What if you had to show Government ID whenever you entered a grocery store, a library, a movie theater? What if you were tracked each time you consumed a video, a still image, an audio clip, or even a text message?
What if the government kept a record of any or all of those checks? What if they arranged for third parties to commercialize that data so they could 'legally' end-run any restriction on domestic spying with a small ad targeting data service fee?
This is the sort of dystopia that librarians and others focused on liberty have been fighting for what seems like forever.
While I strongly disagree with this NC law, and others, your analogy is a bad one.
As a society I think we've accepted that some things (cigarettes, alcohol, sex, etc.) should be restricted from children. That's a far cry from requiring ID every time I go to the grocery store. But, as long as I've been alive, you have had to show ID to purchase alcohol, and the sky hasn't fallen.
Again, I think these types of laws are particularly poorly thought out, but I don't buy the "slippery slope into dystopia" arguments, and I think there are better arguments against it.
It is one thing to show ID. It is an other thing to show ID and have the details stored in a database in perpetuity by companies who don’t have huge budgets for data privacy and security.
At least here in the US, we don't legally restrict minors from having sex (with others of the same age). The other two are physical goods with well-studied and proven health effects. Porn is not like these things.
>What if you had to show Government ID whenever you entered a grocery store, a library, a movie theater? What if you were tracked each time you consumed a video, a still image, an audio clip, or even a text message?
1) entered a grocery store - No, at least not since peak-pandemic. Face recognition?
2) a library - Yes, to borrow books or on demand from security. Needed govt. id to get a library card.
3) movie theatre - Yes, mine no longer takes cash.
4) tracked each time you consumed a video - Yes. Every single streaming service.
5) a still image - Everything on the web. Every book w/ photos I buy. Can hypothetically still look at books we own, was given, found, lent, pirated or stole in privacy.
6) Audio - spotify, youtube etc.
7) a text message - Your phone IS a device you pay for and maintain which is designed and regulated to spy on you. Signal is the only possibility for any privacy at all here.
>This is the sort of dystopia that librarians and others focused on liberty have been fighting for what seems like forever.
How is that fight going, do you think?
A Turnkey totalitarian state exists, who is going to turn that key?
You have to show government-ID-linked payment card information to shop at most shops in airports, or to buy plane tickets.
Most people use a SIM card that is tied to same. Their web activity is similarly tied to ID.
Most USians voluntarily provide that payment card (with full name in the magstripe) whenever they shop at a grocery store or movie theater.
I’m not sure why people think this sort of surveillance isn’t occurring. We’ve known since before Snowden that the feds have been receiving this data in bulk in realtime for decades.
If you extend this policy to "consuming a video/image/text message," that would be dystopian. But this is about porn. Maybe it'll be a slippery slope but I doubt it.
I wouldn't vote for this policy but I get it. Lots of people don't want kids watching porn. And it's not just social conservativism, people across the political spectrum think porn is addictive, psychologically damaging, and leads to sexual dysfunction.
> [P]eople across the political spectrum think porn is addictive, psychologically damaging, and leads to sexual dysfunction.
I think everyone acknowledges it can be, but it's a pretty distinct cohort that holds it necessarily is. Definitely not that it inevitably leads to sexual dysfunction, that's just patently untrue.
Most adults consume pornography, and for the vast majority of them it isn't a problem. Every adult who's sex life I know anything about, watches porn. They're fine.
"porn" is poorly defined and has definitely been used to censor things before that aren't necessarily pornography.
whether or not you agree with the blocking of that sort of content, supporting these sort of restrictions on pornography means supporting a policy that lets the government gate content they deem objectionable behind an id check. i guarantee you there's at least some content out there that you're not going to agree with the government's definition of pornography. or even if you agree with the current government on all their content moderation choices, you might not agree with the next one.
If I like BDSM, and that is cataloged, I can easily see that being leveraged against me.
We should focus on tools and systems that empower parents to guide their childrens' internet experience. Maybe a token of some sort sites can use to self identify as 18+ so parents can set up strong filters.
