Pornhub goes dark in Arkansas after age verification law kicks in::Pornhub operator MindGeek has blocked all users in Arkansas from the site after the state’s new age verification law went into effect.

    • @[email protected]
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      131 year ago

      Arkansas: where the people rule! (Until we, the ones decidedly ruling over the people, decide we don’t like what you’re doing and think it’s icky.)

      • @[email protected]
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        71 year ago

        Everyone in Arkansas is still watching their porn, from the pimply teenagers on up to the crotchety old politicians who came up with this shit.

        It’s all a political stunt so that the (significant) bloc of evangelical/social conservative voters in the state can feel like they got a win, and in turn they’ll reelect the old white guys that signed it into law next fall.

        Politicians get a win, evangelicals get a “win”, and everybody keeps on watching exactly the same amount of Internet porn as they were before this law went into effect.

  • AutoTL;DRB
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    1381 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Pornhub operator MindGeek has blocked all users in Arkansas from the site after the state’s new age verification law went into effect on Tuesday.

    The Arkansas law, SB 66, doesn’t ban Pornhub from operating in the state, but it requires porn sites to verify that a user is 18 by confirming their age with identifying documents.

    On Wednesday, Pornhub blocked all traffic from IP addresses based in Arkansas in protest, arguing that the law, which was intended to protect children, actually harms users.

    “While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users, and in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk,” MindGeek wrote in a message replacing the site’s front page for affected users.

    Responding to this wave of bans, MindGeek has decided to block access to its sites from states where the laws have gone into effect.

    So, instead of rolling out age verification systems, it says it decided to block access entirely, calling on users to contact their state representatives to oppose these laws.


    I’m a bot and I’m open source!

    • Prox
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      51 year ago

      What is the expectation for compliance here? Are users supposed to scan their physical ID and upload that to PH, then PH checks age against that?

      • @[email protected]
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        1 year ago

        The bill says that commercial entities serving pornography are required to do age verification through either verifying a driver’s license, verifying another piece of government-issued identification, or through the use of any commercially viable age verification mechanism.

        So, yeah, I’d imagine compliance to look like either uploading a photograph or scan of an identity card or document for the site operators to check, or uploading it to an affiliated service which does age verification on their behalf.

        Which is obviously horrendous from a privacy and information security standpoint for the consumer, and exposes the site operator to costs and legal risk associated with verifying and storing sensitive personal information.

      • @[email protected]
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        21 year ago

        I know a lot of Republicans that hate how both parties have become. We need some independents to vote for. There’s a lot of us that are caught in the middle. I agree with the small govt part of traditional Republicans, and agree with a lot of what the left has. For whatever reason. All we get is some bullshit extreme from either side.

        What about normal ass people that just want people to leave them the fuck alone, pay taxes, keep their roads working, and stop wasting (literally stealing) our fucking money

    • @[email protected]
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      311 year ago

      To be fair, porn is a little lower on the “first they came for the -----” list than he was probably expecting. He likely thought he had a few more marginalized groups to take the fall before the leopards started eating HIS face. But yeah, reap what you sow.

        • Python13
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          01 year ago

          Not every porn is child porn. Please stop acting like we are the bad guys and that you don’t think of anything sexual at all at any point in your life…

    • Melllvar
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      21 year ago

      “We must blame them and cause a fuss, before somebody thinks of blaming us!”

    • Iron Lynx
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      391 year ago

      For a party that prides itself on being all about “small government” and “no nanny state,” this is some surprisingly big government nanny state shenanigans

      • @[email protected]
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        51 year ago

        The small government libertarian types were lowered in priority in the party after two decades of people pandering to them because there’s basically nobody out there that’s a fiscal conservative and a social liberal.

        Trump and his grip on the GOP are evidence again of that same thing. There are more “conservatives” that are actually fiscal liberals and social conservatives than there are right libertarians.

        The rich would (for the most part) love to get the tax breaks and allow people to do whatever they want socially, but that (and virtue signaling) are not enough to rile up the fascist voters and evangelicals anymore.

        They’ve crossed the Rubicon with Trump and now it’s full on censorship and other Nazi tactics to take us back to the good old (non-existent) days.

        • @[email protected]
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          21 year ago

          I’m just going to sit over here in my fiscally conservative and socially liberal corner.

