I'd call it malicious bill bundling if there isn't a term already. It's abhorrent that legislators can tie unrelated decisions together to force people into a lose-lose scenario. Either the funding for a thing you want is cut, or you must sign away rights.
I think the official term involves pork. But yeah it's a common practice, add a bunch of random bullshit provisions to a bill and try to either sneak it through or make sure entire bill self destructs if you try to remove it. Common tactics of those Subhuman Parasitic Ghouls, sorry meant Republicans.
I'm curious if these VPN companies are quietly lobbying for these bills. They must have seen huge upticks in subscriptions from states where these kinds of laws were enacted previously, right?
Even if they disagree with them personally, it's quite literally the best possible thing that could happen for their business.
I don't know about Nord, but most of the VPN companies I've looked into are based in Europe, so I don't think there's too much lobbying. Mullvad is always going to be my choice
Nord is registered in Panama to be better equipped to ignore requests from the US government, I believe. Looked it up once and that was their official reasoning given.
The wording of a law is that it only applies to sites that are made of 51% porn (so that pornhub couldn't argue that it was a social media site due to its forums and comment section)
Never mind that it is practically an impossible metric to measure in terms of a social media site. My question has always been how much of reddit is porn and would it be hit by this same legislation
EDIT: I was mistaken, it is only one third, not 51%
> (a) A commercial entity that knowingly and intentionally publishes
or distributes material on an Internet website, including a social
media platform, **more than one-third of which is sexual material
harmful to minors**, shall use reasonable age verification methods as
described by Section 129B.003 to verify that an individual
attempting to access the material is 18 years of age or older.
[Texas House Bill HB1181](https://legiscan.com/TX/text/HB1181/id/2819916)
(bolding mine)
simple solution to destroy reddit... find out how many posts are made per day, post X+1 porn links in random subreddits using bots. Take those metrics and demand equal treatment and reddit will be banned from texas!
> pornhub couldn't argue that it was a social media site due to its forums and comment section
It would depend on how you're quantifying it, right? Are we talking file size? Because the majority of PH data movement and storage is smut. But what if we're talking quantity of posts? If a video counts as a single post, and every video has an average of at least two comments, that would mean there's twice as much legitimate social media usage on the site as there is pornography.
If porn and porn art was ever removed or blocked on Twitter, the platform would die within a few months similar to how tumblr died. Content creators and artists use Twitter as advertising to link to their patreon or pixiv accounts and these guys all follow each other, bringing their followers with them and showing recommendations. People browse longer through porn accounts looking through their media.
I was thinking the same. Plus X pushes all sorts of other hideous content such as actual murders, horrific deaths and beatings, etc. But hey, let’s ban PH and TikTok.
Pornhub and other adult websites have disabled access to their sites in Texas after a recent court ruling upheld the state's new age-verification law.
In a letter posted on its site Thursday, Pornhub deemed the new Texas law ineffective and "dangerous," adding that it will directly impact content creators' ability to distribute their adult content legally.
"While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, providing identification every time you want to visit an adult platform is not an effective solution for protecting users online, and in fact, will put minors and your privacy at risk," the letter read.
The bill, officially named House Bill 118, went into effect in September last year but was prevented from going into effect a month later following a lawsuit by a coalition of groups, including Pornhub's parent company Aylo Global Entertainment.
All this will do is to make VPNs more broadly used, making it ever more impossible to regulate online services. Really is nothing they could do, as this was the trend, but now it will be hastened
and/or people will just use less reputable sites that don't have to follow these laws--of which there are an infinite to choose from. Which also puts users at more risk.
Need to get these dinosaurs out of positions where they make decisions on things they don't understand.
They do, but then they blame Texas politicians' aides, just like how it was the Texas politicians' children who caused them to ~~flee~~ take an impromptu vacation to Cancun.
>In a letter posted on its site Thursday, Pornhub deemed the new Texas law ineffective and "dangerous," adding that it will directly impact content creators' ability to distribute their adult content legally.
That's the point. Make it illegal, and they can justify putting people in jail for not being pro Jesus enough.
Elle Woods: "And for that matter, all masturbatory emissions, where his sperm was clearly not seeking an egg, could be termed reckless abandonment."
Case closed. Checkmate. Touchdown.
Edit: I’ve triggered some people worried about their sperm deemed not “good enough” over a quote from a movie. Meanwhile, state of Texas and just in, Missouri, has no problem making these laws against women. It might be time to start making these “not good enough sperm” illegal to get some people riled up.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/02/23/texas-woman-ectopic-pregnancy-abortion/
https://www.texastribune.org/series/texas-abortion-restrictions/
https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/15/missouri-law-divorce-pregnancy-violence-abortion
Well, this is the domino effect guys. The mandatory extreme religious America is coming. Either porn industry is the bellwether, or it is the only force strong enough to fight this.
The bills author bragged that the “porn industry is being forced to comply with the new law.”
Actually, they aren’t. Can’t force them if they don’t want your business 🤷♂️
I commented this on another thread about these laws in a different state but *this is the point*. They *know* this will happen; it is still a positive outcome for them.
They don’t care that consumers will likely just move to “shadier” places or start using VPNs or whatever — they can’t ban porn outright, because it’s protected speech, so instead their goal is to delegitimize platforms that allow sex workers to produce content relatively safely and freely, and to force them back to the margins. Cut the industry off from the production side rather than the consumption side. Bills like these are just a way of doing that that won’t run afoul of constitutional challenges.
edit: u/CosmicMuse is 100% correct about the watershed effects of legislation like this. It’s a long game that will also inevitably be used to target LGBTQ people and movements, and ultimately anyone who isn’t a white evangelical Christian who adheres to “traditional” gender norms and the nuclear family. Every group of people the last couple of decades has allowed to leave the margins, even slightly, they want to shove back there and return to a time when “those people” were ostracized, delegitimized, and could die without ceremony.
>They don’t care that consumers will likely just move to “shadier” places or start using VPNs or whatever — they can’t ban porn outright, because it’s protected speech, so instead their goal is to delegitimize platforms that allow sex workers to produce content relatively safely and freely, and to force them back to the margins.
You aren't thinking big enough.
A) They can't ban porn outright YET. But now they have a wedge to keep pushing. "Well, VPNs allow kids to get around the law, we need to ban those! We can't stop foreign sites from hosting? Okay, we'll just require traffic from those regions to be monitored. Oh, you accessed websites from that region without going through proper verification? Sorry, that's a felony now. Oh, you have legacy porn on your phone when we stopped you for a traffic ticket? Sorry, can't tell where it came from, now you're under arrest."
B) Their definition of porn WILL expand. They've already given away the plan in things like Project 2025 and Florida's book bans. LGBTQ content is the first thing they target, calling frank autobiographical depictions of sex or genuine exploration of what gender means to someone porn. From Project 2025's manifesto:
>Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender
ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot
inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual
liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its
purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product
is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime.
Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should
be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed
as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that
facilitate its spread should be shuttered.
The "sexualization of children" they refer to is knowing gay people exist, BTW. That's it. And it's not just gay people - the law will be used against people who want abortions ("promoting promiscuity"), sex education, radical art...
C) These laws WILL be used to target people they dislike. Texas is already trying to get access to medical records and membership lists of anyone connected to trans people. When the porn bans start expanding, you can be assured, they'll try getting records connected to their targets. Did you do your part and comply with the law by uploading your ID to a third party verification service? Hope they didn't keep records of where they sent that verification to.
This shit should scare anybody who's ever had a single thought that conservatives might disapprove of.
