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Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

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Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#811

Post by rpdillon »

conradev wrote: post #566
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but also because the law sets the standard, it can also provide a new one. If the people writing the law cared about privacy they wouldn't have passed that one, and anybody who does would be repealing it rather than trying to find the best shade of lipstick for the pig. > Which information is collected is made legible by the user agents This is the part you don't need a law in order to do because the user can choos…

I figured I’d get this response, but: I don’t see my primary care doctor selling my health data, due in part to data privacy laws like HIPAA. Consumer companies take COPPA seriously. You absolutely cannot control what companies do with data, so you want to prevent its collection in the first place – but you can penalize them when they do something wrong, which does influence their beyavior. The jury is still out on t…

You can only punish them if you find out about it.

I'm not going to do the legwork for you, but you should be looking around for the way Google is transferring the medical information on 50 million Americans as part of Project Nightingale a few years back, and you should be looking very seriously at medical sites that use Google Analytics in direct violation of HIPAA. The situation here is very much like the situation with the government collecting detailed profiles on every citizen and knowing their location in real time: they're not supposed to be doing it, but the reality is they can and they do.

Snowden's leaks were another great example about how the law doesn't actually matter, if you can't see whether or not it's being enforced.

My point here is if you're counting on the system to protect you, you're going to be disappointed.

Recent example was that I was supposed to give up my ID because I lost my 2FA for a particular site and I refused because I didn't believe they would delete my ID. My friends said that I was paranoid.

https://www.404media.co/id-verification-service-for-tiktok-u...

Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#812

Post by salawat »

conradev wrote: post #566
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but also because the law sets the standard, it can also provide a new one. If the people writing the law cared about privacy they wouldn't have passed that one, and anybody who does would be repealing it rather than trying to find the best shade of lipstick for the pig. > Which information is collected is made legible by the user agents This is the part you don't need a law in order to do because the user can choos…

I figured I’d get this response, but: I don’t see my primary care doctor selling my health data, due in part to data privacy laws like HIPAA. Consumer companies take COPPA seriously. You absolutely cannot control what companies do with data, so you want to prevent its collection in the first place – but you can penalize them when they do something wrong, which does influence their beyavior. The jury is still out on t…

>I don’t see my primary care doctor selling my health data, due in part to data privacy laws like HIPAA.

Oh, you sweet summer child. Bless your little heart. You're right. Doctors don't. Insurance companies do! And that data is passed around like hotcakes to make actuarial datasets which basically have the effect of ensuring premium go up! Several states, in fact, have done everything they can lobbying wise to make sure it remains okay to trade in your personal health data! Also, from personal experience at a PBM, it is at least an offering to get covered populational reports on spend done on behalf of your covered group, meaning employers are given a view of the overall health of their workforce and what that translates to in dollars out the door on their behalf. Information that, of course, would never be used to do strategic layoffs or cross correlation with time taken off to further optimize for cost reduction right?

(Note: if I've had this idea, and rejected it on moral/ethical/legal grounds, there are absolutely people who have had it and hasn't done so).

Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#813

Post by OldfieldFund »

al_borland wrote: post #264
conradev wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like this? https://webkit.org/blog/16993/news-from-wwdc25-web-technolog... It’s a W3C spec led by Okta, Apple and Google based on an ISO standard and it is being rolled out as we speak. This part other iOS applications that have registered themselves as an Identity Document Provider. Has some fun history: California went with an independent contractor for its mDL implementation, which ultimately pressured Ap…

This is interesting, but I’d like to go a step further. I watched the first quarter of the video on where they go over how it works. The site requests data from your ID and they get that data. The site chooses which data it needs and if it will store it or it or not. Sites these days have a tendency to ask for more than what they need, and to store it for profiling purposes. The user can deny the request, but then ca…

Those $99 fake driver's license sites are going to make a killing

Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#814

Post by happycube »

Spivak wrote: post #586
VBprogrammer wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The slippery slope from here to banning under 18s looking at websites discussing suicidal thoughts, transgender issues, homosexually and onto anything some group of middle age mothers decide isn't appropriate seems dangerously anti-fallacitical.

The slope isn't slippery, it's paved with a Starbucks on the way. This process is outlined in detail in Project 2025 to get around 1A being used as a defense because the aim is to define anything as lgbt related as pornography. The current administration has collected nearly all the pieces of Exodia to be able to legally criminalize homosexuality and transgenderism without ever writing a law that says those exact wor…

Yup... this was the plan, they published the plan, certain candidates denied it, and enough of the nation fell for/into it.

We'll be about a quarter of the way to the Chinese Internet by 2029.

Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#815

Post by waffleiron »

istjohn wrote: post #214
smallmancontrov wrote: post #8

"Party of free speech," my ass.

I worry that young people across the political spectrum increasingly no longer see free speech as a foundational value. Both sides pay lip service and deploy it strategically but are quick to sacrifice it when it conflicts with other values and goals. The ACLU won our expansive free speech protections defending the KKK in the 1950s. But today, the ACLU has become short-sighted. They are more concerned with social pro…

>They are more concerned with social progressivism than the liberal foundations of our democracy

That's absolutely not true

In 2017 they filed a lawsuit defending conservative / far-right Milo Yiannopoulos [1] and spoke up for suppression of Trump [2]. Defended someone wishing death to gay people [3]. Filed an amicus brief supporting the NRA's free speech in '18 [4]

And tons of other examples every single year after that: https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/defending-speech-w...

