Besides, I'm not sure why you think that parents are able to be 100% in control of things that their children see/eat/etc. Should we legalize nudity on billboards, and would your suggestion then be to "simply drive on different roads"?

This is a modern social experiment, and while we don't have data on its consequences because so much else changed culturally at the same time, snarkily referring to people concerned about porn at a sociological level as harboring sky-wizard concerns indicates you haven't thought about the issue very much.

I'm non-religious; I have major concerns about modern or organized religions, despite recognizing psychological benefits or even necessities of religion in the abstract. However, I'm still very concerned that porn is causing unrecognized, negative consequences for society.

I don't mean all porn. I think some porn probably has net-positive effects on society and individuals. I'm talking about average, typical porn. If you go to places where lots of porn is shared, and you look at prevailing attitudes and fetishes in those places, and you think the only possible concern derives from sky-wizards, I think you're blind.

The one very recent saving grace of porn in its latest incarnation is that average amateur porn seems to be less horrifically impersonal and non-representative than average professional porn. That's tempered by the massive rise of parasocial relationships and simping for e-girls, which isn't necessarily porn per se but it's porn-adjacent and probably sociologically problematic too.

I don't know what the solution is. Porn bans are impractical, and I don't know what force could counter the ability to hang out on pornhub clicking on each new thing that looks even more enticing than the last, unleashing fetishes and unrealistic expectations. Some people seem to adopt a strong porn aesthetic that keeps them focused on less fetishistic, less absurd, and I would argue healthier porn. However, that's not the majority, and that's merely my personal subjective assessment. I have no idea if what I think is healthier porn is actually net-positive. It just seems that way to me. This is something we need generations of data on with the rest of society not changing much, and we're never going to get that.

Since I haven't brought up "sky wizard", perhaps if you have any actual evidence of harm you might show me?

*Citation needed

The fundamental questions are

1. Does porn usage line up with other patterns of addiction?

2. Are similarly addicting things withheld from children because their brains are less equipped to handle it?

If yes to both, then it’s a no-brainer.

Well, yeah, it would...

>1. Does porn usage line up with other patterns of addiction?

I'm not sure what this question is asking. Porn usage may or may not 'line up' with patterns of addiction. That doesn't mean that porn always or even the majority of the time is. Can you rephrase this question into something more coherent?

>2. Are similarly addicting things withheld from children because their brains are less equipped to handle it?

LOL absolutely not. Children, especially American children, are given huge amounts of sugar, which is actually physically addictive. Many are given huge amounts of caffeine which is again, physically addictive.

Millions of children around the country have tons of access to video games and TV, which can be addictive.

>If yes to both, then it’s a no-brainer.

Well, you're first question doesn't make any sense, and your second question is a resounding no.

The best way to keep your child from becoming addicted to anything is to act like a parent.

A kid with a peanut allergy who came into contact with peanuts, even accidentally one time, could be fatal.

And we already have something similar for porn sites, in the form of the "Are you over 18?" landing page banners.

You're not arguing that "laws don't actually do anything", right?

Gun control laws? Japan's ex-PM got blown away by a wacko with a homemade shotgun, so I guess gun control laws just don't work. Nevermind the rate of gun violence in Japan.. it's all or nothing.

that assassin was motivated by an extreme religious affiliation to the lawmakers. There is irony here.

> In 2019, 37% of US high school students reported lifetime use of marijuana and 22% reported use in the past 30 days.1 Past-year vaping of marijuana also remained steady in 2020 following large increases in 2018 and 2019. However, large percentages of middle and high school students reported past-year marijuana vaping—8% of eighth graders, 19% of 10th graders, and 22% of 12th graders.

> Past-year vaping of marijuana also remained steady in 2020 following large increases in 2018 and 2019.

I've got a guess about why the number might be rising, and it rhymes with "egalization", in which case, yes, making drugs illegal reduced use of drugs. I guarantee fewer people in general, including fewer kids, smoked when it was illegal, and less was consumed overall. I'd further bet there's a lot less pot consumption by kids now, than there would be if dispensaries didn't verify age.

But I also suspect it's just kinda hard to get clean data about teen drug use. I'd also guess the real figures are extremely uneven (that "8% of eighth graders", if accurate, probably means 20% some places and 2% in others) and high use correlates to places where it's easy to get, which supports the notion that carding or outlawing should reduce use (since they make it harder to get).

(Nb. I'm pro-legalization, I just think carding and outlawing almost certainly strongly curb use, though of course they don't stop it completely, and I think "this wasn't perfectly effective, so it's necessarily useless" isn't a strong point in most situations)

People do "make changes" for specific allergies & food restrictions by making the information available & creating some allergen-free zones (just like adult content is currently kept out of schools and family-friendly locations, and there are adult-content warnings most times) but peanut access is absolutely currently up to the parent, in general.

I'm not even sure what the billboard thing is getting at. We shouldn't have nudity on billboards (except female breasts in nonsexual contexts), just like we shouldn't keep peanuts where we know anyone allergic has to be. Counter-hypothetical: it would be incredibly stupid to lock up peanut butter because kids might take a $5 bill to the store and buy the clearly-labelled jar.

We mandate labeling. We could not do that and just say "parents, you must run a peanut-detection lab or have extremely restricted diets of only food you make yourself, to keep your kids safe", but we don't.

I realize I'm beating a dead analogy here, but I don't think we should impose those labelling restrictions on independent hobbyist websites, just like we don't require licensing or ingredient labelling for small bake sales.

But even if we did, "label obviously-adult content" would be way more reasonable than "collect personal information to verify the real-life identity of site visitors, and log this sensitive data so it can be accessed (/hacked) later"

It's still very much on the parents to prevent harm to their peanut-allergic children.

As an aside, the sharp rise in nut allergies is itself an unintended consequence of another well-meaning attempt at social engineering: about 30 years ago, manufacturers began printing "CHOKING HAZARD: DO NOT FEED NUTS TO CHILDREN UNDER TWO YEARS OLD" on nut labels. Many parents complied, and that lack of any early exposure to nut proteins resulted in a massive increase in life-threatening nut allergies among children.

But your attitude is, in a historical context, weird. At basically no point in history has it been the case that the sole responsibility for the well being of children lay entirely with the parents. If you look, for instance, at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (see the Parenthood article section Parental Responsibilities), you will see, for instance, that throughout most of western history and for most people, there is an explicit or implicit understanding that it is, in fact, the parents who operate as stewards of children _on behalf of_ society and that the ultimate locus of responsibility for the security and well being of children is the society at large, not the parents. This is why, for instance, the state is typically understood to have the right to remove a child from the home of an abusive or neglectful parent. Given that understanding, there is a commensurate power in society to make rules which may protect children and in our particular historical moment these rules take the form of laws at multiple levels of government.

It places a powerful (and disordered) burden on parents to make them _exclusively_ responsible for the safety and wellbeing of their children.

In Hammurabi's Code fathers could literally sell their kids into slavery. This seems strange, shouldn’t society protect kids? But it turns out that’s a relatively recent idea, instead there were rules around what happens when both parents die but children were plentiful and many died or where even killed by their parents without consequence.

Which doesn’t mean I disagree with them, just that their argument isn’t sound. Slavery was also depressingly common and I am glad it’s become vastly less common today.

generally, human civilization is us picking and choosing sensible/humane parts of cultures we encounter. the romans who conquered greece were of barbarian culture, only civilized by their adoption of the greek culture, which they later spread to parts of the world the conquered. the greeks remained uncivilized for a long time as well. they attribute most of their development to encounters with egyptians and babylonians. thus, it's almost possible to see a primitive culture that upheld some of the core values of our civilization today: human rights (not too far back but pericle's athens abolished slave trade), etc.

