- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
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How is it these laws can get passed but our legislatures can’t do anything that’s actually important for society? 
It’s so much worse than that. North Carolina House Bill 8 was created a year ago to add Computer Science to middle school and high school curriculums. Throughout it’s 3 edits over the year, all 10 pages of the bill were about teaching kids computer science. Then, ONE WEEK before the bill was passed, a paragraph on the last page was added including the text requiring age verification for adult websites. https://www.ncleg.gov/BillLookup/2023/H8
At that point it was too late, and anyone against the bill would be called out for being against teaching kids computer science. The cowards writing these bills know that they would be shot down immediately if they were public about what they were doing, so they tack it on to a children’s education bill and hope no one notices until it’s too late.
That kind of shit should really be illegal
It is illegal where I live. I imagine it’s illegal in most developed countries. Bills can only have one purpose, they can’t combine unrelated things.
I’ve heard of several cases in the USA where they combine unrelated things to mess with voters. Even this one is kinda related but school education plus internet censorship. Split that shit up and let the people vote for what they want.
Edit: it’s a rider
“Several cases?” Lol
Virtually every bill that passes in Congress contains riders and typically only passes because of those riders.
I think I just had my worst American brain moment. Definitely assumed this was common everywhere and am in shock it’s not. Must be nice lol
Other countries have actual middle-class structures, so I can only assume so.
It’s how literally anything happens in our government here in the US
Thank goodness it’s illegal in New York
Fucking Amy Galey. I hate that I have to be I around her and pretend that she’s the best thing since sliced bread. I wish people got to hear more about her talking at length about how great her family treated their slaves and less about her GOP silly season power moves.
the politicians were the naughty ones all along
Well, why not vote against it and defend yourself when accused of voting against education?
“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.” - Jonathon Swift
So now you’re investing time and effort to publicize why this bill was broken. Your political opposition successfully got you on the defensive. These strategies play a part of why fascism and authoritarianism are succeeding in the USA.
That’s what I wanted to highlight by posting it. It’s a lose/lose situation for America either way.
Simply put, the attack is shorter and easier to understand than the nuanced defense.
Politicians can put “you’re against education!” in a 15 second attack ad on the radio/TV/a poster. It takes a short media appearance to explain the nuance. Which isn’t worth the time or money typically, since so few people will see it.
Especially since a huge section of our population gets 100% of its news from Fox, Newsmax, and other right wing media. That interview will never air there. In fact, those sources will repeat the party line of “you’re against education!”
“Why do Republicans think about porn every time they discuss children?”
Thats how you frame it back at em.
No no no. Nuance can only be used to pave a high road to hell. Get out of here with using it to fire back more intelligently yet equally dirty. We can only do one thing at a time, so it’s high road all the way to the grave.
I mean, what’s next in your suggestions? Using the free and available plethora of Republican politician child sex scandals as non-slanderous, factual, and real ammo fodder?
The situations are clearly different because of the rabid faith of conservative followers, but that being said, it seems relatively easy enough to get on TV/media first and start spreading around “Republicans want to take your porn!” The situation could be explained pretty concisely within a 20 second TikTok or a shareable YouTube video.
Now don’t get me wrong, if American political debate soils itself any further than it already has and fully becomes two-side mudslinging and nothing else, then I’m going to need to either leave the country or become radicalized. But it’s becoming clear to me more and more these days that if the democrats want to throw their weight around they’re going to need to lower their standards a bit. Instead of half hour appeals to judgment we need more 30-second dunks. Poli Sci students need to hear a detailed and nuanced discussion of a bill, but it’s been readily proven again and again ad nauseum that the average person does not.
