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Half of the US Now Requires You to Upload Your ID or Scan Your Face to Watch Porn (www.404media.co)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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As of this week, half of the states in the U.S. are under restrictive age verification laws that require adults to hand over their biometric and personal identification to access legal porn.

Missouri became the 25th state to enact its own age verification law on Sunday. As it’s done in multiple other states, Pornhub and its network of sister sites—some of the largest adult content platforms in the world—pulled service in Missouri, replacing their homepages with a video of performer Cherie DeVille speaking about the privacy risks and chilling effects of age verification.

Archive: http://archive.today/uZB13

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[–] 86 points 9 months ago (8 children)

Yea, but soon we’ll have no states to vpn to, and we will have to start using the Quebec servers, then all the websites will be in French and I’ll have to learn a new language.

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  • [–] 24 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    I VPN to Montreal servers. Everything is still displayed in English.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    Interesting…all of it? I’m in Ontario but my hub/ISP is in Quebec so all my random advertising is in French.

    Somehow it knows to target advertising to you in English…maybe you need to work on your privacy?

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    I've got a lot of privacy stuff, but I also know that I'm being tracked. I'm not using the VPN for privacy though. I'm using it to watch porn, so I don't really care. If I did want privacy there's a lot of things I could improve, but I'm not that worried about it.

    As for the targeted advertising, I don't see any of that. I wouldn't be surprised if that were in French but I wouldn't know.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    Yeah…I don’t really know what I’m talking about…it’s not like I make much of an effort for privacy. I’m guess it’s just my particular ISP. It’s like…the random advertising is in French…but if they know who I am it’s targeted…it’s mixed.

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  • [–] 12 points 9 months ago* (1 child)

    soon we’ll have no states to vpn to

    I've yet to see any state legislature take that proposal seriously. Unlike trying to make porn sites take your credit card info in advance (a policy they hated so much gosh darn it!) you're really fucking with the money when you try and regulate VPNs. Also, just... not really that practical. For the same reason Congress has been pretty toothless when it comes to regulating Torrents and digital encryption, going after VPNs at the regulatory level is something of a technological rabbit hole.

    then all the websites will be in French

    Nothing will ever make anyone on the internet learn a language other than English.

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  • [–] 11 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    I’ve yet to see any state legislature take that proposal seriously

    snekerpimp meant if every state requires ID, then VPN to another state will not get around the ID check.

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  • [–] 11 points 9 months ago* (2 children)

    Setting aside the fact that there's no appetite for these laws in liberal states because its purely a conservative fetish, you can still get porn on the internet without going to the big corporate online clearinghouses.

    FFS, there was porn on Napster back in the day.

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  • [–] 12 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    There's no appetite for these laws in the voter public of any state, as far as I can tell given how VPN usage skyrockets in every state where these laws are put in place. Is California no longer liberal? Also consider the people running sites in any of the states that have such a law. They may resort to just blanket ID-checking everyone rather than risk prosecution.

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  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago* (1 child)

    There’s no appetite for these laws in the voter public of any state

    Evangelical right-wing states have a huge contingent of politicians who compete with one another to be the toughest on "child sex trafficking" and other Epstein-tangential topics. So, in the GOP primary, you get a lot of promises about how you're going to round up all the pedos and put them to the sword or whatever. And this inevitably manifests as "please insert your dick into this pepper grinder to access the pornography" laws, as a sort-of practical compromise.

    Is California no longer liberal?

    Current Status: Failed (2024-08-15: In committee: Held under submission.)

    Looks like they're retaining their title. That said, if you peak under the "Supporters and Opponents" what you're going to see in the Supporters section is a litany of right-wing evangelical organizations and a couple of mega-corps.

    They may resort to just blanket ID-checking everyone rather than risk prosecution.

    The current strategy appears to be refusing to host content in the regulated states. Even then, there are plenty of social media and general content distribution channels that dodge the regulation by claiming to be content-blind in how they serve their data. I don't see Facebook or YouTube getting the business end of any of these regulations. Almost as though they're toothless if you've got enough money to tip your Congresscritters.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    Evangelical right-wing states have a huge contingent of politicians who compete with one another to be the toughest on "child sex trafficking" and other Epstein-tangential topics. So, in the GOP primary, you get a lot of promises about how you're going to round up all the pedos and put them to the sword or whatever. And this inevitably manifests as "please insert your dick into this pepper grinder to access the pornography" laws, as a sort-of practical compromise.

    I'd say rather than a compromise, the "protect the children!" porn bans are an excuse to go after LGBTQ content by marking any and all content related to them as explicit and demonizing them as pedophiles going after children. They don't care who it hurts along the way.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (1 child)

    Napster was audio only. Did you mean limewire, or kazaa, or one of the many napster clones that came after?

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    Napster was audio only.

    It was file type specific and had a soft file side limit, but that's easy enough to work around.

    Did you mean limewire, or kazaa, or one of the many napster clones that came after?

    They all had it as well, yes

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  • [–] 8 points 9 months ago

    This is the plan all along. It’s not about porn, it’s not even about control. It’s about teaching Americans a second language. You know who’s behind this? Duolingo and Big Language.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago*

    Heh. I’m in Ontario, but I guess my DNS is outta Quebec…so most of my banner/insert advertising is in French. It’s fucking awesome because I have no idea what they’re saying or advertising to me most of the time. Highly recommend.

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