Pornhub Is Now Blocked in Almost All of the U.S. South
Pornhub Is Now Blocked in Almost All of the U.S. South
As of today, three more states join the list of 17 that can't access Pornhub because of age verification laws.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/23788061
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.bestiver.se/post/170743
Remember when conservatives complained about the nanny state?
Always just an excuse to get rid of the things they don't like, such as social security.
They absolutely want to regulate you on a federal level. They just want to decide which things get enforced/funded, and which should be left to the states/community/church, or what they really mean, nothing.
Republicans love big government, they just want the same or more power concentrated amongst less people. They're all about that shit.
I guess the South is going to have a harder time rising now.
Welp. back to working on them thar siblings and relatives then.
So people better understand: Pornhub did not get banned by law. There is a law that requires porn sites to verify age with IDs in many southern states. Instead of complying Pornhub location banned themselves.
You left the most important part out; why is PornHub not complying? Understanding the situation requires knowing the very real concerns about privacy and data security as compliance requires keeping copies of IDs on file for verification.
This rule is a trap. They are supposed to do it but there is no way to do this reliably (not even mentioning privacy issues).
I work for municipal government in Texas and I'm not allowed to write down or take a picture of someone's DL number or date of birth, which is a bitch when we're trying to cite a contractor named Jose Gonzales for illegal construction.
giving a scan of your ID to the shadiest people on the web doesn't seem a smart idea.
also: it's not impossible for little jimmy to get a copy of his dad driving license...
honestly that's based as fuck. I wouldn't think the largest porn website would have the ethics to lose out on that much money.
Canada saw what was happening in the US South and decided the they need a friend. Canada is the process of passing their own "Protecting Young Persons from Exposure to Pornography Act".
I feel like if there was some type of course that would teach young people about sex and porn in a healthy manner. We could call it "sex education". This would be far better use of tax payers money instead of knee jerk bans and overreaching privacy violations.
The party of small government
So small it fits in your bedroom
Others have mentioned already - the issue here isn't porn sites being banned, but states mandating age verification and the privacy concerns related to that verification.
I'm not sure I even care about an age limit being enforced for pornography, but doing so will necessitate de-anonymizing internet traffic (further) and make private browsing less feasible. There are other laws being proposed that would require personal identity verification on social media sites, too, and that would be the death of lemmy and any other anonymous shitposting sites that are left.
Regardless of any shitposting, just being forced to hand your ID docs to your Facebooks, Reddits, Twitters, etc with their track record of processing data is not an attractive proposition.
but doing so will necessitate de-anonymizing internet traffic
It's always funny how people from the mass surveillance and selling intelligence data lobbies suddenly rush to finance and support this sort of political virtue signalling when it looks like it can gather support, even in the EU where they are going as far as to propoe of getting rid of end-to-end encryption.
even in the EU where they are going as far as to propoe of getting rid of end-to-end encryption.
And Australia.
Yeah i am not letting PH verify my ID just to view porn. I dont trust it and i feel it violates my privacy.
PH agrees, they aren't checking IDs, they are suspending access to states that have those laws.
This is asinine, even when internet access to porn didn’t exist people had so much porn, and they’ll continue to get it. All this does is shift the business elsewhere.
Yeah pornhub seems pretty legitimate and safe these days.
All these bans do is force people to go to sketchier websites which don't have as thorough vetting process for their videos and likely have a lot more illegal / harmful content.
Yeah pornhub seems pretty legitimate and safe these days.
Yeah, they got threatened a few years ago with essentially banking cutting them off if they didn't make a concerted effort to purge anything shady, which they achieved by purging basically all end-user uploads that weren't verified models or studios.
It highlights that their elected officials are messing with something they like. It is also a lot safer for the business to block a geographic area than deal with PII.
If they operate in those states they need to obtain proof of age. I don't exactly know how that works, since I haven't had to do it, but I imagine it is something like uploading a driver's license picture. If you have all that personal information you have to protect it, or risk information disclosure and lawsuits. A porn favorites list and personal identity info together in the same system is just asking to be hacked.
The Red States are turning into the fucking PRC. Carry on...