And I’m not advocating that they lie, only to use the framework of a lie in order to spread the message. A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth can put its shoes on, specifically because the instant something might maybe be relevant to something someone thinks exists, somebody is on Fox news spouting 30 second dunks about it. The instant we hear what’s going on with the bill rider somebody should have been on TikTok, YouTube and X posting a 30 second dunk about how Republicans are abusing education bills to steal all porn from everyone, everywhere. Don’t lie, but take strategies from their playbook. I want an account doing blow by blow daily updates on everything the R’s have their grubby mitts in, in the same way that there are accounts doing blow by blow daily updates about exactly how many children they accuse Kamala Harris of having eaten. Except this one will have credible sources.
Point being, personally, I’m growing extremely jaded and tired of the way political discussion works in America. On one hand we have the Democrats making an effort to fully explain away and good faith debate (most of) their bills, with a handful of notable and upsetting exceptions. On the other hand we have a pit of screaming pigs that will debate nothing, will source nothing, will sneak last minute riders into bills they had nothing to do with, and will lie at the top of their lungs constantly and without regard to what they are lying about. The pigs in question have proven themselves either unwilling or incapable of rising to a level of proper political discussion expected from an elected official, and it’s becoming clear that if the relevant populace isn’t going to vote out (or in some cases, isn’t going to be allowed to vote out) the representative, the only way to engage with them effectively in a political sense is to sink to their level. At which point we are all well and truly fucked and what gods remain in the world have abandoned us.
Judging from what they said, it took a year to come to fruition and a week to poison the apple. The current kindergarteners are gonna be grown and graduated by the time the red tape lets way for another vote on the matter. Why not just make bills strictly about the thing they are proposing?
Because a bill about adding irrelevant stuff to bills wouldn’t pass.
Or it’ll have some insane riders
I’ve always been confused about how they can legally be like “here’s a hundred page bill about this great thing, but buried at the end is this horrible thing we went to push though but no one will see it”.
Well, why not vote against it and defend yourself when accused of voting against education?
I don’t count on the average American voter to understand nuance
I wouldn’t wanna be on the side that constantly keeps allowing this. Oh well, money > people.
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but like… instantly forgiving all student loans… or Forgiving all medical debt… or immediately begin building high-speed rail across the entire country spending like $10 trillion etc. to do so… like… that kind of shit - something that the most rural red state right wing fucker can’t ignore.
Hey this might help ya
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Because they don’t actually give a shit about society.
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The legislators passing these laws are interested only in hurting people, getting bribes, and getting reelected so they can continue. Doing something important for society doesn’t even factor into their decision making.
If you start fixing things, you’ll have nothing to campaign on.
Republicans doing a real good job giving a peek into what voting Red will do for them this year
The children are saved and wont see porn ever /s
Voting red, not voting, or voting third party.
Sad part is people will still vote for them in droves
Christian taliban
Once again, a vice is blamed for its own sake, “for the children”, instead of the thing people are running from, or the hole they are filling. It’s the Right’s version of virtue signaling.
Porn addiction is just an addiction, and removing porn will not remove addiction in people. Thirst can’t be cured by drying up the well. Saying nothing about the constitutionality of this, restricting potentially addictive content through nanny state ID systems is worthless… check history. South Korea plan was dropped, UK plans for the same thing were dropped. It’s not only ineffective, as kids will always find a way through the cracks, but it also extremely difficult to implement and erodes the bedrock of privacy. We’re not solving addiction, we’re just building a surveillance state under the guise of protection. Solutions are in addressing the root causes of addiction and fostering resilience, not in this game of whack-a-mole that sacrifices our privacy.
I get wanting to keep porn away from children, but on the flipside I don’t trust governments with a history of criminalizing homosexuality with my porn history. Looking up, it seems that these states even kept laws against sodomy in their books.
I had to look this up, and this is so nuts, but there are currently 12 states that stilll have sodomy laws as of late 2023: Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas.
I think a lot of people might not realize that sodomy is often legally defined as anything that is not PIV intercourse. So most foreplay and obviously any sex practiced by homosexual couples. I absolutely don’t get why there isn’t a stronger push to get rid of this and other dumb laws against offenses that are widely committed and/or are hard to enforce.
