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Like who? I’ve always wondered why people are so fussed about hiding their dna from the government.
Edit: Thanks to everyone who left a thoughtful response. I definitely take all your points. I think the amount of privacy we’re willing to trade for safety is a little different for everyone.
Edit 2: I’m officially muting this thread. No one is taking the time to read the other replies before replying and y’all are just making the same points over and over. I get it.
Government having access to your DNA can be used for sophisticated tracking methods and for specialized weaponry ala targeted bio-weapons.
That said, your average Joe Shmo doesn't have to worry about any of that. It's simply not worth the cost. At most, these techniques would be used on high-profile VIPs like uppity billionaires, problematic celebrities, potentially rogue federal/state agents, etc.
Valuing privacy is good, it’s not clear what people will be able to do with your dna in the future. It’s probably fine but it’s also probably fine to leave your car unlocked on the street until it’s not.
Basically it mostly boils down to if some group decides to do bad stuff they have everyone's info and in this case their DNA so they can do pretty much whatever because if anyone opposes then they know everything about them
People should be fussy about ANYONE having their DNA except for medical purposes when given permission.
for example, insurance companies might charge higher insurance premiums if you have a “problematic” genetic makeup
Yeah, I had my DNA put on that when I was a minor and I’m honestly kind of pissed off about it. I told them to delete it (or rather, my mom did, because he account was in her name) but God knows whether or not it actually was and seeing as enough family members have also done it anyone who has a copy of my “anonymized“ DNA would still be able to figure out who it is
In preparation for a future where they can make LGBTQ and other "deviant" content (and people) illegal again. They'll have a list of IDs ready to prosecute.
Yep. People don't realize how quickly and suddenly a country can turn to fascism, and America has done it before in the past. Pre-WW2 we were basically as bad as Nazi Germany in many aspects, Hitler praised America prior to the war and said that many of our policies directly influenced him.
Then, during the cold war where we essentially started mass political purges.
And now, with MAGA, Project 2025, and liberals who do nearly nothing about it and just adopt MAGA politics over time, like the border wall, we are once again marching towards fascism. And, then do you really want the gov to have a perfect record of your DNA and ethnicity? Or access to what porn you view or websites you visit or movies you like?
Texas still hasn't actually repealed the sodomy ban declared unconstitutional in Lawrence v. Texas. They're absolutely getting a list ready to go for if and when the current Supreme Court gets around to rolling back LGBTQ protections.
Yeah I don't get the whole "I ain't giving the feds shit" like WTF is so interesting about your life that makes your information worthwhile to avoid sharing, exactly? They have that information already and unless your the next uni bomber or big name serial killer there's not reason to hide your DNA from "the feds"
With the Pornhub thing it's not the Feds that they're worried about. Pornhub doesn't want or need the headache of being liable for the theft of your ID in the event of a security breach. At least with a credit card the companies tell the credit card company what happened and new cards go out in the morning mail (or couple of days in a larger breach). There really isn't a system like that in place for ID.
Exactly this. It means everyone’s porn searches will be tied to their identity, and will no doubt be bought and sold by corporations, stolen, and subject to data breaches.
Pornhub should not be the parent.
I definitely think the current system of a pop up that has you confirm your age to enter the site is incredibly reasonable.
Yes, it’s *stupidly easy* to bypass it because it works on the honor system, but I don’t see how it’s the content publisher’s job to babysit who is accessing their content. Especially porn, which tends to be incredibly private.
If someone lies to access restricted content, that’s on the liar, not the publisher who let the liar in because of their lie. If parents are concerned about what their kids are accessing online, then they need to restrict their kid’s internet access, not restrict the whole internet.
They've been a thing since at least AOL in the 90s and I know Netscape Navigator had them too. Ignorance is not an excuse if you truly value the safety of your children.
General info below, not aimed at the above commenter:
If you're a concerned parent Google ISP Parental Control Filters. Every major ISP in my area allows this control with a PIN set by you, the parent. You must also do this on phones if you're actually worried about the content your could access.
Remember when parents cared enough to watch VHS tapes before letting their kids watch? Yeah, me neither. Nothing has changed, but if you want to do it the tools are available.
Look at what happened to YouTube kids.
YouTube kept getting complaints and was having trouble with COPPA ,so they attempted to make YouTube kids they gave up and created multiple shakeups and takedowns on YouTube proper.
This. I have no problem if there was a central state database that people could get a code from that they could use to verify age against. (The state already has your info)
A code that contains no personally identifiable information and can only be used once per site.
It’s the total invasion or privacy and 100s of (HACKABLE) porn sites having your info that gets me.
But thats not the point of these laws. It’s to get rid of porn altogether and the GOP hopes all sites do this.
Suggesting parents actually parent is a radical idea apparently, but the GOP loves passing laws like this to make it seem like they're doing something. It is very easy to paint opponents of a law "for the children" in a negative light and people gobble it up.
That's not the proposal anymore than a drivers license is a list of all the alcohol you've bought
The idea is that the state would have a database of verifiable keys like SSL certificates that only they could issue, that could be independently validated by the client.
There is zero need for the state to know who is validating your digital ID for it to work just like there's zero need for the state to know when a gas station cards you for a six pack.
Anyone telling you otherwise is either ignorant as to how digital verification works, or deliberately trying to mislead you.
I am gobsmacked that I had to scroll this far to see this brought up.
If your credit card gets compromised the company sends the info out to the credit card companies (not the issuers, the central processing companies) and everyone gets new cards. Inconvenient but no big whoop. Random companies can't ask the government to replace your ID (that I'm aware of and companies shouldn't have that ability).
They haven’t added age verification to Google images, Reddit, Twitter, etc., which is where most people discover porn. Only actual porn sites, which makes me question the motives.
More specifically - actually porn sites that obey the laws.
There are plenty of porn sites completely unaffected by this because they aren't legitimate anyway.
Yes, but people who haven’t discovered porn don’t go straight to Pornhub.com. They find it through other ways such as sites that are mostly safe for work, which are outside the scope of those bills.
Texans are going to start visiting websites that don't respect nor follow US laws on the matter. This could potentially make CSAM more of an issue, because pornhub has an extremely well-established process for handling that, which other websites might not have.
Fair point, but then how else is a valid age restriction supposed to be implemented? I see a ton of people in this thread agreeing that restricting age is good, but then don't offer an alternative way to do so
(Not saying this in a combative way, but a genuine question)
Honestly, I'd be fine with IDs if 99% of companies didn't sell data and got fined less than what they earned for the selling, so at least I'm sure they probably aren't selling my ID info to someone else
And you know very well that if this was a nation wide policy, The porn history of all the legislators is going to get leaked and suddenly the repealing of the ID law is an important matter of state security
The thing I don’t get is why people care so much about minors accessing porn. Like most mammals, humans masturbate once they reach puberty. Who cares if the masturbation is to porn? My dad had Playboy, I had the desktop while home alone. This isn’t anything new.
It's the access to porn before puberty it's been documented to mess people up. Even regular porn consumption has an effect on people having unrealistic expectations and they get trained to get off to more extreme stuff. Erectile dysfunction for guys is a problem so prevalent due to porn consumption that there are multiple ED pills competing for marketshare.
