What the US Pornhub 'ban' is really about
20 comments
·January 12, 2025Workaccount2
We now have the first generation of people who grew up with easily accessible porn from a young age. Happens to also be the same generation that grew up with violent video games and "parental advisory" music.
Either millennials are a gang of psychotic murdering rapists or religious people are knee-jerk driven idiots.
echelon
These ID-tracking laws are a dragnet to build kompromat and return society to puritanism.
If these lawmakers really cared about children, they'd look into giving them school lunches.
There's far creepier stuff happening on VRChat and Roblox anyway. These lawmakers don't even care enough to understand what they're talking about.
But in any case, the legislation will lag innovation. In two years, you'll be able to generate custom porn of whatever you want on your own device using diffusion video models. No Internet needed.
petre
> you'll be able to generate custom porn of whatever you want on your own device using diffusion video models
I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that, since you did not complete the age verification process.
Clubber
>We now have the first generation ... easily accessible porn from a young age.
I'm GenX and there was always a Playboy or something similar around. Porn on VHS was pretty accessible since it was so easy to copy. There was also "Skinemax," (Cinemax) as we called it after hours.
>grew up with violent video games and "parental advisory" music.
GenX also grew up with this.
mingus88
Yep. My dad kept his playboys under his bed. I knew as young as probably six or seven. They sold them openly in magazine racks at the gas station and in middles school most boys had easy access.
The 90s had Usenet, IRC and free image galleries. Smut was on AOL and Compuserve. If you had a 56k modem, you could get as much porn as you could download.
Early 2000s had limewire and other early p2p sharing programs. Same places we got pirated games, music and movies was riddled with porn.
Porn has been ubiquitous forever. The demand will always be there. It’s human nature.
petre
Baby boomers grew up with sex, drugs and rock 'n roll, yet they're far from a gang of drug addicted rapists playing loud music.
jaco6
[dead]
standardUser
These laws just push people towards shadier sources of porn that have far less oversight or accountability. Even if we were to implement one of the reasonable-sounding age verifications systems mentioned in the article, the outcome would still be more young people discovering porn via torrents or Discord servers or whatever kids use these days, instead of PornHub.
cameldrv
All of these privacy arguments seem a little silly to me given that you have no privacy anyhow. The site is getting an IP address and a browser fingerprint, and that’s enough to uniquely identify a person in most cases.
mingus88
As soon as you have to provide an ID or a credit card to access a site, we’re talking about PII which is a whole different ballgame for privacy.
leshokunin
The party of small government wants to control what you browse. Your browser, my choice.
ggm
No direct mention of homomorphic encryption but from an Australian review some time ago the privacy commission here was reasonably OK with robust 3rd party privacy preserving cryptographic methods.
I get that the debate here is not about technocrats, it's a society issue not a which technology issue.
mlepath
Wait, I thought every pornsite already had age verification, that modal that pops up and says "are you sure you are over 18?"
Volundr
If your in several states they'll ask for a picture of your ID now.
jaco6
[dead]
nerglenomics
[dead]
aaron695
[dead]
There may be some typo discrepancy ;)
>US states where Pornhub and other US states are blocked
>those states have passed laws requiring porn websites to verify that their users are under-18
No adults allowed, their eyes couldn't handle it :)