Well I guess this one kind of makes sense in this current state of political turmoil.
Because they’re all federally illegal (until they aren’t) by Lawrence v. Texas. And of those 12, 2 definitely would overturn if Thomas has his way (Lawrence was one of the decisions he said he wants reviewed) and 2 are iffy. Texas would gladly enforce anti sodomy laws today if they could.
As someone trapped in this shithole of a state, can confirm that Texas would be going after people with this law.
I heard Texas has a ballot initiative to change the state’s name to Republic of Gilead
I just looked it up to confirm because I’ve only known it to mean butt sex, but the Wikipedia article on it agrees with you.
I don’t think any of those states actually enforce those laws though, most likely because it would be difficult to get evidence of such acts. Just because the law exists in the books doesn’t mean it’s still upheld, tons of states have “dumb laws” that aren’t enforced (you can’t keep an alligator in a bath tub, you can’t beat your wife with a stick thicker than your thumb, you can’t drive on Sundays, etc…) but we’re never removed because the process is too arduous.
We were all kids once, we found a way. I did, other kids will. Sure we can make it harder to access, but blocking it isn’t the solution that republicans think it is.
It’s not a solution to the problem they say they’re looking to solve. It’s more government control, it’s big brother, it’s everything they say they don’t want, so it’s obviously exactly what they wanted.
Yeah, the moral scandal of shouting that kids are being exposed to sex is just too effective at enabling all kinds of overreach.
But if you say that sex education, teaching about consent and risks and how to seek help, is far more effective at protecting children than any sort of censorship, they’ll act doubly scandalized. And parents who don’t want to talk about sensitive matters with their precious little angels fall for it every time.
It’s definitely double ungood.
Exactly, additionally I don’t trust governments that consistently fail to understand artistic merit in sexually graphic art and sought to ban it to maintain free expression.
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or the hole they are filling.
Heh
You gotta pay the troll toll, if you wanna get into that boy’s hole!
If you believe that laws forbidding gambling, sale of liquor, sale of contraceptives, requiring definite closing hours, enforcing the Sabbath, or any such, are necessary to the welfare of your community, that is your right and I do not ask you to surrender your beliefs or give up your efforts to put over such laws. But remember that such laws are, at most, a preliminary step in doing away with the evils they indict. Moral evils can never be solved by anything as easy as passing laws alone. If you aid in passing such laws without bothering to follow through by digging in to the involved questions of sociology, economics, and psychology which underlie the causes of the evils you are gunning for, you will not only fail to correct the evils you sought to prohibit but will create a dozen new evils as well.
–Robert A. Heinlein, Take Back Your Government
This isn’t even about porn addiction, it’s definitely a “think of the children!” scenario by the right-wing pearl clutchers. Meanwhile, there’s tons of horrible shit on the Internet freely available that they don’t seem to care about, along with nudity in movies. Also I love how that article claims that “residents will have to go to the deep dark corners of the internet to get their porn once pornhub is blocked” as if hundreds of other porn sites not owned by that company don’t exist 🤣 The Internet and tech improvements are literally driven by porn consumption. IDK what the number is now, but like 5-10 years ago it was “40% of all internet traffic is porn related”.
It’s literally virtue signalling.
We’re not solving addiction, we’re just building a surveillance state under the guise of protection.
That’s a feature of all of these types of schemes, not a bug.
Hey I agree with you but might want to use a different metaphor in the future. Drying the well won’t stop thirst, but neither will anything else, except well, death I guess.
Yeah bruh, I try to avoid porn. Personal decision. PERSONAL. Stay the fuck out of everyone’s goddamn lives. Fucking fascist republican swine.
Classic big government nanny state move. That political party which claims to be against this sort of overreach must be upset over it, right?
Do they even claim that anymore? I can’t remember the last time I’ve heard a conservative talk about small government in any way that even comes close to amounting to an actual philosophy.