If you go to Wikipedia for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide

“Most Stone Age human societies routinely practiced infanticide, and estimates of children killed by infanticide in the Mesolithic and Neolithic eras vary from 15 to 50 percent.”

“Infanticide became forbidden in Europe and the Near East during the 1st millennium.” Except if you dig into the details those bans where very local, it continues:

“Christianity forbade infanticide from its earliest times, which led Constantine the Great and Valentinian I to ban infanticide across the Roman Empire in the 4th century. Yet, infanticide was not unacceptable in some wars and infanticide in Europe reached its peak during World War II (1939-45), during the Holocaust and the T4 Program.[2] The practice ceased in Arabia in the 7th century after the founding of Islam, since the Quran prohibits infanticide. Infanticide of male babies had become uncommon in China by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), whereas infanticide of female babies became more common during the One-Child Policy era (1979–2015). During the period of Company rule in India, the East India Company attempted to eliminate infanticide but were only partially successful, and female infanticide in some parts of India still continues. Infanticide is now very rare in industrialised countries but may persist elsewhere.”

Thus as far as we can tell it was common globally from the Stone Age up until quite recently. Also of note, those bans wouldn’t necessarily be reflected as a change in all cultures in that area only the options of those running the country.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> At basically no point in history has it been the case that the sole responsibility for the well being of children lay entirely with the parents.

The state will _inevitably exercise power_. Only a vigilant citizenry can hope to modulate it.

Republicans can completely ignore California and Democrats can completely ignore the Bible Belt (except GA which is now Purple)

As far as what the state can do. Again as a parent, when my children were minors, we chose trusted family members to be their guardian. If that wasn’t an option, we would have chosen friends.

No matter how you feel about the abortion issue for instance, even in conservative states, the majority of people don’t want more restrictions as proven by recent ballot initiatives, yet the politicians are still passing laws.

In my home state (Florida) the government is wasting all kinds of taxpayer money going after Disney and out of the list of things Florida and especially my city (Orlando) cares about is that Disney spoke out against a policy.

So you can’t have multiple marriage licenses, but you can legally hold a public polygamist civil ceremony followed by “cohabitation.”

Granted people want the legal befits of a recognized marriage rather than the state to treating it as two actors preforming a ceremony as part of a play. But such distinction are relevant when you say something is banned.

“On December 13, 2013, a federal judge, spurred by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups,[25] struck down the parts of Utah's bigamy law that criminalized cohabitation, while also acknowledging that the state may still enforce bans on having multiple marriage licenses.[26] The state of Utah appealed the decision, arguing that polygamist Kody Brown (whose relationships were documented in the show Sister Wives) lacked standing to bring his civil suit, since his county prosecutor, Jeff Buhman, had not followed through on any plan to prosecute the Brown family. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals (Denver) agreed with Utah and overturned the previous decision, thus effectively recriminalizing polygamy as a felony.[27]”

Of note, the state of Utah won the appeal because they didn’t bring action against the group rather than because the lower court’s decision was incorrect. Thus polygamy can remain illegal as long as nobody is ever prosecuted for it.

It also mentions: “Given that almost no polygamists bother to seek a second marriage license, the practice of forming a family with more than one spousal-styled relationship is very difficult to criminalize. In the majority of cases, the additional partner is considered a wife in the context of religious beliefs. Legally speaking, the practice is more akin to adultery.”

> If even one of the marriages is a legal, civil marriage, then Kody and the wives are probably guilty of bigamy under Utah's definition. The Utah Code states that a "person is guilty of bigamy when, knowing he has a husband or wife or knowing the other person has a husband or wife, the person purports to marry another person or cohabits with another person." This is broad in three respects -- it criminalizes the behavior of both purported spouses, not just the one who is already married; it, as interpreted by the state's highest court, includes religious ceremonies undertaken without a civil license as falling under the heading of "purporting to marry"; and it criminalizes cohabitation (as well as actual marriage) with a second person while married to someone else.

The family brought the lawsuit, which was thrown out because they didn’t have standing. They lacked standing because the government hadn’t prosecuted them.

If the community’s role is to protect children, maybe the community shouldn’t be creating the trap in the first place.

Children are curious creatures. It’s natural that they are curious about sex and the human body. In the past they could look around and see members of their family, tribe, etc nude and having sex. Now we’ve taken that away and made it taboo. You can either do nothing, try and lock it away harder, or go the other way.

It’s a very complex issue though so there’s nothing close to easy. But this kind of legislation seems like a fight that has just as much to do with a particular religious viewpoint as it does anything to do with “protect the children”.

Calling a parent shitty because their kid does something they would prefer they didn't means we've all had shitty parents. Kids are individuals that gain preferences the minute they gain any sort of mobility and trying to reign everything in will backfire.

I don't have strong opinions on this particular topic. I don't think porn is quite so damaging as others to the point where society needs to protect them. But the rational response to the views you expressed seems to contradict your actual views on the subject of how parents should raise their kids.

Kids are going to do things their parents don't like. It's literally part of the kid learning about the world and themselves. It's shitty parenting to not know how to deal with this rather than trying to pass laws so that they can pretend the kid is just a miniature clone of their worldview.

You do parenting and education yourself, protect yourself and your kids from any kind of harm outside. If you can't do it, just admit you are incompetent and don't force consequences of paying taxes on me

just because schools and the "government" exist doesn't free you from educating or taking care of your kid outside of those contexts. learn to be a parent

The web is maybe easy to control, but what about all the other means of communication kids have now, like in-game social tools? In the end that comes down to do you ban everything that could cause an issue, and then you are isolating your child from their friends.

Even if that issue is solved, I've heard stories of kids 'forcing' other kids to watch porn on phones at school. How do you prevent that one? Most often the other parents are unaware, don't care, or even provide the porn.

If we want to live in an environment where children have any degree of autonomy, that means delegating some aspects related to restricting age appropriate behaviors to the state. Now, I'm not a fan of government mandated age restriction on websites, but your point is obviously not well thought out.

Not a comment on the policy; I'm a parent and AFAICT none of my cohorts in town know how to do this.

> If your son keeps braking the rules you've set....surely there comes a point where he loses his phone/PC or whatever?

The efficacy of this depends wildly on how the rules are explained and enforced, I think. This is a topic that comes up often between my aunt and I. She has two kids about 10 and 13 years younger than I am, and often asks my father and I, the tech people of the family, how to enforce content filtering and screen time limits for both kids. I've effectively refused to help on the basis that it'll only offer her a false sense of security, given that I was able to circumvent every control I faced with relative ease at the same age as her son. I felt that anything she tried to do on the "blind enforcement" angle would just encourage conflict with her oldest, who like me was rather technically inclined and often frustrated by parental oversight.

Note, I'm not a parent, just an adult with some frustrations over how this stuff was handled when I was a kid, so I'm sure there's blindspots and misconceptions here. Take all this with a grain of salt.

My mom embodied the philosophy of "these are the rules, and you lose privileges if you don't follow them." This most often came up in conflicts over technology. She would set rules over what kinds of games I could play (non violent only), when I could use the computer (not after like 7pm), and broadly how much time in a week I could spend on it (maybe 5 hours before I'd start getting pressure to hop off), in addition to the standard no-admin-rights and interent-content-filtering.