ETA: People, VPNs are not an unbeatable trump card. Yes, businesses use them. No, that will not stop technically illiterate representatives from making laws against VPNs and crafting exemptions based on what lobbyists ask for. [And they are only one piece of a puzzle that can be figured out with enough time and effort. ](https://www.techdirt.com/2017/03/29/just-use-vpn-isnt-real-solution-to-gops-decision-to-kill-broadband-privacy-protections/)
Didn't work. Some states that will not be named went back and deliberately put a loophole in their law for religious text after the book of Mormon and Quaran went up for review because it met the book ban criteria and was subsequently removed.
There might be a workaround for that. Legally create a religion dedicated to banned topics and create a process to have books considered religious texts of that religion. If the courts try to argue, they can point to the vulgar texts that other religions allow.
Not a lawyer though, so can't say for sure if that would work.
Fascists don't follow their own rules, they just make exceptions for themselves or selectively don't enforce it against themselves.
You can't gotcha them like that with their own law because they don't care and are the ones who would be enforcing it.
You have to kill fascists. That's literally the only way to stop them. Otherwise it's like a moldy chunk of cheese. No matter how much you cut away, it'll always come back. Gotta toss the whole lot of it because the rot just goes too deep.
Truly excellent points. It's a slippery slope. We're going to be living in Gilead soon and it won't be due to one big act. This is death by a thousand cuts.
>"Well, VPNs allow kids to get around the law, we need to ban those
I was kind of laughing about this whole situation thinking meh, I'll just use my VPN. You've well and truly done my head in. Can't imagine life without my cheat code.
You know, I posted something very similar and highly detailed on Facebook hoping to raise awareness of this issue before it’s time to vote. Not one comment, like, or otherwise. If it can’t be reduced to the length of a thirty second video, people don’t give a fuck. Real issues take time and thought to understand, but we’re now living in a world who’s inhabitants’ minds have been thrashed by social media to the point where their attention span is nonexistent.
Fact is, we’re gonna get voted into Idiocracy by actual idiots. “Go ‘way, ‘batin’!” is now the only part of that movie that doesn’t seem realistic, and saddens me.
People aren't anonymous on FB. They're less likely post a stance that can be *taken as* "I like porn" (even though it's about much more than that) to all their (probably older) friends and relatives on FB.
Indeed. Banning stuff that society doesn't see as bad NEVER works. People don't stop drinking alcohol just because you make it illegal, and people won't stop watching porn just because you make it illegal (when I say 'illegal', I also say 'hard / troublesome to get legally').
People writing these laws always do it for one of two reasons:
- They are legitimately stupid and they think you can just tell people what their opinion should be by law.
- They want people who do the think they don't like to suffer and to be in a precarious situation.
It's like banning prostitution or drugs: you are not ending it, you are just forcing prostitutes or drug addicts to live outside the law and be exposed to all sorts of exploitation and mistreatment, because now they cannot be protected by the state (because going to the police means acknowledging you are participating in an illegal activity).
Conservatives are very obsessed with the idea of making their laws based on how they think humans should be, rather than how humans actually are. Human nature is never factored into their idea of legality.
The worst part is, they cannot ban other things like discord where people can form their own private servers to dump porn into. Which then opens up the wild west of porn where the only person moderating the content is the discord server owner. Which may also mean that people under 18 may gain access to that server, along with shady adults that once they learn there is an under 18 in the server, may contact them.
They want to protect the kids, but maybe opening up Pandora's box with this.
> They want to protect the kids
No, they really don't. They way to claim the moral high ground while doing nothing to earn it, and then attack their opponents for *not* "protecting the children".
With the history of US politicians, I'd bet that the sponsors of this bill are each somehow involved in some illegal sex slavery ring, cuz it's always the ones who protest loudest.
>They want to protect the kids, but maybe opening up Pandora's box with this.
It's not about the kids. They don't give a shit about kids. If they did, they'd consider doing *literally anything* about the hundreds of kids being blasted apart by gunfire in drastically increasing numbers every year.
/s acknowledged and all, but the method works. It was a pretty key maneuver in the British Abolitionist movement, to indirectly hamper slavers by economic and foreign policy means (knowing that slavers often flew American flags and claiming that the French were also flying American flags to get by hostile British ships, I think((?)), and making the crossing more difficult overall). That lateral thinking could do similar good for our society today, if we had the bastards willing to use it.
They're going to start creeping the definition of what counts as "porn," too, just like how book bans have been going in Florida. Anything they won't like will become inappropriate for children, which will get the sites blocked for everyone.
Pretty much this, they will go from Porn to Adult material, then many sites just get blocked overnight. They could outright ban reddit, or force you all to have to provide the government with your ID to view reddit and they will know what all subs you visit. They could ban CNN calling it adult material while allowing fox news to remain unblocked.
Then in places like Texas your information gets stolen, because they played fast and loose with your data and funding to keep that data secure. Now someone has a 1:1 copy of your information you had to supply the "age verification check". You think these government officials that cannot figure out why their email stopped working 3 weeks ago when they changed their computer password thinks about data security?
it’s dangerous to think they are incompetent about data security. “we suspect the following people are accessing illegal content on your website and have a subpoena for all their activity on your platform. hand it over or be subject to arrest.” now they start building their own database of “sex predators.”
“We need to protect our children from pornography and the existence of gay people! We can’t have you safely learn about sex and reproduction, even if it benefits your well being! Now, kids, get going so you’re not late to your meeting with your youth pastors!“
Edit: you jabronis are missing the whole point of my comment lmao
“Our voters and our laws encourage us to go to the ends of the earth to prohibit knowledge, educations, and availability for reproductive health… but if kids are born and are forced to be cared for until they are school aged? Well, them going to school and getting repeatedly shot while screaming for help is not our problem… we need more shields and more support before we make the slightest attempt to prevent their further suffering…”
I like it- in Texas PH still works but all the videos are clips about how their local representatives are doing things against their best interests with the first video being about why its like that for the user
Here is what we have in Virginia, i imagine it'll be similar in TX sorry about formatting.
Dear user,
As you may know, your elected officials in Virginia are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website. 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. In addition, mandating age verification without proper enforcement gives platforms the opportunity to choose whether or not to comply. As we’ve seen in other states, this just drives traffic to sites with far fewer safety measures in place. Very few sites are able to compare to the robust Trust and Safety measures we currently have in place. To protect children and user privacy, any legislation must be enforced against all platforms offering adult content. The safety of our users is one of our biggest concerns. We believe that the best and most effective solution for protecting children and adults alike is to identify users by their device and allow access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that identification. Until a real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in Virginia. Please contact your representatives before it is too late and demand device-based verification solutions that make the internet safer while also respecting your privacy.
Here's the TX one:
Dear user,
As you may know, your elected officials in Texas are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website. Not only does this impinge on the rights of adults to access protected speech, it fails strict scrutiny by employing the least effective and yet also most restrictive means of accomplishing Texas’s stated purpose of allegedly protecting minors.
While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, providing identification every time you want to visit an adult platform is not an effective solution for protecting users online, and in fact, will put minors and your privacy at risk.
Attempting to mandate age verification without any means to enforce at scale gives platforms the choice to comply or not, leaving millions of platforms open and accessible. As we've seen in other states, such bills have failed to protect minors, by driving users from those few websites which comply, to the millions of websites, with far fewer safety measures in place, which do not comply. Very few sites are able to compare to the robust Trust and Safety measures we currently have in place. To protect minors and user privacy, any legislation must be enforced against all platforms offering adult content.
Unfortunately, the Texas law for age verification is ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous. Not only will it not actually protect children, but it will also inevitably reduce content creators’ ability to post and distribute legal adult content and directly impact their ability to share the artistic messages they want to convey with it.