The only time I hear something from the GOP is when they are “owning the libs” or licking trumps asshole. What the fuck do people think government is suppose to be doing? Neither of those things are remotely important.
VPN companies don’t need much advertising these days. The customers will come by themselves!
The customers will come by themselves!
Nice.
Nice.
Was about to say, did politicians now invest in VPN providers?
Plus, the hypocrisy of it all, since most scandals involving infidelity, abuse and other stuff comes from their side of the aisle (not that the other side is composed of saints, but still).
Yeah it’s not that Dems are more moral, it’s that Dems punish immorality in leaders.
I never voted for a politician I liked. I have voted for a lot of politicians that were less bad than the alternative. But never once I said “yeah, that IS a good person”.
Pretty soon VPN’s will be illegal too.
No they won’t. Virtually every tech company in the world uses them. If any legislation was proposed then companies from the likes of Google and Microsoft down to hundreds of companies with fewer than 100 employees would all fight it.
You make it sound like our lawmakers are wise and would make an informed decision and not just write an exception for companies that lobby for exemption.
You make it sound like our lawmakers are wise and would make an informed decision and not just write an exception for companies that -lobby- pay their greedy asses for said exemption.
There, FTFY.
Virtually every tech company in the world uses them
Virtually every company (tech or not) and every government uses a VPN…
Russia, China and every other authoritarian shithole has made them illegal
Can’t say anything about China, but why do you think vpn’s are illegal in Russia? Sure, the big vpn companies inside the country might be influenced by the government to limit your access to some banned websites. However, you can freely use a vpn if you wish.
Again, I remind you that you could always set up your own vpn server for personal use.
Only “government approved” VPNs are “legal” in Russia. Guaranteed that none of them bypass country censorship.
I took their comment to mean “companies offering VPN services as a subscription for the purpose of privacy”.
It wouldn’t be hard to target those companies specifically while leaving every other “legitimate” (in their view) use cases for VPNs alone.
A lot of people aren’t aware that VPNs are used to connect to internal networks, just “it’s this thing that I see commercials about that says it protects my privacy and allows me to access content not available in my country”. Hell, if you asked them what VPN stood for 90% of them would be like 🤷♂️
I work in IT and can tell you that most people have zero clue about technology, even the things they use every day.
You can literally host your own vpn, nothing illegal about that. And, as someone else mentioned, work would be impossible for many companies, as almost any company that works with sensitive data uses vpn to some extent.
And, as someone else mentioned, work would be impossible for many companies,
Especially those who have moved to a work from home model.
And you think lawmakers would make a wise informed decision? You think that they wouldn’t make a decision that would strip away your capability to use a VPN while protecting themselves and big tech that lobby for exemptions?
Their Profit or Your Privacy, what do you think they’ll pick?
I don’t have to assume they’re wise. The uproar would be enough to kill the bill before it gets out of committee.
Like the patriot act?
How many big tech companies had their business all halted by the Patriot act?
You know I cannot quantify damages from a program that forces compliance without transparency through gag orders. I can point out that preventing the use of a VPN does not halt an entire company, you can still connect and work exactly the same as with a VPN it’s just not in a secure and private manner but what are you trying to hide? /s
No matter what you and I believe it’s irrelevant, if privacy goes on the chopping block than a VPN access would need to go with it and the technology is currently irreplaceable as-is but that doesn’t negate the possibility that it can become regulated. Privacy should be a human right but you and I both know that equality isn’t always equal and there’s a large portion of government over numerous groups that all have their own agendas and understand the advantages of knowledge and the power it can bestow. You’re trying to fight greed and greed only cares about getting more.
Thank you for coming to my Ted talk and best of luck to you frezik, I hope you’re right but I’m not going to hold my breath.
I don’t think it’s even possible to for anyone to stop someone from using a VPN. Sure, in theory, they could affect VPN providers’ businesses, but you’re always going to be able to connect to a VPN if you want to. They’d have to block or heavily limit internet access in order to stop users from connecting to some remote server.