          (Although, I’m good with some level of safety nets still)

    • @[email protected]
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      -391 year ago

      In fairness, this is a state law. States rights being part of the Republican platform during my childhood. Just another reason not to go to/live in Arkansas

        • @[email protected]
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          -151 year ago

          Is it?

          I think “you can’t show porn to kids” seems like something well within the authority of a state to make a law about, even if the implementation is hamfisted and ineffective.

          My understanding is that porn would be considered obscenity, and obscenity is generally not protected by the first amendment, and can generally be regulated much more strictly.

          • Flying Squid
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            71 year ago

            This isn’t “you can’t show porn to kids,” this is “you have to provide an official ID to see porn.” Aside from just basic surveillance state issues, what happens when there’s the inevitable data breach?

      • @[email protected]
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        481 year ago

        Small government is allegedly still at part of the Republican platform at the state level. For a small government party, they sure do like to dictate what’s going on in people’s bedrooms.

        • @[email protected]
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          111 year ago

          This is interestingly why Democrats once performed better at the local level. There was a sizeable block that would split their ticket on state lines.

      • @[email protected]
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        151 year ago

        Republicans only cry States Rights when the federal government is attempting to make someone’s life better or when they want to take something away

        • @[email protected]
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          1 year ago

          They cry states rights as a tactic because they can control some states. If they had a supermajority on the national level they’d be passing abortion bans, contraceptive bans, trans bans, and any number of other abhorrent piles of garbage through at the federal level.

          Note how they give not a single shit about states rights to regulate firearms or allow abortions.

      • @[email protected]
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        121 year ago

        They used to claim they wanted a small government meaning not telling people what to Jack off to. It wasn’t solely about the federal government. Of course if you ask them you quickly find out it’s freedom for them to do anything they want while subjecting all of us to disgusting fascist fascinations

        • @[email protected]
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          41 year ago

          You know, there is a reasonable reading of the comment that doesn’t involve the assumption that they are telling people to move FROM Arkansas. Intentionally avoiding visiting the state, and intentionally avoiding relocating there, are quite different than the standard “LEAVE THE STATE” comment.

  • @[email protected]
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    881 year ago

    Didn’t read the bill cause pdf and cause it’s a bill, but found another article describing it, and it says at the end:

    The bill also would apply to material that as a whole lacks serious “literary, artistic, political, and scientific value for minors.”

    Isn’t that like 99% of the internet?

    • key
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      1 year ago

      Why are you against Pdf files?

      Edit: Though reading my question out loud I get it…

        • @[email protected]
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          111 year ago

          “Now?”

          PDF files have been widely hated for as long as they have existed. They’re good for printing and not much else. Definitely not a user-friendly substitute for a text file or web page.

          • @[email protected]
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            231 year ago

            The are a requirement for distributing a document that has to look the same on every device. I don’t love them and Adobe can go take a flying fuck but if I NEED to make sure that my boss doesn’t alter a document it has to be a PDF.

      • @[email protected]
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        31 year ago

        Just don’t like opening on phone, my browser doesn’t open, so it asks to download, then i end up with a bunch of random useless files there. Don’t u skip search results that lead to pdfs?

        • @[email protected]
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          51 year ago

          Pdfs are like the best for reading. Consistent format on every device.

          They just suck to create or edit.

          • @[email protected]
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            21 year ago

            They suck to edit but you can create them in most Free/Open/Libre software. It’s my favorite way to distribute drawings so that they print the same on every machine.

        • @[email protected]
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          11 year ago

          I actively search for them, moonreader catalogs everything. Having about half a TB on the phone file system also helps, but to be fair, since 2016 I never have filled any phone file system in a meaningful way

    • @[email protected]
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      171 year ago

      I get the impression not a lot of people were reading, writing, or wiping there even when it was legal.

  • @[email protected]
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    711 year ago

    Dang, if kids just had some kind of guardians that would be responsible for their media consumption while every media device out there had basic functionality to support such supervision.

    • @[email protected]
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      221 year ago

      It is completely unrealistic to control kids media consumption after a certain age without also infringing on their rights to privacy. Basically, you can’t do it right as a parent. You are either helicopter parenting or you aren’t controlling enough. It’s funny how we shift blame entirely to parents on this while ignoring that it’s an impossible task. And I am not even a parent.

