this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2025
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Half of the US Now Requires You to Upload Your ID or Scan Your Face to Watch Porn (www.404media.co)
submitted 1 day ago by tonytins@pawb.social to c/technology@lemmy.world
298 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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.

Archive: http://archive.today/uZB13

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[–] ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com 13 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

Not downplaying that this is real dumb, but "half the US" is meant to be misleadingly attention-grabbing. The states that are doing this are not the most populous states. No law like this exists in NY or CA, for example.

I don't know the amount of the population living under these laws, but it is not nearly half, even if half the states have passed such laws.

[–] brianpeiris@lemmy.ca 14 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

I did the math and it's 49.37% of the population, based on the 2024 census data, or 49.94% if you exclude Puerto Rico and D.C. I suppose mostly due to Texas and Florida being in the list, but also Ohio, Georgia and North Carolina with over 10M people each.

Here's the raw data

Based on the table from Wikipedia, and the list of states in the article.

State Population (2024) Requires Age Verification Population Requiring Age Verification
California 39,431,263 0
Texas 31,290,831 x 31,290,831
Florida 23,372,215 x 23,372,215
New York 19,867,248 0
Pennsylvania 13,078,751 0
Illinois 12,710,158 0
Ohio 11,883,304 x 11,883,304
Georgia 11,180,878 x 11,180,878
North Carolina 11,046,024 x 11,046,024
Michigan 10,140,459 0
New Jersey 9,500,851 0
Virginia 8,868,896 x 8,868,896
Washington 7,958,180 0
Arizona 7,582,384 x 7,582,384
Tennessee 7,227,750 x 7,227,750
Massachusetts 7,136,171 0
Indiana 6,924,275 x 6,924,275
Maryland 6,263,220 0
Missouri 6,245,466 x 6,245,466
Wisconsin 5,960,975 0
Colorado 5,957,493 0
Minnesota 5,793,151 0
South Carolina 5,478,831 x 5,478,831
Alabama 5,157,699 x 5,157,699
Louisiana 4,597,740 x 4,597,740
Kentucky 4,588,372 x 4,588,372
Oregon 4,272,371 0
Oklahoma 4,095,393 x 4,095,393
Connecticut 3,675,069 0
Utah 3,503,613 x 3,503,613
Nevada 3,267,467 0
Iowa 3,241,488 0
Puerto Rico 3,203,295 0
Arkansas 3,088,354 x 3,088,354
Kansas 2,970,606 x 2,970,606
Mississippi 2,943,045 x 2,943,045
New Mexico 2,130,256 0
Nebraska 2,005,465 x 2,005,465
Idaho 2,001,619 x 2,001,619
West Virginia 1,712,278 0
Hawaii 1,446,146 0
New Hampshire 1,409,032 0
Maine 1,405,012 0
Montana 1,137,233 x 1,137,233
Rhode Island 1,112,308 0
Delaware 1,051,917 0
South Dakota 924,669 x 924,669
North Dakota 796,568 x 796,568
Alaska 740,133 0
District of Columbia 702,250 0
Vermont 648,493 0
Wyoming 587,618 x 587,618
343,314,283 169,498,848
49.37%

[–] ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com 4 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

Ok, that is much closer to half (or, let's just say effectively half) than I thought. I'll go eat some crow.

[–] brianpeiris@lemmy.ca 3 points 5 hours ago

It was a reasonable assumption, but the distribution didn't pan out that way.

[–] Peruvian_Skies@sh.itjust.works 7 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

I apologize in advance for how pedantic this comment will be but "half the US now requires" obviously refers to half the administrative units (states in this case, could be counties or municipalites etc) while "half the US is required" would refer to the population, so technically the post title is not wrong because of the population distribution.

I'm going to wash my hands now so that my fingers forget they typed this.

[–] MiddleAgesModem@lemmy.world 4 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

That's actually useful pedantism.

[–] ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com 1 points 6 hours ago

That is so technically accurate, I love it.

[–] chunes@lemmy.world 2 points 8 hours ago

I don't know the amount of the population living under these laws

And yet you felt the need to comment on it anyway.