Also yes, I do think lawmakers are aware that vpn’s are not a threat to anything, thus there is absolutely no reason to ban them.
Edit: Someone else mentioned a good point. Even if we consider them blocking vpn as a possibility “The uproar would be enough to kill the bill before it gets out of committee.”
Encryption is a constitutionally protected right. The only debate is whether it falls under the first or second amendment.
I don’t see how encrypted could fall under the 2nd.
Imagine linking your porn watching to your government ID? It WILL leak, and you’ll be embarrassed. 😳
I’m reminded of those time churches would line up around sex shops and take “photos” of visitors to shame them.
That’s pretty much what they want to do now with this
isn’t that illegal on multiple counts?
I don’t believe so, the people at the porn shop are at a public place and anyone can take a picture of you in public. You have zero rights to privacy in public spaces (AFAIK), ya know, because they’re public spaces.
Public harassment? Humiliation? How about using those photos with malicious purpose without consent? Sure it’s must be some kind of defamation?
Also, I don’t think you can just following a stranger and take their pictures just because it’s “public space”. There must be some kind of limitations to that.
Did you forget about the Paparazzi? Their job is to literally follow celebrities and take pictures of them in public.
I imagine this Jolly Roger…
Yarrr?
Harr?
YO! HO! HO!
It’s real generous of these states to boost business for VPN companies like this
Google Trends | Searches for “VPN”
Wait, what the heck. Why does that graph look so much like an ECG?
The spike is first thing in the morning, before work. The gradual increase is home after work. The later it gets, the higher the consumption.
I did some data analysis a few years ago on porn consumption for a project at work. People are insanely addicted.
I did some data analysis a few years ago on porn consumption for a project at work. People are insanely addicted.
Can you share some more details?
Not without violating a bunch of NDAs. Lookup Sandvine and Deepfield. There are other companies that do traffic identification too.
If you’re just curious about what I worked on, ask away and I’ll answer what I can.
Im just shocked because this can really pass for some crappy smart watch ECG tracing. I see what resembles P waves, then the QRST is spot on, really.
Maybe it’s in the morning, when 3rd shift gets off (ayyyy) and then rises as the majority of people don’t work 3rd shift?
That came up on discussions. Maybe, but not enough info to know with any certainty that it was post night shift wanking. That was a fun conversation with executives.
I think most people, by far, don’t know how to use (or want to pay for) a VPN. What they’ll do is use one of the other porn sites. There are probably dozens! And it will push sites to operate outside of US and ignore our dumb state laws.
At this point vpns are popular enough and have enough ads about them that most people will be able to look up ‘free vpn’ on the app store and download the first one that comes up. They’re not difficult to use at all
Yeah how are they going to block sites outside of the US?
it’s a Porn Tax
Pretty soon they like usage of a vpn illegal
In Virginia, they are required to gather personal information and that’s weird. So its just not available here. But when you think of it, porn hub went to great lengths to minimize the problems with the industry. And these sort of regulations are doing the same thing that prohibition did. Push normal citizens into interacting with seedy elements, dangerous situations, and exploitation.
I’m in VA and our governor sucks.
Seconded. He was moderate-LOOKING enough to fool some in our purple state, but he only wants the governorship as a path to president I think.
There was nothing moderate about his campaign. His primary focus during his campaign was to jump on the culture war bandwagon of restricting the liberties of trans kids, and inputting the “will of the parents” into the schools. Not all parents of course, just the ones that align with him politically.
And boy did he deliver on those promises. Laws allowing teachers to discriminate against children, book banning rhetoric, and much more including delaying and halting the already passed legislation on recreational marijuana and fueling the abortion issue.
He’s as much of a shit bag as Desantis and Trump, he’s just more careful about it.