I mean a town in Tennessee recently outlawed homosexuality in public. I can easily see this being applied to anything with LGBT material, sexual or not.
That said, yeah, I get the motivation. I put this in a similar category as the regulatory response to Airbnb/Ubers of the world: it seems like a better outcome may have been possible if the companies didn’t totally and flagrantly shirk their social obligations to begin with.
> If you extend this policy to "consuming a video/image/text message," that would be dystopian. But this is about porn
Eho decides what is porn? There is portln on Twitter, will all of twitter be monitored?
Kids suicides inceased 10x because they arent alliwed to go outside any more and have no friends - if we actually cared about kuds we'd be solving that.
Western boomers grew up in a better world than kids today
“Our thesis is that a primary cause of the rise in mental disorders is a decline over decades in opportunities for children & teens to play, roam, & engage in other activities independent of direct oversight & control by adults.”
license to walk home alone from school dropped
from 86% in 1971 to 35% in 1990 and 25% in 2010, and license to use public buses alone dropped from 48% in 1971
to 15% in 1990 to 12% in 2010.11
Homework, which was once rare or nonexistent in elementary school, is now common even in kindergarten. One study
revealed that the average amount of time that US children in
school, ages 6-8 years, spent at school plus school homework
increased by 11.4 hours per week between 1981 and 2003,
equivalent to adding a day and half to an adult’s work
week.
those who could play freely in neighborhoods spent, on average, twice as much time outdoors, were much more active while outdoors,
had more than twice as many friends, and had better motor
and social skills than those deprived of such play"
How do sites that have porn but not their main purpose respond, or do they have to? Reddit and Twitter come to mind, I've stumbled across a lot of weird stuff on both.
Reddit had a lot of dark subs and users for a very long time, and they kinda just swept it all under the rug.
/r/spaced*cks, ViolentaCruz, others I cant recall, and the infamous /r/cannibals controversy with a reddit founder and CEO.
Yeah, weird times - not its many bots - and interestingly, in the last year, a boatload of .in India subreddits for various aspects of their culture (like IdianMotorcycles, Weird train behavior, their version of /r/idiotsincars, lot of bollywood and movie and celeb gossip subs.
Maybe need a comment filter that hides anything that a non-sequitur or perhaps comments that have < (N) syllables, words or sentences?
This is true but I do wonder if this is where the interesting part of the question around platforms lies. Dark stuff aside, reddit has a lot of porn period. If challenged, I wonder if they would be able to compromise by introducing an age-verification requirement for specific subreddits. Since otherwise it seems like they'd either have to just outright block traffic from places with similar laws or go the imgur route and attempt some kind of content purge if they wanted to avoid id-ing people.
I haven't come across the Indian version of this, but the default page (I don't have an account) now has a lot of posts from celebrity gossip subs, and the viciousness and hatred there is worse than what I saw in radical politics subs, or even 4chan.
At least the porn and NSFW stuff was hidden. This actually what made me block Reddit from my devices.
The law says it applies if more than 30% of the content is adult content. So won't apply to reddit or Twitter at least but I could see this still leaving plenty of gray area for other sites.
I wonder if these adult sites could host a ton of non-adult content in order to get below the 30% mark. There used to be a similar law in (I think it was) NYC stores. To combat this, adult bookstores would stock tons of non-porn titles which weren't even really for sale.
As someone who considers himself a relatively informed netizen, I hadn't even heard of e621.net until now, and I don't know whether I should be proud or ashamed of that.
(Edit: Apparently there's a sister site called E926 to share SFW content. E926 is yet another food additive (Chlorine Dioxide) which is used to bleach food for a cleaner appearance.)
Wow, this moronic bill passed nearly unanimously. It's nice to see bipartisanship on display in North Carolina when it comes to the stupidest ideas.
> Any commercial entity that knowingly and intentionally publishes or distributes material harmful to minors on the internet from a website that contains a substantial portion of such material shall...
That's a ridiculously vague standard. Google and Bing both distribute material harmful to minors in "substantial" quantities...
