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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

#881
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not even universally true, though. I've been to bars where they scan the barcode on my drivers' license. I assume that's more convenient than reading the data off it, so maybe they're just doing it for convenience and aren't storing the data anywhere, but who knows, maybe they are. Maybe there's a database somewhere with a list of name, date, time, location tuples for some of my bar visits from years ago. Cree…

Yeah, grocery stores swipe ids too. Thankfully I’m too old, they don’t ask. Have to teach kids to not allow it. Definitely stored.

> Definitely stored

Not well-designed ones. I think you overestimate how much retailers want to even possess sensitive information like that.

What's going to be stored is the fact that an of-age ID was scanned, and possibly the DOB. This is to protect honest cashiers and to have a way to punish ones who might sell to the underage. If an underage sale is reported, they check the audit log and it says the transaction had an ID scanned the cashier can be cleared of wrongdoing. Unless it's the same DOB always being scanned, which seems like some kind of dishonesty.

I do not buy that the supermarket chain wants to use your ID card data for any purpose. First of all, they don't need to, they have (most people's) loyalty cards that do a much better job as they're swiped or entered even without buying any beer. Second, again, only downsides come from saving it. If they were to sell the data and be caught, terrible. If they were to get hacked, terrible.

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

#882

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

...Who is accurately and reliably doing age verification online? How can you guarantee that the credential you're getting belongs to the actual person on the other side of the screen?

> ...Who is accurately and reliably doing age verification online?

ID.me for one is doing full identity verification by looking at your face and your ID card (and I assume having a human check up on it if the algorithm doesn't work). If Apple can do their fancy cloud-AI server thing with provable attestations that they aren't saving your information, someone could build a version of this which has those kind of safeguards and which passes back an emum (UNDER_18, 18_TO_20, ADULT) rather than a name or ID number to the caller.

Whether people would trust it is again, shrug. Most people barely understand how any kind of cryptography works so at the end of the day you do your best and people make their choices on whether to trust you. But the fact is that if the system actually IS designed properly, there isn't any risk of "oh no, 2029 fascism, now Supreme Commander Trump knows what porn sites I use" because that data was never saved.

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

#883
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Site generates random key Key and verification passed to verifier Verified list is published Site pulls list and checks its number has been verified Site doesn’t know who it is, and verifier doesn’t know which site was verified against

How do you prove that the generated key by the site is actually randomly generated? I certainly don't trust a random porn site to do this right. If the verified list is tied against identity, there is only a simple law change required to de-anonymize everything.

You don't trust people who run a massive-scale streaming video platform to have the technical chops to generate random numbers?

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

#884
post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The recent UK Cass Review concluded "It has been suggested that hormone treatment reduces the elevated risk of death by suicide in this population, but the evidence found did not support this conclusion." Do you have any counter-evidence?

Not the person you were replying to, but the Cass review was quite clearly bunk. Its main thrust is essentially: "there are no double blind studies on the effects of affirming care for minors, so we should stop prescribing it immediately". Aside from the fact that the conclusion does not follow from the premise, how exactly could one do a double blind study on puberty blockers? So the report throws out essentially th…

> So the report throws out essentially the entire body of research for failing to meet an impossible to meet standard.

This is disinformation that is easily shown to be false if you read the final report.

In fact this lie was so widely disseminated that the authors felt they had to address it in the FAQs on the Review website: https://cass.independent-review.uk/home/publications/final-r...

> Did the Review reject studies that were not double blind randomised control trials in its systematic review of evidence for puberty blockers and masculinising / feminising hormones?

> No. There were no randomised control studies identified in the systematic reviews, but other types of studies were included if they were well designed and conducted.