      • @[email protected]
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        421 year ago

        It’s not hard to talk to your kids about porn or the existence of sex. Masturbation is ok and natural.

        I think unhealthy sexual behavior comes from denying that masturbation and sex are perfectly normal and healthy activities. It’s important as a parent to let your kids know about the potential risks (STDs, pregnancy, porn addiction) and to educate on consent. Give your kids a roadmap and advice, but don’t blanket ban or shame and they should be healthy about sex.

        • @[email protected]
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          51 year ago

          It needs to be done at school. Sex is a part of lives (we don’t have more humans without it.) By teaching kids about sex (in an age approprate way) they can learn how to have sex responsibilty, how to see the signs that someone has ill intentions (no one touches you there without permission etc…), as well as the importance of consent. Teens are going to have sex so we might as well prepare them for it.

        • Balder
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          21 year ago

          Well, except the traditional parents don’t think that way or just won’t do it, so saying that doesn’t matter in the cultural context. I don’t think there’s a solution to that except moving to a place more aligned with our values.

        • @[email protected]
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          -101 year ago

          Was that supposed to be a reaction to my comment? I was talking about expecting parents to supervise all and every media consumption of their children.

          • @[email protected]
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            81 year ago

            Healthy, open discussion contributes to a reduced need for parental controls and monitoring, but paired together parents have more than enough to help their kids develop into fully functioning humans.

            You make it sound like without strict monitoring 24/7 kids will turn into porn addicts and lose all sense of all other facets of life.

            The problem is that far right Catholic types won’t touch the subject on a personal level, and will try to abuse government to save themselves from what shouldn’t be but is an uncomfortable conversation.

      • @[email protected]
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        171 year ago

        Every phone and computer has parental control options that allow for as much control as you feel necessary. And obviously as you kids gets older you have to trust in your upbringing - but that’s also completely on you, to teach your kids to deal with modern media.

        • Lakes
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          51 year ago

          I’ve been using the parental controls to lock out FOX and other crap.

          Sucks to suck.

        • @[email protected]
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          -91 year ago

          No, not every phone and computer has parental control options. What about the PCs at libraries and schools? What about older siblings? Other students? Friends of the kid? It’s completely unrealistic to claim parents should just supervise every media usage.

          People also aren’t robots where you put “upbringing” in and get predictable results. You can teach them all you want, unless you completely ignore all privacy rights of your children, you won’t be able to control their media consumption.

          • @[email protected]
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            171 year ago

            No, not every phone and computer has parental control options.

            Which one don’t have one? And even if there are few - it’s not hard to get one with for your kids.

            What about the PCs at libraries and schools?

            Even in my day and age we had restricted access to things on our school pc - learning to get around it was the only useful thing I learned in those classes. But here the same, there are software solutions to control access on local machines.

            What about older siblings? Other students? Friends of the kid?

            What about them? They all also have parents or people responsible for them.

            It’s completely unrealistic to claim parents should just supervise every media usage.

            Because they should not. They should teach children to use media and gradually trust them more and more to make their own decisions. Like with everything else.

            You can teach them all you want, unless you completely ignore all privacy rights of your children, you won’t be able to control their media consumption.

            And as I said, you should not -you should teach them and then learn to trust them - that’s hard part of being a parent, you don’t have control over your childs life.

            • @[email protected]
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              1 year ago

              No real side in this debate because I don’t have kids and am basically an anti-natalist but I don’t think it’s terribly important to control kids media access above a certain age anyway.

              It’s probably important to prevent them from accidentally seeing irrelevant filth, and may make sense to prevent them from accessing certain stuff before they’re ten or eleven. But I had near unfettered access to the wild world of the Internet from a young age and I don’t think it made a big negative difference.

              I personally think it was important to my development to be able to explore things on my own terms in the relatively safe way of accessing pages on the Internet.

              I do think, however, that social media is likely riskier than media consumption for children in certain age groups, but most parents seem to be a-ok with their kids mainlining that and worried instead that they may accidentally see a nipple.

            • @[email protected]
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              -21 year ago

              Which one don’t have one?

              The ones I mentioned directly after… Please, do not quote out of context.

