I've said before, I think selective internet bans are a very slippery slope. No matter how you feel about porn, I think stopping this ID law is overall good for internet freedom. I don't like porn, and I think it can be monumentally harmful. I think the government being able to set requirements to visit websites is more harmful.
I also think it's kind of ironic everyone (rightly) rails against internet ID, and idiots who push that nonsense, but often have no problem with porn restrictions.
It's a parent's job to stop kids from watching porn, not the government's. And the government will almost never make the situation better, no matter how negligent the parent. We know this shit. We see it time and time again. Not sure why people are so keen on porn ID laws. In any other context, they go against everything most of us here believe in.
My only qualm is that it's nearly impossible to keep your kid from watching porn in 2023. You have to deny them a smartphone or tablet (which I do) but even then they're going to see it at friends' houses because of lazy garbage parents of other kids. Feels like the only way to keep their minds safe from that filth is to go live on a homestead or something.
All that said, you're right about the government not making it any better. I do understand why parents want something done though.
A sane anti-porn law would be that sources have to identify any porn, with a tag or a http header or something like that, or face a big fine.
Then adults don't need to be tracked with an ID and porn-blockers for children would work almost perfectly. Other countries could still have untagged porn, but 99% would go along with it since it's not intrusive and they don't want to be excluded from any US-aligned banking or payments system.
Like how many cookie warnings have you seen in the US just because they implemented it for EU and saving US users a minor annoyance is not worth the risk of a mistake? A US tagging law would totally work globally.
"Sources", or face "a big fine"... Not gonna work.
There's an entire genre on Youtube of women in lingerie playing musical instruments. It's very arguably softcore pornography. But is it "porn" porn? Does Youtube need to regulate its thots? How about Twitch? Instagram? X? Conversely, an educational video about sexual health... Is that porn? What about if that "sexual health" is under more scarequotes and italicized?
And what's the fine? How is it administrated? Will The Pirate Bay need to pay fines for hosting torrents of the stuff? How will it wind up being billed?
Of course it'll work. All those lingerie videos are going to default to adult only unless YouTube specifically vouches for them.
So it'll also be a much-needed weakening of 230 by making companies actually be in some way responsible for content. YouTube is not going to use AI to mark videos not-porn when they're actually responsible for mistakes, so kids will only get access to content an actual person looked at and said "yep, no way we're getting fined $100k per view for this".
A fine could be administered like do-not-call or broadcast TV swearing. That's easy. Collecting the fine from the 3rd world is hard, but also 3rd-worlders having to launder money and be at risk anytime they step into the West for vacation just to get what little money kids have is not really worth it.
A sane anti-porn law would be that sources have to identify any porn, with a tag or a http header or something like that, or face a big fine.
There are systems for this. If and whether they are followed, I have no idea. I imagine porn sites would follow the law if it's not too inconvenient for them. But the other random sites that kids are going to be reduced to finding porn on are going to be harder to censor.
Um, anyways, that effectively makes the government the determiner of what is and is not porn, the evasion of which is kind of the point here. It's much better to have a web of voluntary systems. It will work better, and we're not going to disable the whole internet to keep kids off porn. Solutions have to be reasonable.
Kids are resourceful and can dedicate a lot of time to defying their parents if they want to.
That said:
even then they're going to see it at friends' houses because of lazy garbage parents of other kids.
Part of knowing who a kid's friends are is knowing who their friends parents are, and getting to know them, too. It's part of being in a community. I certainly got the "I don't want you hanging out with X" growing up, and I remember scoffing over it at the time (and doing what I can to circumvent it), but as I got older I only then was able to appreciate this and, looking back, yeah, X got me into a lot of evil stuff that started out as "only" schoolboy hijinks.
Feels like the only way to keep their minds safe from that filth is to go live on a homestead or something.
This makes as much sense as living in the middle of a desert to make sure your kid never drowns. Some day, your kid is going to turn into an adult. If the only way your kid knows how to deal with things is "just avoid them", your kid is going to have a pretty rough life.
I pretty much agree with your take. I'm not sure it's QUITE as different as you might make it out. I mean, yes, it's easier than at any time in history to access porn and highly perverted porn is certainly easier to access than at any time in history.
