As of this week, half of the states in the U.S. are under restrictive age verification laws that require adults to hand over their biometric and personal identification to access legal porn.

Missouri became the 25th state to enact its own age verification law on Sunday. As it’s done in multiple other states, Pornhub and its network of sister sites—some of the largest adult content platforms in the world—pulled service in Missouri, replacing their homepages with a video of performer Cherie DeVille speaking about the privacy risks and chilling effects of age verification.

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[–] 416 points 11 months ago (48 children)

Everyone who ever submits for age verification will have their information stolen. It is a matter of when, not if.

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  • [–] 128 points 11 months ago (31 children)

    I mean, a VPN is way cheaper than whatever hoops Idaho wants you to jump through to watch some 10/10 goth hottie get their ass eaten.

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  • [–] 87 points 11 months ago (23 children)

    Yea, but soon we’ll have no states to vpn to, and we will have to start using the Quebec servers, then all the websites will be in French and I’ll have to learn a new language.

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  • [–] 25 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    I VPN to Montreal servers. Everything is still displayed in English.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    Interesting…all of it? I’m in Ontario but my hub/ISP is in Quebec so all my random advertising is in French.

    Somehow it knows to target advertising to you in English…maybe you need to work on your privacy?

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    I've got a lot of privacy stuff, but I also know that I'm being tracked. I'm not using the VPN for privacy though. I'm using it to watch porn, so I don't really care. If I did want privacy there's a lot of things I could improve, but I'm not that worried about it.

    As for the targeted advertising, I don't see any of that. I wouldn't be surprised if that were in French but I wouldn't know.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    Yeah…I don’t really know what I’m talking about…it’s not like I make much of an effort for privacy. I’m guess it’s just my particular ISP. It’s like…the random advertising is in French…but if they know who I am it’s targeted…it’s mixed.

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  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago

    This is the plan all along. It’s not about porn, it’s not even about control. It’s about teaching Americans a second language. You know who’s behind this? Duolingo and Big Language.

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  • [–] 12 points 11 months ago* (7 children)

    soon we’ll have no states to vpn to

    I've yet to see any state legislature take that proposal seriously. Unlike trying to make porn sites take your credit card info in advance (a policy they hated so much gosh darn it!) you're really fucking with the money when you try and regulate VPNs. Also, just... not really that practical. For the same reason Congress has been pretty toothless when it comes to regulating Torrents and digital encryption, going after VPNs at the regulatory level is something of a technological rabbit hole.

    then all the websites will be in French

    Nothing will ever make anyone on the internet learn a language other than English.

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  • [–] 11 points 11 months ago (6 children)

    I’ve yet to see any state legislature take that proposal seriously

    snekerpimp meant if every state requires ID, then VPN to another state will not get around the ID check.

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  • [–] 11 points 11 months ago* (5 children)

    Setting aside the fact that there's no appetite for these laws in liberal states because its purely a conservative fetish, you can still get porn on the internet without going to the big corporate online clearinghouses.

    FFS, there was porn on Napster back in the day.

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  • [–] 12 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    There's no appetite for these laws in the voter public of any state, as far as I can tell given how VPN usage skyrockets in every state where these laws are put in place. Is California no longer liberal? Also consider the people running sites in any of the states that have such a law. They may resort to just blanket ID-checking everyone rather than risk prosecution.

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago* (1 child)

    There’s no appetite for these laws in the voter public of any state

    Evangelical right-wing states have a huge contingent of politicians who compete with one another to be the toughest on "child sex trafficking" and other Epstein-tangential topics. So, in the GOP primary, you get a lot of promises about how you're going to round up all the pedos and put them to the sword or whatever. And this inevitably manifests as "please insert your dick into this pepper grinder to access the pornography" laws, as a sort-of practical compromise.

    Is California no longer liberal?

    Current Status: Failed (2024-08-15: In committee: Held under submission.)

    Looks like they're retaining their title. That said, if you peak under the "Supporters and Opponents" what you're going to see in the Supporters section is a litany of right-wing evangelical organizations and a couple of mega-corps.

    They may resort to just blanket ID-checking everyone rather than risk prosecution.

