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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

#961

Post by red-iron-pine »

jasmer wrote: post #908
gnicholas wrote: post #716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it’s not a big deal then verifying your age shouldn’t phase you anymore than verifying your age to buy alcohol. If the cashier asks for your ID when you buy a six-pack, that's completely ephemeral, with no record created. If they swipe your ID (I think this happens sometimes), that creates a record, but it's not clear if it stores personal info or just verifies that it's a valid ID with appropriate birthdate. If…

"there's no way to do so ephemerally, " - there are ways people can be issued anonymous tokens, 3rd party verifications, regs against recording the data with strong regulatory authority. Frankly, it's not even that hard you could come up with 3 'good ways' just by thinking about it a tiny bit, that would be less intrusive than showing your ID at a bar. Trade this for getting the drinking age lowered to 18 and we win.

Sure, there are ways. There are ways to watch every single American all the time; China is trying that with their citizens already. Doesn't mean we should, or will, or that it will ever make sense.

PH is a business, and the overhead of adding this system, on top of the PII, compliance, and access risks that come with it, doesn't make business-sense.

What costs more? implementing a sweeping system with tons of risk, or blacklisting one state?

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

#962

Post by red-iron-pine »

Mindwipe wrote: post #567
brightball wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s such a strange dichotomy in these conversations. 1. Porn shouldn’t be available to kids and it’s on the vendors legally to ensure that. 2. Porn should be unrestricted, it’s up to parents to do something about it. What I can’t understand is if the people in camp 2 are so unashamed of the porn advocacy then why is age verification such a big deal? If it’s not a big deal then verifying your age shouldn’t phase y…

> What I can’t understand is if the people in camp 2 are so unashamed of the porn advocacy then why is age verification such a big deal? a) It's economically implausible. Age verification is very expensive, and the requirement means that many sites that currently permit adult content will ban it rather than pay for verification (Twitter bans sex workers in Germany rather than pay for verification). b) It doesn't work…

an extension to a) is also that there is non-trivial risk.

PII breaches require disclosure, and that's the last thing PH wants. There is also potential legal ramifications if they fail to handle the PII correctly and stuff gets leaked.

Then there is the risk that somehow a kid manages to get through anyway, and they face the risk on that angle -- angry parents and crusading politicians.

Furthermore, how are you verifying these? Actual human eyes? Image recognition for valid Utah driver's licenses? What if they live in Utah but are from out of state? Fake IDs are a thing, and if it's an uploaded image I could have easily whipped up something with Photoshop when I was like ~15. Compress the image a little to help mask any artifacts and then cry "potato quality phone camera" if anyone questions it.

Opens up a whole can of worms that don't make sense if you're trying to solve this on the scale of just one (1) state. Maybe if California, TX, and NY go in on it, too, but otherwise it's a lot of risk for little gain.

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

#963

Post by theptip »

drdaeman wrote: post #696
theptip wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 for teaching lawmakers how to achieve their goals at the protocol layer. Imagine how much better the web would be if cookie consent was a browser protocol on top of HTTP headers. This is the Obviously Correct solution, they just needed to work with browser vendors to make it happen. I’d rather you have websites support a generic cryptographically-secure claim schema for ages (implementable in any signed token the…

> Imagine how much better the web would be if cookie consent was a browser protocol on top of HTTP headers. Imagine how much better the web would be if the browsers would have a built-in ability to accept or reject cookies on a per-site basis... oh, wait, they do. And had that since forever (or at least IE5). Almost no one used that because it was obnoxious to have a popup on every website. So browser vendors moved t…

Right, but to be clear the cookie consent thing was about purpose limitation, not blocking all cookies outright.

The idea was that core functionality shouldn’t break if you block unnecessary tracking, which the old cookie blockers couldn’t achieve, which was why politicians got involved in the first place. Great idea, terrible implementation.

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

#964

Post by theptip »

freedomben wrote: post #727
theptip wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 for teaching lawmakers how to achieve their goals at the protocol layer. Imagine how much better the web would be if cookie consent was a browser protocol on top of HTTP headers. This is the Obviously Correct solution, they just needed to work with browser vendors to make it happen. I’d rather you have websites support a generic cryptographically-secure claim schema for ages (implementable in any signed token the…

> Imagine how much better the web would be if cookie consent was a browser protocol on top of HTTP headers. This is the Obviously Correct solution, they just needed to work with browser vendors to make it happen. This is a great idea, and it doesn't seem like we need lawmakers to do anything about it. If browsers implemented this, websites could start using it right?

It’s a good point, I don’t know. My guess is the regulations require the website to ask for consent in a way that precludes browsers doing this, but that is a total guess.

Also the sites have a disincentive to make it easier; most people just click through because it’s annoying. The sites want you to do that; they don’t want to make it easier.