In highschool one of my friends managed to get a Playboy subscription. Another, through his older brother, got a couple of VHS tapes that got widely shared around, etc.
It's going to happen. I have a kid going into highschool. I don't want to think about this crap, but realistically, it's going to happen.
I think the government being able to set requirements to visit websites is more harmful
This. It's very likely many inside and out of the government behind this don't give the slightest fuck about porn but know it's a viable tip of the wedge to push wider control tools on the general public who will end up too incensed to think about the consequences correctly.
Sprinkle some pearl clutching and "for the kids" in the appropriate places and you'll have various groups of the public immediately marching in lockstep with others beside them doing so to not be harassed for questioning The Message and its latest Kafka trap.
The moment the infrastructure is in place to target and control the publics access to certain parts of the web the moment that follows will be a list of what parts to do next. Do note the wording I went with there. The list will quickly appear because it already exists and won't be afforded any debate time.
That's the goal. Not the window dressing surrounding any porn bans and anyone who thinks they won't find themselves affected by these tools in the future because they don't use porn, or have certain political alignments, or are of a certain race is woefully mistaken given various attempts on both sides of the Atlantic so far.
That's true any time someone goes on about the children. I feel like people that care about children are busy protecting their children. People that just "care about children" are more suspect.
Because people believe that restrictive ID laws which abolish anonymity which will stop people using the sites in fear of being hacked and doxxed (a la Ashley Madison). Plus making it impossible to function as a site and remain profitable, effectively banning them in all but name. While also abolishing every other aspect of sexual outlet outside of the bedroom with any act requiring more than one consenting adult without payment to be seen as legal will somehow end the demographic issues we have in society and return society to conservative monogamy, relationships for everyone and the two parent, two child household utopia. It won't. All it will do is drive everything to the dark web or create sexually frustrated single men with nothing to lose considering the current state of the dating market.
The people who should be doing the job are parents, I agree. The state should not be taking over the job of parent and treating us all like children.
Plus making it impossible to function as a site and remain profitable, effectively banning them in all but name
This is really all it ever is. Its them considering something a societal cancer, and then trying to make the government ban it.
You'd think they'd have read up how well Prohibition worked. Its even a nearly 1:1 comparison considering the damage alcohol does and still does daily to everyone, yet we realized banning it didn't accomplish anything.
Except this time their get out of jail card is to claim that the sites voluntarily shut down access in their state and it's not an actual ban. They won't mention the bureaucracy, red tape and impossible requirements they implemented that led to this situation.
Exactly, and then the whole time position themselves as "the good guys" because they said the word "CHILDREN" and that instantly makes them the morally superior.
Because when you say think of the children, you are always in the right everytime forever and anyone who opposes you wants children raped and groomed and ruined.
Because I grew up in Moonshine country where people have actual storied histories barely a generation removed explaining how they got away with ignoring it or dodging it, and in turn spending more time in the presence of criminals to assist in those endeavors.
Nascar and stock racing alone got its start by an entire criminal industry forming in response to it, and that's just a single operation in one area of the country.
The people who were causing problems due to alcohol didn't and weren't going to stop just because of a law, all it accomplished was punishing innocent folks from having freedom. No different than "common sense" gun laws, which I'm sure you'll whine "bubububut that's different!"
Because people believe that restrictive ID laws which abolish anonymity which will stop people using the sites in fear of being hacked and doxxed (a la Ashley Madison). Plus making it impossible to function as a site and remain profitable, effectively banning them in all but name.
That's it. It's nothing to do with kids. It's the fucking tradcuck trash thinking they can pump up birth rates by taking away all other outlets.
It's unfortunate this idea is being downvoted because there is a push by both sides of the political spectrum to shut down all avenues of sexual outlets for single men and restrict the act to be defined as two (or more) individuals without payment in a private dwelling. Whether feminist or conservative. The "won't somebody think of the children" aspect of it has always been a tried and true argument from emotion to get something banned. It's happening now with vapes because children could get access (despite age restrictions and ID requirements already in place) and the same will happen to pornography and every other sexual outlet.
Like I say, what happens with all the frustrated men who can't compete in the dating market and have nothing to lose? Will they all be sent into the meat grinder of war?