    The current strategy appears to be refusing to host content in the regulated states. Even then, there are plenty of social media and general content distribution channels that dodge the regulation by claiming to be content-blind in how they serve their data. I don't see Facebook or YouTube getting the business end of any of these regulations. Almost as though they're toothless if you've got enough money to tip your Congresscritters.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago

    Evangelical right-wing states have a huge contingent of politicians who compete with one another to be the toughest on "child sex trafficking" and other Epstein-tangential topics. So, in the GOP primary, you get a lot of promises about how you're going to round up all the pedos and put them to the sword or whatever. And this inevitably manifests as "please insert your dick into this pepper grinder to access the pornography" laws, as a sort-of practical compromise.

    I'd say rather than a compromise, the "protect the children!" porn bans are an excuse to go after LGBTQ content by marking any and all content related to them as explicit and demonizing them as pedophiles going after children. They don't care who it hurts along the way.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (1 child)

    Napster was audio only. Did you mean limewire, or kazaa, or one of the many napster clones that came after?

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    Napster was audio only.

    It was file type specific and had a soft file side limit, but that's easy enough to work around.

    Did you mean limewire, or kazaa, or one of the many napster clones that came after?

    They all had it as well, yes

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago*

    Heh. I’m in Ontario, but I guess my DNS is outta Quebec…so most of my banner/insert advertising is in French. It’s fucking awesome because I have no idea what they’re saying or advertising to me most of the time. Highly recommend.

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  • [–] 28 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    States are also considering banning VPNs now as well. This will never work and is a horrible idea, but it’s being considered.

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  • [–] 14 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    States are also considering banning VPNs now as well.

    Well, some legislators have proposed taking wack-a-mole to the next level and demanding all VPNs be certified and regulated. But good luck getting that passed through the Silicon Valley Presidency or the Ancap Courts.

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  • [–] 7 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    I would count on them being hypocritical. The rich will just use Starlink.

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  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago

    As a watcher from the outside:

    It might not be fun to hear but vpn is neither the solution to government oppression nor a solution against tracking (recently there was a good article regarding that) so all you do is pay more.

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  • [–] 20 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    yeah I barely can bring myself to give like Fidelity or Charles Schwab photos of my ID, just even having a digital image of my ID on my computer feels wrong lol

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  • [–] 20 points 11 months ago (12 children)

    Ironically? If we were a less prudish society this genuinely wouldn't matter.

    "Oh no! Sarah likes threesome porn. Uhm... okay?"

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  • [–] 50 points 11 months ago (10 children)

    I don’t think that’s the main reason folks are concerned about having their government IDs stolen.

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  • [–] 28 points 11 months ago (9 children)

    Yeah, people already browse porn with zero privacy precautions, so linking their fetishes to them would be trivial. The main concern is having yet another privacy vulnerability vector for identity theft.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago* (8 children)

    And there are so many of those these days that a new one genuinely doesn't matter.

    If you haven't been offered a free year of identity theft insurance recently? Some company/org is plugging their ears.

    SSNs are a fundamentally broken system (look it up). Photo IDs? I will guarantee you that if you go to ANY city there is someone at the DMV who will look up whatever you want for fifty bucks. The ONLY reason credit card fraud is less massive than it is (and it is MASSIVE) is because the CC companies put in the effort to monitor that and lock it down.

    EVERYONE should have their credit records locked unless they are actively applying for something.


    No. the issue with these is that we live in an increasingly christofacist society where even looking at porn makes you Unclean. And if you look at the wrong porn? Off to the reeducation camps with you!

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  • [–] 21 points 11 months ago (6 children)

    Um, having direct access to pull my government photo ID is a huge deal. Lots of online services require photo ID or other more in-depth verification to pull loans and stuff. So yes, this new vector IS a serious concern.

    And paying someone $50 at any DMV? C'mon, man, that sounds like some unfounded bullshit. Hardly anyone is going to risk a cushy government job with solid benefits and great hours for fucking $50, let alone the potential risk of going to jail.

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  • [+] -7 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    Your "government photo ID" really isn't all that useful unless people are skilled enough to make fakes (which is a whole different mess). What matters is your SSN, your credit card number, your address, etc.

    And those are basically everywhere.

    As for the DMV thing: You sweet summer child.