I'd often circumvent this stuff through a combination of linux boot disks and just messing with the BIOS clock.

Mom never really explained why the rules were what they were. Some I could extrapolate: the content filtering seemed to largely stem from her Puritan view of sex. Thou Shall Not, and no further discussion. The time-spent I was less clear on, but I think it was broadly just that "screen bad" and there were more interesting things to do in the world, in her opinion. For my part, games and computers were my only social connection to others, as an only child who lived across town from all his school friends. This means whenever I "lost privileges" for my phone/computer/etc, I was now socially isolated as well, which just made me more upset.

There certainly were times she took everything away, as a "loss of privileges" for breaking the rules, but then I just got more miserable because the root problems for me still weren't being addressed. Moreover, that meant she was constantly framed as an adversary: enforcing the rules as a single parent takes significant effort, because there's no outlet. I had nobody to vent to, she had no other adults for backup or to bounce ideas off of. Plus, I needed the thing for school often: writing papers for class, or looking up how to do my math problems. There came a point where, philosophically, it was difficult to physically take things away because I'd bought them with my own money or they were gifts from other family members.

Compare this to my dad's strategy: He knew there were plenty of things in the world he didn't want me having my life ruined by, so he went for education over prohibition: "You're too young for porn, because it gives you unrealistic expectations of both sex and relationships. Also it forms addictive habits. You can ask me questions, and I'll keep an eye on your internet usage in case I see anything we need to have a conversation about, but you should stay away from that." Infinitely more effective to a developing-me: now I understood his concerns, the goals, and had a method of recourse if I disagreed.

As an adult, I 100% understand that there's good damn reason to prevent kids from having unfettered access to the internet. Especially preteens and younger: holy crap, youtube is a brain-melting attention-hacking cesspool. Simultaneously, I think it's insanely unreasonable to "walled garden" everything off and call it a day. That's not how the world works, and if that's the chosen method of "safety" then you're just making it so your kids will never come to you with questions during their own exploring while also leaving them unprepared once they're outside of your bubble. I was always insanely frustrated that my mom didn't just talk to me, or when she did, that her beliefs and concerns were always more important than mine. Again, I get it: kids are not always rational, it is the job of the parent to watch out for forms of harm that kids aren't paying attention to, etc--but I still hold a lot of those frustrations as an adult, especially because I never felt like I got to voice them as a kid. So, I just went around them. Constantly.

I figure the best strategy (again, as a non-parent) is kind of defense-in-depth: implement some general screening to keep the ambient level of attention-bombardment somewhere sane, help your kids develop sane habits around their tech use and getting what they want out of it, and educate the kids on why those controls are in place for the stuff that leaks through.

Again, my main concern is how much people crutch off of "just block everything," along with the knock-on effects that can lead to. E.g., there's a growing pile of people in the US who class any form of LGBT media as "pornography", which is patently ridiculous, but if that's the criteria used by your chosen filter mechanism or if that's the criteria people try to apply to society....

I can't speak for all children, but I have five of them and this works pretty damned well in most circumstances.

Why is punishing misbehavior such a universal practice across all human cultures? Because it works. It never works perfectly but it does work generally.

This isn't to say the systems that exist are really good enough yet, many of them need to be more detailed. For example, most apps are an on or off toggle, rather than a "let my kid play minecraft but chat is disabled and they can only join designated family friendly realms". So what often ends up happening even for parents who do know about the filters, is they wind up relaxing them to the point of being useless.

I think this is a poor solution; a more empowering one would be to develop a standard for content categorization and require commercial websites and commercially developed browsers (so all of them that are in common use) to implement content blocking via e.g. header exchange, with criminal penalties for negligently providing pornography without the correct headers (i.e. have some provision for vandalism when good-faith moderation is in place). Then parents actually could just configure their OS or browser for what kinds of content should be allowed.

A better first step than this bill could also be to require any site that hosts a significant percentage of pornographic content (which I'd place at much lower than the 33% of this bill) to put it on a separate subdomain from any child-oriented content (e.g. forums for a children's game) so that DNS based filtering can work.

https://www.cisdem.com/resource/block-reddit.html

It's called being a parent

It's reasonable to demand that a company that's in the business of hosting forums dedicated to children's topics (e.g. /r/teenagers or /r/roblox) and also hosting forums dedicated to porn needs to do it in a way where the two can be effectively separated or understood by filtering software. The solution to Cartoon Network airing programs for children and adults isn't to block the channel entirely; they just need to correctly label their adult programming so filters will work. In reddit's case, they already mark threads and subreddits as nsfw so it'd be trivial for them to put that onto a separate domain. Even 4chan makes an effort to do this.

I'm not missing the point at all. Reddit is a product. Your job as parent is to evaluate whether or not a product is appropriate for your child.

You know that Reddit doesn't have parental controls. If you can't trust your child to not go onto the NSFW subreddits, you should block Reddit so they can't access it. Sometimes you have to tell your child 'no' and they don't get the thing they want. The other thing you could do is write Reddit and advocate for parental controls.

It's absurd and entitled to believe that I should have to jump through hoops because you want your child to have access to a website that it sounds like is inappropriate for them. I personally think Robolox is terrible for kids. Should Reddit install a parental consent form to make sure that parents who don't want their kids to consume Robolox content can't access it? Where does it end?

>It's reasonable to demand that a company that's in the business of hosting forums dedicated to children's topics (e.g. /r/teenagers or /r/roblox) and also hosting forums dedicated to porn needs to do it in a way where the two can be effectively separated or understood by filtering software.

It's not reasonable to expect a company to filter content based on your personal understanding of porn. If a product doesn't meet your needs in terms of parental controls, be a parent and say 'no'.

>The solution to Cartoon Network airing programs for children and adults isn't to block the channel entirely; they just need to correctly label their adult programming so filters will work.

Again, you should write Reddit and ask for these parental controls. I'm fine with that. It's when you pass laws making me jump through hoops that a problem exists.

>n reddit's case, they already mark threads and subreddits as nsfw so it'd be trivial for them to put that onto a separate domain. Even 4chan puts their hobby boards on a different domain from porn and /pol/, and they're not even trying to appeal to children, banning anyone that mentions they're under 18/in high school/etc.

And those are the companies choices. I'm not opposed to parental controls, but if parental controls don't exist, don't pass laws to force them to.

> It's absurd and entitled to believe that I should have to jump through hoops because you want your child to have access to a website that it sounds like is inappropriate for them.

Where did I suggest you should have to jump through hoops? I said companies like reddit should design things such that filters work. If you don't need filtering, you'd be unaffected. Similar to how that little "TV-MA" pops up at the beginning of a TV show; every TV in the US market can be configured to block content above a desired rating level, and broadcasters are required to include the rating in their signal. I don't see how this would be so onerous to require a similar standard for businesses providing content online, particularly when that's information they already categorize out of politeness to their customers anyway.

> It's not reasonable to expect a company to filter content based on your personal understanding of porn.

I didn't suggest they should filter anything; I suggested they should label content and that the industry should be regulated to use standard way to do this that parental control software can understand. There's already precedent for how to solve this problem in TVs. It can be done in a way that completely preserves privacy and only requires action from people who want to configure their client to have filtering. Note that I also suggested they should label content categories. The person configuring the client can decide which categories are appropriate.

