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Pornhub goes dark in Arkansas after age verification law kicks in (www.theverge.com)
submitted 3 years ago* by to c/politics@beehaw.org
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Pornhub blocked all users in Arkansas after the state's new age verification law went into effect on Tuesday. The law requires porn sites to verify that users are at least 18 years old. Pornhub argued that requiring ID verification actually harms users' privacy and puts children at risk. MindGeek, Pornhub's operator, has decided to block access from states with similar age verification laws. After complying with a similar law in Louisiana, Pornhub traffic dropped by 80%, so they decided blocking access entirely was preferable to implementing age verification.

States they have blocked for similar laws: Virginia, Utah, Mississippi.

In Louisiana the first state to do this they tried to comply and their traffic decreased by 80%.

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[–] 12 points 3 years ago (2 children)

It's puts everyone at risk. How do you expect that to be securely checked? Not only is it basically privacy invasive to the maximum, but you're giving your government ID to multiple different sites who now have the job of securing your ID. With how many hacks go on nowadays, your ID is the last thing you want to get leaked. It's not much different from getting your SSN hacked.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Government run Oauth is the only real way to implement this, with zero PII being provided to the porn sites. All they get is an anonymised token when you log in.
    Then again, the government Oauth service needs to be hardened in that case, but presumably government web stuff has government level security practices.

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