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

#965

Post by least »

bumby wrote: post #863
least wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say that I don't think children should be limited in opportunity due to the circumstances of their upbringing, but with those considerations in mind, protecting them from finding a way to access pornography is pretty low on that list of priorities, especially given that legislation like this will be wholly ineffective at accomplishing its purported goal and will needlessly burden the people who are legally trying…

I think it's perfectly reasonable to say the risk isn't sufficient to justify this kind of action. But how exactly are you measuring the risk in terms of the higher priority risks you mention? I think the danger is people revert to their intuition about what is risky, rather than defining it by an objective measure.

Higher priority risks are things that are easily measurable. A child that does not have food to eat or cannot access healthcare they need because their parents cannot afford it is very obviously bad for the child. Educational opportunities are another thing that's pretty easy to measure. Measuring the negative effects, if any, viewing pornography has on children isn't particularly easy to measure. I would say it's not ethically possible.

So ultimately, policy judgments with regards to increasing access controls are going to be dependent on intuition, one way or another, and individuals' political philosophies. I personally don't think there's any case where I think legislation like this is appropriate, though. If it were, it would be overwhelmingly obvious that it is. Clearly Utahan legislators think differently.

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

#966

Post by cogitoergofutuo »

friend_and_foe wrote: post #943
cogitoergofutuo wrote: post #936

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/resources/mormon.asp

> Violence broke out in 1833 as the “Old Settlers” under the guise of “extra-legal” justice took the law into their own hands. I'm seeing no mention of Mormons breaking laws, the only mentions of law breaking references other people breaking laws to persecute Mormons. The governor of Missouri's declares that they are to be expelled or exterminated (!!!), the mobs attacked them and killed them, no mention anywhere in…

> When the Mormons attacked a duly authorized militia under the belief it was an anti-Mormon mob, Missouri’s governor, Lilburn Boggs, ordered the Saints expelled from the state, or “exterminated,

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

#967

Post by loeg »

cmh89 wrote: post #957
Georgelemental wrote: post #946

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happy and healthy people don't usually become addicted to heroin either.

Sure they do. There are literally thousands of stories of people who were in a car wreck, sports accident, or some kind of injury and then they get prescribed Oxy and when that runs out they are so addicted they end up getting black market pills and then when they can't afford that they move to heroin. Opiates are insanely physically addictive and you can easily accidentally become addicted to them using them as pres…

The conversation rate from pill addiction to heroin is order of magnitude 10%, even ignoring the logical leap made in saying people who get addicted to pills all have happy fulfilling lives. I think it’s substantially correct to say that happy and healthy people, by and large, don’t get addicted to heroin.

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

#968

Post by drdaeman »

theptip wrote: post #963
drdaeman wrote: post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine how much better the web would be if cookie consent was a browser protocol on top of HTTP headers. Imagine how much better the web would be if the browsers would have a built-in ability to accept or reject cookies on a per-site basis... oh, wait, they do. And had that since forever (or at least IE5). Almost no one used that because it was obnoxious to have a popup on every website. So browser vendors moved t…

Right, but to be clear the cookie consent thing was about purpose limitation, not blocking all cookies outright. The idea was that core functionality shouldn’t break if you block unnecessary tracking, which the old cookie blockers couldn’t achieve, which was why politicians got involved in the first place. Great idea, terrible implementation.

P3P also existed, but no one had any respect for it beyond sending it fake policies to get their third-party cookies enabled.

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

#969

Post by jasmer »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #961
jasmer wrote: post #908

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"there's no way to do so ephemerally, " - there are ways people can be issued anonymous tokens, 3rd party verifications, regs against recording the data with strong regulatory authority. Frankly, it's not even that hard you could come up with 3 'good ways' just by thinking about it a tiny bit, that would be less intrusive than showing your ID at a bar. Trade this for getting the drinking age lowered to 18 and we win.

Sure, there are ways. There are ways to watch every single American all the time; China is trying that with their citizens already. Doesn't mean we should, or will, or that it will ever make sense. PH is a business, and the overhead of adding this system, on top of the PII, compliance, and access risks that come with it, doesn't make business-sense. What costs more? implementing a sweeping system with tons of risk, o…

The overhead of adding a decently designed and broadly used age verification mechanism is almost nil. It won't show up even as an operating expense.

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

#970

Post by Aerbil313 »

HaZeust wrote: post #795
4gotunameagain wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything that can hijack the dopaminergic system should not be allowed to kids. Gambling, tiktok & smartphones in general, porn, drugs etc. We used to have shame as a societal mechanism to deal with these issues. It was shameful to be an alcoholic, which was how alcoholism was kept in check. The same way it was shameful in ancient Greece to surrender to your carnal urges. Shame is disappearing. Our societies are goin…

Places with robust systems for shame and conformation to its populace - particularly religious nations - are less civilized and developed than their "shameless" national counterparts. This isn't the only variable, and it's clearly not the determining factor. Push an agenda elsewhere.

Depends on how you define development and civilization. There are plenty who see Western nations as became more barbarian (as opposed to being more civilized) with and due to development of technology. They don't see development of technology as good either.
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