Feminist women (why do I have to self-censor when the stormfaggots are rampant) have a plan, it's called cut them off from banks and make them starve to death.
i can agree with this, its how the slimeballs operate they target a palatable victom in this case porn and then try to ram thru the most draconian shit they think they can get away with while people are charged with emotional rhetoric and thus not thinking too far ahead as to how the legislation will be used... or further leverage it will create.
I tend to agree. I just don't want the government having hands in things. I think porn and degeneracy is a huge problem. Bad parenting is even more of a problem, but we can't legislate it into place.
Yet whenever the parents have asked for help (such as the .xxx domain which could be easily filtered at the ISP level) they're told "there's nothing we can do". And they're left subscribing to some sort of filtering service which is easily worked around by changing some settings on your computer.
Meanwhile if I want to buy Jared Taylor's book from AmRen, I have to print out an order form and mail them cash, because all the payment processors have blacklisted them
Not to mention google having spent so much effort preventing users from seeing "disinformation" they've made their search engine entirely useless.
And now people have picked up on the fact that the industry could have done something but didn't want to, because they got an up-close look at the power the tech industry can wield when it comes to, say, that popular vaccination Facebook group they used to follow before it was banned.
So now they will make the companies do something. And yes it'll be sub-optimal because they chose to not do a more optimal thing.
Yet whenever the parents have asked for help (such as the .xxx domain which could be easily filtered at the ISP level) they're told "there's nothing we can do".
If you want to get conspiratorial, they probably refused to provide better tools to fix the issue exactly so they could propose some bullshit like this. Again, this is the government getting their foot in the door in an extremely dangerous way.
Also, I don't get why some people suddenly trust the government. This is the same government that, among other things, works with the ADL and similar groups that "advise" big tech. This is the same government that sends agents to "advise" big tech itself.
This is putting the same censorious pieces of shit we've been getting attacked by for years in charge of what information we can access. No thanks.
I don't trust the government: I'm saying this is a natural consequence of 20+ years of being told "there's nothing we can do" while seeing that in fact there is something that can be done when the industry wants to do it.
As evidenced by the entire tech industry colluding to suppress "disinformation" post-2016.
This is a recurring pattern that comes up over and over and over in society and politics: when there is a problem that "reasonable" people say is unsolvable, the problem doesn't go away. What happens is that it will fall to "unreasonable" people to fix it, and you won't like how they fix it.
That was why Trump was elected. That was why Brexit happened. It'll be the story of the guy who actually does what people feared Trump would do if and when he rises to power. And it is why states are banning porn.
Thus it falls on the "reasonable" people to actually solve problems before they reach the point where only the "unreasonable" people are offering solutions.
You don't have to like it, but you should understand it.
If there was actually Internet freedom anywhere I'd agree with you. But here we are on this website specifically because there is no such thing as Internet freedom. It's just a buzzword they use when they want to do perverted or corrupt bullshit.
Sorry, but that's a weak argument. Because there's censorship out there, we should be alright with even more direct government intrusion into what we can look at online? Nope, hard pass.
I'm saying that if you can't even criticize troons pretty much anywhere, why should the avenues the enemy uses to groom children be legal? The government already gleefully intrudes on whether or not you're allowed to use money, all based on whether or not you're a leftist. A social credit system has already been imposed on us because we refuse to suppress the left when we should.
So by all means, tell me why we should once again never fight back.
And I'm saying it's a bad precedent, and doesn't work in our favor. This gets the government's foot in the door on internet ID laws, and will be turned against us next.
Also, you say that's not the argument you're making, but it seems to be, because then you do it again; say what the leftists are doing, so the right should do things too. Which might be a fine stance but, again, my issue is I don't agree this is a good thing, and I think it will hurt us by its existence. Internet ID laws are bad, even if they scream "think of the children." When you think about it, it's a very leftist argument in that respect; appeals to emotion above practicality or freedom or legality.
So by all means, tell me why we should once again never fight back.
Never said that. I said let's not make it easier for the government to oppress us all. We're already far enough down the cyberpunk dystopia timeline, let's not make it worse.