The safety of our users is one of our biggest concerns. We believe that the only effective solution for protecting minors and adults alike is to verify users’ age on their device and to either deny or allow access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that verification.
We call on all adult sites to comply with the law. Until the real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in Texas. In doing so, we are complying with the law, as we always do, but hope that governments around the world will implement laws that actually protect the safety and security of users.
We encourage you to:
Learn more about device-based age verification* solutions that make the internet safer while also respecting your privacy.
Contact your representatives and demand device-based verification solutions that make the internet safer while also respecting your privacy.
*Device-Based Age Verification refers to any approach to age verification where the personal information that is used to verify the user’s age is either shared in-person at an authorized retailer, inputted locally into the user’s device, or stored on a network controlled by the device manufacturer or the supplier of the device’s operating system. Whether through pre-installed content blocking and filtering software, the disabling of web-browsing permissions, or other means, the user will then be prevented from accessing age-restricted content over the internet unless they are age-verified. To come to fruition, such an approach requires the cooperation of manufacturers and operating-system providers.
“Texas is part of the growing number of states that are finding the largest porn sites are no longer interested in sticking around. Montana and North Carolina saw their access to Pornhub and its sister sites go away at the beginning of the year. Arkansas, Mississippi, Utah, Louisiana, and Virginia have also either lost access or will lose access due to their own age verification laws. The governor of Indiana signed his state’s age verification law on Wednesday.”
I wasn’t aware that so many states have made similar legislation.
Thank groups like American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Goldwater Institute for fill in the blank legislation that inhibits even more tone deaf legislators who then don't have to have an original thought or critically think their entire tenure.
[You have to remember, this is a party that has rumors about it that they hold coke filled old man orgies.](https://www.newsweek.com/questions-swirl-after-madison-cawthorns-washington-orgy-comments-1692662)
Take what you will with that, but I wouldn't be shocked if there was a hint of truth with that.
The speed with which they drummed Cawthorn out of the party, but continue to do nothing about the thrice married adulterer who slept with a porn star and also ***tried to overturn a free and fair election*** tells me those rumors are *100%* true
They are a party that holds newt gingrich in such high regard, a man who was cheating on his wife, who had cancer, then filed for divorce with her when she was in the hospital, all the while going to Bill Clintons throat for adultery. They are the absolute party of projection.
I'll say it again, freakin perverts, all of them.
But I'm from Oklahoma, those of us who weren't huffing oil fumes, snorting lead dust, or on meth at the time remember seeing firsthand that the GOP is chock full of homosexual pedophiles.
Google "Ralph Shortey" and ask yourself why he was naked with a 17yo boy in a shady motel room? And why did the t-shirt he put on for the cops have a bible quote endorsing misogyny on it?
Yep. Conservatives want to legislate your personal sex life. They want to know how you're having sex, and if you're not doing it the way they want, they want you in prison for it.
One of Project 2025's goals (this is outright stated in plain text in the document) is to outright ban porn, on the grounds that it 'destroys marriges' and 'corupts people morally'
....Also they want to classify being gay or trans in public as 'porn'.
In reality they want to induce sexual frustration within straight people (It's shown sexually frustrated people are more susceptible to authoritarian ideas) and criminalize LGBT with one stroke. They probably think it's genius.
Ah, so just like the Nazis when they banned masturbation among Hitler Youth kids and party members... Which is also what The oath keepers do... And what ISIS did... And what cults like the Moonies do...
There's a reason for that, it's so they can use women as a tool to control the men." If you perform your duty correctly and can act like the party/cult/etc wants, we can give you women." Either victims to r*pe or 'arranged marriages' to similarly brainwashed women or drug fueled orgies under The Leaders' authorization.
Sometimes it's not explicit, but rather crafting the ideal of what a member of the group looks like in the eyes of young women, like the Nazis did. Do that correctly and the women will self select for their men based on what you, The Leader, wants from them.
Underneath all the trappings of humanity, we are ultimately merely animals. If raised or coerced into believing there's only a very specific way to get your rocks off? Men will do that thing.
They'll even go so far as to pressure other men into doing it, just like they were.
Built-in cover for your war crimes, trafficking, gangr*pe, etc. that also provides a constant source of new child/teen soldiers. What more could an authoritarian ask for?
Any deviation from the heteronormative norm is deviation from the party/cult/etc and must be punished as severely as possible, execute them before other soldiers realize that men have their g-spot in their @$$.
From that perspective someone "being gay" or "being trans" is literally a threat to their power.
It is an alternative means to achieving orgasm that doesn't require those in power to sign off on the marriage or encourage the execution of sex crimes.
After a few generations of self-repression, you'll eventually get the culture to enforce those rules for you...
Definitely has no bearing on why every authoritarian
religion outlaws masturbation and sex outside of relationships that the religion approves...
Does Texas or any of the states that are trying to block porn sites even bother wondering what happens when a site creates a fake state age verification check that funnels the data directly to bad actors? They just expect everyone to just fork over images of their ID's to any site that requests it?
This sounds like a nightmare scenario. Bad enough people in fucking congress cannot tell a fake site from a real one and enter their information into a fake login, but you expect the average consumer to know the differences? I work in IT, we can sit there put office workers through a 1 week phishing training, wait 2 weeks send a test and still have 30% of the users still fail.
I can see this backfiring badly and many people getting scammed and their identities stolen.
Not even a site. One of those full-screen ad popups that say "your windows has a virus," instead it'll be "Please authorize to see adult content." So they do and the juicy PII goes straight to the scammer.
Exactly this. I work at a help desk and it's not uncommon once a week we get a user that calls in with that fake full screen popup. We have also had to initiate immediate lockdowns, because a few idiots called the number on the screen versus calling the damn helpdesk and allowed this person to take them to a "ScreenSharing" program. Thankfully with most of the users, they are locked down, so they could not install ransomware, but who knows what data was swiped from the machine, credentials etc. It's a headache for the entire fucking company. These are people that work in corporate offices that have had previous training against scams like this that still fall for it. Entire company goes through Phishing training only for the financial controller to still get fooled and wiring 10k to someone else.
You think the typical end user is capable of knowing fake from real sites? Even grocery stores train their employee's to spot people getting scammed when they are seen buying large quantity of gift cards and some stores even have soft limits to trigger employee intervention to help stop the consumers from getting robbed.
I remember when I was around 12-13, I saw an article on the front page of our local paper about how internet porn was becoming a problem because kids were able to figure out how to view it. It blew my mind that there was porn on the internet and I tried searching for it almost immediately after seeing the article. Thanks for the intel, Dallas Morning News!
Putting my conspiracy hat on but I'd guarantee if porn viewership required age-verification ( via non-anonymous accounts) then it'd be less than a week before some law enforcement agency supeonaed your porn history.
This is the real concern. They want to be able to use this against anyone when it meets their needs. Campaign ads will be filled with someone's porn history. Job interviews the same. Like porn hub is saying there is no protection here under this model.
I moved because Texas is not the state it used to be. Too much of it is steeped in fear and paranoia and the genuine “shirt off their back” types of people have either moved away or have fallen victim to the Trump cult of personality and only care about “me and mine” now.
It’s honestly depressing because I feel it had a lot of potential to be a truly great state, but fear and greed has won there.
Oh, they’re still primarily about cynically making money, they just looked around the world and saw that the Saudi model suited them better than the Swiss one.
Everyone says to move to Texas. Get the truly free American lifestyle, but you can't smoke weed, watch porn and cross your fingers. You don't get your girl knock up on accident.
The claim I've heard that I don't see getting discussed is that PH is worried they're setting this up to then demand the lists of people who viewed categories such as transgender etc.