              I feel like people miss the context of the original content and put words in my mouth. I was referring to the claim that parents can “simply” supervise, and should supervise, all media consumption of their children. Which I argue is impossible without infringing on the children’s rights of privacy.

              It’s like people misinterpret my point with intent. Or there is a huge language barrier I can not comprehend.

              You can not supervise every media consumption of your children. That is all I wanted to say. I didn’t even comment upon whether or not and how good it works (or not) to teach your children about responsible media consumption. That’s a whole different topic.

              • @[email protected]
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                21 year ago

                The ones I mentioned directly after… Please, do not quote out of context.

                So none. All devices have the capability to control access.

                Which I argue is impossible without infringing on the children’s rights of privacy.

                But that whole conversation is in context of governmental control vs. parental control. In my opinion governmental control infringes much more on everyones rights in this case. So obviously your statement is interpreted in this context, not in vacuum.

                • @[email protected]
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                  11 year ago

                  Parents do not have access to parental control on devices of other children, other adults, school, libraries, etc.

    • @[email protected]
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      -61 year ago

      Do you think the same way about physical media? Like, do you think we should be letting kids buy porn magazines? Or that it should be legal for someone to wait outside a school and hand kids porn as they walk home?

    • @[email protected]
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      1 year ago

      Not sure what the spirit is behind this comment, but for all the cases that could be made in advocacy for porn, I don’t think this should be one. If porn is the only thing keeping rape cases from drastically increasing, there is something much more broken in our society, and access to porn won’t fix that.

      Edit: Holy shit, guys. I thought poor reading comprehension and inflammatory dog-piling was something that wouldn’t be so commonplace, after moving here from Reddit. Where did I say I support anything about what these pieces of legislation are enforcing? Every single response I’ve gotten so far has been arguing different points of discussion, of which my comment has nothing to do with. All I said was “GIVE THE RAPISTS THEIR PORN SO WE CAN BE SAFE!!!” isn’t exactly a strong angle to approach the issue from. One user is even sharing a study that includes data showing that giving pedophiles access to child pornography reduces rates of sexual assault with children. Like, no shit, but is the lack of child pornography really the core issue at that point? Don’t bother replying to me if you just want to put words in my mouth, and assume my stances on topics which I so far haven’t shared.

      • @[email protected]
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        241 year ago

        The spirit is quite clearly that rape and abuse numbers will likely go up slightly anywhere porn is banned.

        Nobody said “drastically.”

        • @[email protected]
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          151 year ago

          Holy shit I never thought I’d get to use line before.

          “Anyway, walk to your cars in pairs tonight. Rape’s up 8 percent”

      • @[email protected]
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        211 year ago

        Do you lock your door at night or when you leave? You shouldn’t have to, but you currently need to. So it would be stupid not to.

      • @[email protected]
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        1 year ago

        You’d rather rape rates be higher because the knob we know we can turn is slightly distasteful?

        Edit: GP is a coward and edited their comment rather than try to defend their pro-rape stance.

        • @[email protected]
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          -11 year ago

          “human nature” is such a loaded phrase that generally is only used justify bullshit. and linking some article from some site that reports on some study somewhere isn’t going to change that

        • @[email protected]
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          -101 year ago

          I am utterly unsurprised that there is evidence of a correlation between access to pornography and rates of sex-related crimes. However, I stand by what I said.

          • @[email protected]
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            141 year ago

            “We shouldn’t use evidence that banning porn has a potentially deleterious effect to make a decision on banning porn. We should use The Jesus!”

            It’s not OUR society that you’re responding to. It’s NUMEROUS societies.

            The rest of the world does exist, ya know.

      • @[email protected]
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        21 year ago

        No spirit at all. Genuinely want to see if / how these change.

        I have a feeling they wont.

  • @[email protected]
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    411 year ago

    Well, that basically is an age check. People of Arkansas are obviously not old enough to deal with porn when they support a government that produces such stupid laws.

  • @[email protected]
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    351 year ago

    Won’t someone think of the horny Arkansans?

    Seriously the Republicans are beyond the pale.

    • Roboticide
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      211 year ago

      They already go to the more liberal states for their abortions and their weed. Might as well download some porn while on the dispensary wifi.