Similarly, if they move their nsfw images that they've already categorized from i.redd.it to e.g. p.redd.it, DNS filtering could easily block them all while still allowing roblox memes, and users who don't care wouldn't have to do anything.

> I'm not opposed to parental controls, but if parental controls don't exist, don't pass laws to force them to.

The problem is that parental controls increasingly cannot reasonably exist. With something like TLS with Encrypted Client Hello and DNS-over-HTTPS, and with most sites being hosted on large CDNs, the choice becomes "block all of cloudflare etc." or "block nothing". It's not that much to ask that if a company wants to provide both adult-only and child-oriented content, they should at least provide usable metadata for which is which to make sure filters can work.

Is Reddit targeted to children? My assumption has always been that due to the nature of having intermingled NSFW content, lack of content filters, or literally any other control that Reddit was squarely aimed at older users.

>Grocery stores are free to sell cigarettes and alcohol along with candy, but they're required to not sell the former products to children. We don't just say "don't let your child go to the store alone".

Tobacco is a lot less subjective of a thing than 'inappropriate content' or 'porn' and its bad health effects are actually substantiated. Is fine art porn? Is a naked person porn? It might be to you, it isn't to me. Who gets to decide what is porn? The government? Religious activists?

>I said companies like reddit should design things such that filters work. If you don't need filtering, you'd be unaffected.

I would be affected because there is now a whole system that dictates what content is. How does one do that? How much does it cost? Is it my responsibility to determine that? The site hosts? What if one host has a different labeling system? It's not simple. It's regulatory bloat that would exist solely because people who popped kids out don't want to actually parent.

>Similarly, if they move their nsfw images that they've already categorized from i.redd.it to e.g. p.redd.it, DNS filtering could easily block them all while still allowing roblox memes, and users who don't care wouldn't have to do anything.

If reddit wants to implement that, that's fine with me. What OP said and what I responded to was this

"I think this is a poor solution; a more empowering one would be *to develop a standard for content categorization and require commercial websites and commercially developed browsers (so all of them that are in common use) to implement content blocking via e.g. header exchange*, with criminal penalties for negligently providing pornography without the correct headers (have some provision for vandalism when good-faith moderation is in place). Then parents actually could just configure their OS or browser for what kinds of content should be allowed."

>The problem is that parental controls increasingly cannot reasonably exist.

You can black list the reddit domain right now. How do they not exist? It might not exist in the form that you want, but that's life. I can't have the government force movie theaters to show edited versions of movies so they are kid appropriate. Some stuff just isn't for kids.

> It's not that much to ask that if a company wants to provide both adult-only and child-oriented content, they should at least provide usable metadata for which is which to make sure filters can work.

Reddit, for the most part, does not provide content.

Among other child-oriented boards, they have a teenagers board with 3 million subscribers, so evidently, yes.

> Is it my responsibility to determine that? The site hosts?

The site host, given that they're the ones providing adult material in a commercial context.

> What if one host has a different labeling system?

I proposed we should create a standard system for labeling and mandate its use for commercial sites that offer adult material, just like we did with TV. Browsers from commercial entities (i.e. Chrome and its variants, Safari, and Firefox) would be required to implement the filter settings, just as TVs must contain a v-chip.

> It's regulatory bloat that would exist solely because people who popped kids out don't want to actually parent.

It's requiring site operators to provide the metadata needed for parents to be able to effectively parent without the solution being "lol just don't let your kid use any website at all".

> I can't have the government force movie theaters to show edited versions of movies so they are kid appropriate. Some stuff just isn't for kids.

But we can force movie theaters to provide ratings of movies and require them to bar children from watching any pornographic films they show. Currently companies self-enforce with ratings, but that's because if they didn't, they were going to have it forced upon them. The problem here is that we don't have any kind of rating system for web content, and clearly tech companies aren't going to develop one on their own, so it's reasonable to make them develop one.

> Reddit, for the most part, does not provide content.

Of course they do. They don't make it, but they're the ones providing it, and they make plenty of money doing so.

Any user can make a subreddit about whatever they want. I'd wager the large majority of those users are not teenagers. Regardless, 'used by teens' != 'targeted for teens'.

>The site host, given that they're the ones providing adult material in a commercial context.

Which site host? Reddit is primarily a link aggregator.

> proposed we should create a standard system for labeling and mandate its use for commercial sites that offer adult material, just like we did with TV.

Yes! We need to make sure adults in no way be aware of or responsible for what media their children consume!

Of course that's the end game. We start with forcing companies to 'categorize' their content. Then we make it harder and harder to access the content that people like you have determined is undesirable.

>It's requiring site operators to provide the metadata needed for parents to be able to effectively parent without the solution being "lol just don't let your kid use any website at all".

It's requiring businesses to implement a massively expensive and arbitrary censorship system because parents are unable to tell their kids no. Metata wont be magically created and you know it. What's to stop a host from just refusing to label stuff porn? You full well know that what you are advocating for is the governmental review of all content on the internet.

>But we can force movie theaters to provide ratings of movies and require them to bar children from watching any pornographic films they show

The MPA is a voluntary rating scheme. You should look into it because it highlights all the obvious problems with what you are presenting. Misogyny, christian norms dictating what content can be shown, it's a disaster.

>Of course they do. They don't make it, but they're the ones providing it, and they make plenty of money doing so. hey If that's you're understanding, you don't really understand Reddit in the first place.

Look, just be a parent and stop forcing draconian policies on everyone else because you can't tell your kid no or monitor what they do online. Reddit is inappropriate for children, be responsible, don't let your children use it.

You think a significant number of those people are adults who have nothing better to do than larp as teenagers? And yes if you have millions of children in your audience, it's fair to say you are targeting them. Reddit is a company with a 10 figure market cap and 60 million daily users. They're capable of targeting multiple segments at once.

> Which site host? Reddit is primarily a link aggregator.

Reddit has hosted their own media for years. If you go to e.g. /r/nsfw right now, you'll see plenty of content hosted on reddit domains (along with thumbnails for the other links).

> We need to make sure adults in no way be aware of or responsible for what media their children consume!

I'm literally advocating that we make that awareness easier by requiring sites with adult content to appropriately label themselves. The point is to empower parents to do their jobs without needing to helicopter parent.

> Then we make it harder and harder to access the content that people like you have determined is undesirable.

The entire point of my scheme is to put the end user in charge of what they want to see. You're arguing with a straw man here.

> It's requiring businesses to implement a massively expensive and arbitrary censorship system because parents are unable to tell their kids no. Metata wont be magically created and you know it.

It's already there. They already label posts. Most people don't want random porn mixed in with their hobby discussions, so sites already do that categorization and have some tools for users to control what they see. We just need a standard for http headers to expose it, and have browsers consume those headers.

But yes, business models that include adult material need to account for the cost of not distributing it to children, which is already illegal to do. I'm proposing labeling as an alternative. The current situation is that they should be prosecuted for negligently distributing porn to minors.

> The MPA is a voluntary rating scheme. You should look into it because it highlights all the obvious problems with what you are presenting. Misogyny, christian norms dictating what content can be shown, it's a disaster.

Yes I mentioned that it's "voluntary". The deficiencies are why I proposed labeling categories, not ratings. The parent can configure what categories they deem appropriate. If categories are too much work for a site, they can just label it generically as "adult", and use that to comply with existing relevant laws about distributing things like pornography to minors.

> you can't tell your kid no or monitor what they do online. Reddit is inappropriate for children, be responsible, don't let your children use it.