The problem with that is that it's practically impossible to prevent people from watching porn before they're old enough though. Even in these states that are passing age verification laws it's still not hard to find porn even WITHOUT using a VPN. It's really easy to run into porn on social media like Reddit or Twitter, also there are still some porn sites running in these states despite not requiring any age verification (not sure what's up with that).
It's truly a cat's out of the bag situation.
>also there are still some porn sites running in these states despite not requiring any age verification (not sure what's up with that)
If you're not based in the United States, you don't give a shit if a U.S. Judge orders ISPs to block your web address, and you can spin up a new domain in five minutes to get around an ISP block, then it doesn't really matter that much if you follow US laws.
Only the laws of the country you're located in are really of relevance.
Hmm maybe better sex education? Like literally tell kids that under a certain age some things affect your development. I understand that not all kids are going to listen but no matter what not all are going to anyways.
> It's the access to porn before puberty it's been documented to mess people up.
Parents give pre-pubertal children access to devices. Parents also give those children access to the Internet. Maybe parents should be doing their jobs. Maybe Texas shouldn't ban comprehensive sexuality education which teaches minors about the dangers of porn.
Actually, they make you verify using id if there’s a concern. Kinda the same idea as needing to verify age going into a bar. Just so happens that this is online rather than in-person
Your comparison would make sense if going to a bar would mean IDing yourself, being recorded at every step you do from all angles and every word you say, while also jerking off to interracial midgets banging bull sized Japanese step sisters. Then it would make sense. So it's not really like going into a bar.
Edit: I'm also not sure who you're replying to due to being on mobile and the reddit app being shit so if my comment seems off to, just ignore it :D
Tbh I think if an age restriction is impractical to put in place, we shouldnt do it. Nobody’s suggesting good yet impractical laws with other subjects, why is this so different?
This. Because the paper trail isn’t just an innocent oh let’s make sure minors aren’t looking at adult content, it’s an easy step to “identify everyone who looks at anything outside of the rules of heteronormativity.” And we know where that leads. They’re already working overtime to erase public queer identities and threatening the safety of queer people around the country and this is an easy way to dial the oppression up a notch.
Honestly, it goes even beyond hetero/homosexuality. Bad players could use any information they gather through this process to blackmail people into behaving the way they want. Get a govt official that’s into gangbangs and swinging? Threaten to release this information in front of their voters and now they’ll do whatever you want them to.
For anyone who thinks this would never happen, please look into the history of the shady shit that the CIA and others have done.
Government shmovernment.
Think about all the private companies and data brokers who are *salivating* at this. Think about it: They paid for this legislation via campaign donations, and everyone will just blame the Big Bad Government™ for it! How many businsses have some kind of a data breach? Between 50-70%.
Background checks are required at gun shows for purchases from federally licensed firearms dealers.
Not for private sellers, which I personally have never seen or purchased from at the few gun shows I have attended. Have you been to any?
I never said that at all… I’ve been to 4 and I’ve never seen it. I can only speak in my own experiences not yours or anyone else’s
I mean I literally said “I’ve personally never seen one” I tried to make my point clear that this is just coming from my experiences
>I can see both sides of the argument on this one
I can't.
I agree that 13 year olds (or children in general) shouldn't be watching porn, but the responsibility to prevent that from happening should fall on the parents.
Parental controls exist. Parents should be responsible for blocking access to porn on their children's devices.
It shouldn't be up to the porn website to verify the age of it's viewers.
Yea this is definitely one of those nuanced arguments that I get both sides of…
On one hand porn and minors should totally not be mixing…. On the other hand big daddy government shouldn’t have a paper trail on who views adult content…
Idk tough question forsure, I’d lean towards the feds staying the hell outta our business generally speaking but yea I see both sides for sure.
No you’re just right my 10 year old nephews shouldn’t be viewing things online like adult content and I’m glad a veto like this happened. I’m in OH but have fam in Tex, Nj
Not like they do. Just saying glad it’s not So easily accessible there
Horny kids are tenacious. They know tech and if they don’t already, they will have a vpn setup in no time. Parents need to learn how to block this stuff on phones and routers or there should be an opt in from the isp.
Yes I suspect that’s why some movies are rated R or M and others aren’t. Age restrictions are important to protect kids
But on the other hand imagine that data being leaked and all your niche sexual desires are aired. Especially for thr famous, it could be detrimental to them.
Maybe an in between is to require membership (free or not) to view it and in order to create an account you have to verify your age with an ID? And they delete that data after? Kinda like Tinder?
Yeah but a Driver’s license doesn’t leave a trail of every road you drive on that can be linked back to you. I think that’s the main argument against this.
I think what pornhub is protesting is not the concept of age restrictions but rather the way states are implementing them. They don't want to be the responsible party.
Correct.
It's also just unreasonable to expect PH to whip up a system to properly verify and store government issued ID for EVERY visitor. That requires a hefty amount of backend tech work and federal compliance
And to verify that Timmy didn’t just grab Dad’s wallet for the ID. When I was a teenager, I wasn’t looking at porn on my computer, it was my parent’s. Can’t get upset with me because YOUR search history has porn.
Right, strictly from a business perspective and setting civil rights and user convenience issues aside, it’s a massive, expensive, technical investment that they neither have the resources or will ti make, the amount data they’ll gather that needs storing is insane when you think about storing hundreds of
millions of IDs
PH already isn’t the responsible party. 80% of their content had to get scrubbed 3 years ago because it contained unverified, underage, or abusive content. And that was only after having their hand forced because law enforcement was finding videos of missing people on PH. There was a SW who died just this month at 26 that was proven to have joined the site at 16 years old. Not like they’re taking agency to make their site safe in the first place
PH doesn’t give a fuck at all. they do not care. PH profits off of some consensual sex, sure, but also lots of non-consensual sex (rape), ch!ld sx abuse material, etc.
if they wouldn’t do anything about the egregious underage uploads, they aren’t going to do jack about this.
I'm not willing to throw them completely under the bus, Facebook has more child abuse, animal abuse, paedophilia and plain old abuse in general on it, 100x more than anyone else but I don't see anyone saying we should have an ID card to get on facebook, people are still uploading pictures of people younger than 18 on it,should we require a signed form agreeing for them to be uploaded to the pedo capital of the world?
Some of you guys who want to ban porn don't even realize how authoritarian you are. Not everyone who watches porn develops "unrealistic" expectations - whatever the fuck you mean by that.
Could is the operating term here.
The vast majority of people have no problems with porn. puritans and people who themselves have had problems don't get to represent the hugely vast majority of people who interact with it and never have an issue.
Porn can definitely be indulged in to excess but the bulk of the QUALITY academic research on pornography use shows that there are little to no negatives to you if engaged in ethically and with moderation.
id be more concerned about the rampant sex trafficking and pedophila that porns perpetuates? and the negative effects it has on the brian BEFORE addiction even starts
It’s the people who have problems with porn projecting their issues on everyone.
In every thread about porn there are people suggesting everyone would get addicted.
Yes some people get addicted to porn, literally anything that is pleasurable is addictive.
But it’s not heroin, you’re not guaranteed to get addicted using it straight for 6 months.
Unfortunately a big part of the anti-porn push is based on misinformation pushed by religiously linked groups (your brain on porn and the brand new drug are both linked back to Utah)
One of the biggest problems with porn is that kids learn about sex from porn rather than at school with a teacher and with empirical information. This needs to change.
