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Porn Sites Need Age-Verification Systems in Texas, Court Rules

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Re: Porn Sites Need Age-Verification Systems in Texas, Court Rules

#71
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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> and the negative effects seem to be....nothing. One of my colleagues has a 14-year old daughter, and she has TikTok. It’s not uncommon for girls of her age to post stuff like “the right place for a hand during kissing”, and it’ll be a (subtle) reference to the throat. There’s nothing wrong with consuming porn at that age per sè, but without good parental / sex ed guidance it shapes kids their concept of what “norma…

This is the argument that always bother me. It boils down to "Parents just need to parent heir kids." Look at the impossible task of raising a child who's brain isn't impacted by our pornified society today. Why do we think parents are on their own when it comes to keeping their kids from porn but are more than happy to help them keep their kids from cigarettes/alcohol?

Re: Porn Sites Need Age-Verification Systems in Texas, Court Rules

#72
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You see no negative effects because your brain grew up on porn just like everyone else you interact with. If everyone is sick then it's going to look normal. To really see the effects of porn you need to ask what could porn affect? Possibly someone's understanding of sexual ethics? Could it push their sexual interests into more and more extreme positions? The generation before has better mental health, less divorce,…

You're making a lot of claims there without proving causes and ignoring a whole swath of socioeconomic factors in favour of your bugbear, but just to disprove one, divorce rates have been on a downward trend since online pornography became really ubiquitous. So it turns out porn saves marriages!

https://www.bgsu.edu/ncfmr/resources/data/family-profiles/lo...

Re: Porn Sites Need Age-Verification Systems in Texas, Court Rules

#73
post #28

Im in Utah which has this law. Now pornhub is effectively inaccessible because Im not giving them my ID but I think it largely backfired because everyone uses offshore sites now. Tbh Im kind of grateful because the offshore sites have much better content since its all pirated, but I never wouldve even thought of them until I was kicked off ph.

Strictly for research purposes, what would some of these offshore sites be?

I use porntrex

Re: Porn Sites Need Age-Verification Systems in Texas, Court Rules

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>With talk of regulating TikTok, I've wondered what the US would do if TikTok sent a notification saying, essentially, "just connect to our servers in China". The kids would do it, and then what? Regardless of how you feel about TikTok, the current bill as written is completely absurd on the face of it. It names China as a "foreign adversary", as if everyone just suddenly forgot that our entire economy is completely…

Both things can be true at once. I think its very clear that China is vying to increase its influence and mantle the US as the defacto hegemon of the world, or at least create a sphere of influence as strong as the US.

This means they're competing with the US, not that they're enemies. Competition for economic leadership is something expected from any large country and it does not equal to evil doing. It is the US that has officially adopted the "enemy" language, in my opinion as a sign of weakness, because they know the economic leadership is slipping fast.

Re: Porn Sites Need Age-Verification Systems in Texas, Court Rules

#75
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You see no negative effects because your brain grew up on porn just like everyone else you interact with. If everyone is sick then it's going to look normal. To really see the effects of porn you need to ask what could porn affect? Possibly someone's understanding of sexual ethics? Could it push their sexual interests into more and more extreme positions? The generation before has better mental health, less divorce,…

Both of those issues sound less like problems with the porn itself but there being so much stigma around it that we can't openly talk about what is real and what isn't. (Or "Normal", for lack of a better term here. Basically what doesn't require training to do)

We have these discussions around R rated movies, Violent Video Games, and many other things. But if we could actually discuss porn and sex as naturally as we talk about these other things than people would actually properly understand what they are seeing.

But we don't, and that is a societal problem.

Re: Porn Sites Need Age-Verification Systems in Texas, Court Rules

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now we begin discussing a national firewall. With talk of regulating TikTok, I've wondered what the US would do if TikTok sent a notification saying, essentially, "just connect to our servers in China". The kids would do it, and then what? There are a few Internet regulations I've seen discussed that would require a national firewall to achieve their stated goals.

I feel like if there is one country where this wouldn't fly, it's the US. Not only because of the population but politicians would have a hard time justifying it when they openly complain about the same thing in other countries. Not that it has ever stopped them, but it'd be harder I think. The US still projects an image of freedom to the rest of the world. It's certainly not idolized as much as a few decades ago but…

Conservatives fear and already suspect mass Internet censorship of election stealing and conservative viewpoints, etc. They would be skeptical, for only partially legitimate reasons though. An unreliable ally in this fight I think.