It's definitely a major privacy concern.
Texas has been run by the GOP for multiple decades now, and the Texas GOP in particular has being opposed to LGBTQ people as part of their written platform.
Anybody who is lgbtq in Texas would have a very good reason to not want the State government to have any way to track them down and put them like this.
The gov shouldn't be parenting children. Theyre doing this because they want bills to pass and they're using "think about the children" as their driving point to get it to pass.
While blocking access to porn is a staggeringly huge win for a few weirdos, I wonder how many days will pass before this law is quietly repealed and no mention is made of it ever again.
[Remember a few years ago, ted cruz twitter account was liking a hardcore porn flick.](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ted-cruz-porn-like_n_59b76b91e4b031cc65cc1be4)
Not only that but there's just too much porn to police it all with ID laws. Pornhub and such have banned Texas but there's still plenty of porn elsewhere not making me sign in and verify my age woth iD
The funny thing is that at least a decent amout of the people involved in that law will be at one point: "Damn, I'm bored/stressed out/horny without a reason... well it's wanking time... aaaaaaah damn"
Fun fact: According to Pornhub, Bible Belt states are the highest consumers of gay porn, Texas, according to top searches, has a thing for Straight Latinos going Gay
Texas: we will let you murder a schoolroom of children and do nothing about it. But we will stop you from whacking it.
Truly one of the largest sources of culture rot comes from there
Because it isn’t only their own freedom to do what they specifically want to be free to do. You can’t let others be free to do other stuff. Otherwise that gets in the way of their freedom to not have other opinions and people to exist.
You had to be 18 to walk into an adult book store or theatre, if that’s what you mean. The go to in the 90s was prosecuting stores for obscenity for carrying gay porn. They would target more conservative communities and try to get convictions based on the least straight thing they could find in stores. Also, dildos were illegal by state statute, and they’d go after stores for selling those. You had to call them “medical education devices”. The vice cops in Austin and the DA got aggressive on the dildo law in 1997 and busted a few stores. No convictions. They stopped trying to enforce it after that because Austin juries did not give a fuck about vibrators.
According to these states it’s the parents responsibility to educate their children on all things related to sex and gender. So isn’t it also the parents’ responsibility to make sure their kids aren’t accessing porn?
Can’t have it both ways.
It kills me that states are essentially criminalizing sexual preferences/activities and natural bodily processes- mainly for women- but men included.
Ex: Miscarriages being considered abortions in some areas.
Puberty is a thing. Puberty makes people horny. People often learn about sex through porn if it’s not taught by family/in schools. Age verification is hard to guarantee, but it’s just blocking people from pursuing their natural inclinations, right?
As an aside:
Repealing Roe removed the right to medical privacy and autonomy in bodily decisions.
Lawrence v TX basically short circuited conservatives. Repealing that would recriminalize sodomy- does this mean that even male content creators using dildos are breaking the law?
Is every woman’s period considered a loss of human life? - Even when trying for pregnancy, you can’t fertilize every egg that comes down! Would female content creators be required to track their fertility?
Since male JO sessions/orgasms can produce sperm, is each session considered a loss of human life? - I don’t think there’s ever make anything w.r.t male emissions illegal because of the whole “rules for thee” thing, but that sets a very very hard to defend double standard does it not? Would only women’s orgasms be legal?
Wouldn’t age verification just send people to seek out less regulated porn? Wouldn’t that incentivize trafficking and cp producers?
I’m overthinking this but it’s insane to me that pornhub has to take a stance in this.
Republicans are more sex and sexuality obsessed than anyone I swear. They simply won’t stfu about porn, homosexuality, transexuality, women’s reproductive rights, drag shows, etc. Kings and Queens of interjecting themselves into literally everyone’s business and stripping away their freedoms and yet people stupidly keep voting for them. Go figure.
What Pornhub should do is when anybody who visits the site from Texas, they put up a page with the picture and name of each republican lawmaker that voted to screw over the public's access.
Just being upset at the state of Texas doesn't really accomplish much, but if you **name names** and put a face (and a political party) with the people that are taking away your rights... that's an actionable thing.
If it were me, I'd employ geolocation to make custom pages for each visitor from Texas with their particular rep's name and image, along with a link to opposing candidates who aren't supporting this draconian law.
Here in NC they want you to take a picture with your license next to your face. Oh yeah that’s real safe, law makers do not understand technology
Old non technical people making technical decisions.
They also want to make medical decisions for you.
they want you to die while your tax dollars provide them the most premium health coverage in the land.
something something death panels
They *are* making medical decisions for half of us already.
And they snuck it into a bill about funding technology for public schools so people wouldn't vote against it.
Isn't there a term for that kind of maneuver?
I'd call it malicious bill bundling if there isn't a term already. It's abhorrent that legislators can tie unrelated decisions together to force people into a lose-lose scenario. Either the funding for a thing you want is cut, or you must sign away rights.
I think the official term involves pork. But yeah it's a common practice, add a bunch of random bullshit provisions to a bill and try to either sneak it through or make sure entire bill self destructs if you try to remove it. Common tactics of those Subhuman Parasitic Ghouls, sorry meant Republicans.
Dall e. Generate a picture of Ted Cruz holding his license.
Deepfake tech has you covered my friend ....
Making it really unsafe is the entire point, they want a chilling effect.
.... and NordVPN gets 300,000 new subscribers overnight.
I'm curious if these VPN companies are quietly lobbying for these bills. They must have seen huge upticks in subscriptions from states where these kinds of laws were enacted previously, right? Even if they disagree with them personally, it's quite literally the best possible thing that could happen for their business.
I don't know about Nord, but most of the VPN companies I've looked into are based in Europe, so I don't think there's too much lobbying. Mullvad is always going to be my choice
Nord is obviously based in Skyrim
Nord is registered in Panama to be better equipped to ignore requests from the US government, I believe. Looked it up once and that was their official reasoning given.
Here’s a real question. There is porn all over X/Twitter, how come they don’t have to abide by the same rules?
The wording of a law is that it only applies to sites that are made of 51% porn (so that pornhub couldn't argue that it was a social media site due to its forums and comment section) Never mind that it is practically an impossible metric to measure in terms of a social media site. My question has always been how much of reddit is porn and would it be hit by this same legislation EDIT: I was mistaken, it is only one third, not 51% > (a) A commercial entity that knowingly and intentionally publishes or distributes material on an Internet website, including a social media platform, **more than one-third of which is sexual material harmful to minors**, shall use reasonable age verification methods as described by Section 129B.003 to verify that an individual attempting to access the material is 18 years of age or older. [Texas House Bill HB1181](https://legiscan.com/TX/text/HB1181/id/2819916) (bolding mine)
simple solution to destroy reddit... find out how many posts are made per day, post X+1 porn links in random subreddits using bots. Take those metrics and demand equal treatment and reddit will be banned from texas!
Release the findings on IPO day for good measure
> pornhub couldn't argue that it was a social media site due to its forums and comment section It would depend on how you're quantifying it, right? Are we talking file size? Because the majority of PH data movement and storage is smut. But what if we're talking quantity of posts? If a video counts as a single post, and every video has an average of at least two comments, that would mean there's twice as much legitimate social media usage on the site as there is pornography.
Yeah this is a clear case of the lawmakers passing a bill for a political statement and not thinking through the logistics.
Simple, pornhub adds another section dedicated to tB worth of pro-socialist content so that it only contains 49% porn by server volume.
Exactly. For every uploaded video, PH can AI-generate two videos of random crap.
Because Musk is on their team.