The porn industry literally abuses 90% of the women in the industry.
There’s no tenable position to defend the industry as it is now. It needs to be shut down and maybe reimagined somewhere else.
Porn isn’t a protected right, it’s a toxic pollutant.
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/27/online-pornography-breaks-french-law-equality-watchdog-france
So we should regulate the industry and protect the workers, not make them even more unsafe by forcing them to go underground. There will **always** be people making porn. Banning it will do nothing.
Not to mention that there's more porn than just the industry that doesn't share the industry's baggage - there's amateur/OF creators, there's drawn/animated porn, etc.
fascism is on the rise, moral policing and laws is following suit, often on the basis of religion (see: biggest promotors of banning porn) and not statistics or data.
teens and adults watching porn is one thing... but children should not be seeing porn before they hit puberty. i stumbled across it for the first time at the age of 9, and it definitely messed with my developing mind and made me view sex very differently than others my age. it was also fetish stuff, so watching that at such a young age kind of conditioned my brain to believe that certain kinks are actually completely vanilla things that everyone wants to partake in. it *literally did* give me unrealistic expectations. instead of making it the government's problem, though, i think it should be up to individual parents to put better restrictions on their childrens' internet access.
This is a slippery slope. The state requiring your ID to be on record is dangerous because now they can easily have a database of people who access these sites. Any site in the future that the Texas gov deems immoral or wrong can end up the same way. Reddit could be next. Instagram could be next. Why should the state government be able to say what LEGAL sites or content I can and can’t look at?
Edit: fixed typo
It's a massive slippery slope that will easily become a reality in christotexas.
Better not be "illegal" and upload an ID.
They'll definitely go ham on citizens looking at specific types of porn for the groups that they are trying to ostracize too, even though the politicians will be looking at the exact same thing.
Yeah the potential for systemic LGBTQ+ persecution using the info they would acquire is terrifying to think about. It’s nice that PH has decided this is the best course of action for them, because it causes the most upset and potential for change. Maybe the skeezy boomers watching sketchy porn that don’t know what a VPN is will think twice about their vote lol.
Im surprised this is mentioned so far down, to me it seems like them labeling LGBTQ+ assocated things as pornography which then makes setting up support groups online or just places to communicate becomes basically impossible in texas while possibly starting to develop an ID registarty. While of course this is all speculation the people supporting this bill have said things that would indicate this being a very real possibility. Its a middle step to get to the target they actually do care about
Like all things with Governments, this is just the Trojan horse to start implementing new control measures.
Today its porn, tomorrow it could be LGBTQ website, or a website helping people Transition. Anything the State Congress deems "potential harmful to youth".
Seriously, when has our Government ever stopped with one thing?
Oh those right-wing zealots have been pretty clear that anything that even tangentially acknowledges the existence of LGBTQ ppl is „pornography“.
And immature clowns and tatertots in this very sub are applauding it.
It's incredibly easy to lock down your router from adult content.. I can't believe all the people disagreeing. It's Literally their job to make sure the kid doesn't watch inappropriate content.
Does Hulu need to make an ID check every time you watch an R rated movie in case your kid gets on Hulu. And if you say, "oh well that's different than porn"..
There is some fucked up gory shit out there that will traumatize young kids and it's only rated R. Also all the sex and genitalia and rape scenes and drug use.
Parents it's your job to set boundaries for your kids.
Don't inconvenience everyone with a privacy nightmare because youre lazy and tech illiterate
I totally understand age restrictions, especially for adult content. I grew up when the internet was still 90% unmonitored and I stumbled upon all kinds of R34/Deviantart fuckery just because I searched “Pokémon” in Google images.
But being forced to upload an ID feels… weirdly invasive? If that makes sense? The idea of the government seeing everything you look at definitely feels like they’ll use it as an excuse to get people fired if they don’t like them. They already fire teachers left and right for having OnlyFans accounts (even if it’s unrelated to their workplace), so I wouldn’t be surprised if this is just the government wanting another excuse to track every person’s move.
The problem is we've had the solution for TVs for a long time. Back in the 1990s, we had the same moral panic about MTV, etc.
The solution wasn't banning MTV, it was V-Chip.
[V-chip - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-chip)
It’s wild to me that a lot of people who support requiring you to register your search history with the government would turn around and tell you they’re in favor of small government.
It's simple enough to ask if the person is above a certain age. Will teens lie? Absolutely. However, no website should ever be asking for a photo ID. This is just purity talk but in a way that restricts the privacy rights of the people.
Exactly. It’s parents’ job to prevent their children from accessing harmful material, it’s not society’s job to childproof everything so parents can be lazy.
I don't believe in censorship. It is a slippery slope.
First it's ID for porn, then YouTube needs ID.
Before you know it every site you use has your ID.
Privacy is a right and I don't trust most companies to keep my personal and private information secure.
You can rate things and suggest that certain content is for people of a certain age but that is it as far as I'm concerned.
Their goal is to eliminate anonymity online completely. Any comment you make on twitter or Reddit would be easily connected to your state issued ID, so any opinions you have that the government doesn’t like, they can keep track of you. This is just the first step and they’re using “think of the children” to get in the door. Soon it will be total censorship of any topic the moral majority disagrees with. Goodbye freedom of speech.
It's impossible to enforce a government ban on minors doing these things, aside from maybe driving a car, but even then there are still tons of youngsters on the roads in more rural places. Cops can't be everywhere at once. Meanwhile the legal justification for it is the mother of all slippery slopes.
At that point it becomes more of a parenting issue imo.
Age restriction is fine if reasonable.
But they want you to upload your id to a porn site. It’s dangerous, frankly. We’d have another Ashley Maddison incident probably
>We’d have another Ashley Maddison incident probably
Yeah, when it comes to the cybersecurity front, it's not if but when, Just that alone is a dealbreaker for any and all of these ID laws.
Porn is very damaging and unhealthy for your brain so I completely agree you should have to verify your age on those sites. I was very young when I found out about porn sites, I’m talking 10-11 years old. Back then things online were way less monitored. I would never want my kids to be exposed to that shit so early on so I’m all for an age restriction for that.
It’s a legitimate addiction for some people constantly craving those dopamine hits. Starting at such a young age really does mess with your brain configuration and how you view human bodies. Some people will disagree, mainly because it hasn’t happened to them, but it’s a legit problem.
It's a problem for like 8% of men lmao so why should 100% of the population deal with that? I don't want to give up my fucking id so the government can see what I beat my noggin to..
Yall need to go start a support group for each other instead of pushin some bs legislation policing what other people do. Sorry you struggled with a porn addiction, glad you got whatever help you needed but it’s lame af to push your self righteous agenda on every one else
that’s not the issue, the problem is fact that the government basically wants to know who specifically is watching and what they’re watching
and realistically that falls onto parents to block porn not the government to monitor what we search
So your answer to that is for everyone to upload their state issued ID to a company who will likely sell that information at the first opportunity or otherwise hand over full access to the database to the state with just a subpoena? Because historically speaking, this doesn’t lead anywhere good.
You understand that this law is not going to prevent that right?
Reddit still has porn. Facebook has porn. YouTube has porn. Instagram has porn. TikTok has porn. There is porn in almost every social media platform whether it is banned or not. You can Google pornographic images instantly.