There is internet freedom. Reddit has their website, and "we" have ours.
The fact that theirs is more popular than this is not their fault.
While it is enjoyable forcing this content on people who don't like it, it's probably not the way the internet is supposed to work. OTOH they force stuff on us, so whatever I guess.
I don't like porn, and I think it can be monumentally harmful. I think the government being able to set requirements to visit websites is more harmful.
I don't want the gubmint controlling this either, but "it's the parents job" is a lolbertarian argument that never worked. I'm not going to make any arguments about how harmful porn is to society, but let's pretend it's very harmful, for various reasons. Go with undecidedmask's assertion that it's one of the most dangerous weapons around today. If that's true then we've got a huge problem on our hands. How do we solve that problem? The parents failed. What do you as a man of courage and honor do?
For many people, "It can't be solved" isn't an acceptable answer. So far I think fauxgnaws had the best idea from a technical point of view, but that does nothing to fix a culture where lots of parents are fine with their kids viewing porn. (or they don't think it's a big deal anyway)
"It doesn't work" is itself an argument that doesn't work. Especially because, historically, the government is going to come in and fuck things up worse. Hell, that was basically the creation of the Federal Reserve; "Hey, the economy isn't working, put us in charge!" Yeah, no.
For many people, "It can't be solved" isn't an acceptable answer.
Yeah, but people not finding it acceptable, again, often leads to very bad things. Because some things are really hard to solve, and this is one of them. Throwing the government at it is just going to make it worse. "We must solve this issue that is super complex and probably not immediately solvable" tends to be the leftwing answer. It shouldn't matter if the people find it acceptable or not, it should matter if the proposed solution will actually fix the problem. If it won't, let's not implement further totalitarian control just to make people happy because we're Doing Something.
AFAIK, you can buy guns/ammo/etc online in the US- right?
If so, they require ID/background checks more intense than what porn sites would require. Yet I don't know of any 2A backlash on that.
There are issues/concerns with ID but they have those already on online alcohol/gun sales, I don't see a constitutional argument against online porn ID when IRL sex shops require it, as does the 7/11 when you buy a Playboy.
The massive difference is purchasing versus viewing.
You're not (currently) barred from accessing an online gun website without showing the government ID. In fact, that's one of my big concerns; that could end up being the case if they argue you can do the same for porn content. You currently have to show ID to purchase guns, that's it.
I can pull up any gun website on the internet without giving the government shit. That could change if they set precedent like they want to do with porn.
How? Short of not having an ad block (which everyone who used Youtube should have gotten regardless) no money is gained for anyone until you purchase something.
Like with a lot of arguments made in favor of this law, that's a mighty slippery slope ya got there. "Purchase" has a very specific definition, and free viewership ain't that.
For starters the only thing changing hands is you, if you get tired.
I've bought ammo and accessories online and I don't recall any additional checks. It was just like buying anything else online. I think they just left it at my door just like any other purchase. I've bought ammo at the store too, they just check it out like anything else generally. I don't even think there's an age requirement albeit I've not been underage in a long time and never tried it. I'm in Texas. It may be different in other states.
I believe for all/most online gun purchase you have to have a legal licensed firearm dealer (FFL dealer) to have the online purchase sent to and then they will do whatever checks required before handing the gun over. There's also some limited accessories like silencers that require a tax stamp. I will say particularly on the 2nd point the 2A community is not happy with it.
Exactly; you can buy anything but a lower receiver (or corresponding part depending on gun configuration) without any additional checks. At least for now. The ATF keeps trying to essentially write laws to change this, despite them not being able to write laws.
Potential black mail material. Also you never know what such information can do. The Dutch government stored religious affiliation on personal records before ww2. That info was used by the Nazi's to locate their victims. You don't know who will own stored information at some point.
That's an argument that the there could be flaws in the ID collection, not that age verification is unconstitutional- if that's true it would be unconstitutional for the sex shop to verify age.
I disagree. I'm a hardcore opponent of porn, and would prefer it banned completely. When you have my view of it being the greatest weapon against men, I want it destroyed. This is a case of government power being used correctly.
But again, look at how it's being done. "Thing I don't like is being hurt, hurrah" is a really bad argument.
