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half of states does not equal half of americans
this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2025
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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.
I don't know the amount of the population living under these laws
And yet you felt the need to comment on it anyway.
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This is the future you all dreamed of.
Yeah, I will never show my ID to a fucking porn site, get real
fucking porn site
No need to be redundant
Then you can't offend god by watching it and masturbating, like we intended!
-The Puritans pushing this legislation.
I'm not against proper age verifications as such, it would be like carding people in a store or a bar. But I just haven't seen an implementation of it that isn't prone to being a privacy nightmare and surveillance state shit.
I know there's some systems that generate a token that verify that you are 18 and you give that to the site, so neither side directly meet so to say. The site knows only that you have a valid token for being 18 and the app or service you use to generate the token knows just that you wanted to token for something. I think Spain was figuring out a system like that.
the easiest thing would be making the internet as a whole 18+.
under 18 would be restricted to a firewalled version and age info would be part of the cellphone or internet plan. on a family plan..? under 18s get a firewalled plan. home internet? have a family and home internet? owner of the service gets a pin to disable the firewall. when everyone in the house hold is over 18, the service is unlocked.
the truth is that none of this is actually about porn or kids, its about the new world lifestyle of surveillance state getting a foot in the door. thats why all this bullshit aligns with other aspect of modern political and business tech agendas
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When you are carded at a club the staff doesn't scan your card and keep it on file. They simply look at it and return it.
As someone who worked similar jobs and would have had to look at tons of IDs every day I can assure, I dont have the time or interest in remembering all of them.
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Also the fact no companies are ever held liable for losing all your personal info, I sure as hell don't trust this, it can backfire at all.
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Clearly, no-one involved in making these laws has ever heard of OAuth. Not every single site needs to manage your identity / credentials. The government already has this info, they can be the identity provider and use OAuth to grant access to age-gated resources without giving any personal data to the platform. Someone mentioned id.me, and I'm pretty sure that's how that platform works, though they're a private entity if I understand their site correctly.
I know most politicians are comically tech-illiterate, but it's so frustrating to see them constantly implement terrible solutions to already solved problems without asking a single expert who knows how this shit works.
That being said, California passed a bill with a not perfect, but better approach. User age is configured on the OS level when a user account is set up, and then it will tell platforms what age category the user belongs to, and nothing more:
(a) An operating system provider shall do all of the following:
(1) Provide an accessible interface at account setup that requires an account holder to indicate the birth date, age, or both, of the user of that device for the purpose of providing a signal regarding the user’s age bracket to applications available in a covered application store.
(2) Provide a developer who has requested a signal with respect to a particular user with a digital signal via a reasonably consistent real-time application programming interface that identifies, at a minimum, which of the following categories pertains to the user:
(A) Under 13 years of age.
(B) At least 13 years of age and under 16 years of age.
(C) At least 16 years of age and under 18 years of age.
(D) At least 18 years of age.
(3) Send only the minimum amount of information necessary to comply with this title and shall not share the digital signal information with a third party for a purpose not required by this title.
I think iOS already does this, actually.
While true, a government IDP would still be able to track what sites you're using your tokens at, which is not great.
Agreed, but you'd think they would prefer that. The way it is now, they have no way of knowing which platforms have your government IDs.
Though, let's be real, all they need to do is pay a data broker for the tracking data that's already being collected everywhere.
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The US government already uses a clearing house service, id.me, for it's own verification systems. Why is this not used for this purpose as well instead of forcing the site owners to collect and protect that data? It's stupid and unnecessary. There is literally already a system in place that they aren't even considering using.
I would like to dispute the primary supposition here that pornography is harmful. The use of pornography is nearly universal, and most of the harms that it supposedly causes are symptoms of other issues, or are invented to impose control of sexuality. The ability to reach out with the power of the law to impose religious edicts or project sexual hangups is one of the most esoteric, yet effective, forms of political control available other than violence. If you can control the way that people express their sexuality, you can probably also control their views through the monetization and restriction of sex.
Sexuality and privacy are human rights, and the creation of and access to pornography is protected by the first and fourth amendments under which so-called “age verification” is an unnecessary and excessive burden. If the idea is to prevent access to children, ask yourself why now all adults must now have their access prevented or interrupted.
Furthermore, it is not the state’s role to control childhood sexual development, and the idea that porn is harmful to minors is debatable at best and dubious at worst. Access to objectionable material is solely at the discretion of parents. The fact that they cannot effectively manage this is a symptom of another problem.
When Meta shows teenage girls makeup ads after they delete their selfies, or streaming apps are flooded with violent movies that are easily accessible to minors, this is acceptable. But when I want to watch porn it’s now my job to “protect minors” by compromising my privacy and security?
The real “danger” here is the availability of ideas that do not align with state power.
Feels like half the country wants to outlaw gay marriage and reimplement sodomy laws, so we're not exactly coming at this issue from a great place right now.
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I can't possibly see how this ends poorly.
All the public restrooms and back streets are going to packed with trafficked people.
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ITT: People who don't realize the advanced nature of fingerprinting that makes VPNs nearly useless in an authoritarian environment
The VPN is not supposed to protect you from an authoritarian government, it's meant to bypass the ID requirement, which it does very well.
I just don't want some company having a picture of me in my dressing gown getting ready for a big wank.
All it takes is Firefox with some tweaking. Or simply use it with chameleon (browser plugin) that throws fingerprinting off big time.
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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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