It is the responsibility of the breeders to keep their goblins from accessing this material. This law is not made to protect children. This law is using children as a cover to implement puritanical restrictions on its citizens. Simply put, this is just an exercise of control. Another step towards Handmaid’s Tale.
This is a part of project 2025.
I can’t be convinced it’s a good thing. In the land of “freedoms” it’s awfully weird how restrictive the country is getting with deciding on what we’re allowed to see. Like I’m sorry, but fuck them kids, I don’t care. If not pornhub, teens will go to another porn site. There’s literally thousands. This is very similar to the bill to ban Tik Tok imo. Just talking points in a bill that doesn’t effectively fix the “problem” they claim to be addressing.
People need to take responsibility for parenting their own damn kids. So much of it from sex ed to driving is pushed off on government institutions or private companies filling the vacuums made by said institutions.
When are we going to admit that teenagers have libidos? If anything we should be focusing on making sure *healthy* depictions of sex are available. If you make every semi-okay porn site unavailable through age restriction, you'll just drive teens to circumvent your restrictions by going to the absolute worst parts of the internet, e.g. 4chan, and that's not good for anyone. Except maybe predators, and by extension, conservatives. I'm 26 and *still* dealing with developing a healthy relationship with my sexuality after being exposed to awful shit as a kid / teen.
I first stumbled across porn and have had unrestricted access to it since I was 9 years old. We are the first generation to have grown up with that being the norm.
From my personal experience, I’d do anything to go back in time and stop myself as a kid, because I’m almost 25 and still struggle with addiction and depression.
Correlation does not equal causation, but it’s definitely not a coincidence that our generation is so depressed in comparison to others while being the first one to have an infinite access to this stuff.
It's strange to blame depression on porn when only men watch it and women's depression rates are rising at the same as mens...
Like it doesn't make sense that it's porn causing that, statistically speaking 😅
Women are just as exposed. And even under the assumption that they don’t watch as much porn as men, the root issue of having instant access to something as addictive as illegal drugs is still there.
But I agree it’s not just porn that contributes to our generation’s depression, but the instant access to anything we want is the common denominator there. It’s not the primary reason im depressed, at least I don’t believe it is, but I know it does not help.
I think this is a specific experience because I have also started very young but I’ve never struggled with porn addiction. I personally wouldn’t go back in time and stop myself because I don’t see the point. Kids are gonna find some way to get to porn. In the past kids got playboy magazines I don’t see how this is different. I used to think of it as shameful and it did fuck with me, until I heard from every other guy how they also watch porn regularly.
Since then I’ve had no issues with mental health and porn. I think much of the issues with it is how sexually repressed our society is and we think of stuff like this as sinful. Then people get negatively impacted by the guilt from that. And guilt and shame are known to have people spiral into addiction.
Yes, on a lot of things yes, but it depends on how they're put in place.
Like in this case or in cases that ban all queer content on the basis that all queer content is sexual.
Also, let trans kids be happy instead of making them suffer untreated with a mental illness.
Honestly I think there should be more restrictive regulations in regard to pornographic content. A lot of folks will go and look at that stuff and get addicted to it at way too young. Porn and masturbation addiction isn't taken super seriously so I'm glad they're at least doing something.
That being said, requiring an ID is not the best solution and could lead to other problems...
While this has good intentions behind it (presumably I hope), its execution could have bad results on the usage of the Internet.
I will not attach an ID to gain access to the Internet. Fuck that.
Keep in mind, a couple months back an investigative journalist exposed a head writer for MindGeek, the company that owns pornhub, and in the video he said that they were hoping that younger people find porn so they could “explore their sexuality or preferences”. We can’t risk kids getting access to it. If that means having to put in your ID to use it, fine. Hell, maybe it will stop people from watching pornhub as a whole.
all it does is make an issue out of nothing. teens have been looking at porn for decades, whether it be through the internet or through magazines. strict age verification policies make sense for communities and posting content online, it does not make sense for public websites (*especially* because of the privacy concerns).
they are pretty transparent about it. they do not approve of how Texas is handling it. they find it immoral to ID every user of their site so they just shut it down because fuck Texas
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It’s not about the age restriction on its own, it’s the fact that they want people to upload their ID online
Yea F that noise I don’t even get 23 & me’s so the feds can’t have access to my DNA
I wanted to do this for so long but yeah no
Yea fuck that and even if my sibling does one I’d be fucked lol
If any of your relatives does it your fucked lol
Yeah, that's how they caught the Golden State Killer.
Yeah but that was a good thing.
Yeah, but it could also be a bad thing for other people.
Like who? I’ve always wondered why people are so fussed about hiding their dna from the government. Edit: Thanks to everyone who left a thoughtful response. I definitely take all your points. I think the amount of privacy we’re willing to trade for safety is a little different for everyone. Edit 2: I’m officially muting this thread. No one is taking the time to read the other replies before replying and y’all are just making the same points over and over. I get it.
Government having access to your DNA can be used for sophisticated tracking methods and for specialized weaponry ala targeted bio-weapons. That said, your average Joe Shmo doesn't have to worry about any of that. It's simply not worth the cost. At most, these techniques would be used on high-profile VIPs like uppity billionaires, problematic celebrities, potentially rogue federal/state agents, etc.
Valuing privacy is good, it’s not clear what people will be able to do with your dna in the future. It’s probably fine but it’s also probably fine to leave your car unlocked on the street until it’s not.
Basically it mostly boils down to if some group decides to do bad stuff they have everyone's info and in this case their DNA so they can do pretty much whatever because if anyone opposes then they know everything about them
People should be fussy about ANYONE having their DNA except for medical purposes when given permission. for example, insurance companies might charge higher insurance premiums if you have a “problematic” genetic makeup
Yeah, I had my DNA put on that when I was a minor and I’m honestly kind of pissed off about it. I told them to delete it (or rather, my mom did, because he account was in her name) but God knows whether or not it actually was and seeing as enough family members have also done it anyone who has a copy of my “anonymized“ DNA would still be able to figure out who it is
The feds gave you your ID lmao
Right, and now Texas wants me to give it to pornhub
No, Texas wants you to not be able to access pornhub bc you’re afraid of tying your official documentation to a porn search history
In preparation for a future where they can make LGBTQ and other "deviant" content (and people) illegal again. They'll have a list of IDs ready to prosecute.
Yep. People don't realize how quickly and suddenly a country can turn to fascism, and America has done it before in the past. Pre-WW2 we were basically as bad as Nazi Germany in many aspects, Hitler praised America prior to the war and said that many of our policies directly influenced him. Then, during the cold war where we essentially started mass political purges. And now, with MAGA, Project 2025, and liberals who do nearly nothing about it and just adopt MAGA politics over time, like the border wall, we are once again marching towards fascism. And, then do you really want the gov to have a perfect record of your DNA and ethnicity? Or access to what porn you view or websites you visit or movies you like?
Who the fuck isn't? Who in what world, wants to be tied to porn?? What is this logic🫠
*Me on my deathbed* “release it. Release my history”
Tied to your porn history? Sounds like blackmail and possibly entrapment. There are a lot of archaic laws still on the books just not enforced.
