Pornhub blocks access to entire state of Virginia | Hacker News Reader

Pornhub blocks access to entire state of Virginia

virginiamercury.com

59 pointscuuupid42 comments

This similar Arkansas law is attracting lawsuits:

https://www.engadget.com/arkansas-passes-social-media-law-re...

Since DDG suggested searching for “arkansas age of consent” when I typed in “arkansas age verification”, I had to check:

https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/arkansas-sta...

So, it’s legal to have sex with 15 year olds there, but you can’t show them porn till they turn 18.

To be fair, unsupervised porn access isn’t great on young people, speaking from personal experience. I don’t think sex would necessarily be as damaging as porn (assuming condoms are used)

The easiest way to get people to turn their brains off is "think of the children".

My rights will not be infringed because of people that won't parent their kids. When that kind of thinking becomes reasonable then anything can be done for any reason just because children might have access because of poor parenting.

The appears reasonable to me. A 15 year old can’t purchase alcohol online and have delivered, right? We agree that is reasonable. There are long standing laws against children buying porn in real life. It does seem reasonable to me to require age verification for online porn.

and when the porn site gets hacked, your ID photo will be in the leak alongside every video you watched.

At this point everyone should assume that everything they do online is traceable to them and can be leaked. In the scenario you describe tracing porn activity to you is easier to do than it is now. I don’t know what the solutions are but I think it reasonable to have some sort of age verification process online for the activities that require age verification if done offline.

Children aren't buying porn, and if they were they would use their parents CC. Children don't have payment methods.

Anecdotal “evidence” should not drive policy. Surely you understand how dangerous this is.

No, it should not. But it does provide one with a basis, a starting point, for how to first approach and view a given topic. We all use our experiences to form mental models for now things work. So while anecdotal evidence should not drive policy it should drive which policies one gains an interest in.

Also, responding with anecdotal evidence should not drive policy isn’t really helpful without some sort of refutation of the evidence.

Yeah because speaking from experience, unsupervised access to porn was great for me.

This sort of thing is ripe for confirmation bias.

No mirrors then?

It's 14 in half of Europe by the way.

> The lowest minimum age is 14 years, set in seven Member States: Austria, Bulgaria, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Portugal.

Not even close to half. It's also not that clear cut and depends on the circumstances.

https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2017/mapping-minimum-ag...

Those have 40.1% of the European union population though.

is it really 14 with no upper limit on the other partners age?

On Czechia it was "both must be under 14, or both must be over 14, but one cant be younger and the other older. At least that was when I was about 14..

I'm not aware of all the specifics, rules like that are country specific but it's definitely possible that there are additional limitations.

Austria: Anyone 14 or older can have legal sex with anyone else 14 or older.

Exceptions that would make one a victim and one a criminal:

- victim is <16 and the perpetrator abused the victims "limited maturity"

- victim is <18 and did it for money or because the perpetrator abused the victims "predicament"

For Europeans where this website is blocked:

https://archive.is/gIbkY

There's a lot of irony in this.

I had to throw my VPN on to see this, PornHub in Virginia now shows a message by Cherie Deville against age verification as it's currently being enforced.

And if you're curious who Cherie Deville is, here's a mostly-sfw page: https://wikifid.com/cherie-deville/

> She earned an average income of around $70k to $90k per month. The net worth of Cherie Deville is approximately $5 Million dollars as of 2021.

She earns 90k but she is worth 5 Millions. Am i missing something ?

The denominator.

That’s less than 5 years to clear 5 million. Maybe 6 after taxes.

its 70k to 90k PER MONTH, not per year

This is impressive! I didn’t realize Pornhub even had a paramilitary wing, let alone one this effective. Hopefully the national guard will be able to handle the situation!

I had a similar thought.

I think it should be "PornHub blocks access FOR the entire state of Virginia". Or maybe "from", but definitely not "to".

I clicked the link to the article and I was welcomed with: "This site not available in your country"

At least, Pornhub doesn't block whole countries.

In 100 years time when history students look back at the triggers of the American Civil Wars, this event will be up there with Fort Sumter.

A simple google search unblock pornhub will bring proxy sites that will unblock pornhub!! Very simple lol

How to quickly setup a VPN saas co?

There are plenty of adults who want to access these sites but will never upload a govt ID to one.

I could do some promos for VPNs, should I affiliate with one? Create a new service? Whitelabel from another service? I already imagine other ways to increase revenue while doing it.

I've heard a lot of people start from whitelabel Nord

I wonder how many people will be moving out of state because of this.

probably not a ton. NoVA and a few other areas like Norfolk are wealthy because of tech and the military, and they'll just use VPNs. Rural VA still believes the Earth is 6000 years old and will embrace the new law.

I’m guessing zero

So, Utah and Virginia want their residents to surrender their private informations to shaddy websites and Louisiana is disposed to itself provides these informations.

How are they doing the blocking. Is it by IP or geofencing? Neither of which is very accurate. How else can they do it?

Does it need to be 100% accurate?

Of course not. It’s a stunt.

Ironically the Virginia Mercury also blocks access to me, presumably due to Cookie Consent.

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