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Pornhub blocks access in Mississippi and Virginia over age verification laws

And more states may be on the list soon.

24 comments

  • So sick of these Puritanical laws dictating for all. And it’s not even just the Republicans. In Virginia, it was both sides supporting it. Good on PornHub for pushing back, but watch this shit become a domino effect.

    I’ve had this conspiracy theory that Reddit saw the writing on the wall and plans to ban NSFW altogether. The first step was forcing users to their app and banning 3rd-party apps. Wild to see this come up in the news.

  • The ONLY porn site that seemed to be effected is pornhub. You know the one that verifies actors to prevent revenge porn and showing children. You know which porn sites still don’t bother checking your ID? Every other one in the world.

    • Oh it gets dumber. In order to view other websites, in Virginia they want you to allow access to your webcam so that an unknown third party can determine if you look to be over 18.

    • It's kinda mind boggling to me because it's not like it's hard to find porn everywhere on the internet. Sure maybe some companies will comply and set up some sort of age verification that attempts to block minors. Other companies will do what pornhub did and just quit doing business in that state, but if a teenager wants to find porn on the internet they absolutely still will. You can torrent it, get it from usenet, or just type "boobs" into Google. Hell the Fediverse is already like 50% porn.

      It's gonna require parents monitoring their children's online activity like they should already fucking be doing because there's way worse things than porn on the internet.

      I'm tired of being penalized as an adult because parents can't seem to do the job of actually parenting their little shitstains.

  • One thing to note is that these laws (or at least Louisiana's and Virginia's) don't criminalize anything. Instead, they create a private cause of action (meaning that someone can bring a civil lawsuit) for damages that result from underage exposure to pornography or whatever. If I had to guess, it's an attempt to get around any possible First Amendment challenges by a porn site, just as Texas' anti-abortion cause of action laws were intended to get around Roe before it was overturned.

    I'm going to be very curious to see how this plays out assuming anyone ever actually sues. It's not clear to me what actual damages could actually be proven, and at the least doing so would be difficult and expensive. Plus, in most states AFAIK, the plaintiff has a responsibility prior to suing to mitigate damages, and failure to do that can hurt a plaintiff's claim (the specifics are going to be entirely situation- and state-specific). It would also be pretty easy, I'd think, for the site to argue some variation of contributory negligence or comparative fault (depending on what the state in question calls it) to at least reduce any award if not eliminate it outright. Come to think of it, this might actually require the site to sue the parent(s) directly, since at least initially, the parents would presumably be suing on behalf of their kid rather than on their own. (This is starting to sound like a bar exam question.)

    Finally, even assuming someone wins such a lawsuit, actually collecting is much more difficult when you're dealing with a non-US defendant. It can certainly be done (depending on the country in which they are based), but that too becomes extremely difficult, time-consuming, and expensive.

    I'm sure there are parents out there who'd be willing to do this, but I doubt there're that many. Most sites, at least for now, are probably willing to roll the dice on that.

  • Living the dream those states...

    A society without porn...

    • I suspect it's a conspiracy to generate more babies with families (Or not families per se) that can't afford them. In order to perpetuate a supply of cheap, uneducated labor. banning porn will remove an outlet for for horny folks... banning contraceptives will make people more likely to get pregnant. banning abortions will force mothers to carry to term, leading to... perpetuated poverty.

      • DING DING DING! WE HAVE A WINNER! That's exactly what the Republicans want. They are fully well aware that they don't represent the average educated voter's interests. Therefore, the best way to stay in power is to perpetuate poverty, ignorance, lack of healthcare, suffering, anger, and misguided hate towards fellow neighbors. This keeps them in power.

  • I've always wondered how you actually enact this on a technical level. So lets say I'm on my phone (not on wifi) in random town X near the state border in Virginia or Miss. What if the tower serving me the data is in Kentucky, or WV? Does the tower now triangulate every single device and try to ban one single website's dns down to the geo zone? Doesn't seem possible to me.

  • The right blathers on about freedom while pulling shit like this. Apparently the only freedom they care about is the freedom to be a selfish, racist, well-armed, inequitable hoarder of resources.

24 comments