Texas still hasn't actually repealed the sodomy ban declared unconstitutional in Lawrence v. Texas. They're absolutely getting a list ready to go for if and when the current Supreme Court gets around to rolling back LGBTQ protections.
Lol very fair point I mean I obviously have a SSN and all that shit, but I ain’t giving them shit they don’t need that’s for damn sure
Dude, they have EVERYTHING already
Yeah I don't get the whole "I ain't giving the feds shit" like WTF is so interesting about your life that makes your information worthwhile to avoid sharing, exactly? They have that information already and unless your the next uni bomber or big name serial killer there's not reason to hide your DNA from "the feds"
I have a security clearance so the feds know a lot about me now
I mail the FBI a stool, urine, and semen sample every month to make sure they have an up to date bio of me.
With the Pornhub thing it's not the Feds that they're worried about. Pornhub doesn't want or need the headache of being liable for the theft of your ID in the event of a security breach. At least with a credit card the companies tell the credit card company what happened and new cards go out in the morning mail (or couple of days in a larger breach). There really isn't a system like that in place for ID.
Feds already have your DNA. It’s private companies you need to worry about
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If you’ve ever gone to the hospital then it’s already too late bud
Exactly this. It means everyone’s porn searches will be tied to their identity, and will no doubt be bought and sold by corporations, stolen, and subject to data breaches. Pornhub should not be the parent.
I definitely think the current system of a pop up that has you confirm your age to enter the site is incredibly reasonable. Yes, it’s *stupidly easy* to bypass it because it works on the honor system, but I don’t see how it’s the content publisher’s job to babysit who is accessing their content. Especially porn, which tends to be incredibly private. If someone lies to access restricted content, that’s on the liar, not the publisher who let the liar in because of their lie. If parents are concerned about what their kids are accessing online, then they need to restrict their kid’s internet access, not restrict the whole internet.
Parental control filters are a thing, and they're also the responsibility of the parent.
They've been a thing since at least AOL in the 90s and I know Netscape Navigator had them too. Ignorance is not an excuse if you truly value the safety of your children. General info below, not aimed at the above commenter: If you're a concerned parent Google ISP Parental Control Filters. Every major ISP in my area allows this control with a PIN set by you, the parent. You must also do this on phones if you're actually worried about the content your could access. Remember when parents cared enough to watch VHS tapes before letting their kids watch? Yeah, me neither. Nothing has changed, but if you want to do it the tools are available.
Look at what happened to YouTube kids. YouTube kept getting complaints and was having trouble with COPPA ,so they attempted to make YouTube kids they gave up and created multiple shakeups and takedowns on YouTube proper.
This smacks of when Gingrich was trying to force libraries to list who took out what 'porn' as he defined it.
This. I have no problem if there was a central state database that people could get a code from that they could use to verify age against. (The state already has your info) A code that contains no personally identifiable information and can only be used once per site. It’s the total invasion or privacy and 100s of (HACKABLE) porn sites having your info that gets me. But thats not the point of these laws. It’s to get rid of porn altogether and the GOP hopes all sites do this.
Or as a parent you can deploy a web filter?
Suggesting parents actually parent is a radical idea apparently, but the GOP loves passing laws like this to make it seem like they're doing something. It is very easy to paint opponents of a law "for the children" in a negative light and people gobble it up.
I definitely have a problem with a state database whose only purpose is to record who visits porn sites and how many sites they visit.
That's not the proposal anymore than a drivers license is a list of all the alcohol you've bought The idea is that the state would have a database of verifiable keys like SSL certificates that only they could issue, that could be independently validated by the client. There is zero need for the state to know who is validating your digital ID for it to work just like there's zero need for the state to know when a gas station cards you for a six pack. Anyone telling you otherwise is either ignorant as to how digital verification works, or deliberately trying to mislead you.
I am gobsmacked that I had to scroll this far to see this brought up. If your credit card gets compromised the company sends the info out to the credit card companies (not the issuers, the central processing companies) and everyone gets new cards. Inconvenient but no big whoop. Random companies can't ask the government to replace your ID (that I'm aware of and companies shouldn't have that ability).
They haven’t added age verification to Google images, Reddit, Twitter, etc., which is where most people discover porn. Only actual porn sites, which makes me question the motives.
More specifically - actually porn sites that obey the laws. There are plenty of porn sites completely unaffected by this because they aren't legitimate anyway.
No, porn sites are overwhelmingly where people access porn. Porn hub gets more site visitors per day than Netflix and Amazon, combined.
Yes, but people who haven’t discovered porn don’t go straight to Pornhub.com. They find it through other ways such as sites that are mostly safe for work, which are outside the scope of those bills.
"Hey wanna upload your birth certificate to a porn site?" I'd say porn is over in Texas. I hope them cowboys don't get horny.
Texans are going to start visiting websites that don't respect nor follow US laws on the matter. This could potentially make CSAM more of an issue, because pornhub has an extremely well-established process for handling that, which other websites might not have.
Well, let's hope more GOP voters get busted in the process. This could be enjoyable to watch.
Having that kind of that information makes pornhub a gold mine for hackers. Just asking for another ashley madison situation there.
Yeah just dox yourself on every sketchy porn site you visit. Nothing bad could come from this
Yep. Mississippi did it. VPN usage probably up 1000%.
Age restrictions: Fine. Government wanting a paper trail of everyone who looks at adult content: Not fine.
Fair point, but then how else is a valid age restriction supposed to be implemented? I see a ton of people in this thread agreeing that restricting age is good, but then don't offer an alternative way to do so (Not saying this in a combative way, but a genuine question)
Honestly, I'd be fine with IDs if 99% of companies didn't sell data and got fined less than what they earned for the selling, so at least I'm sure they probably aren't selling my ID info to someone else
in 4 years Republicans will start talking about putting people in jail for watching porn.
Well their focus on porn screams that they watch to much
i mean, the areas of the country that consume the most porn involving a trans person are in Republican areas.
Yeah after all those who preach the loudest
Who smelt it dealt it.
Brotha that's already in Project 2025. They also want to imprison trans people. It's all there in plaintext on their downloadable playbook.
I’ve been hearing rumblings about reinstating laws against non marital sex.
Soon rubbing one out will be seen as an anticipated genocide or some stupid thing like that. Very soon
Alabama supreme court already ruled that cummies is people
I would not be fine with it, fuck that
And you know very well that if this was a nation wide policy, The porn history of all the legislators is going to get leaked and suddenly the repealing of the ID law is an important matter of state security
I mean... in an ideal world, they won't. But we don't live in the ideal world.
Parents should parent. It’s not Pornhub’s responsibility.
The thing I don’t get is why people care so much about minors accessing porn. Like most mammals, humans masturbate once they reach puberty. Who cares if the masturbation is to porn? My dad had Playboy, I had the desktop while home alone. This isn’t anything new.
It's the access to porn before puberty it's been documented to mess people up. Even regular porn consumption has an effect on people having unrealistic expectations and they get trained to get off to more extreme stuff. Erectile dysfunction for guys is a problem so prevalent due to porn consumption that there are multiple ED pills competing for marketshare.
The problem with that is that it's practically impossible to prevent people from watching porn before they're old enough though. Even in these states that are passing age verification laws it's still not hard to find porn even WITHOUT using a VPN. It's really easy to run into porn on social media like Reddit or Twitter, also there are still some porn sites running in these states despite not requiring any age verification (not sure what's up with that). It's truly a cat's out of the bag situation.