Reddit has plenty of content that is appropriate for children, which is the whole point. If they want to be all things and include both content for children and content that's illegal to distribute to children, then they should provide parents with tools to segment those things. Or they can choose to exit one of those markets and e.g. ban all users on /r/teenagers, and start putting their over 18 splash page on all pages like every other porn site.

There's also an age range where it's better to set guard rails and then let the kids do their own thing, and you trust that you don't need to spy on them/monitor everything they do. It's helpful if the guard rails are reasonable and actually work. It's absurd to have to block major video game forums because they're also porn sites.

That isn’t, however, an argument against restraint in such arbitrariness, but the opposite.

While the US has something of a shared culture, the South has a wildly different culture than New York. Kind of like how Poland has a wildly different culture than Spain though without the language barrier. That's also why it's OK for Germany and France to say that the politics of Hungary and Poland shouldn't represent them, and vice versa.

Blanket statements about the US aren't much different than blanket statements about the EU. It greatly depends where you are.

Most nations have regional differences in the realm of the US. Yes, a town like Alba in Texas isn't like NYC culturally or physically, but many countries have this difference.

I suspect that of the many that I have lived in or visited, the only ones with apparent uniformity are ones I haven't really seen deeply: Iceland and Norway perhaps.

someone told me once "Think of the US less like a secular Western European country and more like a very rich Iran" and that really does help to make sense of a lot of these decisions

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_violence_against_LG...

Readers should note that all of the cited examples here are considered criminal and illegal in the United States.

No law on earth can prevent someone from acquiring a weapon and killing members of the LGBT community, the difference is whether this is tolerated and/or endorsed by the state.

You provided a list of heinous crimes that in no way reflects the views of the United States.

To make it even clearer, recent LGBT violence is not even remotely relatable to the widespread lynchings of Black Americans (which you are invoking with this word) that was 'illegal' yet systemically tolerated in the early-mid 1900s.

Literally none of these LGBT crimes were associated with a mob proclaiming justice as was the case with historical lynchings.

[1] https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=h...

There still are! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy_laws_in_the_United_Stat...

> As of March 2023, 14 states either have not yet formally repealed their laws against sexual activity among consenting adults or have not revised them to accurately reflect their true scope as a result of Lawrence v. Texas.

While Lawrence v Texas does limit these laws, there's a concerted effort to repeal it, and if that happens, these laws will go back into effect.

Our government is at least partly reactive to our votes. Utah is very different from Colorado or California or Connecticut. So, no, nothing like rich Iran.

So is Iran's. Keep in mind the country is a theocratic Republic that turned out this way because of a popular religious revolt against a secular absolutist monarch. That bottom up, democratic, religious zealotry is something you also have in the US but virtually nowhere in the developed world.

What about the Christian Democratic Union of Germany which officially believes in Catholic Democracy and didn't recognize same-sex marriage until 2017?

Honestly we (Europeans) make the same mistake the Americans do in regards to us, we view the US as one homogeneous mass. The difference between states seems like it's often as great as between European nations. I'd be less concerned about the laws of the individual state, if companies did target the lowest common denominator for the entire US, just to make business easier.

PornHub is in my mind doing the right thing, blocking the state that's causing issues.

Yeah, but only in a few areas in terms of studios, not individual creators. iirc studios/companies are mostly in California (LA mostly), Florida (Miami), and NYC.

> PornHub is in my mind doing the right thing, blocking the state that's causing issues.

Curious to know if this is strategic, in the sense that they're hoping their blocking of the state will piss off enough people to reverse the policy.

When introducing myself to Europeans now I've started saying the state I'm from, such as "I'm from the state of Idaho in the US". Utah is a different state/place than Idaho (see liquor laws, state lottery) and both are very different than California or New York. They're almost like different countries in some ways, especially over the last 10 or so years. Not too long ago you could pretty much live anywhere and the main difference would be where you buy your booze and your tax rates, but that's increasingly changing.

On the rather extreme end, there are some serious movements for secession from the US. Funny enough they don't usually go very far because (shockingly /s) the red states drop their enthusiasm when a red president gets elected, and the blue states drop theirs when a blue get elected. But if we had a steady president for 3 or more terms, I would bet you it gets serious again.

“Talking to your kids” doesn’t work when multinational corporations are incentivized to addict them for ad revenue.

No one chooses their life circumstances. Too poor ("just learn to code bruh!" (did)) and not good looking enough ("just work out bruh!" (tried did not grow my missing body part back)) to attract woman for one night stand in country with banned sex work? Well you must belong to some radical political party or be poisoned by porn!

This is beneficial to the manipulators for various reasons, be they financial or political.

It’s as old as time. They just happen to be on the Internet now and we’ve atomized society to the point where they’re super common.

Most everyone is an incel until they’re not. After all - there’s a point where you want sex and aren’t getting it. Thus, an incel.

Online, in incel echo chambers, such voices of reason and wisdom are expelled. The incels then spiral into unchallenged worldviews that alienate them from the general public, isolating them from women and everybody else even more than they were before.

Nowadays, you're constantly pushed all kinds of random shit. The usual incel rhetoric that I see is - there's not many women to talk to. Which is mostly attributed to the decline of social spaces due to again - whole atomized society stuff and late stage capitalism, yadda yadda. (If you haven't heard about it yet - just read some robert putnam)

I think you can have both the overly aggressive censoring of nudity and also at the same time have corporations aggressively pushing porn onto anyone and everyone for profit.

In my opinion, you could pretty clearly enact policy to resolve both of these issues without making it a one or the other argument or saying "something has to be done".

Why does it have to only be one "something"? Could it not be two different "somethings" that target each issue specifically?

You can justify almost any amount of censorship based on "thinking about the kids". But our society is built for more than just the first 20% of human life. The proliferation of this argument that everything from the internet to IRL bookstores need to be censored to protect children starts from a good place, but it jumped the shark a long time ago.

I'm no expert, but I'd say incels' social ineptitude seem to come from personality traits and [mis]expectations that aren't that frequently portrayed in pornography. I'd say it's various media with unrealistic portrayal of romantic relationships that should be attributed (and that's typically not porn). And, obviously, strong meme-affirming effects of echo chambers, the bane of our times, but that's a whole different topic.

I don't believe your last statement either. Where - except for anti-porn propaganda statements - have you seen any large adult industry corporation intentionally targeting children? The article in question clearly indicates that virtually everyone in that whole industry want kids to stay away from their businesses, because they only cause trouble. If someone invents a way to keep kids off the porn sites without having any negative impact on adult audience, I'm sure they're gonna celebrate that person as a savior of the industry. Those companies surely have put a blind eye to the problem, but I find the claim of adult industry actually targeting children to be outrageous.

What makes me thing so is that I highly doubt the incentive. On the contrary, there's at least one very cynical reason to still say there isn't such incentive: kids aren't paying. Parents may tolerate them spending money on some in-game cosmetics, but surely they won't approve if they spot a porn purchase on a statement. Porn companies have enough problems making profits from adults, so them considering kids as a target audience sounds insane not just from a moral standpoint but from a business perspective as well.

It's Utah. Utah, for all the ways that actually matter, is effectively a theocracy operated by an ultra-conservative religious minority. Utah is about as similar to the rest of the United States as the rest of the United States is similar to the Middle East.

I see a lot more "health bro influencer"/Andrew Tate types warn against watching porn because they think it makes people weak minded, which I would agree with when it turns into an addiction and actually impacts your ability to form real life relationships.