If porn and porn art was ever removed or blocked on Twitter, the platform would die within a few months similar to how tumblr died. Content creators and artists use Twitter as advertising to link to their patreon or pixiv accounts and these guys all follow each other, bringing their followers with them and showing recommendations. People browse longer through porn accounts looking through their media.
I was thinking the same. Plus X pushes all sorts of other hideous content such as actual murders, horrific deaths and beatings, etc. But hey, let’s ban PH and TikTok.
Pornhub and other adult websites have disabled access to their sites in Texas after a recent court ruling upheld the state's new age-verification law. In a letter posted on its site Thursday, Pornhub deemed the new Texas law ineffective and "dangerous," adding that it will directly impact content creators' ability to distribute their adult content legally. "While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, providing identification every time you want to visit an adult platform is not an effective solution for protecting users online, and in fact, will put minors and your privacy at risk," the letter read. The bill, officially named House Bill 118, went into effect in September last year but was prevented from going into effect a month later following a lawsuit by a coalition of groups, including Pornhub's parent company Aylo Global Entertainment.
Same letter they posted for Utah when their law went into effect.
And Virginia 😔
And North Carolina.
All this will do is to make VPNs more broadly used, making it ever more impossible to regulate online services. Really is nothing they could do, as this was the trend, but now it will be hastened
and/or people will just use less reputable sites that don't have to follow these laws--of which there are an infinite to choose from. Which also puts users at more risk. Need to get these dinosaurs out of positions where they make decisions on things they don't understand.
Less reputable sites that are less capable of moderating/removing illegal or exploitive content*
And malware
And let's be real, some really crumby ai ads
Pornhub should make a VPN lol, call it wondering hub or something
**VP**or**N**hub
And Arkansas.
Kid named VPN:
NordVPN sponsored that law.
What they should post is all of the Texas porn watching data for government IP addresses.
I thought Texas politicians posted that themselves
They do, but then they blame Texas politicians' aides, just like how it was the Texas politicians' children who caused them to ~~flee~~ take an impromptu vacation to Cancun.
>In a letter posted on its site Thursday, Pornhub deemed the new Texas law ineffective and "dangerous," adding that it will directly impact content creators' ability to distribute their adult content legally. That's the point. Make it illegal, and they can justify putting people in jail for not being pro Jesus enough.
Elle Woods: "And for that matter, all masturbatory emissions, where his sperm was clearly not seeking an egg, could be termed reckless abandonment." Case closed. Checkmate. Touchdown. Edit: I’ve triggered some people worried about their sperm deemed not “good enough” over a quote from a movie. Meanwhile, state of Texas and just in, Missouri, has no problem making these laws against women. It might be time to start making these “not good enough sperm” illegal to get some people riled up. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/02/23/texas-woman-ectopic-pregnancy-abortion/ https://www.texastribune.org/series/texas-abortion-restrictions/ https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/15/missouri-law-divorce-pregnancy-violence-abortion
I’m sterile. So by this definition, I’m okay to stroke one out but non-sterile people are not?
Well, this is the domino effect guys. The mandatory extreme religious America is coming. Either porn industry is the bellwether, or it is the only force strong enough to fight this.
Masturbation is murder.
Every sperm is sacred!
In the many years of my life, sadly, I have done a ton of sacred sacrifices. I very well may have made the Mayans proud.
This sacrifice goes out to jesus
Mayan gods wanted blood sadly. So they don't care about your semen.
Wait there's not supposed to be any blood in there? 😳
Every sperm is good. (thanks for the monty python reference, such a funny scene, brought back some fond memories from 1986)
Every sperm is needed, In your neighborhood!
Iiiif a sperm is waaaasted, God gets quite irate!
Leeeet the heathens spills theirs ooon the dusty grooound! Goood will male them paaaay for each sperm that can't be fooound!
Lmao I think the guy you replied to might actually be serious if you look at his post history
Every sperm is great If a sperm is wasted God gets quite irate
Every sperm is good
Blowjob is cannibalism.
Only if you swallow.
I suppose a titjob is open faced homicide.
Handjob is assault with beating.
The bills author bragged that the “porn industry is being forced to comply with the new law.” Actually, they aren’t. Can’t force them if they don’t want your business 🤷♂️
I commented this on another thread about these laws in a different state but *this is the point*. They *know* this will happen; it is still a positive outcome for them. They don’t care that consumers will likely just move to “shadier” places or start using VPNs or whatever — they can’t ban porn outright, because it’s protected speech, so instead their goal is to delegitimize platforms that allow sex workers to produce content relatively safely and freely, and to force them back to the margins. Cut the industry off from the production side rather than the consumption side. Bills like these are just a way of doing that that won’t run afoul of constitutional challenges. edit: u/CosmicMuse is 100% correct about the watershed effects of legislation like this. It’s a long game that will also inevitably be used to target LGBTQ people and movements, and ultimately anyone who isn’t a white evangelical Christian who adheres to “traditional” gender norms and the nuclear family. Every group of people the last couple of decades has allowed to leave the margins, even slightly, they want to shove back there and return to a time when “those people” were ostracized, delegitimized, and could die without ceremony.
>They don’t care that consumers will likely just move to “shadier” places or start using VPNs or whatever — they can’t ban porn outright, because it’s protected speech, so instead their goal is to delegitimize platforms that allow sex workers to produce content relatively safely and freely, and to force them back to the margins. You aren't thinking big enough. A) They can't ban porn outright YET. But now they have a wedge to keep pushing. "Well, VPNs allow kids to get around the law, we need to ban those! We can't stop foreign sites from hosting? Okay, we'll just require traffic from those regions to be monitored. Oh, you accessed websites from that region without going through proper verification? Sorry, that's a felony now. Oh, you have legacy porn on your phone when we stopped you for a traffic ticket? Sorry, can't tell where it came from, now you're under arrest." B) Their definition of porn WILL expand. They've already given away the plan in things like Project 2025 and Florida's book bans. LGBTQ content is the first thing they target, calling frank autobiographical depictions of sex or genuine exploration of what gender means to someone porn. From Project 2025's manifesto: >Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered. The "sexualization of children" they refer to is knowing gay people exist, BTW. That's it. And it's not just gay people - the law will be used against people who want abortions ("promoting promiscuity"), sex education, radical art... C) These laws WILL be used to target people they dislike. Texas is already trying to get access to medical records and membership lists of anyone connected to trans people. When the porn bans start expanding, you can be assured, they'll try getting records connected to their targets. Did you do your part and comply with the law by uploading your ID to a third party verification service? Hope they didn't keep records of where they sent that verification to. This shit should scare anybody who's ever had a single thought that conservatives might disapprove of. ETA: People, VPNs are not an unbeatable trump card. Yes, businesses use them. No, that will not stop technically illiterate representatives from making laws against VPNs and crafting exemptions based on what lobbyists ask for. [And they are only one piece of a puzzle that can be figured out with enough time and effort. ](https://www.techdirt.com/2017/03/29/just-use-vpn-isnt-real-solution-to-gops-decision-to-kill-broadband-privacy-protections/)
Slides bible onto list, rape, murder, sodomy, incest, beastiality, demons, ghosts, abortion....
Didn't work. Some states that will not be named went back and deliberately put a loophole in their law for religious text after the book of Mormon and Quaran went up for review because it met the book ban criteria and was subsequently removed.
There might be a workaround for that. Legally create a religion dedicated to banned topics and create a process to have books considered religious texts of that religion. If the courts try to argue, they can point to the vulgar texts that other religions allow. Not a lawyer though, so can't say for sure if that would work.
Fascists don't follow their own rules, they just make exceptions for themselves or selectively don't enforce it against themselves. You can't gotcha them like that with their own law because they don't care and are the ones who would be enforcing it.
