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Comment by verdverm | Hacker News Reader

> In the complaint, the plaintiffs write that ... on-device content filtering would be a better method of restricting access to porn for children, they write. “But such far more effective and far less restrictive means don’t really matter to Texas

Wait... what? On device filtering is a better, less restrictive means to accomplish this? Are those behind the on-device CSAM scanning behind this too?

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edit, thank you to all those who clarified that this is different from on device scanning and that is in fact a better solution

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It means requiring the age restricted device to validate against the existing rating headers “Adult” websites already set, versus requiring the client to upload their personal information to validate their own identity to the “Adult” site.

FWIW, iOS already does this. If you have parental controls enabled and a http request is made with a response that sets ‘rating: RTA-whatever’, webkit will refuse to render it.

This is a good thing. The texas law blows, same general category of “harass the user instead of embrace the platform” as cookie banners.

They are likely referring to features such as iOS' parental controls, which can limit adult websites.

To take things even further, some ISP providers provide parental controls which block at the DNS level.

Pornhub is correct; they shouldn't be the one doing the blocking or verification. Leave that up to those that have control over the devices.

Yeah.

I’d love it if I could buy a device for my grade schoolers that auto-locked the screen if it saw that the next frame of whatever youtube kids video is being played contains porn or vivisections or whatever is sneaking past Google’s censors this week.

This could happen on-device, and be an opt-in, paid feature.

(The above are real examples, so we simply haven’t given them access to youtube yet.)

Is there that much porn on youtube? and even gore?

I remember people warning starkly against blindly scraping imgur as it had a lot of CP, but I had hoped Google had better image/video processing for it.

Yes, it's a better, less restrictive means to accomplish this.

Because it means that instead of Pornhub having to identify a person's identity and all the expenses and privacy issues that entails, it happens in the home, by a parent, with an application that restricts access to certain content.

Pornhub doesn't need to know who you are and the government doesn't need to know what you're doing.

This is like saying strip clubs shouldn't need to ID minors attempting to enter the building i.e. parents should be fully responsible for restricting a minor's access strip clubs. I think it's reasonable to conclude strip clubs also bear a responsibility to prevent minors from entering. This is just the porn industry shirking its responsibility.

It's not like that at all, because a website is nothing like a strip club regardless of what content it contains. Yes, the parents should be responsible for their own home networks and what travels across them. If the technology doesn't exist or isn't sufficient, then a market will be created to fill that need in short order.

This legislation is not about children accessing smut. It's about the government knowing which adults are accessing smut. That some children attempt to gain access is simply a convenient excuse and a way to rationalize the intrusion into privacy.

Should parents also be responsible for their physical home and what travels into it?

Because sex workers do make out calls. Should 16 year olds be able to call for strippers for their birthday parties, and the onus put on their parents to stop their entry? I’d think you would say no.

The problem with the law as it stands isn’t the concept. It’s that it’s difficult to execute to the point where it basically bans free porn sites.

Pay sites can still live because asking for ID and credit cards is something they can do and check manually. However free sites can’t do that.

If the government provided some mechanism to automatically validate that a persons is over 18, when making an HTTP request then that would be fine. It would be no worse than having ID scanners at a club.

My understanding is that this is like checking an ID for the club when the club uses an ID scanner to validate. In this case the device is presenting the club with the answer rather than the club having to make the query

Parents installing things on devices accessible to minors is certainly less restrictive given it doesn't impact anyone else.

While that may be true, it is not unconstitutional to write dumb laws. I'm not sure how they have a case here.

1st Amendment exceptions do sometimes hinge on whether or not less burdensome alternatives were explored first. IANAL, but "you didn't even think if there were other ways to accomplish the same goals" can be a factor in deciding whether speech restrictions are over-burdensome.

If I remember correctly, this came up a couple of times during Covid over religious gathering restrictions -- the question was less "can the government ever restrict a religious gathering" and more "is it actually necessary for you to do this? Have you taken steps to minimize the burden, is the burden imposed greater than the state's specific need for this restriction?"

How a judge would rule on that in this case... :shrug:, but it doesn't seem to be an uncommon argument. There have been Supreme Court ruling that boil down to, "it's not unconstitutional necessarily but you did it wrong and we think you were too slapdash doing it, so try again."

> While that may be true, it is not unconstitutional to write dumb laws.

It was when the kind of “dumb” is a more intrusive (on fundamentlal rights) than necessary means of serving a compelling government interest that would otherwise be sufficient to warrant some intrusion on fundamental rights.

Or when it is an intrusion on fundamental rights without such an interest at all.

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