If you want porn banned, go after hosting it. Even that has some really bad implications, but is probably still better than the government outlawing the accessing of certain sites.
Internet ID is a retarded concept, no matter the reason.
I've said before, I think selective internet bans are a very slippery slope. No matter how you feel about porn, I think stopping this ID law is overall good for internet freedom. I don't like porn, and I think it can be monumentally harmful. I think the government being able to set requirements to visit websites is more harmful.
I also think it's kind of ironic everyone (rightly) rails against internet ID, and idiots who push that nonsense, but often have no problem with porn restrictions.
It's a parent's job to stop kids from watching porn, not the government's. And the government will almost never make the situation better, no matter how negligent the parent. We know this shit. We see it time and time again. Not sure why people are so keen on porn ID laws. In any other context, they go against everything most of us here believe in.
I think you have pretty much the right take.
My only qualm is that it's nearly impossible to keep your kid from watching porn in 2023. You have to deny them a smartphone or tablet (which I do) but even then they're going to see it at friends' houses because of lazy garbage parents of other kids. Feels like the only way to keep their minds safe from that filth is to go live on a homestead or something.
All that said, you're right about the government not making it any better. I do understand why parents want something done though.
A sane anti-porn law would be that sources have to identify any porn, with a tag or a http header or something like that, or face a big fine.
Then adults don't need to be tracked with an ID and porn-blockers for children would work almost perfectly. Other countries could still have untagged porn, but 99% would go along with it since it's not intrusive and they don't want to be excluded from any US-aligned banking or payments system.
Like how many cookie warnings have you seen in the US just because they implemented it for EU and saving US users a minor annoyance is not worth the risk of a mistake? A US tagging law would totally work globally.
"Sources", or face "a big fine"... Not gonna work.
There's an entire genre on Youtube of women in lingerie playing musical instruments. It's very arguably softcore pornography. But is it "porn" porn? Does Youtube need to regulate its thots? How about Twitch? Instagram? X? Conversely, an educational video about sexual health... Is that porn? What about if that "sexual health" is under more scarequotes and italicized?
And what's the fine? How is it administrated? Will The Pirate Bay need to pay fines for hosting torrents of the stuff? How will it wind up being billed?
Of course it'll work. All those lingerie videos are going to default to adult only unless YouTube specifically vouches for them.
So it'll also be a much-needed weakening of 230 by making companies actually be in some way responsible for content. YouTube is not going to use AI to mark videos not-porn when they're actually responsible for mistakes, so kids will only get access to content an actual person looked at and said "yep, no way we're getting fined $100k per view for this".
A fine could be administered like do-not-call or broadcast TV swearing. That's easy. Collecting the fine from the 3rd world is hard, but also 3rd-worlders having to launder money and be at risk anytime they step into the West for vacation just to get what little money kids have is not really worth it.
You would have various levels of content tags. I'm sure YT is already doing it behind the scenes.
There are systems for this. If and whether they are followed, I have no idea. I imagine porn sites would follow the law if it's not too inconvenient for them. But the other random sites that kids are going to be reduced to finding porn on are going to be harder to censor.
Um, anyways, that effectively makes the government the determiner of what is and is not porn, the evasion of which is kind of the point here. It's much better to have a web of voluntary systems. It will work better, and we're not going to disable the whole internet to keep kids off porn. Solutions have to be reasonable.
Kids are resourceful and can dedicate a lot of time to defying their parents if they want to.
That said:
Part of knowing who a kid's friends are is knowing who their friends parents are, and getting to know them, too. It's part of being in a community. I certainly got the "I don't want you hanging out with X" growing up, and I remember scoffing over it at the time (and doing what I can to circumvent it), but as I got older I only then was able to appreciate this and, looking back, yeah, X got me into a lot of evil stuff that started out as "only" schoolboy hijinks.
This makes as much sense as living in the middle of a desert to make sure your kid never drowns. Some day, your kid is going to turn into an adult. If the only way your kid knows how to deal with things is "just avoid them", your kid is going to have a pretty rough life.
I pretty much agree with your take. I'm not sure it's QUITE as different as you might make it out. I mean, yes, it's easier than at any time in history to access porn and highly perverted porn is certainly easier to access than at any time in history.
