Pornhub Pulls Out of Nebraska

https://gizmodo.com/pornhub-pulls-out-of-nebraska-2000476879

by mikece • 2 years ago

35 106 2 years ago

havblue3• 2 years ago

"Nebraska Legislative Bill 1092 went into effect on Friday making it a requirement for sites that show adult content to verify the age of users. This usually means some form of identification needs to be uploaded to the site to confirm the person using the site is 18 or over. "

Yeah, just upload your driver's licence to every sketchy site you browse to. What could go wrong?

I'm much more in favor of Leisure Suit Larry's approach:: give the user a quiz on things adults should know. Censor according to how well the user scores on the test.

nhumrich3• 2 years ago

Except that 16 year olds will likely pass this better than a quarter of adults.

Also, is there some magic knowledge you somehow learn the day you turn 18?

The problem is from a legal standpoint, 17 and 364 days, is not allowed. But "turned 18 an hour ago" is.

Also: we live in the age of chatgpt. Knowledge proves nothing anymore.

bloqs• 2 years ago

He isnt saying there is, but hes saying that its better than the alternative

doggero5• 2 years ago

Or, just choose not to consume online pornography if you don't want to share your identity documents with a verification service.

It really is that simple.

halJordan• 2 years ago

I definitely was not aware America was a country where i need to be permitted my actions and otherwise kept on a registry of who's allowed to do what.

EnergyAmy9• 2 years ago

Or, just don't pass laws that impinge on people's freedom and privacy.

It really is that simple.

anon2918• 2 years ago

Ideally, what ought to happen is the government sets up a system with cryptographic key pairs in a government database.

Adults go to a drug store / grocery store / whoever participates and is licensed to do this. The store clerk checks your ID. If you're an adult, they will give you a public key. The public key comes in an envelope that has been sealed at a government facility. No one can see it until you open the envelope. You can obtain as many of these as you want (you have to pay the cost of the printing / stationary / program admin costs at the time of purchase).

To go on pornhub, you need to type in the public key. Porn hub encodes a message with the key and sends to the government database to get a yes / no.

Governments can prosecute any store that gives out keys to minors (like with alcohol).

Governments can prosecute porn sites that do not adhere to this protocol.

This is good because it provides a lot of points where bad actors may fall afoul of the law, and these bad actors were probably the same types going to commit otehr crimes anyway.

But the truth is, this will never happen, because sites like PornHub are not interested in keeping minors off. They want to get young kids (boys mostly, although I hear girls are getting more amenable) addicted to their porn.

Atotalnoob• 2 years ago

What happened to privacy? Now the government knows all about my shopping habits…

havblue3• 2 years ago

It just sounds like building a system that's going to be used to coerce and blackmail the public in the future. Why on Earth would you trust that your embarrassing habits will not be monitored and used against you?

slowmovintarget• 2 years ago

"Who was the best Canadian lyricist of all time?"

{doesn't answer "Gordon Lightfoot"}

"Sorry, here's a Youtube link you should watch..."

bradneuberg• 2 years ago

Someone in Nebraska should start a site named Cornhub.

usui• 2 years ago

What do you mean? CornHub already exists

https://cornhub.website/

nielsbot• 2 years ago

I clicked absentmindedly.. luckily it seems mostly harmless.

ta12434• 2 years ago

So that's what the MP was after [0]

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-61284686

ta12434• 2 years ago

And will be about as effective at prevention

punkspider• 2 years ago

Loving the choice of words.

Dig1t• 2 years ago

According to Planned Parenthood pulling out is 88% effective. Which is actually not too bad in my opinion :)

https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/birth-control/withdr...

bitshiftfaced• 2 years ago

The website says 78% of people will avoid pregnancy in the scope of one year. Over the course of three years, you will more likely than not have an unplanned pregnancy.

paulvnickerson• 2 years ago

The fact that this website simply refuses to do any kind of age verification says a lot about their leadership and possibly their motives...