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

#885
post #400
post #27

So, while I agree that this feels foreign and wrong to me as someone who has experienced "The Internet" for so long, I can't help but wonder if we can separate that from how the offline world works. I'm asking this in good faith. Given that: 1. The Internet is not an optional subscription service today the way it was in 1995. Every kid and adult has 1,000 opportunities to get online including on the multiple devices…

I would say the best option, if there absolutely must be age verification etc., would be to have a registry of sites that comply with all regulations and by default devices shouldn't access sites off that list. Basically a giant allolist for verified good sites. The internet is already effectively shrunk to less than a dozen sites for regular users, so this won't impact them, and the rest of us can have real free spe…

I actually agree with this. One would just need Apple, Google, and Microsoft to buy into this and listing a legitimate site on the registry would be adopted as fast as universal HTTPS was. Keeping pubescent kids from mainly learning about sexuality through the lens of often-disturbing porn is a worthwhile goal.

Still need a solution to age-verify without tracking though, or else people would think of it as something to be turned off immediately since Reddit and X would obviously not be on the registry since they host tremendous amounts of porn.

I don't think that's an intractable problem at all, and I think as technologists we should be putting our efforts into building the most trustworthy system for that instead of just campaigning for nothing to change because it's "the parents' problem." Easy for us to say: We're all either not parents, or we're the type who are equipped to properly filter access to the Internet for our young kids. In reality, the single mom of 3 working 12 hours a day is not equipped to "just" set up a proxy server or figure out how to install internet filtering software on the Amazon Fire tablet she got her 8-year-old to watch Spider-Man.

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

#886
post #857

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Distribution of pornography to minors has almost always been illegal during that time. My photos only, go back to the 80s and you can buy porn, but not if you are a kid. Obviously it was a lot easier to enforce because it was physical media, but the principle here is that these laws were not unconstitutional. I honestly think kids seeing porn is no big deal, but again, the folks in this thread comparing distribution…

It’s hard for me to square you finding kids seeing porn no big deal, with what you wrote in your original comment. But I see it’s been flagged and I think we’re probably just kindof talking past each other. So nevermind

I can want something to be legal without insisting it’s a human right. All the courts did here was say “no you don’t have a right to distribute pornographic material without age verification.” After which, it becomes an issue for the legislature, and we all culturally decide, together, what’s legal and what’s not.

I can say “I think kids seeing porn is no big deal” without insisting that pornographic speech is protected speech (which I don’t think is true).

I’m really confused as to why it’s not clear, but oh well, I’m just trying my best.

-note: “my photos only” in the previous post was an autocorrect typo.

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

#888

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t be serious thinking it has NO bad effect on people, especially children. Would you let your own children watch porn?

Yes!

Without restrictions, any age?

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

#889

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would apply to Facebook just as any other site, and that’s obvious to the HN crowd. It’s the ambulance chaser section of the article that explains the problem. American Christians can and should rely on content blockers rather than lawsuits.

I think American Christians should do neither. Restricting a child's access to information in order to indoctrinate them into a set of beliefs unquestioningly is a form of child abuse. Various forms of psychological and physical abuse are extremely prevalent in American Christian parenting practices, and it's something as a society we should not tolerate.

Exposing children to propaganda that they are ill equipped to deal with is also child abuse.

Just because someone can argue better than you can does not mean they are right. Climate change deniers can be very convincing if you don't understand physics.

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

#890
post #863

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has as much to do with other people as buying guns does. What about the actresses in the porn content; people the world, clearly including you, so quickly forget about? The concerning number of women who are trapped into this industry, usually in third world countries, by men? What about the people on the other side of the personal relationships of individuals who consume this content; the averted gazes, their tre…

Asking id from the person watching porn has nothing to do with making porn illegal. If you think it is harmful to the people doing the porn, then it should be illegal. If not, asking for id is super useless. Also if watching porn is bad for the person’s spouse then they shouldn’t do it, which has nothing to do with asking for id

But isn't harm minimization a thing? That's something we practice in other domains, like providing clean needles to drug addicts. After all, if drug use is harmful to the people doing drugs, then it should be illegal. So; making things illegal often doesn't solve the problem. Making it harder to consume porn reduces consumption which reduces the amount of money being funneled into the industry, which might be beneficial to those harmed by it (both producers and consumers). Versus, making it illegal might have a prohibition-style impact, and is, of course, legally tenuous anyway.
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