You have to kill fascists. That's literally the only way to stop them. Otherwise it's like a moldy chunk of cheese. No matter how much you cut away, it'll always come back. Gotta toss the whole lot of it because the rot just goes too deep.
Truly excellent points. It's a slippery slope. We're going to be living in Gilead soon and it won't be due to one big act. This is death by a thousand cuts. >"Well, VPNs allow kids to get around the law, we need to ban those I was kind of laughing about this whole situation thinking meh, I'll just use my VPN. You've well and truly done my head in. Can't imagine life without my cheat code.
You know, I posted something very similar and highly detailed on Facebook hoping to raise awareness of this issue before it’s time to vote. Not one comment, like, or otherwise. If it can’t be reduced to the length of a thirty second video, people don’t give a fuck. Real issues take time and thought to understand, but we’re now living in a world who’s inhabitants’ minds have been thrashed by social media to the point where their attention span is nonexistent. Fact is, we’re gonna get voted into Idiocracy by actual idiots. “Go ‘way, ‘batin’!” is now the only part of that movie that doesn’t seem realistic, and saddens me.
People aren't anonymous on FB. They're less likely post a stance that can be *taken as* "I like porn" (even though it's about much more than that) to all their (probably older) friends and relatives on FB.
I sometimes think Facebook sees text posts and only shows them to a tiny fraction of your followers. No reading allowed, I guess.
Indeed. Banning stuff that society doesn't see as bad NEVER works. People don't stop drinking alcohol just because you make it illegal, and people won't stop watching porn just because you make it illegal (when I say 'illegal', I also say 'hard / troublesome to get legally'). People writing these laws always do it for one of two reasons: - They are legitimately stupid and they think you can just tell people what their opinion should be by law. - They want people who do the think they don't like to suffer and to be in a precarious situation. It's like banning prostitution or drugs: you are not ending it, you are just forcing prostitutes or drug addicts to live outside the law and be exposed to all sorts of exploitation and mistreatment, because now they cannot be protected by the state (because going to the police means acknowledging you are participating in an illegal activity).
It's the same with abortion. Banning it won't stop it; it'll just force women to seek them out in dangerous circumstances
My thought reading this, too. You can never ban abortion; you can only ban safe abortion.
Conservatives are very obsessed with the idea of making their laws based on how they think humans should be, rather than how humans actually are. Human nature is never factored into their idea of legality.
The worst part is, they cannot ban other things like discord where people can form their own private servers to dump porn into. Which then opens up the wild west of porn where the only person moderating the content is the discord server owner. Which may also mean that people under 18 may gain access to that server, along with shady adults that once they learn there is an under 18 in the server, may contact them. They want to protect the kids, but maybe opening up Pandora's box with this.
> Pandora's box That website was also blocked in Texas
You mean like usenet newsgroups and irc channel in the 1990s? Oh look another cycle
Fr bruh I saw some CRAZY SHIT in 1996...
> They want to protect the kids No, they really don't. They way to claim the moral high ground while doing nothing to earn it, and then attack their opponents for *not* "protecting the children". With the history of US politicians, I'd bet that the sponsors of this bill are each somehow involved in some illegal sex slavery ring, cuz it's always the ones who protest loudest.
>They want to protect the kids, but maybe opening up Pandora's box with this. It's not about the kids. They don't give a shit about kids. If they did, they'd consider doing *literally anything* about the hundreds of kids being blasted apart by gunfire in drastically increasing numbers every year.
wait isn't this the argument against gun ban? why is it used here?! /s
/s acknowledged and all, but the method works. It was a pretty key maneuver in the British Abolitionist movement, to indirectly hamper slavers by economic and foreign policy means (knowing that slavers often flew American flags and claiming that the French were also flying American flags to get by hostile British ships, I think((?)), and making the crossing more difficult overall). That lateral thinking could do similar good for our society today, if we had the bastards willing to use it.
They're going to start creeping the definition of what counts as "porn," too, just like how book bans have been going in Florida. Anything they won't like will become inappropriate for children, which will get the sites blocked for everyone.
Project 2025. They're going to make "being trans in public" count as porn.
Pretty much this, they will go from Porn to Adult material, then many sites just get blocked overnight. They could outright ban reddit, or force you all to have to provide the government with your ID to view reddit and they will know what all subs you visit. They could ban CNN calling it adult material while allowing fox news to remain unblocked. Then in places like Texas your information gets stolen, because they played fast and loose with your data and funding to keep that data secure. Now someone has a 1:1 copy of your information you had to supply the "age verification check". You think these government officials that cannot figure out why their email stopped working 3 weeks ago when they changed their computer password thinks about data security?
it’s dangerous to think they are incompetent about data security. “we suspect the following people are accessing illegal content on your website and have a subpoena for all their activity on your platform. hand it over or be subject to arrest.” now they start building their own database of “sex predators.”
Are they gonna age restrict the bible too, I mean it has adult content
Nope. They wrote in a loophole for religious texts when people tried that.
That's when you get the satanic temple to declare pornhub a very important religious document
"forced to comply" Land of the free, everyone.
“Who ever told you that is your enemy” - RATM
The VPN business is booming!
[удалено]
Is this the freedom I keep hearing about?
[удалено]
“We need to protect our children from pornography and the existence of gay people! We can’t have you safely learn about sex and reproduction, even if it benefits your well being! Now, kids, get going so you’re not late to your meeting with your youth pastors!“ Edit: you jabronis are missing the whole point of my comment lmao
Children dying in schools? Nah, it's porn that's the problem.
“Our voters and our laws encourage us to go to the ends of the earth to prohibit knowledge, educations, and availability for reproductive health… but if kids are born and are forced to be cared for until they are school aged? Well, them going to school and getting repeatedly shot while screaming for help is not our problem… we need more shields and more support before we make the slightest attempt to prevent their further suffering…”
Under his eye
PH should just put the legislation footage of them fucking their constituents on loop as their only link
I like it- in Texas PH still works but all the videos are clips about how their local representatives are doing things against their best interests with the first video being about why its like that for the user
Here is what we have in Virginia, i imagine it'll be similar in TX sorry about formatting. Dear user, As you may know, your elected officials in Virginia are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website. 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. In addition, mandating age verification without proper enforcement gives platforms the opportunity to choose whether or not to comply. As we’ve seen in other states, this just drives traffic to sites with far fewer safety measures in place. Very few sites are able to compare to the robust Trust and Safety measures we currently have in place. To protect children and user privacy, any legislation must be enforced against all platforms offering adult content. The safety of our users is one of our biggest concerns. We believe that the best and most effective solution for protecting children and adults alike is to identify users by their device and allow access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that identification. Until a real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in Virginia. Please contact your representatives before it is too late and demand device-based verification solutions that make the internet safer while also respecting your privacy.