Absolutely agreed, but my point is more that his offensive stuff was underreported by MSM during the campaign. He was clear enough on his plans when talking to right wing crowds, but in “public” he avoided answering when it would make him look bad. Anyone who was looking out could tell what he was going to do, but if you only watched the evening news you probably wouldn’t have noticed it.
His opponent didn’t do a good enough job defusing the “muh schools” crap, which FOX had spun out of nothing into a national issue in the preventing months.
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Yup. Most regulations of sex workers end up only hurting sex workers. They accomplish little else. That’s arguably the end goal rather than a side effect.
“CP is bad!”
sends everyone to the dark web for their porn
So it’s* just not available here.
Pornhub and its related companies aren’t the only “normal” porn sites out there, there are thousands of sites not owned by the parent company. These are just the big names everyone knows. Blocking access to porn on a statewide basis is only really possible at the ISP level, and of course those are private companies not owned by the state (in most cases). Even then, a cheap VPN would be able to get around that.
It’s akin to standing next to someone and telling them not to breathe your air.
I am sure that a VPN can obfuscate my location. But its a hassle that most people will not do. And you must not be in Virginia, because you would know that the ISP did not need to get involved. Use your vpn and spoof as in VA. You will see the companies comply with the order to remain legal. The reputable ones have a vested interest to stay legal, and can be reached via legal means. The ones that pedal revenge porn and other exploitation? Not so much. The amount of sites that are not reachable is very large, when your search would begin at the 4th page of a search engine query for porn, you are no longer in safe waters
VPNs are super easy to use because most of the popular ones (NordVPN, Private Internet Access, etc…) are made for the non-tech savvy. Pay a few bucks a month and leave it as “always on” and boom, all the porn you want! Also, I think you’re misunderstanding the drive people, especially men, have to watch porn. A teenage boy would definitely figure this out in a heartbeat.
Of course the “reputable” porn sites don’t want to get into a legal battle with the state, that’s why they comply. What I’m saying though is it’s a stupid law since they can’t block every porn site. I’d say most consumers don’t care about the delineation between “legal porn” and revenge porn/other exploitation since it’s very difficult to discern between the two, unless it’s super obvious. Pornhub is just one site, there are tons of “good” sites out there besides it that are easily found on the first page of Google. I highly doubt people are going multiple pages deep just for a porn link.
“the land of the free”
FTFY: The land of the formerly free.
Today, guns have more freedoms than people, it seems.
This land was founded on genocide of natives and the enslavement of black ppl. Since when was there ever freedom in the US?
Freedom is a call-sign at best and most likely a constructed illusion.
You’ve got a point here, indeed.
North Carolina and Montana just flipped some folks from red to blue “for reasons…”
Those are now blue balls.
At this point I’m not convinced people will abandon the Republicans. Especially if they get to vote for Trump. They’ll just assume Trump will fix it by taking PornHub to court cause this is all PornHubs fault.
Lol I was just in Utah and on a home wifi there, pornhub was blocked (100% blocked, like you cannot access the site).
But if I switched to data, it was not blocked
Lol – how’s that working out for ya, Utah??
Lol – how’s that working out for ya, Utah??
Kinda perfectly. The lawmakers don’t want to block porn; they want their constituents to think they are effective. The people that don’t go to pornhub hear it’s blocked (well that’s nice) and the ones that go, find a work around (some people like it being hard). They hope the work around is innocuous enough to be forgotten by election day.
I hope they miscalculated. I don’t see how blocking porn and weed is a winning strategy. I don’t understand this country. Life could be fun. We have all the ingredients.
I don’t see how blocking porn and weed is a winning strategy. I don’t understand this country. Life could be fun. We have all the ingredients.
A not insignificant portion of our fellow citizens are looking at their own misery and deciding that the source of that misery are things you are doing in the privacy of your own home or are or not doing that you “should”. This is much easier that actual self reflection and putting in the work to sort out what portion of that misery is self inflicted (and correctable with personal behavior changes!) or a systemic as a result of public policy which affects all of us to make changes in how our society treats one another.