Volundr• 2 years ago

I mean I don't want to be responsible for keeping a bunch of people's photo IDs secure either. What does that say about my leadership and motives?

wkat42425• 2 years ago

And what point is there to even give a website photo ID? How will they validate your face? They have no need for the photo.

shrimp_emoji2• 2 years ago

Yeah, it says a lot of good.

You can't do it without turning your site into a panoptical dystopia where even more of your personal data ends up with the NSA, third party data brokers, or hackers on the darknet. None of that's worth people's silly moralism to me.

wkat42425• 2 years ago

The thing is, age verification that consists of more than a simple button of "yes I'm over 18" is privacy intrusive. Who wants to register as a porn viewer? Especially in the US where this is stigmatised.

doggero5• 2 years ago

It's stigmatized for good reason. The amount of abuse within the pornography industry is immense. Anyone with any decent of ethics would refrain from consuming this material.

mcphage5• 2 years ago

What is it you feel that it says about their leadership and their motives?

IshKebab• 2 years ago

I wonder what age verification system Pornhub would want. I mean if they actually do want one (dubious) and they don't want to deal with people's IDs (very sensible) then they could propose one.

I would have thought it's pretty easy. Have a government site that verifies your ID and just produces some kind of cryptographic token that porn sites can verify but reveals nothing other than the fact that you are over 18.

I mean realistically that's pointless because VPNs... but it's better than what they are currently demanding at least.

jfengel• 2 years ago

It's not really a question of what PH would want, but what the states will accept.

The government isn't going to provide an age identification program, because they really don't want to enable people to watch porn. This isn't about protecting the kiddies; it's about keeping porn out entirely.

And PornHub knows perfectly well that nothing they do will satisfy a state prosecutor looking to harass them. Even if they collected photo IDs, police will set up a sting with fake IDs.

So they give the government what it wants. They leave. As you said, anybody with a VPN gets their porn just fine, but the government cares more about the perception of morality than actual morality.

doggero5• 2 years ago

This is good news. Here's hoping for a federal law that makes age verification for pornographic content a requirement across all states.

There's no reason why these sites shouldn't shoulder their share of the responsibility to prevent children from accessing this content.

It's really quite telling that Pornhub is removing itself from all markets where it's mandated to do this. Like all dealers of addictive and abusive substances, they want to hook their users in while young and impressionable.

explodes• 2 years ago

There are a million other ways to access it. I don't know how introducing privacy invading practices could end up as a net good.

doggero5• 2 years ago

If you feel that some pornography site would be invading your privacy by asking for age verification, then just don't use it. It really is that easy.

No-one's forcing you to watch porn. It's not a necessary consumption.

And if you consider the abuse that is rife within the pornography industry, then really it is better to not increase demand for this material by consuming it.

anon2918• 2 years ago

Like the privacy invading practice of requiring drug stores to check IDs before selling Playboys?

I'm sorry, Playboy is way tamer than Pornhub. There's no reason PH should have less strict access requirements. There's no 'right' to access porn anonymously. For goodness' sake, most states monitor your alcohol consumption by tying purchases to your ID!

tills133• 2 years ago

I'm so tired of this "won't someone think of the children" argument. What exactly do you propose that isn't wildly invasive and over-complicated?

ideasp5• 2 years ago

There are loads of things that require age verification to prevent children accessing them. Why is porn apparently so special? Bit suspicious tbh.

ta12434• 2 years ago

won't someone think of the children

Really not a good thing to be doing with porn

EnergyAmy9• 2 years ago

If you want to live in a dystopia, you're free to live somewhere else.

doggero5• 2 years ago

Mandatory age verification for porn sites is dystopian now?

I'm guessing you're some sort of pornography addict, if it means that much to you that you whip out this level of hyperbole.

mcphage5• 2 years ago

This is good news. Here's hoping for a federal law that makes age verification for pornographic content a requirement across all states.
It's really quite telling that Pornhub is removing itself from all markets where it's mandated to do this.