In highschool one of my friends managed to get a Playboy subscription. Another, through his older brother, got a couple of VHS tapes that got widely shared around, etc.
It's going to happen. I have a kid going into highschool. I don't want to think about this crap, but realistically, it's going to happen.
Playboy is kindergarten porn compared to what you can find with google
This. It's very likely many inside and out of the government behind this don't give the slightest fuck about porn but know it's a viable tip of the wedge to push wider control tools on the general public who will end up too incensed to think about the consequences correctly.
Sprinkle some pearl clutching and "for the kids" in the appropriate places and you'll have various groups of the public immediately marching in lockstep with others beside them doing so to not be harassed for questioning The Message and its latest Kafka trap.
The moment the infrastructure is in place to target and control the publics access to certain parts of the web the moment that follows will be a list of what parts to do next. Do note the wording I went with there. The list will quickly appear because it already exists and won't be afforded any debate time.
That's the goal. Not the window dressing surrounding any porn bans and anyone who thinks they won't find themselves affected by these tools in the future because they don't use porn, or have certain political alignments, or are of a certain race is woefully mistaken given various attempts on both sides of the Atlantic so far.
That's true any time someone goes on about the children. I feel like people that care about children are busy protecting their children. People that just "care about children" are more suspect.
Because people believe that restrictive ID laws which abolish anonymity which will stop people using the sites in fear of being hacked and doxxed (a la Ashley Madison). Plus making it impossible to function as a site and remain profitable, effectively banning them in all but name. While also abolishing every other aspect of sexual outlet outside of the bedroom with any act requiring more than one consenting adult without payment to be seen as legal will somehow end the demographic issues we have in society and return society to conservative monogamy, relationships for everyone and the two parent, two child household utopia. It won't. All it will do is drive everything to the dark web or create sexually frustrated single men with nothing to lose considering the current state of the dating market.
The people who should be doing the job are parents, I agree. The state should not be taking over the job of parent and treating us all like children.
This is really all it ever is. Its them considering something a societal cancer, and then trying to make the government ban it.
You'd think they'd have read up how well Prohibition worked. Its even a nearly 1:1 comparison considering the damage alcohol does and still does daily to everyone, yet we realized banning it didn't accomplish anything.
Except this time their get out of jail card is to claim that the sites voluntarily shut down access in their state and it's not an actual ban. They won't mention the bureaucracy, red tape and impossible requirements they implemented that led to this situation.
Exactly, and then the whole time position themselves as "the good guys" because they said the word "CHILDREN" and that instantly makes them the morally superior.
Because when you say think of the children, you are always in the right everytime forever and anyone who opposes you wants children raped and groomed and ruined.
But prohibition did reduce crime, reduce deaths from alcohol & associated illnesses.
Why do you feel that banning it "didn't accomplish anything"? Is that based on data?
Because I grew up in Moonshine country where people have actual storied histories barely a generation removed explaining how they got away with ignoring it or dodging it, and in turn spending more time in the presence of criminals to assist in those endeavors.
Nascar and stock racing alone got its start by an entire criminal industry forming in response to it, and that's just a single operation in one area of the country.
The people who were causing problems due to alcohol didn't and weren't going to stop just because of a law, all it accomplished was punishing innocent folks from having freedom. No different than "common sense" gun laws, which I'm sure you'll whine "bubububut that's different!"
That's it. It's nothing to do with kids. It's the fucking tradcuck trash thinking they can pump up birth rates by taking away all other outlets.
It's unfortunate this idea is being downvoted because there is a push by both sides of the political spectrum to shut down all avenues of sexual outlets for single men and restrict the act to be defined as two (or more) individuals without payment in a private dwelling. Whether feminist or conservative. The "won't somebody think of the children" aspect of it has always been a tried and true argument from emotion to get something banned. It's happening now with vapes because children could get access (despite age restrictions and ID requirements already in place) and the same will happen to pornography and every other sexual outlet.