This is much easier that actual self reflection
tbh self reflection can be very challenging. very scary. it can trigger an identity crisis and not everyone is mentally able to deal with it.
I don’t see how blocking porn and weed is a winning strategy.
Then you’re giving the people involved far more benefit of the doubt than they deserve. They’re far-right extremists. It’s not hollow rhetoric or exaggeration, they’re here and they’re passing laws.
If you disregard the excuses that come out of their mouths, this is perfectly aligned with the far-right ideology that has infested the Republican party.
Groups like the Proud Boys, the former head of the Ku Klux Klan and incessant fuckwits like Jordan Peterson all openly promote giving up jerking off and routinely make pseudoscientific claims about it increasing your testosterone, therefore making you more of a man.
They’re also working hard to broaden the term “pornography” to include anything that acknowledges any sexuality other than “straight” and any form of gender expression that doesn’t clearly broadcast what genitals you have. This allows them to attack teachers and authors that dare say anything that isn’t right wing.
Weed is essentially the same story as it’s always been. It was made illegal so police could target “undesirables” like black people, hippies, jazz musicians and women who wanted to be more than a source of hot meals and warm holes for a middle class husband.
Literally the only thing they changed was updating the left-wing stereotypes.
Hop off the wifi for banking and wanking.
What’s the security benefit for banking on mobile?
Ah ok so the consensus is to be wary of public networks especially free open networks as they can be spoofed and a MitM or traffic sniffing.
So it’s good I have my wireguard vpn on all the time calling home to my home network then I assume.
It’s more the security risk of being on WiFi, assuming it’s not your home wifi.
No one else can be on the same network when you’re on mobile.
Spoofing mobile is at least an order of magnitude harder than spoofing wifi. It pretty much guarantees that those who spoof mobile are either government agencies or people with enough money your pathetic little bank account is irrelevant to them.
That’s for now. It is only a matter of time until spoofing mobile is at least as easy and cheap as spoofing wifi is now.
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Probably the IP not being assigned to the blocked geo location.
best of all, this strategy isn’t going to decrease viewership, probably increase it. it’s also going to increase the usage of vpn’s.
VPNs will be their next target. This isn’t an accident. They are setting up the framework for China like internet censorship laws, but they are going to take this way fucking farther than China ever has. They are building a system for state laws to establish interstate autocracy on the foundation of abortion and trans panic.
So it’s bodily autonomy, identity, sexuality, privacy that’s on the chopping block…
Seems like democracy is going to be pretty hollow without at least a little free expression.
It’s likely just going to drive it off to the less centralized websites that won’t block anyway because they are just so used to ignoring the requests. The only reason PornHub has to pay heed is because they try to go at it the “legal” route.
Hell, there’s a shitload of porn on Reddit and Lemmy that isn’t geofenced or age restricted.
This is just a silly waste of resources.
The most effective regulation here is from payment handlers.
Not sure what eventually became of this, but MasterCard shitcanned PornHub a few years ago. See https://www.bbc.com/news/world-52543508
I also see a statement from 2022 reinforcing that decision. https://www.mastercard.com/news/press/2022/august/mastercard-statement-reinforcing-adult-content-standards/
I guess even that’s not very effective since PornHub is obviously still in business. I wonder what their numbers looked like before and after.
Pornography access seems very close to people’s heart in here but the claim “it won’t decrease viewership, probably increase it” has zero chance of being true.
However insignificant it might be, any amount of faff will lower participation and there isn’t a single person in the world thinking “I don’t watch pornography or allow my children to watch pornography but now the gubbermint is involved we’re going to do nothing else but watch smut”.
There are so many shit takes in this thread that I have to assume they’re from children upset about their pornography being cut off.
Those who want porn will get it. It’s a need, like alcohol and tobacco. It being illegal will make teens even more interested.
It’s a need, like alcohol and tobacco
Two things that demonstrably haven’t grown more popular when they’ve been made less accessible, despite those restrictions not having 100% success rate.