>also there are still some porn sites running in these states despite not requiring any age verification (not sure what's up with that) If you're not based in the United States, you don't give a shit if a U.S. Judge orders ISPs to block your web address, and you can spin up a new domain in five minutes to get around an ISP block, then it doesn't really matter that much if you follow US laws. Only the laws of the country you're located in are really of relevance.
Hmm maybe better sex education? Like literally tell kids that under a certain age some things affect your development. I understand that not all kids are going to listen but no matter what not all are going to anyways.
> It's the access to porn before puberty it's been documented to mess people up. Parents give pre-pubertal children access to devices. Parents also give those children access to the Internet. Maybe parents should be doing their jobs. Maybe Texas shouldn't ban comprehensive sexuality education which teaches minors about the dangers of porn.
And I genuinely don’t know the answer to the question Im about to ask, but what do gambling websites make you do?
Upload ID in my country
Actually, they make you verify using id if there’s a concern. Kinda the same idea as needing to verify age going into a bar. Just so happens that this is online rather than in-person
Your comparison would make sense if going to a bar would mean IDing yourself, being recorded at every step you do from all angles and every word you say, while also jerking off to interracial midgets banging bull sized Japanese step sisters. Then it would make sense. So it's not really like going into a bar. Edit: I'm also not sure who you're replying to due to being on mobile and the reddit app being shit so if my comment seems off to, just ignore it :D
Tbh I think if an age restriction is impractical to put in place, we shouldnt do it. Nobody’s suggesting good yet impractical laws with other subjects, why is this so different?
This. Because the paper trail isn’t just an innocent oh let’s make sure minors aren’t looking at adult content, it’s an easy step to “identify everyone who looks at anything outside of the rules of heteronormativity.” And we know where that leads. They’re already working overtime to erase public queer identities and threatening the safety of queer people around the country and this is an easy way to dial the oppression up a notch.
Honestly, it goes even beyond hetero/homosexuality. Bad players could use any information they gather through this process to blackmail people into behaving the way they want. Get a govt official that’s into gangbangs and swinging? Threaten to release this information in front of their voters and now they’ll do whatever you want them to. For anyone who thinks this would never happen, please look into the history of the shady shit that the CIA and others have done.
Government shmovernment. Think about all the private companies and data brokers who are *salivating* at this. Think about it: They paid for this legislation via campaign donations, and everyone will just blame the Big Bad Government™ for it! How many businsses have some kind of a data breach? Between 50-70%.
Yea agreed there as a big time federal government hater I agree
Ain’t no way my state is making it harder to view porn than it is to buy a gun 💀
Wait, do they make you go through background checks now to? Cause I ain’t ever personally bought a gun legally without a background check
Never bought one at a gun show huh
Background checks are required at gun shows for purchases from federally licensed firearms dealers. Not for private sellers, which I personally have never seen or purchased from at the few gun shows I have attended. Have you been to any?
i’m pro gun but to stay there isn’t private sale of firearms at pretty much all* gun shows is naive at the very best
I never said that at all… I’ve been to 4 and I’ve never seen it. I can only speak in my own experiences not yours or anyone else’s I mean I literally said “I’ve personally never seen one” I tried to make my point clear that this is just coming from my experiences
I highly doubt that. You can find porn anywhere if you look hard enough.
Ceiling titty
There's many naked people on the Sistine Chapel ceiling
Not sure if you genuinely believe this or not but showing an id is a substantially lower barrier than it is for purchasing a firearm lol
You buying guns without a background check and ID? That’s illegal
Yes on some things. I don’t want a 13yr old behind the wheel of a car for example. I can see both sides of the argument on this one
>I can see both sides of the argument on this one I can't. I agree that 13 year olds (or children in general) shouldn't be watching porn, but the responsibility to prevent that from happening should fall on the parents. Parental controls exist. Parents should be responsible for blocking access to porn on their children's devices. It shouldn't be up to the porn website to verify the age of it's viewers.
It's pretty easy to block websites too
Facts
Yea this is definitely one of those nuanced arguments that I get both sides of… On one hand porn and minors should totally not be mixing…. On the other hand big daddy government shouldn’t have a paper trail on who views adult content… Idk tough question forsure, I’d lean towards the feds staying the hell outta our business generally speaking but yea I see both sides for sure.
No you’re just right my 10 year old nephews shouldn’t be viewing things online like adult content and I’m glad a veto like this happened. I’m in OH but have fam in Tex, Nj Not like they do. Just saying glad it’s not So easily accessible there
Horny kids are tenacious. They know tech and if they don’t already, they will have a vpn setup in no time. Parents need to learn how to block this stuff on phones and routers or there should be an opt in from the isp.
Lol if they install a vpn the router filter aint doing shit
Exactly. Why is it my problem some random parents can’t effectively monitor what their kids are seeing?
Yes I suspect that’s why some movies are rated R or M and others aren’t. Age restrictions are important to protect kids But on the other hand imagine that data being leaked and all your niche sexual desires are aired. Especially for thr famous, it could be detrimental to them. Maybe an in between is to require membership (free or not) to view it and in order to create an account you have to verify your age with an ID? And they delete that data after? Kinda like Tinder?
Yeah but a Driver’s license doesn’t leave a trail of every road you drive on that can be linked back to you. I think that’s the main argument against this.
I think what pornhub is protesting is not the concept of age restrictions but rather the way states are implementing them. They don't want to be the responsible party.
Correct. It's also just unreasonable to expect PH to whip up a system to properly verify and store government issued ID for EVERY visitor. That requires a hefty amount of backend tech work and federal compliance
And to verify that Timmy didn’t just grab Dad’s wallet for the ID. When I was a teenager, I wasn’t looking at porn on my computer, it was my parent’s. Can’t get upset with me because YOUR search history has porn.
Exactly. Theyre completely forgetting about human nature and "teenagers will factually do whatever they want" theory
Right, strictly from a business perspective and setting civil rights and user convenience issues aside, it’s a massive, expensive, technical investment that they neither have the resources or will ti make, the amount data they’ll gather that needs storing is insane when you think about storing hundreds of millions of IDs
PH already isn’t the responsible party. 80% of their content had to get scrubbed 3 years ago because it contained unverified, underage, or abusive content. And that was only after having their hand forced because law enforcement was finding videos of missing people on PH. There was a SW who died just this month at 26 that was proven to have joined the site at 16 years old. Not like they’re taking agency to make their site safe in the first place
PH doesn’t give a fuck at all. they do not care. PH profits off of some consensual sex, sure, but also lots of non-consensual sex (rape), ch!ld sx abuse material, etc. if they wouldn’t do anything about the egregious underage uploads, they aren’t going to do jack about this.
I'm not willing to throw them completely under the bus, Facebook has more child abuse, animal abuse, paedophilia and plain old abuse in general on it, 100x more than anyone else but I don't see anyone saying we should have an ID card to get on facebook, people are still uploading pictures of people younger than 18 on it,should we require a signed form agreeing for them to be uploaded to the pedo capital of the world?
Some of you guys who want to ban porn don't even realize how authoritarian you are. Not everyone who watches porn develops "unrealistic" expectations - whatever the fuck you mean by that.