I wish, I’d move there if they had half the benefits they do in the PRC. Universal healthcare, maternity leave, sick leave of multiple months, unions in all companies, workers councils in all corporations, rent controls, price controls… man, please let your comment come true.
I’d move there if they had half the benefits they do in the PRC. Universal healthcare,
Taiwan has universal healthcare. China has a crappy employer based health care system.
BTW, they have their own challenges some not dislike the USA, all countries do. Just be careful and stay sane!
PRC?
Porn of the Republic of China.
The People’s Republic of China
China
Ya see, up north, we believe in a lil thang called FREEDOM! 😎
Ahem, good Internet person. In the south, freedom is going STRONG. It is taking away jobs, revenue (ex:PorhHub), medication, rights, health, safety, life, and freedom. Er...ah...um...
And yet when we pointed out that Project 2025 talked about banning porn, a lot of people didn't think it was serious. This is just one way that such an idea can play out.
I don't think porn could ever be fully banned - prohibition doesn't work. (Besides, I already made a promise to create erotic art specifically in order to spite any such enacted law.) But considering how modern porn and its variety has enabled many people to acquire niche preferences, this is still going to trigger a challenging time for a lot of people.
If this plays out like it's played out in other countries the only people who will actually be prevented from accessing pornography will be lawmakers, because they'll be the only people not tech savvy enough to be able to circumvent the restrictions.
They'll just offer their nephew some robux and a job in state legislature in exchange for a couple felonies
Would you like to share any of your art?
Yis, share art.
So… wait. How will conservatives watch all their sister porn now?
Like any god fearing christian; by asking her first.
They would need to learn the meaning of consent first...
by peeping through the blinds.
Remove the word porn and you probably have the answer.
lol .... as if .... I'm sure there is a boom in subscriptions for VPN services in the south at the same time .... especially for every political office holder at every level of government
Ha! You seem to be under the impression that the laws are enforced for them also.
"Laws for thee, not for me!"
Lol I agree with the sentiment, but pornhub isn't blocked by law. It has chosen to stop offering services in those areas because of the relevant laws.
This is affecting them, too. But it isn't hard for them to acquire a vpn, so not really.
I hope PH is putting a list with the names of the representatives who are responsible for this on the home page for those states. With phone numbers and mail addresses of the reps offices.
So what I'm reading is that VPN business is going to continue to thrive. But that also is an age limit hurdle, I suppose.
Eh. Until the state does lots of IP blocking of foreign websites outside of their jurisdiction, there will always be a way.
proton VPN has some free locations, haven't used the free version in a while because I switched to paid mullvad but iirc they're: Switzerland, USA, Canada, Taiwan, Germany (I think?)
The servers are free but slower and you can't torrent on them.
It would be a great time to be a VPN company right now.
Edit: On second thoughts, this is great, because it normalizes VPN usage too
Not for long, with Net Neutrality forever murdered yesterday, ISPs will soon be blocking VPNs with aplomb and pushing their own. The whole Internet will become airplane WiFi.
You don't think it would be simpler to just use one of the fifty thousand other free sites?
A lot of the other free sites are blocking users also
Honestly? Probably not. Pornhub is far and away the best porn site out there in terms of selection, ease of use, speed, and most importantly, they have the least annoying ads of any porn site I've ever been to. Other porn sites really don't even come close
But how will the south watch all that transexual porn they love so much?
Side subject, sorry for my aside: I'm starting to really get annoyed at the censorship on my instance.
You can export all your subscriptions pretty easily so you can sign up to a different instance and import everything over. Check Lemmy settings.
It was probably the lemmy.ml word filter, not lemmy.world
Should look at others.
Unless you actually are a child who can't handle reading magic words. Then you probably shouldn't be online at all.
Can they access the hundred other porn sites?
Looks like the big-name ones are either complying with the ID law or self-blocking like Pornhub. Smaller ones are operating as normal for now.
I actually just checked after seeing this post, no ID requirement popping up in Tennessee for whatever reason. I also realized I don't believe I had ever typed pornhub.com into a browser before until now. If somehow i had ever been there it was from search engine results I guess, never knew they had a main page.
From the article:
As of today, Florida, Tennessee, and South Carolina join the list of 17 states that can’t access some of the most popular porn sites on the internet, because of regressive laws that claim to protect children but restrict adults’ use of the internet, instead.
