Technology

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Pornhub operator MindGeek has blocked all users in Arkansas from the site after the state’s new age verification law went into effect on Tuesday.

The Arkansas law, SB 66, doesn’t ban Pornhub from operating in the state, but it requires porn sites to verify that a user is 18 by confirming their age with identifying documents.

On Wednesday, Pornhub blocked all traffic from IP addresses based in Arkansas in protest, arguing that the law, which was intended to protect children, actually harms users.

“While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users, and in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk,” MindGeek wrote in a message replacing the site’s front page for affected users.

Responding to this wave of bans, MindGeek has decided to block access to its sites from states where the laws have gone into effect.

So, instead of rolling out age verification systems, it says it decided to block access entirely, calling on users to contact their state representatives to oppose these laws.

I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Arkansas: your kids should be working in a mine, not wanking online

Oh no. I'm in Arkansas.

Guess I'll turn on the VPN.

The party of small government.

Who in their right mind would expect a free porn site to go to this level of hassle?

Or is this a puritanical measure in disguise?

Didn't read the bill cause pdf and cause it's a bill, but found another article describing it, and it says at the end:

The bill also would apply to material that as a whole lacks serious "literary, artistic, political, and scientific value for minors."

Isn't that like 99% of the internet?

Things you aren't legally allowed to do in Arkansas: watch porn, have an abortion, read, write, or wipe your ass.

Dang, if kids just had some kind of guardians that would be responsible for their media consumption while every media device out there had basic functionality to support such supervision.

In other, unrelated news, VPN’s are experiencing an unexpected spike in traffic. More at 5.

I wanna see over the next year how rape and sexual harassment rates change.

Well, that basically is an age check. People of Arkansas are obviously not old enough to deal with porn when they support a government that produces such stupid laws.

Won't someone think of the horny Arkansans?

Seriously the Republicans are beyond the pale.

Freedum loving repubeicans inbound to other states?

I remember reading about this before. This is so stupid. Making people verify with offical documents.. People are going to get their documents stolen so much more now. Nice job Arkansas!

Is this a scheme of VPN providers? Do they pay off politicians?

It's downright hypocritical that MindGeek has been outright supportive of the UK government's efforts to push age verification checks on porn and have even tried to lobby our country to implement AgeID as the solution.

But the moment US states start demanding that they verify user ages, they start geoblocking.

Verification should be a 2fa letter with the logo on the envelope.

Xhamster is now requiring personal identification for EVERYONE in the whole US, not just in Arkansas. WTF?!

Pornhub's site was already pretty dark. Like it's mainly black