Well at least some common sense prevailed, there is zero reason to have a notice like that.
Like I kinda get on paper how you could come to the conclusion of needing to do something like this (the ID part), I mean generally (unless you look a certain age) you do have to show your ID to buy porn or any related places...
But it just feels unnecessary and reeks of data collection that could be used for bad reasons.
I know I started looking at porn at... middle school timeframe. Maybe freshman of high school but pretty sure middle school. So 13/14 years old time frame.
I am just fine. I am not saying that kids should have free access to it, but we need to remove this stigma.
Unfortunately the era of "viewer discretion advised" seems to be closing. Today it’s punish the broadcaster if viewers have an issue.
I do think there need to be tighter restrictions on the industry exploiting people, though. That seems to be a consistent fact: many people have claimed the industry is exploitative, and that there are few if any protections against it.
I am thankful that within my group of friends we can openly talk about it.
> I do think there need to be tighter restrictions on the industry exploiting people, though. That seems to be a consistent fact: many people have claimed the industry is exploitative, and that there are few if any protections against it.
I for sure agree with that. There are problem with the industry, particularly how woman are treated.
Always has been. MO of the U.S. regulatory State has always been "go after the platform". It's why "freedom of the press" is about more than newspapers and reporters. Even if no one seems to argue on those grounds.
Aside from porn, if I had kids under 14 I'd straight up ban them from accessing hyper-addictive / damaging social media.
Anyways, you're fine. That's great. Lots of people aren't. On a personal level, I like the idea of moderating my appetites and controlling my consumption. Mastering temptation is key to a healthy and happy life, including not killing yourself with alcohol, drugs or food. I see sex as "just another appetite" that can be satisfied in a number of ways, some healthy, some not.
Besides all of the above, I don't think it's possible to forcibly remove stigmas. Stigmas don't work that way.
Not being excited about "vanilla sex" really isn't a problem, sex should be fun and regardless of the reason you should be able to explore it. Even if that is the only sex you enjoy, that's fine. If that is the case, porn is just the thing that helped you find out you enjoyed a certain kink but you could have found that out another way. We should not be putting rules (or expectations) on what type of sex people should be having.
Porn can be a healthy part of someone's sexuality.
As far as forcibly removing stigma, obviously no. But we can analyze there that stigma comes from and push against it when it doesn't make sense.
No one has the right to make, distribute, or watch pornography. The idea that it even could be a right is absurd, as no one has the right to what is unethical. And it isn't free speech. It is obscenity, and obfuscation of this fact is tiresome. If banning the production and distribution of this filth outright is too difficult to achieve politically, then burdensome regulation is a good Plan B. I would prefer targeting the industry, personally, rather than individuals, but perhaps there are reasons why that, too, is too difficult to achieve politically in the current climate. Recall that Alan Dershowitz pulled off a nice piece of legalistic sophistry when he defended porn as "free speech". Perhaps that's the notion that needs to be roundly defeated first, before we can crush the industry as a whole.
But it is worth mentioning that restrictions on pornography use are not new. Israel effectively requires citizens to register to be able to view it. That's quite a light touch, but obviously goes beyond what we see in the West. The law has an instructive dimension, and banning porn and stigmatizing it can help nudge most people away from such bad habits, and signal that it is not good, serious, and shameful. Consider that porn is also weaponized, and has a history as an instrument of psyops, both domestically and against foreign enemies. (In a military context, and since we mention Israel, recall how Palestinian airwaves were flooded with pornography when the IDF captured a Palestinian TV station in Ramallah some years ago. You think the Israelis were trying to "liberate" the Palestinians by doing that? If porn was a nothingburger, you think it would have been used in that manner? The US has employed similar tactics.)
I could maybe, maybe! buy that porn has some negative problems.
But if you seriously think that self pleasure has any negative problems it invalidates everything you are trying to say that I don't even feel like taking the time to respond to the rest.
Self pleasure is an incredibly important part of discovering yourself, study after study has proven that.
Everything else you said is just the usual puritanical views and I am not going to hold Isreal up to a beacon of what societal views on sex should be.
I'm not saying that it's black and white, but I hope we can rise above the level of discourse of "I watched porn when young and turned out just fine". It's about as interesting as e.g., "I started smoking when I was 16 and turned out just fine" or "my parents beat me as a kid and I turned out just fine". First of all, what you might consider "just fine" is perhaps, well, not fine. Second, it's one single data point; well, not even a data point, but rather a hot take.
Many of these things can also be mitigated by an ability to have open conversations about feelings about what they see. Same with playing violent video games, watching R rated movies, or whatever.
Also backwards for privacy and security. If anything, sites should be prevented from collecting identifying info unless absolutely necessary.
[0] https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/88R/billtext/html/HB01181H...
etsy has the wildest stuff.
edit: maybe this is common knowledge, but I was pretty surprised when I was shopping for a chopping block last year.
> What counts as a porn site?
are really stale, and too often sophistic attempts at obfuscating what is rather clear.
If banning the production and distribution of pornography is not possible with an outright ban, strangling this monstrous industry through onerous regulation is a pretty good tactic. And it's not new. Israel effectively requires citizens to ask for permission from the state to view pornography, for example, while also using pornographic content against what it regards as its enemies (e.g., pornographic broadcasts from a captured TV station in Ramallah some time ago).
In the US, you are dreadfully wrong. Also, obscenity has a very specific, and strict, definition. The second prong under the Miller test is:
> Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions specifically defined by applicable state law
There is a large amount of porn that isn't going to satisfy this prong because it's not going to be sexual conduct--fetishes like BDSM could well fail to depict any sexual conduct whatsoever. It wouldn't surprise me if less than half the videos on PornHub were actually considered obscenity under the Miller test.