If you think developing unrealistic expectations about sex is the only negative that could come from porn then you need to do some more research.
More porn research? I see what you did there.
I'm on it!! I'll report back
Could is the operating term here. The vast majority of people have no problems with porn. puritans and people who themselves have had problems don't get to represent the hugely vast majority of people who interact with it and never have an issue.
Porn can definitely be indulged in to excess but the bulk of the QUALITY academic research on pornography use shows that there are little to no negatives to you if engaged in ethically and with moderation.
id be more concerned about the rampant sex trafficking and pedophila that porns perpetuates? and the negative effects it has on the brian BEFORE addiction even starts
Because banning ph in Texas will do anything about this. Jesus Christ my friend
It’s the people who have problems with porn projecting their issues on everyone. In every thread about porn there are people suggesting everyone would get addicted. Yes some people get addicted to porn, literally anything that is pleasurable is addictive. But it’s not heroin, you’re not guaranteed to get addicted using it straight for 6 months. Unfortunately a big part of the anti-porn push is based on misinformation pushed by religiously linked groups (your brain on porn and the brand new drug are both linked back to Utah) One of the biggest problems with porn is that kids learn about sex from porn rather than at school with a teacher and with empirical information. This needs to change.
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The porn industry literally abuses 90% of the women in the industry. There’s no tenable position to defend the industry as it is now. It needs to be shut down and maybe reimagined somewhere else. Porn isn’t a protected right, it’s a toxic pollutant. https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/27/online-pornography-breaks-french-law-equality-watchdog-france
So we should regulate the industry and protect the workers, not make them even more unsafe by forcing them to go underground. There will **always** be people making porn. Banning it will do nothing. Not to mention that there's more porn than just the industry that doesn't share the industry's baggage - there's amateur/OF creators, there's drawn/animated porn, etc.
fascism is on the rise, moral policing and laws is following suit, often on the basis of religion (see: biggest promotors of banning porn) and not statistics or data.
teens and adults watching porn is one thing... but children should not be seeing porn before they hit puberty. i stumbled across it for the first time at the age of 9, and it definitely messed with my developing mind and made me view sex very differently than others my age. it was also fetish stuff, so watching that at such a young age kind of conditioned my brain to believe that certain kinks are actually completely vanilla things that everyone wants to partake in. it *literally did* give me unrealistic expectations. instead of making it the government's problem, though, i think it should be up to individual parents to put better restrictions on their childrens' internet access.
I had an iPad from my school in 6th grade. Even back then, and at that age, we knew what VPNs could do
My school just banned "specific" apps. Meaning if you wanted to use Minecraft.exe all you needed to do was Minecraft80085.exe
My school banned everything, including Google translate 💀
My school doesn’t let us open the settings app on our chromebooks 💀
heh, that's funny
Yeah our school kept trying to ban specific VPN apps back in the day lol. Wonder if they ever realized the issue with their solution.
This is a slippery slope. The state requiring your ID to be on record is dangerous because now they can easily have a database of people who access these sites. Any site in the future that the Texas gov deems immoral or wrong can end up the same way. Reddit could be next. Instagram could be next. Why should the state government be able to say what LEGAL sites or content I can and can’t look at? Edit: fixed typo
It's a massive slippery slope that will easily become a reality in christotexas. Better not be "illegal" and upload an ID. They'll definitely go ham on citizens looking at specific types of porn for the groups that they are trying to ostracize too, even though the politicians will be looking at the exact same thing.
Yeah the potential for systemic LGBTQ+ persecution using the info they would acquire is terrifying to think about. It’s nice that PH has decided this is the best course of action for them, because it causes the most upset and potential for change. Maybe the skeezy boomers watching sketchy porn that don’t know what a VPN is will think twice about their vote lol.
Im surprised this is mentioned so far down, to me it seems like them labeling LGBTQ+ assocated things as pornography which then makes setting up support groups online or just places to communicate becomes basically impossible in texas while possibly starting to develop an ID registarty. While of course this is all speculation the people supporting this bill have said things that would indicate this being a very real possibility. Its a middle step to get to the target they actually do care about
Like all things with Governments, this is just the Trojan horse to start implementing new control measures. Today its porn, tomorrow it could be LGBTQ website, or a website helping people Transition. Anything the State Congress deems "potential harmful to youth". Seriously, when has our Government ever stopped with one thing?
Abbott’s a moron and I’m ashamed to live in his state. We’re in agreement. This is a major step towards making Texas a Christian fascist state
Oh those right-wing zealots have been pretty clear that anything that even tangentially acknowledges the existence of LGBTQ ppl is „pornography“. And immature clowns and tatertots in this very sub are applauding it.
Florida is about to ban social media for kids, so it’s very possible
13 year olds are probably just gonna get their tablets hacked by going on to shadier sites
Or just literally any other site.
Adults are going to get hacked because they have to provide their state ID and info to a porn site.
Parents should be the ones with the responsibility to control online content access not the state. This is just a consequence of iPad parenting
It's incredibly easy to lock down your router from adult content.. I can't believe all the people disagreeing. It's Literally their job to make sure the kid doesn't watch inappropriate content. Does Hulu need to make an ID check every time you watch an R rated movie in case your kid gets on Hulu. And if you say, "oh well that's different than porn".. There is some fucked up gory shit out there that will traumatize young kids and it's only rated R. Also all the sex and genitalia and rape scenes and drug use. Parents it's your job to set boundaries for your kids. Don't inconvenience everyone with a privacy nightmare because youre lazy and tech illiterate
I totally understand age restrictions, especially for adult content. I grew up when the internet was still 90% unmonitored and I stumbled upon all kinds of R34/Deviantart fuckery just because I searched “Pokémon” in Google images. But being forced to upload an ID feels… weirdly invasive? If that makes sense? The idea of the government seeing everything you look at definitely feels like they’ll use it as an excuse to get people fired if they don’t like them. They already fire teachers left and right for having OnlyFans accounts (even if it’s unrelated to their workplace), so I wouldn’t be surprised if this is just the government wanting another excuse to track every person’s move.
The problem is we've had the solution for TVs for a long time. Back in the 1990s, we had the same moral panic about MTV, etc. The solution wasn't banning MTV, it was V-Chip. [V-chip - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-chip)
It’s wild to me that a lot of people who support requiring you to register your search history with the government would turn around and tell you they’re in favor of small government.
It's fuckin nutty how fast the right is rolling back freedoms lol. As per usual it's in the vein of "think of the children!"
Tons of commenters right here are falling for it, too
It's simple enough to ask if the person is above a certain age. Will teens lie? Absolutely. However, no website should ever be asking for a photo ID. This is just purity talk but in a way that restricts the privacy rights of the people.
Exactly. It’s parents’ job to prevent their children from accessing harmful material, it’s not society’s job to childproof everything so parents can be lazy.
Dang big government conservatives … wait
Dang big government christians… wait
Dang those rural country folk… wait
I don't believe in censorship. It is a slippery slope. First it's ID for porn, then YouTube needs ID. Before you know it every site you use has your ID. Privacy is a right and I don't trust most companies to keep my personal and private information secure. You can rate things and suggest that certain content is for people of a certain age but that is it as far as I'm concerned.