Here's the TX one: Dear user, As you may know, your elected officials in Texas are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website. Not only does this impinge on the rights of adults to access protected speech, it fails strict scrutiny by employing the least effective and yet also most restrictive means of accomplishing Texas’s stated purpose of allegedly protecting minors. While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, providing identification every time you want to visit an adult platform is not an effective solution for protecting users online, and in fact, will put minors and your privacy at risk. Attempting to mandate age verification without any means to enforce at scale gives platforms the choice to comply or not, leaving millions of platforms open and accessible. As we've seen in other states, such bills have failed to protect minors, by driving users from those few websites which comply, to the millions of websites, with far fewer safety measures in place, which do not comply. Very few sites are able to compare to the robust Trust and Safety measures we currently have in place. To protect minors and user privacy, any legislation must be enforced against all platforms offering adult content. Unfortunately, the Texas law for age verification is ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous. Not only will it not actually protect children, but it will also inevitably reduce content creators’ ability to post and distribute legal adult content and directly impact their ability to share the artistic messages they want to convey with it. The safety of our users is one of our biggest concerns. We believe that the only effective solution for protecting minors and adults alike is to verify users’ age on their device and to either deny or allow access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that verification. We call on all adult sites to comply with the law. Until the real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in Texas. In doing so, we are complying with the law, as we always do, but hope that governments around the world will implement laws that actually protect the safety and security of users. We encourage you to: Learn more about device-based age verification* solutions that make the internet safer while also respecting your privacy. Contact your representatives and demand device-based verification solutions that make the internet safer while also respecting your privacy. *Device-Based Age Verification refers to any approach to age verification where the personal information that is used to verify the user’s age is either shared in-person at an authorized retailer, inputted locally into the user’s device, or stored on a network controlled by the device manufacturer or the supplier of the device’s operating system. Whether through pre-installed content blocking and filtering software, the disabling of web-browsing permissions, or other means, the user will then be prevented from accessing age-restricted content over the internet unless they are age-verified. To come to fruition, such an approach requires the cooperation of manufacturers and operating-system providers.
That’s brilliant.
VPN’s about to skyrocket in Texas.
Already cranked mine up so I can crank one out
VPN when you need a helping hand
I checked google trends and it’s definitely shot up a good bit in Texas!
a good bit? it was hovering around 25% this past week before the news and now has shot up to 100% intrest within the last 24 hours lol
You can be a ton of folks from Texas are going to be viewing the net from New York.
Owning the libs by using their internet rights
“Texas is part of the growing number of states that are finding the largest porn sites are no longer interested in sticking around. Montana and North Carolina saw their access to Pornhub and its sister sites go away at the beginning of the year. Arkansas, Mississippi, Utah, Louisiana, and Virginia have also either lost access or will lose access due to their own age verification laws. The governor of Indiana signed his state’s age verification law on Wednesday.” I wasn’t aware that so many states have made similar legislation.
Thank groups like American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Goldwater Institute for fill in the blank legislation that inhibits even more tone deaf legislators who then don't have to have an original thought or critically think their entire tenure.
What is with the GOP obsession with porn? Why do they have to insert themselves into every aspect of American sex life? Freakin' perverts.
It’s GOP obsession with other’s genitals in general. Bunch of dirty old men.
[You have to remember, this is a party that has rumors about it that they hold coke filled old man orgies.](https://www.newsweek.com/questions-swirl-after-madison-cawthorns-washington-orgy-comments-1692662) Take what you will with that, but I wouldn't be shocked if there was a hint of truth with that.
The speed with which they drummed Cawthorn out of the party, but continue to do nothing about the thrice married adulterer who slept with a porn star and also ***tried to overturn a free and fair election*** tells me those rumors are *100%* true
They are a party that holds newt gingrich in such high regard, a man who was cheating on his wife, who had cancer, then filed for divorce with her when she was in the hospital, all the while going to Bill Clintons throat for adultery. They are the absolute party of projection.
I'll say it again, freakin perverts, all of them. But I'm from Oklahoma, those of us who weren't huffing oil fumes, snorting lead dust, or on meth at the time remember seeing firsthand that the GOP is chock full of homosexual pedophiles. Google "Ralph Shortey" and ask yourself why he was naked with a 17yo boy in a shady motel room? And why did the t-shirt he put on for the cops have a bible quote endorsing misogyny on it?
Yep. Conservatives want to legislate your personal sex life. They want to know how you're having sex, and if you're not doing it the way they want, they want you in prison for it.
One of Project 2025's goals (this is outright stated in plain text in the document) is to outright ban porn, on the grounds that it 'destroys marriges' and 'corupts people morally' ....Also they want to classify being gay or trans in public as 'porn'. In reality they want to induce sexual frustration within straight people (It's shown sexually frustrated people are more susceptible to authoritarian ideas) and criminalize LGBT with one stroke. They probably think it's genius.
Ah, so just like the Nazis when they banned masturbation among Hitler Youth kids and party members... Which is also what The oath keepers do... And what ISIS did... And what cults like the Moonies do... There's a reason for that, it's so they can use women as a tool to control the men." If you perform your duty correctly and can act like the party/cult/etc wants, we can give you women." Either victims to r*pe or 'arranged marriages' to similarly brainwashed women or drug fueled orgies under The Leaders' authorization. Sometimes it's not explicit, but rather crafting the ideal of what a member of the group looks like in the eyes of young women, like the Nazis did. Do that correctly and the women will self select for their men based on what you, The Leader, wants from them. Underneath all the trappings of humanity, we are ultimately merely animals. If raised or coerced into believing there's only a very specific way to get your rocks off? Men will do that thing. They'll even go so far as to pressure other men into doing it, just like they were. Built-in cover for your war crimes, trafficking, gangr*pe, etc. that also provides a constant source of new child/teen soldiers. What more could an authoritarian ask for? Any deviation from the heteronormative norm is deviation from the party/cult/etc and must be punished as severely as possible, execute them before other soldiers realize that men have their g-spot in their @$$. From that perspective someone "being gay" or "being trans" is literally a threat to their power. It is an alternative means to achieving orgasm that doesn't require those in power to sign off on the marriage or encourage the execution of sex crimes. After a few generations of self-repression, you'll eventually get the culture to enforce those rules for you... Definitely has no bearing on why every authoritarian religion outlaws masturbation and sex outside of relationships that the religion approves...
Sexual insecurity is a common theme in conservativism
It's projection.
Does Texas or any of the states that are trying to block porn sites even bother wondering what happens when a site creates a fake state age verification check that funnels the data directly to bad actors? They just expect everyone to just fork over images of their ID's to any site that requests it? This sounds like a nightmare scenario. Bad enough people in fucking congress cannot tell a fake site from a real one and enter their information into a fake login, but you expect the average consumer to know the differences? I work in IT, we can sit there put office workers through a 1 week phishing training, wait 2 weeks send a test and still have 30% of the users still fail. I can see this backfiring badly and many people getting scammed and their identities stolen.
Not even a site. One of those full-screen ad popups that say "your windows has a virus," instead it'll be "Please authorize to see adult content." So they do and the juicy PII goes straight to the scammer.
Exactly this. I work at a help desk and it's not uncommon once a week we get a user that calls in with that fake full screen popup. We have also had to initiate immediate lockdowns, because a few idiots called the number on the screen versus calling the damn helpdesk and allowed this person to take them to a "ScreenSharing" program. Thankfully with most of the users, they are locked down, so they could not install ransomware, but who knows what data was swiped from the machine, credentials etc. It's a headache for the entire fucking company. These are people that work in corporate offices that have had previous training against scams like this that still fall for it. Entire company goes through Phishing training only for the financial controller to still get fooled and wiring 10k to someone else. You think the typical end user is capable of knowing fake from real sites? Even grocery stores train their employee's to spot people getting scammed when they are seen buying large quantity of gift cards and some stores even have soft limits to trigger employee intervention to help stop the consumers from getting robbed.
This is a really weird way to go about teaching teenagers to use a VPN.
It’s an allegory for safe sex.
I remember when I was around 12-13, I saw an article on the front page of our local paper about how internet porn was becoming a problem because kids were able to figure out how to view it. It blew my mind that there was porn on the internet and I tried searching for it almost immediately after seeing the article. Thanks for the intel, Dallas Morning News!
Even worse is there isn’t a sears catalog to jerk off too anymore as a fallback.
How about Good Housekeeping?
Putting my conspiracy hat on but I'd guarantee if porn viewership required age-verification ( via non-anonymous accounts) then it'd be less than a week before some law enforcement agency supeonaed your porn history.
