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.
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!
Good bot! I didn’t know I missed having a summary until now
Having one in link posts really should be mandatory in the rules for most communities
Good bot
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?
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.
Good bot
Arkansas: your kids should be working in a mine, not wanking online
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.)
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.
Oh no. I’m in Arkansas.
Guess I’ll turn on the VPN.
I’m in Arkansas
I’m sorry.
I grew up there. The northern part of the state is honestly one of the prettiest parts of our country. It is also filled with some of the most vile people. Vile people from everywhere else go there to retire and add to the smegma pot.
You just described basically the whole south.
Hey! I’m from Texas and… Fuck there’s Mansfield.
Mansfield sounds a bit gay ngl
Not true. There are many shitty looking places in the south that don’t attract remote retirees but are equally vile.
add to the smegma pot
Good lord.
It is a beautiful state, especially the part in the ozark mountains. But there is no way I could live there because of the people. It also lacks a single great city (Little Rock is a dump).
Oh no. I’m in Arkansas.
That’s putting it mildly
I recommend using Tor browser as an alternate option. For anybody who can’t use a VPN or doesn’t want to.
I’m not sure if streaming 1080p video over Tor would be very appreciated by the rest of the network. Or that it would be a very pleasant experience.
Do you always stream porn in 1080p? I guess I never thought about the quality, but I honestly don’t expect anything more than 720
Does the resolution really matter? I may be wrong, but I think nobody runs a Tor node, giving away their bandwidth for free and risking jail time, just so that some random dude in Arkansas can watch some porn.
Definitely not the right scenario for tor. If you dont care about your privacy and just want to see some titty boombom Fanny maracas then even the cheapest VPN would be a better experience.
Really though a decent VPN should something everyone has access to though anyway.
I think a vpn is simpler than tor personally. Also then videos gonna be buffering for a minute on tor lol
It’s not “simpler” at all because it includes the step of paying. But, indeed, better for this application.
Not necessarily. Granted installing the Tor browser will set up the services/daemons and access to the appropriate ports in the background, but generally the Tor protocol has a lot more going on than a VPN.
Additionally a VPN can be had for free from certain services like ProtonVPN. It’s not as fast as a paid VPN service, but during lower traffic times it’ll suffice. Plus if you know how to torrent over a VPN, then you just download the vids that way and you don’t need internet access every time you want to watch it.
This plus using CLI tools like yt-dlp on sites like pornhub, xhamster, etc, and you really start to realize how ineffective bullshit laws like these are for increasingly more technically savvy youths.
Nobody is going to prefer tor to a vpn.
I just use OperaGX’s shitty free VPN if I need it. It works enough to get any vpn needed jobs done.
Very Pretty Neice/Nephew?
That’s grim
So is the dating scene in Arkansas.
Wanna control the media your kids consume? Take away the screen. Or at the very least watch with them to filter their intake.
Sidenote: I live in AR and my very republican boss is livid about this. Reap what you sow, my dude.
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.
So your boss found out at about this at work? 🤔
Laid back work atmosphere. We talk about all kinds of shit.
I dunno, I would feel weird watching porn with my kids.
I don’t like child porn myself, but… Different folks, I guess…
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…
“We must blame them and cause a fuss, before somebody thinks of blaming us!”
The party of small government.
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
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.
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
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
“just move”
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.
Who in their right mind would expect a free porn site to go to this level of hassle?
Or is this a puritanical measure in disguise?
It’s the second one. I saw article where they talked how Florida was the first to pass it, pornhub put time and money into developing what they needed to comply and saw a 90% decrease in traffic because nobody wants to hand over their ID for free porn.
Wouldn’t even want to hand over my ID for a paid service.
Ohhhh fuck is it viewer’s age verification… I assumed it was the people in the porn… As if this is gonna stop horny kids from seeing porn
It’s to stop people from watching porn, they don’t care about kids.
yeah, the smart teenager is going to be charging the adults in his life $50 to get their porn working again.
Pretty sure PH already requires ID for people in porn. That’s why they wiped half the uploads some years aho pending accounts verifying themselves.
When this happened in Utah a few months ago, Google searches for VPN increased in like over 1000%.
The best Free VPN IMO is ProtonVPN,
For a general user that just wants a comprehensive google replacement, proton unlimited at $12/mo is a pretty good deal. Comes with the VPN premium and a password manager (now).
I do not understand the need to have your passwords stored somewhere in the cloud. I’d better sync them by a wire if I had several devices, not like passwords change every day. And there are cheaper VPNs out there with better reputation.
It’s not like they are plaintext, and increased availability/ redundancy would be one potential reason for deciding to have a cloud synced password manager database.
There are other solutions that you can self host or create yourself, and if that works better for you and your use case, I encourage it.
VPN industry lobbyists disguised as morality crusaders if you like tin foil hats as much as I do. Most likely not though, just people who feel the need to control how others spend their time and precious bodily fluids.
Especially since PornHub has an excellent point. Even though they theoretically could do an ID check, the sketchier porn sites simply wouldn’t. All these laws would do is push minors to use more dangerous porn sites. They’re not going to not watch porn just because the big, law abiding site checks IDs.
I don’t think it’s especially disguised…
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?
Why are you against Pdf files?
Edit: Though reading my question out loud I get it…
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?
Pdfs are like the best for reading. Consistent format on every device.
They just suck to create or edit.
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.
Sounds like all online games too
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.
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.
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.
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.
You will all go blind.
/s
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Parents do not have access to parental control on devices of other children, other adults, school, libraries, etc.
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?
Pretty sure it’s already illegal to distribute porn online to kids.
Things you aren’t legally allowed to do in Arkansas: watch porn, have an abortion, read, write, or wipe your ass.
I get the impression not a lot of people were reading, writing, or wiping there even when it was legal.
In other, unrelated news, VPN’s are experiencing an unexpected spike in traffic. More at 5.
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.
23.5andme
Do Arkansans have a reputation for inbreeding ?
Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Both the carolinas, and missouri are all commonly made for of for their perceived incest issues
Vpn prices bout to go up
Edit: I like mullvad
Vpn searches bout to go upFTFY
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.
I wanna see over the next year how rape and sexual harassment rates change.
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.
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.
So, are we torrenting porn now, or no?
It’s downright hypocritical that MindGeek has been outright supportive of the UK government’s efforts to push age verification checks on porn and have even tried to lobby our country to implement AgeID as the solution.
But the moment US states start demanding that they verify user ages, they start geoblocking.
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.
Didn’t the company also previously claim they were unable to effectively combat child porn?
Classy lot.
No, they claimed they weren’t able to let amateurs post and prevent child porn. So they took down an enormous amount of content.