Literally 1984
One of the things that stuck out to me while reading in school was the sexual frustration part
For every 1 porn site that has to comply with US regulations there are 100 that don’t and they won’t implement any IP blocks. Absurd that they really think this will have any effect.
it's a foot in the door for online surveillance. has little to do with porn
But now they can legitimate all sort of bullshit measures to enforce that law. It will have an effect. Just not the one you expected.
Guess its back to finding nudie mags in the woods like the old days.
When I was a kid I volunteered at the local recycling center. My hippie parents were so proud of my environmental consciousness lol.
Or finding suriving anime centric stores, one of my friends would get hentai at one since they didnt even question why a teenager was there so long as he bought something other than hentai. That is how he got into Bezerk.
on the bright side at least torrenting will become more mainstream 😅
So whats Desantis etal doing for gay sissy porn to jack to now ?
Matt gaetz can assist with some human trafficking I'm sure.
Now they can all rest easy that their liitle romps with their sister-cousins won't be seen by the rest of the family
How utterly bizarre.
Malicious intentions. They're trying to normalize internet ID laws.
We need a modern day Larry Flynt.
They saw what happened to NC governor candidate. They made it illegal for anyone in the future NOT to use a VPN.
OOTL, what happened?
On a black fetish site he was talking about how he was a black racist and wish they still had slavery so he could own some black women.
How would a VPN have helped a dude who used the same handle for a porn forum and other sites he personally identified himself on?
I live in Maryland. There is a law under review currently. It has not been passed. I joined a site, and was fine for a day. Went back on the next day and got the verification notice.
I looked up the status of the law, and freaked out thinking I was being scammed.
I live in a state where it’s not banned and it’s so annoying when iCloud Relay routes through one of the states in the South. I need to turn iCloud Relay off and proceed.
Traffic in truck stop bathrooms and motels near Sunday schools has spiked dramatically as the access to porn sites has gone down... Very weird coincidence.
We did it! We beat beating it!
Not with a VPN it isn’t.
Next go on the Southern Strategy: banning VPNs for private use.
What about other millions of porn sites?
I had no idea that US states could block websites at the state level
This is porn websites choosing to block users from certain states rather than jump though ID law hoops.
It's not states blocking porn sites. It's states treating porn site companies similarly to bars. "If we catch you serving minors, we're gonna sue the shit out of you."
The only legally airtight way to know you're not serving minors is to check valid IDs for every visitor. Just like a bar. But since doing that for a website is a huge burden and still a tremendous risk, companies like Pornhub aren't playing ball. Instead of complying with the new laws, they're simply choosing to refuse service to any user from one of these hostile states. Can't get in trouble for serving minors from certain states if you don't serve anyone from those states at all.
Of course they can, ineffectively, and sometimes legally. It depends on the details.
I suppose here the states will lose in court, but it takes time... 1A is on the people's side, and precedent is also on the people's side. But the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court is batshit crazy, so who knows.
They can't. The article title is misleading.
17 US states are at the same level as Russia right now, when you look at pornhub blocked areas.
Get yer hands off your satanic bits, American South, and your asses back in the church pews where you belong!
🎶 onward christian soldiers, marching as to war 🎶
PRAIZE BE 2 JEEBIS HALLE BERRY (fully clothed)
Incredible. I never thought this would happen.
This is why VPNs exist. Happy surfing, folks.
Blocked. But far from inaccessible lol
The fact that the law is hard to enforce doesn't really make it better, IMO. It may be kind of worse, really - it makes the enforcement arbitrary. Everybody's accessing porn illegally, so any time the police decide they don't like you they can drum up some porn charges and actually pursue them.
No it's not illegal to access the porn, the porn sites are just required to "prove you're over 18" using an approved mechanism, which in practice means a scan of a state ID. Porn sites rightly don't want to touch that kind of PII with a 100 foot pole so are just blocking all access instead. Technically, they attempted to comply with the law exactly as the law requires so nothing illegal has occurred. Basically it's a giant waste of everyone's time and the only lasting impact is that VPN companies are loving this.
"Almost All" Missouri bootheel strikes again!
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