> If banning the production and distribution of pornography is not possible with an outright ban, strangling this monstrous industry through onerous regulation is a pretty good tactic.
Sorry, you don't get to curtail constitutionally-guaranteed free speech just because you don't like it, and "strangling [...] through onerous regulation" is no more viable a vehicle than an outright ban is under strict scrutiny.
Sure it is. It's just speech some people don't like.
Just because some other government makes a shitty restrictive law doesn't mean the US should make shitty restrictive laws.
With talk of regulating TikTok, I've wondered what the US would do if TikTok sent a notification saying, essentially, "just connect to our servers in China". The kids would do it, and then what?
There are a few Internet regulations I've seen discussed that would require a national firewall to achieve their stated goals.
Regardless of how you feel about TikTok, the current bill as written is completely absurd on the face of it. It names China as a "foreign adversary", as if everyone just suddenly forgot that our entire economy is completely interdependent with them as our largest foreign trade partner, and that the loss of that trade would mean a massive loss of wealth for most Americans.
That would be fine. The bill [1] bans Americans from listing it in app stores or providing it hosting services if it hasn’t been sold to a non-foreign adversary country within the required timeline.
[1] https://selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites...
Not only because of the population but politicians would have a hard time justifying it when they openly complain about the same thing in other countries. Not that it has ever stopped them, but it'd be harder I think.
The US still projects an image of freedom to the rest of the world. It's certainly not idolized as much as a few decades ago but, when compared to other powerful countries, the general population still maintains a good perception of it (at least in the Western world?).
Anyway, a national firwall would create roadblocks for business and money talks.
It's kind of already in place, since gatekeepers (Google search, Youtube, Apple Appstore, Twitter ...) all have region-specific content filters implemented and control your informational freedom and "digital mobility".
For most non-tech people, if it isn't indexed, it doesn't exist, since search results are basically their DNS.
> I've wondered what the US would do if TikTok sent a notification saying, essentially, "just connect to our servers in China".
TikTok may not be able to send that notification, or have an alternative connection be made at all, if Apple complies with the law and bans the app. I think this shows how important it is for something like the iOS ecosystem and the Apple Appstore to be broken apart, or it will become an instrument of censorship.
Now, I really don't give a fuck about TikTok and China's loss here, but it's easy to see how closed ecosystems of gatekeeper companies are a grave threat to freedom and democracy:
Today it's "protect the children", tomorrow it's "protect the morals"...
Today it's Pornhub, tomorrow it's Grindr...
Today it's TikTok, tomorrow it's Signal...
Today it's Terrorism, tomorrow it's smuggling contraceptives...
... enforced in totality through effectively absolute technical interface/access control.
Imagine there were only locked-down iOS devices, anymore, in control of the US-based company Apple, and then consider the lawful implications of their tight grip in light of a future laid out in Project 2025 [1] or Agenda47 [2]. The threat is very real.
Nobody wins, except those offshore sites, and I guess the prudes who are only in it for the sound bite.
I'm a Christian, and live within my belief structure, too. BUT the path to redemption is either a chicken finger sub if you are a secularist, or a pulpit if your God fearing individual.
I just can't stand politicians who have 0-faith that try to leverage it without consulting those on the opposite side of the idle that need that Adam and Eve 12" whatever demonstrated on pr0nh0rb.
Internet freedom is harder to legislate, but with enough backing you can legislate things in a way to make it difficult for the common person to access certain websites, which is certainly impactful.
It hasn't happened yet but there is nothing to say it wouldn't happen with enough time and backing of certain politicians.
The idea that the government takes an interest in whether a minor views pornography doesn't make sense to me. I can see why their parents would take an interest, but it's harder for me to justify why the government ought to weigh in on it. I get that the government gets to say what they have a legitimate interest in and what they don't, but if you follow that logic you just wind up back where you started. It seems pointless and overreaching. This is a completely different matter than child exploitation or sex trafficking, or any matters tangential to porn.
I'm partial to a republic, a set of difficult to change rules that protect us against mass hysteria and tyrrany of the majority, subjecting us all to the will of the majority in potentially every fascet of our lives is a recipe for disaster. There are some things that are nobody's business but mine, restricting the scope of the civic process is an absolute necessity IMO.
Personally I'm more of the free-for-all, repeal the obscenity laws type of person, but this logical inconsistency irks me.
This law may very well be just about protecting children, but if it were also a part of a broader strategy of containing and eventually obliterating the porn industry and the normalization of porn use, then I welcome it.
Proceeds to not state said harms…
Maybe tell us those supposed harms.
I have already forgotten all about the open interent, all we're left with is this internet thing full of closed gardens with nations each trying to claim parts of it fall under their jurisdiction.
Not sure what about any of this is slow or quiet.
Not saying it’s easy to figure out how to accomplish change in a free and fair way. But the status quo is pretty clearly a horrifying outcome.
Being the parents of children. Let's be clear here.
If your children are visiting adult sites in 2024, it's 100% on you.
"gambling" I'm sorry, but gambling? How is a 12 year old supposed to gamble in limitless ways without parental consent? Please, let me know. I'm actually curious.
Care to elaborate? This feels like all of the ads that were warning about the "dangers of gay marriage" without ever being able to name an actual danger. Just fear mongering.
Right now, this sort of regulation seems like the purpose is a de-anonymised internet in a format that Republicans can accept.
Or because people don’t get addicted to things that cost money?
I am currently working on one such solution:
It works, it scales and solves the problem comprehensively.
Happy to answer any questions.