The chief sponsor of the bill went to BYU.[1] The co-sponsor of the bill went to BYU [2]

[1] https://senate.utah.gov/sen/WEILET/

[2] https://house.utleg.gov/rep/PULSIS/

Edit: spacing

Utah was literally founded as a state to be a place for Mormons[2], because they were a persecuted religious minority in other states. I grew up in Missouri, and part of Missouri state history is that of the 1838 Mormon War[3]. At one point the Governor of Missouri signed an order that paid out for the scalps of Mormons[4]. The aftermath was a mass migration of Mormons from Missouri to what became Utah, literally founded as a place for Mormons, to this day Mormons consider Independence, Missouri as a holy site, but Utah is the headquarters of the LDS Church and the predominant residence of Mormons in the US.

It is for all intents and purposes a theocratic state within the US.

[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/07/23/b...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Utah#Settlement_by_...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1838_Mormon_War

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_Extermination_Order

AFAICT, within the state, Mormons are not a minority but a majority. Wikipedia says[1] 60.68% as of 2020.

---

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Utah

Utah is 85% white and 60% Mormon, so...

The only reason that Utah isn't whiter and more Mormon is due to all the immigrant workers, just like the Middle East...

LGBT rights in Utah is also middle of the road among U.S. states. The LDS church also supported the recent Respect for Marriage Act unlike many other conservative Christian organizations. Your other points about climate and economy are extremely generic and not really a strong argument for why Utah more similar to the Middle East than the rest of the US.

>Utah is 85% white and 60% Mormon, so...

Maine is ~95% white and ~60% Christian, so what's your point?

>The only reason that Utah isn't whiter and more Mormon is due to all the immigrant workers

Replace "Utah" with "United States" and "Mormon" with "Christian", then it remains a true statement for the entirety of your country's existence. The United States is far more culturally homogenous than most Americans like you think it is. Consider travelling outside North America for once before making such egregious comparisons again.

I've extensively traveled the world, to more than 70 countries, and have spent years of my life living abroad. The United States is far more diverse and heterogeneous than most other countries in the world, contrary to your statements. Some subsets of the US are regionally /very/ homogeneous, however, which is part of my point.

It would help to start thinking of the US for what it is, a federation of 50 states, not a single entity with a single mind. There is a high level of diversity within the US, but in each state, there tends to be a balance point towards some particular dominant culture, which can include religion, and in the case of Utah was explicitly created to include religion (Utah was founded to give the Mormons a home).

> The LDS church has prohibited polygamy for well over a century now: https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/polygamy-la...

Officially. Unofficially, polygamy is still widely practiced in Utah as part of the official doctrine of FDLS, which is the breakaway Fundamental sect of the LDS Church. The FDLS has recently gained more prominence, which lead to Utah making a surprising reversal recently by effectively decriminalizing polygamy, something that was for a long time a felony in Utah in order to follow LDS Church doctrine that banned polygamy as part of the split from FDLS. FDLS exists almost entirely within the state of Utah however, and the words of the Book of Mormon on this topic are literally plainly in black and white.

Technically speaking, the Quran heavily restricts polygamy in Al-Nisa', 4:3 and clarified in Al-Nisa', 4:129. In practice however, polygamy is widely practiced in the Middle East and is a core part of the way in which many people practice Islam and has had no significant actions taken against it. It's specifically a core tenet of the Wahabi sect of Islam, which is the dominant sect in the modern Middle East (although other sects generally reject polygamy).

My multiple full passports say otherwise.

> Shame on all those money you wasted travelling then because you clearly didn't make good use of it.

I'm happy with my experiences. I'm not sure what parts of the world you went to, but most of the world is /very/ homogeneous. There are parts of the world that are more diverse than the US, on some variable, for instance pretty much anywhere in Africa is more ethnically and linguistically diverse than anywhere in the rest of the world. But in the mix of things, the US is not the most diverse country, but is very much near the top. Canada is more diverse than the US, as an example, but the US is more diverse than essentially any country in Europe, any country in South America except perhaps Brazil, and most countries in Asia. It somewhat depends on what you mean by "diversity"? But the US has a mix of ethnic groups, religious groups, and cultural groups, as well as languages. You only don't see it because of assimilation over generations, but each of the groups leaves their mark on those regions in the US.

As for the Respect for Marriage Act, they were pretty open about supporting it because it carves out exceptions against employment discrimination for religions (and they're certainly not the only religion to support it because of this). They're still pretty dead-set against having to support an employee's paycheck when that employee does everything else required for the job but is LGBTQ+. But I'd agree that the situation is getting better. SLC has a thriving LGBTQ population and social scene.

[1]: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topi...

Al-Nisa 4:3 literally says:

> Each man may marry two or three or four but do not exceed this

I'm not sure if this counts as a heavy restriction.

> [...] or restrict yourself to what your right hands own of slavegirls since these do not have the same rights as wives

It also allows having an infinite number of slavegirls.

"If you fear you might fail to give orphan women their ˹due˺ rights ˹if you were to marry them˺, then marry other women of your choice—two, three, or four. But if you are afraid you will fail to maintain justice, then ˹content yourselves with˺ one1 or those ˹bondwomen˺ in your possession.2 This way you are less likely to commit injustice."

The reason I said passage 4:129 gives context is that it says

"You will never be able to maintain ˹emotional˺ justice between your wives—no matter how keen you are. So do not totally incline towards one leaving the other in suspense.1 And if you do what is right and are mindful ˹of Allah˺, surely Allah is All-Forgiving, Most Merciful."

The interpretation I've heard is that while the Quran does not forbid polygamy, it restricts it by stating that it is required that you maintain equality between your wives and do not raise one above another, but advises that this is often impossible, so it is best to only have a single wife, and further that it is advised only to marry more than one wife in the case that you are marrying orphan girls.

I am not Muslim, I am not a religious scholar, however I have read the major religious works of all of the major religions and some experts opinions of them, and this is my understanding. You may not consider this a "restriction", it's certainly rather loose, but it's been my interpretation that the Quran does not outright endorse unrestricted polygamy, it is allowed only in specific circumstances (orphanage), and advised against.

Why does all the rationality I come to expect on hacker news go out the window once my religion is being discussed? Or is it I only notice issues when I'm a subject matter expert?

Polygamists are 1% of Utah's population. The decriminalization of polygamy has nothing to do with fundamentalists gaining prominence, and everything to do with helping people escape.

> the words of the Book of Mormon on this topic are literally plainly in black and white.

Not sure what is meant by this. The Book of Mormon plainly states that monogamy is the norm and polygamy, while sometimes allowed, is not standard.

You should look up what the word theocracy means. Here. I'll do it for you: "a system of government in which priests rule in the name of God or a god."

Utah's government is a constitutional Republic. People vote in leaders who make laws and administer the government on their behalf.

> Utah is about as similar to the rest of the United States as the rest of the United States is similar to the Middle East.

Your unequivocally false, deceitful, and extremely hyperbolic statements aren't helping anyone out.

It's a state that was literally created to be a place for Mormons because they were a persecuted religious minority ran out of every other state and it was a huge desert wasteland nobody else wanted. It's only due to huge influxes of immigration, especially from the South, that Utah is... checks notes only 85% white and 60% Mormon.

So it's like less of a 51% attack and more, business as usual and intended. If anything, the non-Mormons are going to soon be able to do a 51% attack and take Utah back, since Mormons are only 2% of the US population, and Californians are mass migrating to Utah now that people realized you can build in the desert with modern technology.