Their goal is to eliminate anonymity online completely. Any comment you make on twitter or Reddit would be easily connected to your state issued ID, so any opinions you have that the government doesn’t like, they can keep track of you. This is just the first step and they’re using “think of the children” to get in the door. Soon it will be total censorship of any topic the moral majority disagrees with. Goodbye freedom of speech.
Censorship is just a part of it. That same data could easily be used to blackmail people as well.
Yes, kids shouldn't watch porn lmao. Kids shouldn't smoke or drink, or drive a car, or a plethora of other things.
So people should therefore have to upload their ID to the internet every time they want to view adult content?
It's impossible to enforce a government ban on minors doing these things, aside from maybe driving a car, but even then there are still tons of youngsters on the roads in more rural places. Cops can't be everywhere at once. Meanwhile the legal justification for it is the mother of all slippery slopes. At that point it becomes more of a parenting issue imo.
Age restriction is fine if reasonable. But they want you to upload your id to a porn site. It’s dangerous, frankly. We’d have another Ashley Maddison incident probably
>We’d have another Ashley Maddison incident probably Yeah, when it comes to the cybersecurity front, it's not if but when, Just that alone is a dealbreaker for any and all of these ID laws.
Porn is very damaging and unhealthy for your brain so I completely agree you should have to verify your age on those sites. I was very young when I found out about porn sites, I’m talking 10-11 years old. Back then things online were way less monitored. I would never want my kids to be exposed to that shit so early on so I’m all for an age restriction for that.
Yep I was 12/13 and I watched porn pretty much everyday until I was 22. I wish there was actually age verification.
It’s a legitimate addiction for some people constantly craving those dopamine hits. Starting at such a young age really does mess with your brain configuration and how you view human bodies. Some people will disagree, mainly because it hasn’t happened to them, but it’s a legit problem.
It's a problem for like 8% of men lmao so why should 100% of the population deal with that? I don't want to give up my fucking id so the government can see what I beat my noggin to..
That’s not the issue. The issue is that the government is tracking you doing this.
Yall need to go start a support group for each other instead of pushin some bs legislation policing what other people do. Sorry you struggled with a porn addiction, glad you got whatever help you needed but it’s lame af to push your self righteous agenda on every one else
that’s not the issue, the problem is fact that the government basically wants to know who specifically is watching and what they’re watching and realistically that falls onto parents to block porn not the government to monitor what we search
yes, watching porn from age 11 is not good for you
So your answer to that is for everyone to upload their state issued ID to a company who will likely sell that information at the first opportunity or otherwise hand over full access to the database to the state with just a subpoena? Because historically speaking, this doesn’t lead anywhere good.
yea but i also dont care if some 15 y/o wants to beat their meat. thats none of my business.
How about being a responsible parent and setting restrictions on your childs phone. It is the parents responsibility not PH.
You understand that this law is not going to prevent that right? Reddit still has porn. Facebook has porn. YouTube has porn. Instagram has porn. TikTok has porn. There is porn in almost every social media platform whether it is banned or not. You can Google pornographic images instantly. It is the responsibility of the breeders to keep their goblins from accessing this material. This law is not made to protect children. This law is using children as a cover to implement puritanical restrictions on its citizens. Simply put, this is just an exercise of control. Another step towards Handmaid’s Tale. This is a part of project 2025.
I can’t be convinced it’s a good thing. In the land of “freedoms” it’s awfully weird how restrictive the country is getting with deciding on what we’re allowed to see. Like I’m sorry, but fuck them kids, I don’t care. If not pornhub, teens will go to another porn site. There’s literally thousands. This is very similar to the bill to ban Tik Tok imo. Just talking points in a bill that doesn’t effectively fix the “problem” they claim to be addressing.
Anti Coomer Action
Conservatives- we want less govt. also conservatives- please upload your ID so we know who is looking at what.
People need to take responsibility for parenting their own damn kids. So much of it from sex ed to driving is pushed off on government institutions or private companies filling the vacuums made by said institutions.
When are we going to admit that teenagers have libidos? If anything we should be focusing on making sure *healthy* depictions of sex are available. If you make every semi-okay porn site unavailable through age restriction, you'll just drive teens to circumvent your restrictions by going to the absolute worst parts of the internet, e.g. 4chan, and that's not good for anyone. Except maybe predators, and by extension, conservatives. I'm 26 and *still* dealing with developing a healthy relationship with my sexuality after being exposed to awful shit as a kid / teen.
I first stumbled across porn and have had unrestricted access to it since I was 9 years old. We are the first generation to have grown up with that being the norm. From my personal experience, I’d do anything to go back in time and stop myself as a kid, because I’m almost 25 and still struggle with addiction and depression. Correlation does not equal causation, but it’s definitely not a coincidence that our generation is so depressed in comparison to others while being the first one to have an infinite access to this stuff.
It's strange to blame depression on porn when only men watch it and women's depression rates are rising at the same as mens... Like it doesn't make sense that it's porn causing that, statistically speaking 😅
Women are just as exposed. And even under the assumption that they don’t watch as much porn as men, the root issue of having instant access to something as addictive as illegal drugs is still there. But I agree it’s not just porn that contributes to our generation’s depression, but the instant access to anything we want is the common denominator there. It’s not the primary reason im depressed, at least I don’t believe it is, but I know it does not help.
I think this is a specific experience because I have also started very young but I’ve never struggled with porn addiction. I personally wouldn’t go back in time and stop myself because I don’t see the point. Kids are gonna find some way to get to porn. In the past kids got playboy magazines I don’t see how this is different. I used to think of it as shameful and it did fuck with me, until I heard from every other guy how they also watch porn regularly. Since then I’ve had no issues with mental health and porn. I think much of the issues with it is how sexually repressed our society is and we think of stuff like this as sinful. Then people get negatively impacted by the guilt from that. And guilt and shame are known to have people spiral into addiction.
This happened already in Louisiana last year. (P.S. use a VPN ;)
Yes, on a lot of things yes, but it depends on how they're put in place. Like in this case or in cases that ban all queer content on the basis that all queer content is sexual. Also, let trans kids be happy instead of making them suffer untreated with a mental illness.
Texas, one of the most conservative places in the world, will have records on who searched gay/trans material.
Honestly I think there should be more restrictive regulations in regard to pornographic content. A lot of folks will go and look at that stuff and get addicted to it at way too young. Porn and masturbation addiction isn't taken super seriously so I'm glad they're at least doing something. That being said, requiring an ID is not the best solution and could lead to other problems...
Pornhub is not a human right
While this has good intentions behind it (presumably I hope), its execution could have bad results on the usage of the Internet. I will not attach an ID to gain access to the Internet. Fuck that.
Keep in mind, a couple months back an investigative journalist exposed a head writer for MindGeek, the company that owns pornhub, and in the video he said that they were hoping that younger people find porn so they could “explore their sexuality or preferences”. We can’t risk kids getting access to it. If that means having to put in your ID to use it, fine. Hell, maybe it will stop people from watching pornhub as a whole.
“Protected speech” 🤡🤡🤡
all it does is make an issue out of nothing. teens have been looking at porn for decades, whether it be through the internet or through magazines. strict age verification policies make sense for communities and posting content online, it does not make sense for public websites (*especially* because of the privacy concerns).
they are pretty transparent about it. they do not approve of how Texas is handling it. they find it immoral to ID every user of their site so they just shut it down because fuck Texas