Pornhub goes dark in Arkansas after age verification law kicks in
Pornhub goes dark in Arkansas after age verification law kicks in
Pornhub is protesting this law and others by blocking the site.
Pornhub blocked all users in Arkansas after the state's new age verification law went into effect on Tuesday. The law requires porn sites to verify that users are at least 18 years old. Pornhub argued that requiring ID verification actually harms users' privacy and puts children at risk. MindGeek, Pornhub's operator, has decided to block access from states with similar age verification laws. After complying with a similar law in Louisiana, Pornhub traffic dropped by 80%, so they decided blocking access entirely was preferable to implementing age verification.
States they have blocked for similar laws: Virginia, Utah, Mississippi.
In Louisiana the first state to do this they tried to comply and their traffic decreased by 80%.
Good. Let all the conservative boomers who can't figure out VPNs get pissed at their legislators for trying to push this b.s.
If they get this to be normalized, next up will be "well there are other sites we can't control, so now you need to put in your ID card into a reader anytime you're online!"
96Republicans would love to have their own version of WeChat and their own great firewall. That's what Musk is planning to do with whatever he's calling twitter now, after all.
39That's what Facebook's plan was as well, they called it the "Metaverse." Everyone thought it was a VR thing, but they want to have their own version of the Internet that people use instead of separate services.
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I'm sure they will eventually try to force ID's because it would be profitable for criminal data theft ads stalkers. This is all about corrupt money and exploitation. Billionaires are worthless parasites that have no right to exist in a Democratic system. Fuck the US fascist oligarchy party.
27Small d democratic system. And funny how all the states that have enacted these laws have something in common. And it isn't the big D...
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Permanently Deleted
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
Pornhub operator MindGeek has blocked all users in Arkansas from the site after the state’s new age verification law went into effect on Tuesday.
The Arkansas law, SB 66, doesn’t ban Pornhub from operating in the state, but it requires porn sites to verify that a user is 18 by confirming their age with identifying documents.
On Wednesday, Pornhub blocked all traffic from IP addresses based in Arkansas in protest, arguing that the law, which was intended to protect children, actually harms users.
“While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users, and in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk,” MindGeek wrote in a message replacing the site’s front page for affected users.
Responding to this wave of bans, MindGeek has decided to block access to its sites from states where the laws have gone into effect.
So, instead of rolling out age verification systems, it says it decided to block access entirely, calling on users to contact their state representatives to oppose these laws.
I'm a bot and I'm open source!
30I sense a lot of pastors who now have to be reading the bible like they said they were
26So, you know, I was a child in the 1980s, still had access to porn. In magazines, on VHS. They won't stop making porn. If it's out there, the people will access. The people who made these laws will access, no doubt. So dumb.
24The problem is not access, it's unlimited instant access. We had to wait until our parents weren't home to raid Dad's stash. Or catch a tape from someone's uncle at a sleepover. It's a world of difference.
That being said, blocking is not the answer. Blocking the major sites just pushes people to smaller sites, which may be more likely to harbor revenge porn, underage content, nonconsensual content, etc.
24I really don't see the difference. Instant access versus delayed access.. sounds like a Freud book I read about once about the pleasure principle. It's all silly. The timing has nothing to do with anything. As a matter of fact, you've just argued yourself out of your own argument and made my point all over again. You can see it tomorrow, you can have it today. You can delay your pleasure. You can choose not to delay your pleasure. You can delay your pleasure because that's what pleasures you.
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Louisiana government just recently got hacked and I'm absolutely sure the porn verification stuff got leaked along with it.
20spoiler
sdfsaf
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lol @ the morons who vote for the idiots making these laws.. and at the ones not voting against them..
16In sustained French, "verge" is a synonym for "penis". So, it made me smile to see an article about Pornhub in TheVerge.
15For extra linguistic amusement, they also mention the state of Virginia, etymologically descending from "virgin" from Latin "virgo", which descended from "virga", which happens to also have been an euphemism for "penis" in Latin, from where it descended into the French "verge" keeping the meaning, and from there to the English "verge", where initially did also mean "penis", but lost the meaning over time.
So, when reading about PornHub in Virginia on TheVerge... you can smile twice, or more 😉
9Thank you for linguistic enlightenment, and for the extra smiles.
8Thank you for making the article ~20% cooler
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That's a cocky observation.
4Call me greatness the way I'm always on the verge
2Sustained French?
2Ouiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
4Looks like I was betrayed by deepl..
I meant formal/elevated langage.
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But now where will these fascists find their LGBT porn?
144chan
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This is a terrible day for Sarah Huckabee's husband
8Oh no… people will have to visit one of the other 3,000 or so porn sites that are carbon copies of PH.
8PH isn't the villain here... Also those sites would legally be required to block access as well.
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So...not that I will ever be for such an idea, but how is requiring ID putting kids at risk. I thought that was a misquote, but no, that's what the article itself says. Are we really just saying whatever random words come to mind these days?
7Probably kids will increase risk to themselves by using less secure sites, using chat platforms to source pornography, or uploading their real ID to people providing photoshopping services.
19Their personal data will need to be stored somewhere for this to work, and it will leak. Eventually. Security always fails. And with these government age ID systems built by the lowest bidder it will fail sooner rather than later.
17It's puts everyone at risk. How do you expect that to be securely checked? Not only is it basically privacy invasive to the maximum, but you're giving your government ID to multiple different sites who now have the job of securing your ID. With how many hacks go on nowadays, your ID is the last thing you want to get leaked. It's not much different from getting your SSN hacked.
12Government run Oauth is the only real way to implement this, with zero PII being provided to the porn sites. All they get is an anonymised token when you log in.
Then again, the government Oauth service needs to be hardened in that case, but presumably government web stuff has government level security practices.5
It means nothing, like you have made clear.
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VPN's getting popular in Arkansas
7They'll be fine so long as they still have their cousins.
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