Pornhub blocks Montana and North Carolina as their age verification laws take effect | The website says the states’ ID requirement would put users’ privacy at risk::Montana and North Carolina are the latest to join the list of states with age verification laws for adult platforms.

  • Gigan@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    So pornhub would rather let kids watch porn than comply with age verification laws

    • EmergMemeHologram@startrek.website
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      6 months ago

      Please register your id, sexual preferences, and all your financial information with the government. We know from the history of governments this info would never get abused or leaked or used for something horrific.

    • bassomitron@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      I hate to break it to you, but teenagers have been circumnavigating around any law the government throws at them since the beginning of time.

      This law is particularly ridiculous and poorly thought out. It is easily bypassed and only has potential downsides. It is ripe for abuse and it’s insane anyone supports this level of privacy intrusion.

    • Alteon@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      The absolute dumbest of takes.

      All anyone has to do is say, “…it’s for the children,” and you just line up, ready to sign away your rights and privacy.

    • Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      No they’d rather people not have to upload copies of their photo ID to porn sites or participate in a system where such preferences will be easily stored in a government database. It opens the door for privacy violation, extortion, public humiliation, etc for engaging in legal but socially stigmatized behavior in the privacy of their own homes.

      • winterayars@sh.itjust.works
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        6 months ago

        Even that would not be enough to protect Pornhub, too. Some kid gets on their parents’ account? Bam, lawsuit. Even the total ban is not enough. Some kid uses a VPN to access the site? Lawsuit.

        It is not physically possible to comply with these laws. (The NC one at least.)

        • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          The total ban should protect from lawsuits for vpn use. It’s a case of “we deny service to anyone who logs in from your jurisdiction. This individual logged in from outside that jurisdiction and there’s no way for us to tell that they aren’t” the vpn theoretically could get in trouble though

          • winterayars@sh.itjust.works
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            6 months ago

            I look forward to the courts being very normal about that argument.

            The law in NC (not sure about the Utah one) doesn’t care about where the login is coming from. It only cares about where the user is located. The user concealing that information, on purpose or by accident, does not mean the website can ignore its requirements under the law.

            • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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              6 months ago

              Yeah but it’s well established that states don’t have the right to prohibit transactions outside their borders. There will be legal questions about several aspects of this, but the worst I expect federal judges to rule on this is to declare a level of effort they need to put in to verify the viewer’s location. But at the end of the day, a reasonably good faith effort to deny service to those states should be sufficient in part because those states almost certainly don’t have the right to unilaterally force every other state to not get to use VPNs for sexually graphic materials

    • TugOfWarCrimes@sh.itjust.works
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      6 months ago

      No. They would rather effective age verification that doesn’t negatively impact the privacy and liberties of their users. They want a solution, not just a ham fisted excuse to start building the foundations of a social credit system

      • iknowitwheniseeit@lemmynsfw.com
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        6 months ago

        While care is required, designing a system that only proves that someone is over a specific age is possible without leaking much additional information.

        For example a request for age verification can be generated and signed by the porn site. All it needs is a unique ID and the signature. It should expire quickly and can only be used once.

        The person identifying themself can send this request to a certifying party (the government in the EU where we trust governments, or I guess some terrible for profit company in the USA because they privatize everyday). The certifying party can sign the request, since they know how old the person is.

        The person then returns this verification to the porn site.

        In this scenario the porn site never learns anything about the user other than that they are above a given age. The certifying party only knows that the person has gotten an age verification, but not why or where.

        There is still possible collusion between the porn site and the verifying party, but in that case the system is not really needed at all. Also metadata tracking is possible (like when a person gets a request and has network traffic to a porn site), but can be mitigated if a user is concerned.

          • iknowitwheniseeit@lemmynsfw.com
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            6 months ago

            Did I? I’m not sure how. The person visiting would only use the verification request once. It’s only good for a single request. How could this be used for tracking?

            • mcribbs@lemmy.world
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              6 months ago

              You didn’t… If anything you’ve described something closer to OAuth or JWT. You’re just getting hit by people who don’t know how cookies actually work.

        • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          I’m not nearly as afraid of a porn site having information about people as I am about governments having a list of who watches porn on what sites

          • iknowitwheniseeit@lemmynsfw.com
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            6 months ago

            The problem is that if a porn site has the information they can be compelled to pass that information on, or it can be revealed by data breaches.

    • CodeName@infosec.pub
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      6 months ago

      What are you talking about? They are blocking access in those states. They are literally doing the opposite of what you are suggesting.

    • cabron_offsets@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      What is with this fucking dumbass, disingenuous campaign on Lemmy? And I recently saw some dumb cunt arguing that blue states are taking gun rights away from black people, too.

      You fucktards really expect people to think that you care about kids or black people?

      I assure you, we are not the idiots.

    • felykiosa@sh.itjust.works
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      6 months ago

      You do not start to watch porn at 18 , every adolescent watch porn stop with this "protect kid " bullshit

    • HipHoboHarold@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      I’m just not an authoritarian. I don’t like the government spying on us as it is. Why would I volunteer to give up even more privacy? Consider installing cameras in your home and give the government access to them if you want. Totes just to make sure the kids aren’t doing anything wrong. I’ll skip.

      Party of small government!

    • VieuxQueb@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      You know they are not doing it for the kids, they want to know if you are gay. By associating people ID to content type they know what YOU watch.

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        It’s partly but not just that. They want blackmail and they want enforced sexual modesty for all adults. Porn is against their religion and they believe their primary duty is to force others to follow their religion’s rules. And it creating sexually frustrated prudish adults is a plus to them.

    • InFerNo@lemmy.ml
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      6 months ago

      What kind of a parent are you if you’re not blocking access to these kinds of sites on the devices of your kids?