Yes if someone starts a cult that does illegal things they don't get to claim religious freedom or cry about persecution.

Take a moment to think about history of US statehood. The Mormons, chased off Eastern settlements for their polygamy, settled most of the mountain West, declared governance, then watched big mining operations all around them get cut off from their territory and turned into full-fledged states, while they were not admitted to the union for decades.

It was a time of shared culture that is unrecognizable from where we stand today, and they absolutely didn't want to give statehood to polygamists...

I'm seeing no mention of Mormons breaking laws, the only mentions of law breaking references other people breaking laws to persecute Mormons. The governor of Missouri's declares that they are to be expelled or exterminated (!!!), the mobs attacked them and killed them, no mention anywhere in your link of Mormons breaking any laws.

Note that I do not take the position that Mormons broke no laws, I'd just like to know what laws they broke, and particularly what federal laws they broke, since my reply is to the claim that they broke American laws and not of some specific state.

No, they can't, at least not by a general citizenship against a general pool of candidates. The Vatican's citizens don't get to elect the pope, and among those few who do vote, they can't choose a Bhuddist to be Pope.

> I fail to see how your definition of a theocracy automatically disqualifies Utah from being an "effective theocracy".

Well,I think you have to try really, really hard, not to see that.

> No, they can't

Why not? The vast majority of people in Utah are Mormon, and people in high positions within the LDS Church often go into state and local politics and elected, precisely because they will enact policies that align with the moral tenets of the Mormon religion...

Yep. That's called a democracy, or a Republic, depending on which word you prefer. It's literally nothing like a Theocracy, in practice or in theory.

You should probably study what an actual theocracy is: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/theocracy...

Here are some major practical differences between a theocracy and a constitutional republic.

1. If citizens change their mind, within one election cycle they can replace every leader with atheists, or ones with different religions, and change the laws entirely. This is not possible in any theocracy, either in theory or in practice.

2. A constitution, both state and federal, limits what the state government can do, even when the leaders are all of one religion. Such limits do not exist in any theocracies, in theory or in practice, because, when you rule in the name of God, limits to your rule are sinful!

3. Utah has checks and balances via different branches of government. It has judicial procedures, for instance, where minorities can seek redresses. Our state and federal governments were explicitly designed to protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority. No such systems exist in any theocracies, in theory or in practice. For one, the majority doesn't rule in theocracies! When the majority rules, that makes it a democracy. I'm sure you've heard of that system of government?

> You can't get more theocratic while being inside the US.

You can't get past 0% theocratic in the US because theocracy is illegal in the U.S. You redefining the word to mean something else doesn't change this fact.

I’m genuinely asking because I personally don’t really have an answer. I have a personal intuition but that doesn’t count for much.

I was hoping for a genuine, curiosity driven discussion and instead it will end here with a personal accusation about what you think I believe in. That’s just unfortunate.

I wish you a good day.

Well that's quite the oxymoron.

If they're the majority in that region, any democratically elected government should reflect their interests. Barring infractions of Constitutional limits protecting individuals, like the Bill of Rights, of course.

The Islamic Republic of Iran, for instance, meets both.

Now, the assertion that Utah is effectively a theocracy rests on the claim that the leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints asserts informal power loosely analogous to that held formally by, say, the Guardian Council in Iran. I’m nit saying that that’s true. But that it is formally a republic with democratic election of representatives isn’t even slightly incompatible with it being an informal theocracy, you can even be a formal theocracy with those features.

No religious head of state and no state religion. Non-theocracies can be highly religious.

Porn destroys human brain, what's wrong with you? Do you have any factual data that porn is good and beneficial to society?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qJHRvHU8IM

1. Porn shouldn’t be available to kids and it’s on the vendors legally to ensure that.

2. Porn should be unrestricted, it’s up to parents to do something about it.

What I can’t understand is if the people in camp 2 are so unashamed of the porn advocacy then why is age verification such a big deal?

If it’s not a big deal then verifying your age shouldn’t phase you anymore than verifying your age to buy alcohol. If it is then you know exactly why kids should be kept away from it.

Additionally porn has a much bigger stigma than alcohol, so keeping record of what you watch, especially if you're into something more niche connected to your name can be used to discredit political opponents or even single out certain group due to abuse of power. A good example would be exposing a conservative politician that watches gay porn. Not that would necessarily be a bad thing, but there is no equivalent to this with alcohol - oh you drink tequilla, but you're whole ideology is based on drinking whiskey...

This could be very easily done at the ISP level for the whole connection. (I'm talking best effort not a perfect implementation)

Why not just block all "Adult" content by default and allow the buyer to opt in (both temporarily via password, and permanently).

Then it would be a decision each household could easily make about what they want.

edit: I love the downvotes without rebuttal. Reminder that the downvote in this community is not "I disagree with you"

The "household" is a pretty bad level at which to have to make these decisions, given that people of all age ranges share the same household. It seems to me that age verification makes a lot more sense than this, (and ftr I think Utah's bill is ridiculous overreach and would have massive privacy implications that are highly problematic).

That was specifically addressed in my post. Temporary disable.

Remember that safe guards dont have to be perfect before being implemented. They just need to be better than the status quo. The status quo right now is 10 year old kids viewing porn and thinking that's what average intimate loving relationships look like.

What I'm suggesting does not require abstinence from those who have the password.

Correct. The first iterative step would be to simply block the big obvious domains and sources escalating the arms race. It will never be possible to keep 100% of porn out of your kids' hands, but just like alcohol, cigarettes, and getting behind a car we can setup a better starting point than "Do you promise you're older than 18/19/21? YES/NO"

It's a bit absurd that providing alcohol to minor is punishable by a fine, but we give the internet/porn industry a free pass. Also if you were to hand out porn to a minor you'd probably be hit with some kind of charge (inviting a minor to some sexuality), but the Porn industry is handing it out en masse without any repercussion

I assume they use some kind of regex to do this, and it works.

I think the underlying disagreement/debate is whether or not these initiatives are in good faith. Any implementation of this is going to be imperfect and a motivated person will probably be able to get around this. So the debate, I think, is, if we implement this are we going to incrementally improve it? Or is it just a pretext to point to and say, hey look, this can never work perfectly, so we should ban x, y, and z.

a) It's economically implausible. Age verification is very expensive, and the requirement means that many sites that currently permit adult content will ban it rather than pay for verification (Twitter bans sex workers in Germany rather than pay for verification).

b) It doesn't work - it just pushes audiences to pirate content, because pirate sites don't give a stuff about verification, and don't take down content of individuals distributed without their consent, and steals from content creators.

c) It's not safe - there are multiple instances of systems being breached, which can put the safety of performers and other groups at jeopardy.

d) It enables incredibly bad legislation from political groups who are not benign.

PII breaches require disclosure, and that's the last thing PH wants. There is also potential legal ramifications if they fail to handle the PII correctly and stuff gets leaked.

Then there is the risk that somehow a kid manages to get through anyway, and they face the risk on that angle -- angry parents and crusading politicians.

Furthermore, how are you verifying these? Actual human eyes? Image recognition for valid Utah driver's licenses? What if they live in Utah but are from out of state? Fake IDs are a thing, and if it's an uploaded image I could have easily whipped up something with Photoshop when I was like ~15. Compress the image a little to help mask any artifacts and then cry "potato quality phone camera" if anyone questions it.