Also, US trust in mainstream media is falling and people are turning to other sources of news. These alternative news sources won't be happy to see mass censorship, because they know it could happen to them.

If they do ban TikTok (or ruin it somehow), an entire generation of kids will be embittered against the government and learn an important lesson; a silver lining.

You may be right. I hope you're right.

Re: Porn Sites Need Age-Verification Systems in Texas, Court Rules

#77
post #10

> Texas cannot enforce a provision requiring porn websites to "display health warnings about the effects of the consumption of pornography." Well at least some common sense prevailed, there is zero reason to have a notice like that. Like I kinda get on paper how you could come to the conclusion of needing to do something like this (the ID part), I mean generally (unless you look a certain age) you do have to show you…

Your anecdote isn't data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_pornography_on_youn... I'm not saying that it's black and white, but I hope we can rise above the level of discourse of "I watched porn when young and turned out just fine". It's about as interesting as e.g., "I started smoking when I was 16 and turned out just fine" or "my parents beat me as a kid and I turned out just fine". First of all, what you m…

The tone of your comment implies that the wikipedia article supports the "porn bad" narrative, but the article does not support that at all. I'm not sure why you linked it.

Re: Porn Sites Need Age-Verification Systems in Texas, Court Rules

#78

What counts as a porn site? Reddit, Twitter, etc. all have porn on them. Definitely backwards for free speech and the open internet. Also backwards for privacy and security. If anything, sites should be prevented from collecting identifying info unless absolutely necessary.

Porn isn't speech. It falls under obscenity. Questions like > What counts as a porn site? are really stale, and too often sophistic attempts at obfuscating what is rather clear. If banning the production and distribution of pornography is not possible with an outright ban, strangling this monstrous industry through onerous regulation is a pretty good tactic. And it's not new. Israel effectively requires citizens to a…

> Porn isn't speech. It falls under obscenity.

In the US, you are dreadfully wrong. Also, obscenity has a very specific, and strict, definition. The second prong under the Miller test is:

> Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions specifically defined by applicable state law

There is a large amount of porn that isn't going to satisfy this prong because it's not going to be sexual conduct--fetishes like BDSM could well fail to depict any sexual conduct whatsoever. It wouldn't surprise me if less than half the videos on PornHub were actually considered obscenity under the Miller test.

> If banning the production and distribution of pornography is not possible with an outright ban, strangling this monstrous industry through onerous regulation is a pretty good tactic.

Sorry, you don't get to curtail constitutionally-guaranteed free speech just because you don't like it, and "strangling [...] through onerous regulation" is no more viable a vehicle than an outright ban is under strict scrutiny.

Re: Porn Sites Need Age-Verification Systems in Texas, Court Rules

#79
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with a lot of these studies is they are also done in a society that highly stigmatizes sexuality and porn. Many of these things can also be mitigated by an ability to have open conversations about feelings about what they see. Same with playing violent video games, watching R rated movies, or whatever.

Maybe I should have added, I also hope we can rise above the level of discourse where a single though is viewed as enough to dismiss a bunch of studies.

I am not dismissing the studies, but we have to look at the studies through the society that they were done in.

To ask, is the study saying that there is an inherent problem with porn in an isolated bubble or is the problem with porn in the way our society is setup. That is a very important question and drastically changes the conversation and the action items.

Re: Porn Sites Need Age-Verification Systems in Texas, Court Rules

#80
post #10

> Texas cannot enforce a provision requiring porn websites to "display health warnings about the effects of the consumption of pornography." Well at least some common sense prevailed, there is zero reason to have a notice like that. Like I kinda get on paper how you could come to the conclusion of needing to do something like this (the ID part), I mean generally (unless you look a certain age) you do have to show you…

Hmm. Plenty of people end up with porn addiction and lots of men who watch extreme porn can't get it up for plain old vanilla sex. And be honest, most porn isn't vanilla, and is horribly misogynistic and frequently violent. And men trying to normalise "porn-style" sex isn't doing women any favours. The whole industry is ... just extremely unpleasant.

Aside from porn, if I had kids under 14 I'd straight up ban them from accessing hyper-addictive / damaging social media.

Anyways, you're fine. That's great. Lots of people aren't. On a personal level, I like the idea of moderating my appetites and controlling my consumption. Mastering temptation is key to a healthy and happy life, including not killing yourself with alcohol, drugs or food. I see sex as "just another appetite" that can be satisfied in a number of ways, some healthy, some not.

Besides all of the above, I don't think it's possible to forcibly remove stigmas. Stigmas don't work that way.

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