I imagine that if it became a federal mandate, Pornhub would add some sort of gate that they felt met the legal requirements.

nonameiguess• 2 years ago

So I'm in Texas and Pornhub already did the same thing here. What I don't get is all of the studio and professional aggregator sites that have existed for 30 years, well before user-generated video platforms were a thing, still operate in Texas. They use exactly the same age verification they've always used. Click yes on a splash screen before you can see free preview content, and submit a credit card to see paid content. If no one complains, we'll assume that was actually your credit card and you're thus 18.

Why is that good enough for every porn site in the world except Pornhub? I have still never seen a website ask for an actual ID except remote test proctoring stuff that popped up for IT certification exams after Covid closed the testing centers.

tills133• 2 years ago

This might be a case of PornHub's popularity and position actually being detrimental to them, here. The smaller sites are going to operate on a "we'll deal with it when we have to" model whereas PornHub, due to being (or partially being) the reason for the laws in the first place, do not have the luxury of seeing if they are even discovered to be in violation.

HDThoreaun4• 2 years ago

My understanding is that every site other than pornhub is just ignoring the law and either hoping the state doesnt come after them or just operating offshore where the state has no jurisdiction.

tennisflyi2• 2 years ago

BRCC/ECG explicitly make you provide ID

gorgoiler3• 2 years ago

What is the gold standard for age verification online? Is there one?

I could take my ID to the library / police station, have it verified, and then get given a USB stick with 16GB’s worth of signed government tokens from a big bucket of unmarked hardware. I guess a bad site could still narrow down who I am to my nearest library / police station though.

Proof-of-age tokens that aren’t tied to my ID have the downside that they are transferable. Kind of like a case of beer is transferable from an adult to a child.

Is there a better way of keeping are-you-old-enough separate from who-are-you?

bastawhiz• 2 years ago

Scans of driver's license or passport with a selfie liveness check. That's the best that can be done right now.

gorgoiler3• 2 years ago

ID has traditionally had a copy of what you look like embedded into the surface, but wouldn’t it be nice to have an ID that encoded what you sound like? If certain characteristics of my voice could be narrowed down to a QR code I’d feel a lot more comfortable identifying myself with a mic instead of a camera.

You could combine that with only one side of the ID showing the QR code and a some proof of age and keeping my actual name to the other side, hidden from the camera.

Have me say a random number, see if it matches the QR code for “en_US, male, tenor, southern French accent” to prove it’s me, here, and alive?

sebazzz• 2 years ago

In the Netherlands iDIN could be used, by which you verify she though your bank.

gorgoiler3• 2 years ago

Doing it through banking or credit card infra sounds handy.

The site gives me a magic number and also sends it to their bank. I give the magic number to my bank and the two banks agree I am old enough without telling their respective customers (or each other) who is asking and who is responding?

krembo2• 2 years ago

How do they make money? What's their revenue stream? Who's paying $ when most content is for free, and when people really want to pay they go to OF. I know the phrase that when the product is free, then I'm the product, but even then, how do they make money from customers' mostly-incognito data?

pests2• 2 years ago

PH purged all unverified content a few years ago and focuses more on creators like Twitch or YouTube does. You have paid memberships, premium content, tipping, and ads. They even do a pretty good revenue share. It's not the PH of the 2000s.

Their parent company, MindGeek, also owns at least 5+ studios themselves including popular ones like Brazzers so it works as promotion/marketing as well.

krembo2• 2 years ago

I assume it still sounds crazy to me that people pay for porn these days...

HDThoreaun4• 2 years ago

Pornhub is owned by the biggest porn studio. They push their studios videos, company makes money off subs to their content plus rev share for the independents.

deafpolygon2• 2 years ago

Honestly, what we need are two internet(s):

- One for adults over 18

- One for minors under 18

All indications are that we will be heading in that direction.