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    this "you'd have to make a fake to use it!!" argument is especially ridiculous when you've posted on a story about submitting a picture of your photo ID in place of a physical one. and one of the pieces of info you say actually "matters" is literally written on said ID

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  • [–] -4 points 11 months ago* (2 children)

    Huh?

    If you go to a bar with an ID you cut out of printer paper, they are going to throw your ass out Jazzy Jeff style. The actual ID isn't useful without a LOT of additional resources... at which point your photo means almost nothing.

    As for stuff like addresses? Again, that is basically EVERYWHERE because just about EVERY org has a data breach at least once a year. You might as well be saying people need your long form birth certificate to know what your name is.

    Like... I'mma be blunt with you. A lot of the "your photo ID is the most important secure thing ever" nonsense comes from republican chuds trying to disenfranchise voters who live in cities. It is the idea that your photo ID is some magical artifact that protects you when the reality is that it is basically just a way to tie your name to your face. All the pertinent information is everywhere else.

    Like... photo IDs tend to be one of those weird cases where we are ACTUALLY using biometrics (in this case, appearance) as a login rather than a password. Anything of value will just use that to cross reference you with an entry that is already in a system.

    And in terms of the actual avenues for fraud? That ID doesn't mean shit.

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  • [–] 9 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 child)

    my dude nobody is using a stolen identity to go to a bar. they're taking out lines of credit and you don't have to always present a physical, photo ID for those because there are entire industries of creditors that have no physical location. you don't even seem to be aware of the reasons why someone would bother stealing someone's identity so if you'd like to continue this argument I invite you to have it with yourself.

    edit: and MAJOR lol at using a bar as your example. establishments well known for being sticklers about the quality of fake IDs you "sweet summer child"

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  • [–] -5 points 11 months ago

    And legit creditors just need your SSN, address, and maybe an old address. They run a credit check (hence why you freeze that shit) and then you are driving away in your 4k a month pickup truck.

    And less legit creditors... don't ask too many questions other than where you live and where your loved ones love.

    But hey. Feel free to throw a hissy fit rather than think through why that plastic card actually doesn't matter anywhere near as much as you thought it did. I mean, it would be nicer if you could actually sit and think and learn. But this is the 2020s. Ain't nobody doing introspection.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago

    It's not really about the porn in the first place (for advertisers it is - they hate sex unless it's selling their product). The porn is merely an avenue to attack another minority group. In this case, LGBTQ people. Make everything about them sexual in some way, and then ban them from life for sexual deviancy.

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  • [–] 143 points 11 months ago* (4 children)

    That will protect the children, for sure.

    If I lived in the US, I'd be far more concerned about sending my kids to school but whatever.

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  • [–] 36 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Also church. I wouldn't want them to get diddled by a pastor.

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago

    Sure, but that is more of a Christian church problem over a US one. There are plenty of cases where I'm from too, and also a few recent scandals with private Catholic school, so I'd tend to shit on the Vatican rather than the US on that particular one.

    I just can't imagine thinking my children could get shot every time they go to school.

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  • [–] 137 points 11 months ago (14 children)

    The end game here is to require ID for social media in order to suppress dissent. This is an easy first step due to the longstanding controversy surrounding pornography.

    It's all about control.

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago

    Social media has mostly divided and isolated us. Twitter and some other platforms have been useful communications channels during unrest. But there could be other forms of communication just for that, since it's all owned by billionaires now anyway, we need to stop imagining them as reliable tools.

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  • [+] -7 points 11 months ago (11 children)

    I hope to Darwin social media ends up requiring ID. I believe it would do wonders for democratic discourse. It was only last week, a number of large US right-wing accounts were revealed to be driven from outside the US. Is it healthy for democracies that so many people pay heed to foreign actors?

    If you write an op-ed for a newspaper, the newspaper need to identify you as there is an editor who is responsible for what gets written in the paper. This ensures there’s someone who can stand to account for any libellous statements.

    With social media we immediately reneged on this and allowed them to wash their hands; “we are just a channel” is a pretty bleak statement to make when the discourse on social media destroys the lives of minorities, encourages suicide, undermines our democracy with AI and troll farm bots.