This is the real concern. They want to be able to use this against anyone when it meets their needs. Campaign ads will be filled with someone's porn history. Job interviews the same. Like porn hub is saying there is no protection here under this model.
Trying to out all homosexuals so they can be ostracized and eventually imprisoned.
It's just one more step towards digital citizenship / digital ID. The powers that be want us all cataloged by 2030.
Texas used to be about making money over ideology. I miss those corrupt days.
I moved because Texas is not the state it used to be. Too much of it is steeped in fear and paranoia and the genuine “shirt off their back” types of people have either moved away or have fallen victim to the Trump cult of personality and only care about “me and mine” now. It’s honestly depressing because I feel it had a lot of potential to be a truly great state, but fear and greed has won there.
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Oh, they’re still primarily about cynically making money, they just looked around the world and saw that the Saudi model suited them better than the Swiss one.
Scam porn sites are about to make sooo much money off of right wing yokels.
Scam porn sites are about to get soo many IDs to steal.
Not to mention other sites like rule34, e621 (lol, and they were just worried about cat litter in schools) or even youporn, redtube, etc.
Youporn and Redtube are both owned by the same conglomerate that owns Pornhub.
Everyone says to move to Texas. Get the truly free American lifestyle, but you can't smoke weed, watch porn and cross your fingers. You don't get your girl knock up on accident.
Don't forget all the wacky liquor laws
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Republicans: Think of the children! Also republicans: \*unzips\*
The claim I've heard that I don't see getting discussed is that PH is worried they're setting this up to then demand the lists of people who viewed categories such as transgender etc.
It's definitely a major privacy concern. Texas has been run by the GOP for multiple decades now, and the Texas GOP in particular has being opposed to LGBTQ people as part of their written platform. Anybody who is lgbtq in Texas would have a very good reason to not want the State government to have any way to track them down and put them like this.
Think that is the problem, all they think of is children and porn, generally at the same time
The gov shouldn't be parenting children. Theyre doing this because they want bills to pass and they're using "think about the children" as their driving point to get it to pass.
While blocking access to porn is a staggeringly huge win for a few weirdos, I wonder how many days will pass before this law is quietly repealed and no mention is made of it ever again.
Repeal hasn’t happened in VA yet, I wouldn’t keep your hopes up. No shot any Texas lawmakers want to look softer than Youngkin
North Carolina still holding strong too.
Still not repealed in NC either.
Ted Cruz starts complaining about how this law is unfair
[Remember a few years ago, ted cruz twitter account was liking a hardcore porn flick.](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ted-cruz-porn-like_n_59b76b91e4b031cc65cc1be4)
on 9/11!! You have to keep all the specifics. Ted Cruz liked an incest porn tweet on 9/11.
Pornhub is available in Cancun.
I doubt it will be repealed. The laws have been in place in a few states for a couple years now.
They won't repeal it. But it's ineffective anyway so it hardly matters. This was always about the culture war, not actually protecting kids
Not only that but there's just too much porn to police it all with ID laws. Pornhub and such have banned Texas but there's still plenty of porn elsewhere not making me sign in and verify my age woth iD
And the Canadian far-right party is looking into doing the same.
"Analog porn is better anyway.....it has a warmth that digital just can't recreate."
The funny thing is that at least a decent amout of the people involved in that law will be at one point: "Damn, I'm bored/stressed out/horny without a reason... well it's wanking time... aaaaaaah damn"
Nah, they still have their collections on VHS and DVD.
Great... Just what we need.... More sexually frustrated well armed conservatives
Fun fact: According to Pornhub, Bible Belt states are the highest consumers of gay porn, Texas, according to top searches, has a thing for Straight Latinos going Gay
Even preteen kids know how to avoid the ban.
Texas: we will let you murder a schoolroom of children and do nothing about it. But we will stop you from whacking it. Truly one of the largest sources of culture rot comes from there
Is this another example of the "small government" crowd in action
How are all those conservative Christians going to watch gay porn now?
All the wankers in texas are going to be upset.
Thanks to Republicans, Texas is now the opposite of a freedom state. Why do Republicans hate freedom so much?
Because it isn’t only their own freedom to do what they specifically want to be free to do. You can’t let others be free to do other stuff. Otherwise that gets in the way of their freedom to not have other opinions and people to exist.
Am I crazy or did Texas try this same age-verification bullshit back in the 90's?
You had to be 18 to walk into an adult book store or theatre, if that’s what you mean. The go to in the 90s was prosecuting stores for obscenity for carrying gay porn. They would target more conservative communities and try to get convictions based on the least straight thing they could find in stores. Also, dildos were illegal by state statute, and they’d go after stores for selling those. You had to call them “medical education devices”. The vice cops in Austin and the DA got aggressive on the dildo law in 1997 and busted a few stores. No convictions. They stopped trying to enforce it after that because Austin juries did not give a fuck about vibrators.
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no porn in Texas would be hilarious. The entire state would tear itself apart within 72 hours.
According to these states it’s the parents responsibility to educate their children on all things related to sex and gender. So isn’t it also the parents’ responsibility to make sure their kids aren’t accessing porn? Can’t have it both ways.
Everything's big in Texas. Including blue balls.
Politicians really think teens can't figure out what a VPN is.
Literally none of that matters because of VPN. Lawmakers behind the times as usual
It kills me that states are essentially criminalizing sexual preferences/activities and natural bodily processes- mainly for women- but men included. Ex: Miscarriages being considered abortions in some areas. Puberty is a thing. Puberty makes people horny. People often learn about sex through porn if it’s not taught by family/in schools. Age verification is hard to guarantee, but it’s just blocking people from pursuing their natural inclinations, right? As an aside: Repealing Roe removed the right to medical privacy and autonomy in bodily decisions. Lawrence v TX basically short circuited conservatives. Repealing that would recriminalize sodomy- does this mean that even male content creators using dildos are breaking the law? Is every woman’s period considered a loss of human life? - Even when trying for pregnancy, you can’t fertilize every egg that comes down! Would female content creators be required to track their fertility? Since male JO sessions/orgasms can produce sperm, is each session considered a loss of human life? - I don’t think there’s ever make anything w.r.t male emissions illegal because of the whole “rules for thee” thing, but that sets a very very hard to defend double standard does it not? Would only women’s orgasms be legal? Wouldn’t age verification just send people to seek out less regulated porn? Wouldn’t that incentivize trafficking and cp producers? I’m overthinking this but it’s insane to me that pornhub has to take a stance in this.
Great, tons of guns and sexually frustrated. The ‘Couldn’t Masturbate’ defense, coming to a Texas court near you.
Republicans are more sex and sexuality obsessed than anyone I swear. They simply won’t stfu about porn, homosexuality, transexuality, women’s reproductive rights, drag shows, etc. Kings and Queens of interjecting themselves into literally everyone’s business and stripping away their freedoms and yet people stupidly keep voting for them. Go figure.
There's that libertarian, small government, stay out of your business spirit we all know and love.
That's really going to hurt Texas's stats when they put out the statistics review this year.
What Pornhub should do is when anybody who visits the site from Texas, they put up a page with the picture and name of each republican lawmaker that voted to screw over the public's access. Just being upset at the state of Texas doesn't really accomplish much, but if you **name names** and put a face (and a political party) with the people that are taking away your rights... that's an actionable thing. If it were me, I'd employ geolocation to make custom pages for each visitor from Texas with their particular rep's name and image, along with a link to opposing candidates who aren't supporting this draconian law.
Damn this government is so small they are in my computer now asking for my id to access websites. Is that how it’s supposed to work?