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

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    1 year ago

    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!

    • Prox@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      What is the expectation for compliance here? Are users supposed to scan their physical ID and upload that to PH, then PH checks age against that?

      • FriendlyBeagleDog@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 year ago

        The bill says that commercial entities serving pornography are required to do age verification through either verifying a driver’s license, verifying another piece of government-issued identification, or through the use of any commercially viable age verification mechanism.

        So, yeah, I’d imagine compliance to look like either uploading a photograph or scan of an identity card or document for the site operators to check, or uploading it to an affiliated service which does age verification on their behalf.

        Which is obviously horrendous from a privacy and information security standpoint for the consumer, and exposes the site operator to costs and legal risk associated with verifying and storing sensitive personal information.

    • Iron Lynx@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      For a party that prides itself on being all about “small government” and “no nanny state,” this is some surprisingly big government nanny state shenanigans

    • canni@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      In fairness, this is a state law. States rights being part of the Republican platform during my childhood. Just another reason not to go to/live in Arkansas

      • GiddyGap@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Small government is allegedly still at part of the Republican platform at the state level. For a small government party, they sure do like to dictate what’s going on in people’s bedrooms.

      • Saneless@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Republicans only cry States Rights when the federal government is attempting to make someone’s life better or when they want to take something away

        • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          They cry states rights as a tactic because they can control some states. If they had a supermajority on the national level they’d be passing abortion bans, contraceptive bans, trans bans, and any number of other abhorrent piles of garbage through at the federal level.

          Note how they give not a single shit about states rights to regulate firearms or allow abortions.

        • DarthBueller@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          You know, there is a reasonable reading of the comment that doesn’t involve the assumption that they are telling people to move FROM Arkansas. Intentionally avoiding visiting the state, and intentionally avoiding relocating there, are quite different than the standard “LEAVE THE STATE” comment.

      • Justice@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        They used to claim they wanted a small government meaning not telling people what to Jack off to. It wasn’t solely about the federal government. Of course if you ask them you quickly find out it’s freedom for them to do anything they want while subjecting all of us to disgusting fascist fascinations

  • Ilovethebomb@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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?

    • Spacemanspliff@midwest.social
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      1 year ago

      It’s the second one. I saw article where they talked how Florida was the first to pass it, pornhub put time and money into developing what they needed to comply and saw a 90% decrease in traffic because nobody wants to hand over their ID for free porn.

    • betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      VPN industry lobbyists disguised as morality crusaders if you like tin foil hats as much as I do. Most likely not though, just people who feel the need to control how others spend their time and precious bodily fluids.

    • CoderKat@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Especially since PornHub has an excellent point. Even though they theoretically could do an ID check, the sketchier porn sites simply wouldn’t. All these laws would do is push minors to use more dangerous porn sites. They’re not going to not watch porn just because the big, law abiding site checks IDs.

    • Icaria@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I get the impression not a lot of people were reading, writing, or wiping there even when it was legal.

  • gapbetweenus@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • ParsnipWitch@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      It is completely unrealistic to control kids media consumption after a certain age without also infringing on their rights to privacy. Basically, you can’t do it right as a parent. You are either helicopter parenting or you aren’t controlling enough. It’s funny how we shift blame entirely to parents on this while ignoring that it’s an impossible task. And I am not even a parent.

      • gapbetweenus@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        Every phone and computer has parental control options that allow for as much control as you feel necessary. And obviously as you kids gets older you have to trust in your upbringing - but that’s also completely on you, to teach your kids to deal with modern media.

        • ParsnipWitch@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          No, not every phone and computer has parental control options. What about the PCs at libraries and schools? What about older siblings? Other students? Friends of the kid? It’s completely unrealistic to claim parents should just supervise every media usage.

          People also aren’t robots where you put “upbringing” in and get predictable results. You can teach them all you want, unless you completely ignore all privacy rights of your children, you won’t be able to control their media consumption.

          • gapbetweenus@feddit.de
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            1 year ago

            No, not every phone and computer has parental control options.

            Which one don’t have one? And even if there are few - it’s not hard to get one with for your kids.

            What about the PCs at libraries and schools?

            Even in my day and age we had restricted access to things on our school pc - learning to get around it was the only useful thing I learned in those classes. But here the same, there are software solutions to control access on local machines.

            What about older siblings? Other students? Friends of the kid?

            What about them? They all also have parents or people responsible for them.

            It’s completely unrealistic to claim parents should just supervise every media usage.

            Because they should not. They should teach children to use media and gradually trust them more and more to make their own decisions. Like with everything else.

            You can teach them all you want, unless you completely ignore all privacy rights of your children, you won’t be able to control their media consumption.

            And as I said, you should not -you should teach them and then learn to trust them - that’s hard part of being a parent, you don’t have control over your childs life.

            • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              No real side in this debate because I don’t have kids and am basically an anti-natalist but I don’t think it’s terribly important to control kids media access above a certain age anyway.

              It’s probably important to prevent them from accidentally seeing irrelevant filth, and may make sense to prevent them from accessing certain stuff before they’re ten or eleven. But I had near unfettered access to the wild world of the Internet from a young age and I don’t think it made a big difference.

              I personally think it was important to my development to be able to explore things on my own terms in the relatively safe way of accessing pages on the Internet.

              I do think, however, that social media is likely riskier than media consumption for children in certain age groups, but most parents seem to be a-ok with their kids mainlining that and worried instead that they may accidentally see a nipple.

            • ParsnipWitch@feddit.de
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              1 year ago

              Which one don’t have one?

              The ones I mentioned directly after… Please, do not quote out of context.

              I feel like people miss the context of the original content and put words in my mouth. I was referring to the claim that parents can “simply” supervise, and should supervise, all media consumption of their children. Which I argue is impossible without infringing on the children’s rights of privacy.

              It’s like people misinterpret my point with intent. Or there is a huge language barrier I can not comprehend.

              You can not supervise every media consumption of your children. That is all I wanted to say. I didn’t even comment upon whether or not and how good it works (or not) to teach your children about responsible media consumption. That’s a whole different topic.

              • gapbetweenus@feddit.de
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                1 year ago

                The ones I mentioned directly after… Please, do not quote out of context.

                So none. All devices have the capability to control access.

                Which I argue is impossible without infringing on the children’s rights of privacy.

                But that whole conversation is in context of governmental control vs. parental control. In my opinion governmental control infringes much more on everyones rights in this case. So obviously your statement is interpreted in this context, not in vacuum.

                • ParsnipWitch@feddit.de
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                  1 year ago

                  Parents do not have access to parental control on devices of other children, other adults, school, libraries, etc.

    • YeeterOfWorlds@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Do you think the same way about physical media? Like, do you think we should be letting kids buy porn magazines? Or that it should be legal for someone to wait outside a school and hand kids porn as they walk home?

  • elxeno@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    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?

      • elxeno@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Just don’t like opening on phone, my browser doesn’t open, so it asks to download, then i end up with a bunch of random useless files there. Don’t u skip search results that lead to pdfs?

        • Strykker@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          Pdfs are like the best for reading. Consistent format on every device.

          They just suck to create or edit.

          • nik282000@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            They suck to edit but you can create them in most Free/Open/Libre software. It’s my favorite way to distribute drawings so that they print the same on every machine.

  • Ab_intra@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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!