Like I say, what happens with all the frustrated men who can't compete in the dating market and have nothing to lose? Will they all be sent into the meat grinder of war?
https://communities.win/c/KotakuInAction2/p/17r9DkqVUL/x/c/4Txi8mV7PCj
Feminist women (why do I have to self-censor when the stormfaggots are rampant) have a plan, it's called cut them off from banks and make them starve to death.
i can agree with this, its how the slimeballs operate they target a palatable victom in this case porn and then try to ram thru the most draconian shit they think they can get away with while people are charged with emotional rhetoric and thus not thinking too far ahead as to how the legislation will be used... or further leverage it will create.
I tend to agree. I just don't want the government having hands in things. I think porn and degeneracy is a huge problem. Bad parenting is even more of a problem, but we can't legislate it into place.
In fact, government getting involved tends to make things even worse, not better.
Yet whenever the parents have asked for help (such as the .xxx domain which could be easily filtered at the ISP level) they're told "there's nothing we can do". And they're left subscribing to some sort of filtering service which is easily worked around by changing some settings on your computer.
Meanwhile if I want to buy Jared Taylor's book from AmRen, I have to print out an order form and mail them cash, because all the payment processors have blacklisted them
Not to mention google having spent so much effort preventing users from seeing "disinformation" they've made their search engine entirely useless.
And now people have picked up on the fact that the industry could have done something but didn't want to, because they got an up-close look at the power the tech industry can wield when it comes to, say, that popular vaccination Facebook group they used to follow before it was banned.
So now they will make the companies do something. And yes it'll be sub-optimal because they chose to not do a more optimal thing.
If you want to get conspiratorial, they probably refused to provide better tools to fix the issue exactly so they could propose some bullshit like this. Again, this is the government getting their foot in the door in an extremely dangerous way.
Also, I don't get why some people suddenly trust the government. This is the same government that, among other things, works with the ADL and similar groups that "advise" big tech. This is the same government that sends agents to "advise" big tech itself.
This is putting the same censorious pieces of shit we've been getting attacked by for years in charge of what information we can access. No thanks.
I don't trust the government: I'm saying this is a natural consequence of 20+ years of being told "there's nothing we can do" while seeing that in fact there is something that can be done when the industry wants to do it.
As evidenced by the entire tech industry colluding to suppress "disinformation" post-2016.
This is a recurring pattern that comes up over and over and over in society and politics: when there is a problem that "reasonable" people say is unsolvable, the problem doesn't go away. What happens is that it will fall to "unreasonable" people to fix it, and you won't like how they fix it.
That was why Trump was elected. That was why Brexit happened. It'll be the story of the guy who actually does what people feared Trump would do if and when he rises to power. And it is why states are banning porn.
Thus it falls on the "reasonable" people to actually solve problems before they reach the point where only the "unreasonable" people are offering solutions.
You don't have to like it, but you should understand it.
If there was actually Internet freedom anywhere I'd agree with you. But here we are on this website specifically because there is no such thing as Internet freedom. It's just a buzzword they use when they want to do perverted or corrupt bullshit.
Sorry, but that's a weak argument. Because there's censorship out there, we should be alright with even more direct government intrusion into what we can look at online? Nope, hard pass.
That isn't the argument I'm making.
I'm saying that if you can't even criticize troons pretty much anywhere, why should the avenues the enemy uses to groom children be legal? The government already gleefully intrudes on whether or not you're allowed to use money, all based on whether or not you're a leftist. A social credit system has already been imposed on us because we refuse to suppress the left when we should.
So by all means, tell me why we should once again never fight back.
And I'm saying it's a bad precedent, and doesn't work in our favor. This gets the government's foot in the door on internet ID laws, and will be turned against us next.
Also, you say that's not the argument you're making, but it seems to be, because then you do it again; say what the leftists are doing, so the right should do things too. Which might be a fine stance but, again, my issue is I don't agree this is a good thing, and I think it will hurt us by its existence. Internet ID laws are bad, even if they scream "think of the children." When you think about it, it's a very leftist argument in that respect; appeals to emotion above practicality or freedom or legality.
Never said that. I said let's not make it easier for the government to oppress us all. We're already far enough down the cyberpunk dystopia timeline, let's not make it worse.
There is internet freedom. Reddit has their website, and "we" have ours.
The fact that theirs is more popular than this is not their fault.