    And we can do this is a privacy preserving way - of course the social media companies feeds the opposite narrative because they don’t want to implicated in the piles of shit they shovel on top of our democracy.

    If social media was required to ensure they could tie an account to a real person, which they needn’t reveal unless forced to by a court order, we would know that we were engaging with a real opinion, not something coughed up by a Putin-run AI bot or a Chinese troll farm.

    The system required isn’t that complex.

    A social media

    • a social media company is opening a new account.
    • it sends the person opening the account to any of the multitude of ways we can already verify identity online.
    • the person is identified and issued an identity token, which gets sent to the social media company.
    • the social media company says “great, this person is real and we can, if required by a court order, work with the identity company to reveal who this person is is”. Right now, all the social media company has is a token.
    • the account is opened.

    In a system likes this, the identity company doesn’t know who the person is; that sits with the social media company.

    Nor does the identity service know which account is actually posting for this real person, all they know is they verified someone as part of an account opening process.

    Social media should be treated like the press - make them accountable for what gets posted and allow them to place this accountability on a real person by labelling posts “op-eds” if, and only if, they know who is doing the posting.

    We are letting large, anonymous money-men ruin our democracy behind the veil of “free discourse”. It’s not free to the many people who gets harmed by it.

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  • [–] 28 points 11 months ago (8 children)

    I'm not going to give up my privacy over your fear of foreign bogeymen.

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  • [–] 21 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    It's all fun and games until the government decides that it really doesn't like dissenting opinions. We've already seen serious erosion of 1A rights in the U.S.

    It would be one thing to have this in a world with benevolent leadership. But that isn't the world we are living in.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    It would be one thing to have this in a world with benevolent leadership. But that isn’t the world we are living in.

    So, Fantasyland, then. The closest anyone gets to benevolent leadership is their own parents, and that's only maybe 50-50.

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  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Bogeymen are imaginary. Political troll farms are real.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    They certainly are real, but their machinations are misunderstood. They often consist of people in poor countries looking to make a buck. Follow the money. You'll find that even if you were to build a great firewall for your country of residence, troll farms will still reach you, and that domestic astroturf ain't any greener than foreign astroturf.

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  • [+] -6 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    That's the point.

    You, as a common citizen, should not have to. But the moment you feel like to share your thought or opinion, you should be identifiable and made responsible for it.

    The current social media outlets shield behind the argument they act solely as channels while at the same time fostering and allowing for "anonymous" groups or individuals to spout whatever views they want, often views that deter from advancing social and civilizational progress. Hence the current state of the world, with authoritarianism on a rise and hight like there wasn't in nearly 70 years.

    When the internet was made of individual websites, the person behind it was automatically made responsible for whatever they put on it. That was fair and reasonable.

    Pushes like this, is assigning suspition/guilt before any wrong doing.

    I will grant the overall facilitated acess to pornography is damaging the kids. There are already enough studies showing how the early access to porn is related to bad interpersonal relations on social, emotional and sexual level.

    But this does not imply you should be identifying yourself to access adult content or anything on the web. Just impose curation. If it's available to the public, you're responsible for it.

    Old school "dirty" books and magazines stores had controlled access and the really hardcore stuff was well out of reach of who should not get to it. Free porn is nice but there are things available that should be behind pay walls or at least registry, with identity verification.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    If your point is to stifle dissent, then sure. Whoever controls the narrative will make contradiction look unacceptable. If your name is tied to an opinion that may be construed as contrary to the dominant narrative, you will hesitate to post it, and if you do post it, then you will be taken down with very real consequences because of that tie to your real identity. Employers already look at social media to determine if your behavior is considered acceptable to them, even if you keep your professional life completely separate. Your proposal only destroys free speech further by making it worth less and less the cost of expressing.

    Make no mistake, the excuse of protecting children from pornography is just that, an excuse, to restrict freedom of speech by putting into place the mechanisms to identify people and strike at them for daring to express their opinions. Pornography being in the form of books, magazines, tapes, DVDs, whatever physical media did not necessarily control access. There are many with stories of how they managed to gain access as children, either through a parent's collection or otherwise. Similarly, this internet ID bullshit can be defeated, but it'll be backed by stricter and stricter legislation to make defeating it illegal and they won't be prosecuting children or the companies providing the ID verification service, they'll be prosecuting adults using tools to defeat these mechanisms to express their opinions.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    No, it's not my point, although there is a difference between expressing ideas, no matter how contrarian or controversial they may be, and spouting hate or other positions detrimental to advancement.