Opens up a whole can of worms that don't make sense if you're trying to solve this on the scale of just one (1) state. Maybe if California, TX, and NY go in on it, too, but otherwise it's a lot of risk for little gain.

When marijuana became legalized in my state, you had to verify your age and they wrote down your ID in a book. It quickly went away because its draconian as shit. I'm not ashamed to buy weed or alcohol, or look at porn, but I still don't want to create a written record every time I do it.

I also generally don't agree with the moral panic that conservatives want to generate about porn. Most kids see porn and have since porn was produced. It's on the parent to, you know, be a parent.

These laws have nothing to do with protecting children and everything to do with social control.

We're talking about a state that imprisoned a women for being topless around her children. These people are dangerous and want to enforce their fringe world view on everyone they can.

What I couldn't understand about this scenario (regardless of the product being purchased) is... how does it possibly get tracked? Like can't I just drive across town to the other grocery store and buy more cold meds there? How on earth is the state (???) collecting and reconciling paper records in the 21st century? The likely answer is that they aren't, but someone who wrote the law was certain there had to be an audit trail...

It's databases all the way down, me hearty.

If it’s not a big deal then verifying your age shouldn’t phase you anymore than verifying your age to buy alcohol.

I don't like that either and some years ago I stopped providing my ID on request. Corporate vendors (eg supermarkets) still insist on asking my birthdate. I'm in my 50s.

Paternalistic attitudes infantilize society and that's a lot more shameful than most porn could ever be. Absent specific reasons to believe abuse or exploitation is taking place, lawmakers need to stay out of other people's business.

How does this work with picking up prescription medication?

I have to show ID for a couple of prescriptions I have, and my understanding is that it then goes into some kind of database that gets cross-referenced between pharmacies to make sure that I don't have multiple prescriptions at multiple pharmacies.

I think that came about as part of the opioid crisis, because some people would have 5 different doctors write prescriptions for the same meds to 5 different pharmacies. No one had a way to detect that someone was getting 5 oxycontin prescriptions.

It's not 'paternalistic' to require people to pass a driving exam, or gasp, do a safety test to buy a gun.

This pseudo-liberatrian crap is the most toxic part of HN, and frankly what is 'infantile'.

I have a number of nephews and nieces now and completely emphasize with my brothers and sisters who don't want to allow you and others to infect their kids with your supposed 'ideals' willy nilly - it's a cesspool out there.

At minimum parents should have choice.

We can be smart about it and provide anonymous tokens to validate age, it's not even hard, we just have to think about it, it should have happened long ago.

Parents absolutely have a choice and always had it. They can always enable the adult filter in their internet box or on the devices they give to their children. Expecting the whole internet to implement sound age verification because they can't be bothered to do such a simple thing and instead need the state to nanny the other 80% of the population - that's actually infantile.

If the cashier asks for your ID when you buy a six-pack, that's completely ephemeral, with no record created. If they swipe your ID (I think this happens sometimes), that creates a record, but it's not clear if it stores personal info or just verifies that it's a valid ID with appropriate birthdate.

If you verify your age to view online pornography, there's no way to do so ephemerally, at least that most people would trust. I think most people who oppose these types of rules wouldn't have a problem with showing ID at an adult shop to buy an adult DVD (but I could be wrong).

Frankly, it's not even that hard you could come up with 3 'good ways' just by thinking about it a tiny bit, that would be less intrusive than showing your ID at a bar.

Trade this for getting the drinking age lowered to 18 and we win.

PH is a business, and the overhead of adding this system, on top of the PII, compliance, and access risks that come with it, doesn't make business-sense.

What costs more? implementing a sweeping system with tons of risk, or blacklisting one state?

This is very different. When I buy alcohol, the guy at the checkout looks at my ID picture, checks the DOB, then we move on with the transaction. Digitizing the process changes so much.

Will porn websites be required to provide an audit trail to regulators to verify compliance? Will providers need to send your ID to a third party provider to verify authenticity? What security and privacy guarantees are in place? What is to stop another Ashley Madison style leak from outing gay Mormons in Utah?

"We do it in analog, so it will be fine at scale in digital" is not an argument I would expect on HN.

The only reason we do this with alcohol is because of health and safety risks. Please tell me how boobies threaten the fabric of society?

Premature exposure to sexual content is thought to be deleterious to a developing brain. Sure, kids mature at different rates but what should be formative years might instead be spent in navel gazing porn addiction which can lead to developing a taste for evermore strange, fringe, and or violent self gratification or acting out of fantasies and disrupted socialization. Instead of going out and figuring things out, why leave the house when you can get your fix(es) in the comfort of your own room.

Yeah, it’s a judgement call but one I’m comfortable with. Kids have always figured sex out just fine, we don’t need to throw nitroglycerin on already raging fire in the way of ever increasingly fringe/violent/illegal unlimited free sexual videos on demand. You can read up on Reddit about people addicted to porn and how empty of shells they feel like, childhood is the wrong time to introduce this fuel to that fire.

Don’t worry the porn owners can learn to code.

https://www.parl.ca/legisinfo/en/bill/44-1/s-210

UK

https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3137

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65388255

I'm not sure where else these bills are being passed but it seems more or less in concert you will have to use a government approved age verification system to access porn, which may kill it off as I don't think people want to give the government information on what porn they watch.

It turns out, a mother's nipple has a far different effect on an infant than a young adult female nipple does on a teenage boy. If this is difficult for you to grasp, then you should consider stepping away from this conversation, as there is clearly nuance here that the average person can easily understand but that you can't.

> What's wrong with these people?

What's wrong with you?

> Even public nudity laws differ from city to city (e.g. in California), so clearly, people aren't aligned at all on this subject (I'm emphasizing the arbitrary nature here).

I don't think "arbitrary" means what you think it means. Just because people don't all agree on the definition of something doesn't make one person's definition arbitrary.

> Forbid and censor the things you're afraid of educating on.

"Education" has nothing to do with it. Pornography has been proven to be devastatingly harmful for many, many people. There is no world in which you can be morally consistent, for instance, in supporting an age minimum for alcohol consumption but not for pornography consumption.

> On a closing note, I do recommend supporting organizations like https://www.aanr.com/ who also provide legal help to citizens in states that'd rather have you wear a burka than show a nipple.

If your moral code drives you to make the world a better place by liberating people from restrictions on viewing pornography, then I contend that your moral code is corrupt or severely misguided.

The government unequivocally has the right and obligation to enforce federal law. To what extent and by which mechanisms they should do this is a different question altogether but this issue is hardly about 'dictating what other people can do with their own lives in their homes' as was the case with other laws like anti-LGBT.

That's literally the point of law. One person writes the law, and it dictates what others can and can't do with their lives. Are you an anarchist? Or are you just not thinking clearly about what you are saying?

If thing X demonstrably causes major harm to individuals, then it is often in the purview of government to restrict adults from exposing minors to X.

And, yes, you might want to take a look at your moral code to see if it's a bit broken. I think mine is operating fine!

Anyways, back to debating porn.

One of the best ways to demonstrate how ridiculous and un-thinking this position is would be to do just that. If they "know it when they see it", just say "when!" as we systematically wax, outfit, camera angle, and contextualize this stereotypical, upper-endowed male football fan into a gorgeous female, who then slowly gets topless.

IANAL, but what would happen if you took a picture of a male nipple and used that to censor the female nipple? Would it be okay?

Traditionally, obscenity laws have been extremely vague. Having a fairly clear list of what counts is an improvement.