While it is enjoyable forcing this content on people who don't like it, it's probably not the way the internet is supposed to work. OTOH they force stuff on us, so whatever I guess.
I don't want the gubmint controlling this either, but "it's the parents job" is a lolbertarian argument that never worked. I'm not going to make any arguments about how harmful porn is to society, but let's pretend it's very harmful, for various reasons. Go with undecidedmask's assertion that it's one of the most dangerous weapons around today. If that's true then we've got a huge problem on our hands. How do we solve that problem? The parents failed. What do you as a man of courage and honor do?
For many people, "It can't be solved" isn't an acceptable answer. So far I think fauxgnaws had the best idea from a technical point of view, but that does nothing to fix a culture where lots of parents are fine with their kids viewing porn. (or they don't think it's a big deal anyway)
"It doesn't work" is itself an argument that doesn't work. Especially because, historically, the government is going to come in and fuck things up worse. Hell, that was basically the creation of the Federal Reserve; "Hey, the economy isn't working, put us in charge!" Yeah, no.
Yeah, but people not finding it acceptable, again, often leads to very bad things. Because some things are really hard to solve, and this is one of them. Throwing the government at it is just going to make it worse. "We must solve this issue that is super complex and probably not immediately solvable" tends to be the leftwing answer. It shouldn't matter if the people find it acceptable or not, it should matter if the proposed solution will actually fix the problem. If it won't, let's not implement further totalitarian control just to make people happy because we're Doing Something.
AFAIK, you can buy guns/ammo/etc online in the US- right?
If so, they require ID/background checks more intense than what porn sites would require. Yet I don't know of any 2A backlash on that.
There are issues/concerns with ID but they have those already on online alcohol/gun sales, I don't see a constitutional argument against online porn ID when IRL sex shops require it, as does the 7/11 when you buy a Playboy.
The massive difference is purchasing versus viewing.
You're not (currently) barred from accessing an online gun website without showing the government ID. In fact, that's one of my big concerns; that could end up being the case if they argue you can do the same for porn content. You currently have to show ID to purchase guns, that's it.
I can pull up any gun website on the internet without giving the government shit. That could change if they set precedent like they want to do with porn.
But with porn the viewing IS the purchase.
How? Short of not having an ad block (which everyone who used Youtube should have gotten regardless) no money is gained for anyone until you purchase something.
Like with a lot of arguments made in favor of this law, that's a mighty slippery slope ya got there. "Purchase" has a very specific definition, and free viewership ain't that.
For starters the only thing changing hands is you, if you get tired.
I've bought ammo and accessories online and I don't recall any additional checks. It was just like buying anything else online. I think they just left it at my door just like any other purchase. I've bought ammo at the store too, they just check it out like anything else generally. I don't even think there's an age requirement albeit I've not been underage in a long time and never tried it. I'm in Texas. It may be different in other states.
I believe for all/most online gun purchase you have to have a legal licensed firearm dealer (FFL dealer) to have the online purchase sent to and then they will do whatever checks required before handing the gun over. There's also some limited accessories like silencers that require a tax stamp. I will say particularly on the 2nd point the 2A community is not happy with it.
Exactly; you can buy anything but a lower receiver (or corresponding part depending on gun configuration) without any additional checks. At least for now. The ATF keeps trying to essentially write laws to change this, despite them not being able to write laws.
Potential black mail material. Also you never know what such information can do. The Dutch government stored religious affiliation on personal records before ww2. That info was used by the Nazi's to locate their victims. You don't know who will own stored information at some point.
That's an argument that the there could be flaws in the ID collection, not that age verification is unconstitutional- if that's true it would be unconstitutional for the sex shop to verify age.
Porn sites already get your credit card info.
I disagree. I'm a hardcore opponent of porn, and would prefer it banned completely. When you have my view of it being the greatest weapon against men, I want it destroyed. This is a case of government power being used correctly.
But again, look at how it's being done. "Thing I don't like is being hurt, hurrah" is a really bad argument.
If you want porn banned, go after hosting it. Even that has some really bad implications, but is probably still better than the government outlawing the accessing of certain sites.
Internet ID is a retarded concept, no matter the reason.