And although I don’t fundamentally object to any of them, calling alcohol, tobacco and pornography a “need” just makes you sound like even more of a child.
Maybe participation would be lowered, just not to the extent “they” hoped for. I have personal experience with this - we had some major social media sites blocked, and for a lot of people that was a final push to learn to avoid censorship, even if not in the best way (by sketchy free VPNs). So if you take away something very important, it might turn a person from someone who didn’t go to blocked sites into someone who isn’t bothered by blocking.
Its not about blocking it, its about making it criminal so they can eventually loop in certain people who partake in it.
I think one legislator even said so brazenly this is all about limiting access to LGBT people.
Well I guess it’s back to the garbage bag of porn mags in the woods for North Carolina and Montana kids.
Seriously tho, who is this law stopping? When I was a kid I would traverse the entire city if it meant there was a chance I’d see a boob.
If I had to start torrenting porn I would probably develop a serious habit from having to curate my own library. I would also gain full access to videos I normally wouldn’t bother with making everything even more involved.
The beauty of pornhub is you load it up, do some minor browsing, settle on something and forget all about it. Having to maintain a personal library would consume more of your time and you would develop even more intense prefrences.
Aren’t there numerous other sites though? Like xvideos, spankbang, redtube, etc?
Why is everyone acting like PornHub and the companies owned by the parent company are the only porn sites in existence? Literally just search for “porn sites” and you’re done, or if you’re looking for a specific model whose videos you found there just search for their name.
Pornhub is just the least skeevy but you’re right. I also understand it would be impossible to get every porn site in existence to follow US law. These are just all more reasons its a stupid idea.
Xvideos and Xhamster are pretty much the same as PornHub.
I think it’s fine that they are making it a bit harder for kids. Overexposure to this can cause issues in mental health and the brain. So yeha, this won’t stop anybody for accessing porn if they really want it but it will prevent overexposure.
I mean I honestly think if they really wanted to “protect the children” they’d actually make COPPA enforcement a lot more strict (and also add in under 18 limitations), though I suspect that would be significantly harder.
There are a lot of places where you can get exposure to “bad” stuff as a child that are arguably more dangerous long term.
Are we talking about the internet? I honestly feel the internet is just too wild for children. I’d even create legislation for phones and computers to have mandatory internet security features for minors. I grew up looking at things like Rotten and Liveleaks with friends at school. Without noticing, watching people die in gory ways was my main internet activity at 15, and it was pretty hard to stop that habit. I wish I didn’t have access to that content at that age, I was pretty fucked up for a couple of years. I was totally desensitized and didn’t care when a family member died, didn’t feel a thing. I knew it was wrong, I just couldn’t feel anything.
Yes.
A bunch of states including NC are just blocking porn to protect the children but it’s literally the laziest solution with some of the smallest impact.
Twitch, Discord, and Roblox are far more accessible and arguably more dangerous in terms of short term consequences than porn because they are primarily social interaction platforms.
I’ve never seen Rotten or Liveleaks (at first I thought you meant Rotten Tomatoes that’s how unaware I am), but they could probably use similar regulation.
It’s not even that I think porn regulation is inherently bad, but the implementation is garbage and the claim to protect the children is extremely weak.
Social content sites are dangerous because of the opportunity for predators to easily encounter minors (especially age restriction breaking ones under 13), and violent content sites are, well, violent? They should be a higher priority but they evidently aren’t.
Yeha, I’m not defending the implementation but the idea. I think children shouldn’t be exposed to certain things. The reality is that the internet is flooded with porn and it’s basically impossible to achieve, but maybe this is just the beginning of something more organized.
As much as I would like to believe that, these politicians have more than demonstrated their intentions and modus operandi. They need to be voted out and replaced with someone who will actually try to do the right thing even if it’s not such an easy talking point come reelection time.
It won’t though. See the war on drugs.
