What a thorough article. It seems that it is finally true; I just visit that site for the articles.

I'm not really against age verification, the problem is that I'm very, very against having a government backed database of all porn I visit. Nobodies really assured me that current implementations aren't doing that.

Plus, at the rate we're going I'm not really sure how much longer porn will be legal, free speech rights be damned. Both the right and the left and the younger generation seem fully invested in 'save the kids' mentality these days.

Some users might even be tempted to turn to the dark web to escape this wave of state overreach — though we certainly don’t recommend it.

If you're going to the dark web for porn, you're gonna have a bad time.

No easy access to legal porn means illegal porn becomes more profitable. That's very bad.

One thing they didn't focus on is how it explicitly makes sexual minorities feel unsafe. When Pornhub enabled age verification in my conutry via soc media authorization, I freaked out and stopped using it because I didn't want my real identity being connected to my watch history in any way. It wasn't disclosed on entry if the VA broker can collect info on what I'm interested in, and it is a major security risk if one's state becames authoritarian and would get a handy database of people watching everything but vanilla.

Also I use Private Browsing for porn, so if I have to sign in every time to some third party age verification service - which is never saved logins because it's private browsing - that's an additional roadblock to mainstream sites.

There’s a kernel of something positive in decentralization, though. Me pointing this out feels a little bit like someone saying how good COVID lockdown was for the environment, but I still feel like it’s an important point.

An internet made of lots of small sites is better at resisting censorship and centralized control. People should remain accustomed to using a bunch of individual sites, not JUST the biggest sites on the internet, and amateur sysadmins should maintain their “host a public web server from an at-home business internet connection” chops.

There being lots of small porn sites makes it harder for anyone to apply pressure and make certain kinds of affirming content disappear.

That’s … just about everything positive I could say about this idea. Not a fan.

We agree with Meta (Facebook, Instagram), Aylo (Pornhub), and many others that the only effective solution to the problem of minors accessing porn is a systematic approach — applied at the device level, or at least at a higher layer than individual sites, such as app stores.

Oh no, please, no.