[1] https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-sues-dc-metro-over-...

[2] https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/donald-trump-has-free-...

[3] https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2017/06/aclu-defending-guy-calle...

[4] https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/new-york-state-cant-be...

Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#816

Post by zajio1am »

eesmith wrote: post #700
zajio1am wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is ignoring difference between individual distancing from such person and cancel culture campaigns, whose characteristic pattern is transitivity (boycotting third persons just because they do not participate themselves in boycott). Amplifying effect of such transitivity creates a social coercion in the form that Mill warned against in chapter 1. That is why he mentioned "though not to parade the avoidance" - to…

The "displeases us" you quoted is for "the part of a person's life which concerns only himself". For example, "No person ought to be punished simply for being drunk." For actions "which concerns others" Mill writes: "The evil consequences of his acts do not then fall on himself, but on others; and society, as the protector of all its members, must retaliate on him; must inflict pain on him for the express purpose of…

Yes, but in the first chapter, Mill is clear that even public speech falls into sphere of liberty, the part of person's life "that affect only himself":

"But there is a sphere of action in which society, as distinguished from the individual, has, if any, only an indirect interest; comprehending all that portion of a person’s life and conduct which affects only himself, or if it also affects others, only with their free, voluntary, and undeceived consent and participation. When I say only himself, I mean directly, and in the first instance: for whatever affects himself, may affect others through himself; and the objection which may be grounded on this contingency, will receive consideration in the sequel. This, then, is the appropriate region of human liberty."

"It comprises, first, the inward domain of consciousness; demanding liberty of conscience, in the most comprehensive sense; liberty of thought and feeling; absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects, practical or speculative, scientific, moral, or theological."

"The liberty of expressing and publishing opinions may seem to fall under a different principle, since it belongs to that part of the conduct of an individual which concerns other people; but, being almost of as much importance as the liberty of thought itself, and resting in great part on the same reasons, is practically inseparable from it."

(Also note that your original citation was also related to judgements based on actions that concern only the judged person: "Though doing no wrong to anyone, a person may so act as to compel us to judge him, and feel to him, as a fool, or as a being of an inferior order")

Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#817

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

If there's going to be strict rules around sex, then I'd like to see similar laws around distributing violent content. What we need are age verification requirements before kids can see violence on News programmes or be subjected to the threat of gun violence (e.g. in schools).

Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#818

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

useless_eater wrote: post #45
perihelions wrote: post #25

There was a NYT article a couple weeks ago about Chinese morality police doing mass arrests of erotica authors, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/28/world/asia/china-boys-lov... ( "Chinese Police Detain Dozens of Writers Over Gay Erotic Online Novels" ) [note article contains large images of erotica novel covers] But you'd *expect* that of the PRC; the US, wow, has it ever fallen fast and fallen hard.

[flagged]

Far more damage happens by letting 10 year olds have access to firearms

Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#819

Post by Spooky23 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #469
conradev wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The spec is being implemented by Apple, who is sensitive to privacy issues. The intent of the ISO spec is to allow you to request fine-grained data, like birth year only, but if you read the W3C standard, they explicitly call out privacy as a complex thing that maybe should be regulated. The spec spells out the complexity: some ID verification processes actually need a lot of info! But some, like an alcohol age check…

> The intent of the ISO spec is to allow you to request fine-grained data, like birth year only, but if you read the W3C standard, they explicitly call out privacy as a complex thing that maybe should be regulated. Aren't the regulations the problem here? If not for that nobody would be getting pressured to divulge this personal information to every shady app and website in the first place. Suppose I want to make a s…

The theocracy types are making this terrible, but the technology has alot of potential to enhance privacy.

For example, I was involved in a project several years ago on this where this was explored before the big vendors became players. The issue we were studying was abuse of credentials in-person - many bars will capture people’s identity information when validating IDs.

The ability to provide only the attribute securely is awesome, but of course the systematic abuse of this technology by the reactionaries among us will drive adoption.

Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#820

Post by fluidcruft »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #697
fluidcruft wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't see any reason erasing bots and captchas from my online experience is bad. I hate bots and captchas. They add absolutely no value to my life. Conversely there is lots to be gained if imagine if something like X or reddit or whatever can anonymously verify that a user is a person and over 18 or 21 or 30 even (whatever) without having to directly handle identities. It's could be all the benefits of a boun…

Because you're choosing not to see the obvious downsides. Wasn't this community the ones worried last decade about tech companies havesting their data for profit? But sure, let's explain the downsides: 1. this isn't an all encompasing law. It's only for sites that host adult content. You know what people will do... remove adult content. 2. As we see this year, rules are useless without enforcement. I'm sure X or Redd…

One response to flaws in the law is to oppose them. Another response is to find common ground and embrace and extend.

It won't harm anything. Even now as these things spread nationwide something like Stripe or whatever will pop up and fill the need as a service. It used to be essentially universally required to prove your age using a credit card. There was/is a company that specializes in that. I can't remember its name but it was ubiquitous for porn access for quite a long time. Those over 18 confirmation banners used to be much stronger than the merely souped up cookie notices they have become today. Age verification as a service is trivial (particularly with the rise of phones) and someone will build a system that does a much better job preserving anonymity than credit cards ever did. At this point all you need is something like a passkey or FIDO token and a way for something to vouch age during account creation.

I agree that federal law is preferred.

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