    I am aware of what you mention of companies sniffing for the social media of employees and potential applicants. It is a shameful practice. And if it is illegal in my country, has it is viewed as trespassing on one's privacy, it should be as welll any and everywhere.

    Nobody should be ashamed nor afraid of expressing their opinions and ideas. Unfortunately, freedom of expression is often confused with the hability of saying whatever one feels like it, which is not.

    What you describe (and fear, I take) is persecution. And that already tells whatever system an individual lives in is already deep into veering towards blatant suppression of rights. The US case is so off the rails it deserves an entire category to itself but it is only one among too many.

    On the question of banning access to pornography I am completely against it. Yet I can not and will not deny the amount of evidence that supports that early and easy access to it is in fact tainting how people in general and kids in particular understand how relations are constructed. Pornography is really good at teaching wrong things. Nothing against it per se, it can be fun, but it should be consumed just like sugar, tobbacco and alcohol: in moderation and knowing of its ill effects.

    I personally started reading erotic books much sooner than it was supposed. I recognize that curiosity towards sex and sexuality is ingrained in what makes us humans. I'm not advocating for banning adult material of any sort. What I would like to see would be clear boundaries for that specific content, for it not reaching those who are not expected to access it unware. It can't be written off to caveat emptor. Even less because a lot of it is "free".

    The web is as it is today in great measure due to porn. There was a lot of money being poured into technology to facilitate access to it and in high definition. Let's be thankful for it but that is it. It can be almost ubiquious nowadays, along with casinos and crypto. It's too much and too much of a good thing is bad for everyone. Remember death by snu-snu.

    I have no illusion we, as a species and a civilization, are going through a very dark period. Again. All the prior should have been able to sink in the lesson but we are either too sttuborn or too stupid to learn. Censoring, wide spread control of ideas, knowledge and thought is detrimental to a fair and free society.

    Excuses like "protecting children", "fighting terrorism", etc, are, as you correctly said, excuses to make advances on individual rights and liberties. But we should be as concerned by now that companies do whatever they can to reach their goals and we are being force fed too many things that are not good for us. Two wrongs don't make a right but something has to change. Perhaps ceasing to be afraid of being responsible by one's own ideas and words would be a good start. Maybe stop feeding social media would be another. And perhaps reigning in companies on bad practices could be another.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 child)

    I am not doxxing myself because the paranoia will likely continue in such a scenario.

    And what's next? Suspecting US citizens of being foreign agents and then sicking the FBI on them?

    Unlike you, I'm not going to be cheerleading the return of McCarthyism.

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    [–] 66 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Yeah, I will never show my ID to a fucking porn site, get real

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  • [–] 61 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    *half of the us requires you to "visit" iceland to watch porn

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  • [–] 13 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    Still allowed for now. 6 months tops?

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  • [–] 59 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    The most important issue facing the world: Someone might be jerking off in the privacy of their own home.

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    [–] 58 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    The death of freedoms by the day.

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  • [–] 9 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

    those aren't claps you're hearing. might just be the half that can still watch porn...

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  • [–] 11 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    I wouldn't care if 1% of the population watched it. The truth is that enough of the population watches it that it is a useful tool to track and dox the population. People in power don't care who you fuck or don't fuck, they care how they can use who you fuck against you.

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  • [–] 55 points 11 months ago

    Watch them retreat once Grindr states that due to increasing safeguards and transparency, all of their files will be released to the public.

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  • [–] 55 points 11 months ago (7 children)

    I'll end up becoming an artist and drawing my own porn before I give my ID to a website to view it.

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  • [–] 26 points 11 months ago

    All this actually does is push people to porn sites outside of Missouri's jurisdiction and/or sites that don't give a fuck about being "legitimate businesses" or whatever. It's effectively prohibition and the outcome will be the same.

    This shit never actually makes anyone safer, it just draws more normal users to seedier parts of the internet.

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  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago (2 children)
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