As of this week, half of the states in the U.S. are under restrictive age verification laws that require adults to hand over their biometric and personal identification to access legal porn.
Missouri became the 25th state to enact its own age verification law on Sunday. As it’s done in multiple other states, Pornhub and its network of sister sites—some of the largest adult content platforms in the world—pulled service in Missouri, replacing their homepages with a video of performer Cherie DeVille speaking about the privacy risks and chilling effects of age verification.
Archive: http://archive.today/uZB13
I don’t get the purpose of this.
Blackmail material that can be selectively used against political enemies.
Basically some guy came up with the idea for it, some guy made a case study that it would kneecap the online adult industry even with Article 230 style guarantees, then christofascists saw an opportunity in it to de facto ban porn.
It’s part of Project 2025, although there was a complete ban described
It’s a coalition of groups with different purposes
One group wants to ban porn entirely
One group want to collect data on everyone. Your porn habits can be valuable if you’re a future political rival
Some people believe it will prevent children from seeing porn
Others use it as a way to assert control over sex workers, especially female sex workers
Probably a few other smaller groups too. End of the day, none of them have your interests at heart
Some just want money.
I think this article: https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/23/17043978/uk-porn-age-verification-law-mindgeek
Is about pornhub’s parent company trying to lobby in favor of this because it thought it could make money by selling age verification. I read an article saying something to that effect quite some time ago, and I think this is the article, but can’t be sure because it’s requiring a login and the archive site isn’t loading for me at the moment.
Imagine the consequences of needing to give your ID to watch gay porn as a gay person in a red state.
Oooooh! Shit. Yeah. Wow. It makes total sense now and that fucking sucks.
I hope some day these fascists get branded as the terrorists they are. And I’m so fucking sorry that they’re doing this to people.
You clearly haven’t thought of the children.
Nah it’s just a precursor to having all your online activity tied directly to your identity. That’s the purpose. I’m sure plenty of misguided elders in government think it’s about saving kids from porn though.