this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2025
917 points (99.0% liked)

Technology

77307 readers
3167 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

As of this week, half of the states in the U.S. are under restrictive age verification laws that require adults to hand over their biometric and personal identification to access legal porn.

Missouri became the 25th state to enact its own age verification law on Sunday. As it’s done in multiple other states, Pornhub and its network of sister sites—some of the largest adult content platforms in the world—pulled service in Missouri, replacing their homepages with a video of performer Cherie DeVille speaking about the privacy risks and chilling effects of age verification.

Archive: http://archive.today/uZB13

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 16 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Assuming what you're saying about the harms of consuming pornography, is it the state's responsibility? Is it a top priority? Do we trust conservatives to implement a solution in good faith?

The answer to all of those I think is no.

There's no analogous ID check for violent media, so far as I know.

There could be a raging wildfire and I would hesitate if a Republican said "let me deal with it". They are fundamentally untrustworthy.

That's on top of the deep irony of the same party that goes on about "small government" and "parents rights" is typically the same one pushing draconian anti-porn laws. It's a joke. "A government small enough to fit in your bedroom". Their motivations are so corrupt I am extremely skeptical of anything they propose.

[–] DupaCycki@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago

Assuming what you're saying about the harms of consuming pornography, is it the state's responsibility?

In general, yeah. It's quite literally what the government is supposed to be for. When there's a widespread problem affecting a lot of people, it's precisely the government's job to step in, regulate and solve it.

Is it a top priority? Do we trust conservatives to implement a solution in good faith?

These two I can agree with the answer being 'no'. The problem isn't that it's not an issue or that the government shouldn't interfere. The two main problems I can identify here are:

  • The current American government (and most of the previous ones) cannot be trusted to handle this in good faith,
  • There are several more pressing matters that should be addressed first.

And a bonus issue. There's currently no sufficient and reliable infrastructure to even implement restrictions on pornography, as we can plainly see from the results of recent attempts. But this ties in to the first problem. If they really wanted to solve the issue in any capacity, obviously they'd start by building the necessary digital infrastructure.

All in all, I think you brought up important points and I pretty much fully agree with you on them. However, to me it seems like they're not exactly relevant to the discussion. Or at least that's not what I was trying to address.

My main goal was to refute the previous guy's theses that pornography has no confirmed negative effects on people, especially the part about children, since it literally takes seconds to find dozens of studies on this topic. I didn't mean to speak about whether or not the government should do anything, let alone defend the current US efforts to regulate porn, if we can even call them that. In fact, one of the studies I quoted stated that the participants did not feel a government intervention is needed, which I felt was a crucial detail to highlight.