> Officials explained that companies will be able to use commercially available databases to verify that users are old enough to access their content. The new law will take effect starting January 1st.
What would the legal consequences be for PornHub if they ignored the law and didn't (and perhaps don't) have any physical or commercial presence in North Carolina, beyond the website being available?
They sell an online subscription. Some states consider there to be a nexus if you’re selling to residents in the state. NC doesn’t tax digital software, so that would complicate things, but it wouldn’t be as cut and dry as “we don’t have a physical presence there.” Fighting the government, even if you’re right, is very expensive.
From a political standpoint its sort of wild the bills principal sponsor --Amy Galey-- mentions absolutely nothing of it in her 2024 campaign site. You'd imagine championing child safety would be at the top of your list of achievements. nope. parenting and nutrition.
this was clearly meant to be a political stunt leading into the 2024 election year to make the democratic governor Roy Cooper appear as though he didnt care about children. No respectable republican voter would ever dream of submitting to a government database for something like this.
Cooper called the bluff, as did most of the minority Democratic legislature in the house and senate. i doubt this law will survive past the second quarter of 2024.
This news article on a Fox affiliate site only mentions Pornhub. Did this originally link elsewhere?
edit: e621 is certainly doing this; this is from their front page right now:
Dec 31st: Due to the current legal situation in North Carolina and the uncertainty surrounding it, we will be blocking access to e621.net from North Carolina until we can consult with our legal counsel on this matter. We did not come to this decision lightly and we will do what we can, as we can, to rectify and remedy this situation so that we can restore access to those users that are affected by this matter. We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience and will have an update as soon as possible.
Readit News
What if the government kept a record of any or all of those checks? What if they arranged for third parties to commercialize that data so they could 'legally' end-run any restriction on domestic spying with a small ad targeting data service fee?
This is the sort of dystopia that librarians and others focused on liberty have been fighting for what seems like forever.
As a society I think we've accepted that some things (cigarettes, alcohol, sex, etc.) should be restricted from children. That's a far cry from requiring ID every time I go to the grocery store. But, as long as I've been alive, you have had to show ID to purchase alcohol, and the sky hasn't fallen.
Again, I think these types of laws are particularly poorly thought out, but I don't buy the "slippery slope into dystopia" arguments, and I think there are better arguments against it.
It's pretty insane that we have no check for an unlimited amount of free porn with all kinds of extremes.
It fucks up a lot of kids (and adults).
Showing porn to a random kid on the street would have you catch a charge if not something worse, but somehow on the Internet it's just fine?
How is that fight going, do you think?
A Turnkey totalitarian state exists, who is going to turn that key?
A totalitarian that will be recognized as such.
The plausible deniability of the status quo is worth quite a bit.
Most people use a SIM card that is tied to same. Their web activity is similarly tied to ID.
Most USians voluntarily provide that payment card (with full name in the magstripe) whenever they shop at a grocery store or movie theater.
I’m not sure why people think this sort of surveillance isn’t occurring. We’ve known since before Snowden that the feds have been receiving this data in bulk in realtime for decades.
What if you had to show Government ID whenever you entered a bar, a strip club, or a (R-rated) movie theatre?
You already are.
I mean you mostly are already
Dead Comment
I wouldn't vote for this policy but I get it. Lots of people don't want kids watching porn. And it's not just social conservativism, people across the political spectrum think porn is addictive, psychologically damaging, and leads to sexual dysfunction.
I think everyone acknowledges it can be, but it's a pretty distinct cohort that holds it necessarily is. Definitely not that it inevitably leads to sexual dysfunction, that's just patently untrue.
Most adults consume pornography, and for the vast majority of them it isn't a problem. Every adult who's sex life I know anything about, watches porn. They're fine.
whether or not you agree with the blocking of that sort of content, supporting these sort of restrictions on pornography means supporting a policy that lets the government gate content they deem objectionable behind an id check. i guarantee you there's at least some content out there that you're not going to agree with the government's definition of pornography. or even if you agree with the current government on all their content moderation choices, you might not agree with the next one.