  • Ab_intra
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    331 year ago

    I remember reading about this before. This is so stupid. Making people verify with offical documents… People are going to get their documents stolen so much more now. Nice job Arkansas!

        • @[email protected]
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          231 year ago

          You mean that every American citizen is automatically issued a photocard ID free of charge after they reach a certain age?

          Because that’s how it works in most of Europe for example. Some countries mandate that you must carry it at all times in case the police requires you to identify yourself. You use this card to vote, and you can also travel freely within the EU with it (loads of people don’t even own a passport for this reason).

          • @[email protected]
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            51 year ago

            You can 100% get and ID in the US (might be state dependant but all states i’ve lived in have had this option) that is not a drivers license. It looks similar but you just cant drive with it. It can be used for anything else like buying alcohol or as a governemnt id for something. I dont think theres a fee either, if there is its like $20 for the paperwork. And it is not just issued. You do have to go to the dmv or something.

          • @[email protected]
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            41 year ago

            Where in Europe is that? Not in Austria. Passports, driver’s licenses and personal identity cards all cost money. For a long time my only ID card was my passport, so I used that to vote, but now I have a driver’s license.

          • Ab_intra
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            31 year ago

            You might be right about this one. I myself don’t have a ID-card but use my bank card as identification.

            • @[email protected]
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              21 year ago

              I think we’ve lost thr plot a bit. Yes, the US is one of thr only countries without a national ID, but that’s sort of beside the point.

              Whatever ID you onr is forced to use, national or not, the issue is the state tyrannically policing teens behavior.

          • @[email protected]
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            11 year ago

            IDs cost money in Germany, you definitely aren’t required to have it on you (but most do because it’s in the wallet), and technically you aren’t even required to have one you’re only required to have an official identifying document which can also be a passport. Or, if you’re an alien, well, passport, or residency permit. Any Schengen one probably works.

            Oh and IDs aren’t required to vote, you usually just show them the piece of paper they sent you to tell you when and where to vote. Push come to shove and things being suspicious you have to “make believable” that you’re you, and that also works with a student ID or whatever.

        • @[email protected]
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          111 year ago

          The UK does not require you to have any ID. it is not your job to prove who you are. this does lead to a number of interesting problems.

      • @[email protected]
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        21 year ago

        The government doesn’t go out of it’s way to give you one, but they usually aren’t difficult to get. Driver’s licenses and passports are commonly used as ID. Many states will also issue a state ID card, though the process for getting one varries by state.

        Driving, or at least being able to drive, is so ubiquitous that nearly everyone over 16 has some kind of driver’s license. That’s especially true of rural areas like Arkansas.

        For these kinds of things “official document” typically means a driver’s license, passport, state ID, military ID, etc. Anything issued by a state or federal government that has your name, date of birth, and photo.

    • @[email protected]
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      271 year ago

      There are still tons of porn sites that don’t give a fuck about those state laws and don’t comply. No VPN needed, just browse to an unblocked site.

      They can’t force compliance of foreign hosts anyway

  • @[email protected]
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    321 year ago

    In other, unrelated news, VPN’s are experiencing an unexpected spike in traffic. More at 5.

    • @[email protected]
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      331 year ago

      I don’t understand why they use pornhub, it’s so much easier for them to get actual sex with their favorite dating app: 23andme.

        • @Fapp
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          21 year ago

          Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Both the carolinas, and missouri are all commonly made for of for their perceived incest issues

    • @[email protected]
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      111 year ago

      My knowledge on this is very limited and I currently lack sources, but I believe the issue that Mindgeek has is not the implementation of age verification, but instead the fact that all of the work is being put on Mindgeek to implement it instead of the states. I believe they’ve been fine in the past implementing age verification if the system already exists and they just have to tie into it.

    • @[email protected]
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      61 year ago

      I’m pretty sure their main issue is that they don’t want to be the ones doing the age verification. Louisiana set up a state run verification system, and pornhub has continued to operate their site in the state. I don’t want porn sites to have my ID info.

    • @[email protected]
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      11 year ago

      Didn’t the company also previously claim they were unable to effectively combat child porn?

      Classy lot.

      • @[email protected]
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        61 year ago

        No, they claimed they weren’t able to let amateurs post and prevent child porn. So they took down an enormous amount of content.