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PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

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Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#41

Post by dspillett »

stinos wrote: post #11
johnnymorgan wrote: post #6

In other news, VPN subscription sales explode in Utah! easy sales opportunity

My guess would be: more visitors to from Utah?

Yes. Though I suspect a lot of users know the site by reputation and may not specifically know others other than indirectly when they search (google/bing) or are linked to them from elsewhere (reddit, etc.). For those people the constant VPN advertising via sponsorship of podcasts and youtube channels will attract a number of users. The other porn sites can't advertise in those mediums.

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#42

Post by sslayer »

tokai wrote: post #32
NotYourLawyer wrote: post #20

This all seems a little disingenuous. First, from their summary, it doesn’t sound like the law actually requires checking a photo ID. They’re treating it like some maximalist regulation that it isn’t—it requires them to do more than nothing though. And also > PornHub said that a better solution is to identify users by their device. Pornhub effectively does absolutely nothing to verify users’ ages right now. Maybe it…

>Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if they did something I don't get that. Why would it be good? Why should it ever be a webpage's responsibility?

Well, because then we can hold someone else responsible instead of having any personal responsibility for our own actions.

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#43

Post by brookst »

xxs wrote: post #4
YPPH wrote: post #2

Presumably they are using some form of IP address geolocation. If that's as inaccurate in the USA as it is in Australia, they're going to have problems - a lot of the time it puts me in the wrong State.

Mobile phones cannot be reliably geo-located by IP as that depends on the datacenter serving them, which can easily be out of state. Usually the only half reliable part is the country which doesn't work in Europe when it comes to roaming (it uses the host country regardless the location).

The law is more about intent than technical compliance. Both are important, but the most important thing is demonstrating good faith efforts to comply.

It's a very different world from technology, where technical compliance is more or less the same thing as policy compliance.

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#46

Post by aflag »

xyzzy4747 wrote: post #37
aflag wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious. What's in between nothing and checking id?

Just my own thoughts: there could theoretically be an identity system that simply replies "Yes/No" if someone is underage or not. But nothing like this exists to my knowledge.

That service would need to be run by a third party, which would know your id and the fact that you are trying to access pornhub, wouldn't it?

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#48

Post by ben_w »

brightball wrote: post #14

It’s probably only a matter of time. The internet became the only place where age verification wasn’t really a thing. I’m honestly more surprised this didn’t happen 20 years ago.

20 years ago, Microsoft Internet Explorer had settings for exactly what maximum age rating of websites you wanted to be allowed to see. I vaguely remember one of the options being "full frontal nudity". Were there separate options for sex vs. violence, or was that just my imagination?

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#49

Post by MiddleEndian »

NotYourLawyer wrote: post #20

This all seems a little disingenuous. First, from their summary, it doesn’t sound like the law actually requires checking a photo ID. They’re treating it like some maximalist regulation that it isn’t—it requires them to do more than nothing though. And also > PornHub said that a better solution is to identify users by their device. Pornhub effectively does absolutely nothing to verify users’ ages right now. Maybe it…

>Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if they did something.

If it were instead illegal for sites to check for your ID outside of a handful of circumstances, that would be much preferable. Last thing we need is more privacy invasions on the web. Unfortunately, things are going in the wrong direction, both from private interests and from newer govt regulations.

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#50

Post by rtpg »

tokai wrote: post #32
NotYourLawyer wrote: post #20

This all seems a little disingenuous. First, from their summary, it doesn’t sound like the law actually requires checking a photo ID. They’re treating it like some maximalist regulation that it isn’t—it requires them to do more than nothing though. And also > PornHub said that a better solution is to identify users by their device. Pornhub effectively does absolutely nothing to verify users’ ages right now. Maybe it…

>Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if they did something I don't get that. Why would it be good? Why should it ever be a webpage's responsibility?

There are some people who believe that access to certain services should be age-gated. Thus follows that a web page offering the service should handle this age gating, in the same way that alcohol sellers are responsible for checking that their customers are of drinking age.

In the Real World(TM) this is a fairly uncontroversial idea. The Internet is very wild west on these things and that has lead to interesting outcomes... but really age gating porn is in line with many things in the world.

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