We should focus on tools and systems that empower parents to guide their childrens' internet experience. Maybe a token of some sort sites can use to self identify as 18+ so parents can set up strong filters.
That said, yeah, I get the motivation. I put this in a similar category as the regulatory response to Airbnb/Ubers of the world: it seems like a better outcome may have been possible if the companies didn’t totally and flagrantly shirk their social obligations to begin with.
Eho decides what is porn? There is portln on Twitter, will all of twitter be monitored?
Kids suicides inceased 10x because they arent alliwed to go outside any more and have no friends - if we actually cared about kuds we'd be solving that.
Western boomers grew up in a better world than kids today
“Our thesis is that a primary cause of the rise in mental disorders is a decline over decades in opportunities for children & teens to play, roam, & engage in other activities independent of direct oversight & control by adults.”
license to walk home alone from school dropped from 86% in 1971 to 35% in 1990 and 25% in 2010, and license to use public buses alone dropped from 48% in 1971 to 15% in 1990 to 12% in 2010.11
Homework, which was once rare or nonexistent in elementary school, is now common even in kindergarten. One study revealed that the average amount of time that US children in school, ages 6-8 years, spent at school plus school homework increased by 11.4 hours per week between 1981 and 2003, equivalent to adding a day and half to an adult’s work week.
those who could play freely in neighborhoods spent, on average, twice as much time outdoors, were much more active while outdoors, had more than twice as many friends, and had better motor and social skills than those deprived of such play"
/r/spaced*cks, ViolentaCruz, others I cant recall, and the infamous /r/cannibals controversy with a reddit founder and CEO.
Yeah, weird times - not its many bots - and interestingly, in the last year, a boatload of .in India subreddits for various aspects of their culture (like IdianMotorcycles, Weird train behavior, their version of /r/idiotsincars, lot of bollywood and movie and celeb gossip subs.
Maybe need a comment filter that hides anything that a non-sequitur or perhaps comments that have < (N) syllables, words or sentences?
I haven't come across the Indian version of this, but the default page (I don't have an account) now has a lot of posts from celebrity gossip subs, and the viciousness and hatred there is worse than what I saw in radical politics subs, or even 4chan.
At least the porn and NSFW stuff was hidden. This actually what made me block Reddit from my devices.
Armie Hammer?
i'm surprised that the app stores let them on though since it isn't that hard to view it
Looks like it's unconfirmed but likely it was specifically named for monosodium glutamate. "This is where we keep the tasty content."
https://en.wikifur.com/wiki/E621
https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/e621/
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sites/e621
(Edit: Apparently there's a sister site called E926 to share SFW content. E926 is yet another food additive (Chlorine Dioxide) which is used to bleach food for a cleaner appearance.)
> Any commercial entity that knowingly and intentionally publishes or distributes material harmful to minors on the internet from a website that contains a substantial portion of such material shall...
That's a ridiculously vague standard. Google and Bing both distribute material harmful to minors in "substantial" quantities...
I hope it gets thrown out on judicial overview.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory
US State legislators tend to be more politically extreme these days, AFAIK.
Or just good old "save the children," I guess? Where either party is afraid to make themselves look bad.
Dead Comment
Perhaps one could even argue that it is beneficial, by helping dispel sexual repression or discomfort around sexual matters.
Deleted Comment
ಠ_ಠ
https://amygaley.com/#issues
this was clearly meant to be a political stunt leading into the 2024 election year to make the democratic governor Roy Cooper appear as though he didnt care about children. No respectable republican voter would ever dream of submitting to a government database for something like this.
Cooper called the bluff, as did most of the minority Democratic legislature in the house and senate. i doubt this law will survive past the second quarter of 2024.
edit: e621 is certainly doing this; this is from their front page right now:
Dec 31st: Due to the current legal situation in North Carolina and the uncertainty surrounding it, we will be blocking access to e621.net from North Carolina until we can consult with our legal counsel on this matter. We did not come to this decision lightly and we will do what we can, as we can, to rectify and remedy this situation so that we can restore access to those users that are affected by this matter. We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience and will have an update as soon as possible.