What the US Pornhub 'ban' is really about | Hacker News Reader

What the US Pornhub 'ban' is really about

independent.co.uk

17 pointsthunderbong27 comments

We now have the first generation of people who grew up with easily accessible porn from a young age. Happens to also be the same generation that grew up with violent video games and "parental advisory" music.

Either millennials are a gang of psychotic murdering rapists or religious people are knee-jerk driven idiots.

These ID-tracking laws are a dragnet to build kompromat and return society to puritanism.

If these lawmakers really cared about children, they'd look into giving them school lunches.

There's far creepier stuff happening on VRChat and Roblox anyway. These lawmakers don't even care enough to understand what they're talking about.

But in any case, the legislation will lag innovation. In two years, you'll be able to generate custom porn of whatever you want on your own device using diffusion video models. No Internet needed.

> you'll be able to generate custom porn of whatever you want on your own device using diffusion video models

I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that, since you did not complete the age verification process.

>We now have the first generation ... easily accessible porn from a young age.

I'm GenX and there was always a Playboy or something similar around. Porn on VHS was pretty accessible since it was so easy to copy. There was also "Skinemax," (Cinemax) as we called it after hours.

>grew up with violent video games and "parental advisory" music.

GenX also grew up with this.

Yep. My dad kept his playboys under his bed. I knew as young as probably six or seven. They sold them openly in magazine racks at the gas station and in middles school most boys had easy access.

The 90s had Usenet, IRC and free image galleries. Smut was on AOL and Compuserve. If you had a 56k modem, you could get as much porn as you could download.

Early 2000s had limewire and other early p2p sharing programs. Same places we got pirated games, music and movies was riddled with porn.

Porn has been ubiquitous forever. The demand will always be there. It’s human nature.

Your comment reminded me of watching the scrambled Playboy Channel on cable TV, desperately hoping to spot a moderately warped and discolored image of a boob.

For the younger readers, this is approximately what it looked like:

https://www.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/1g05h46/trying_t...

Baby boomers grew up with sex, drugs and rock 'n roll, yet they're far from a gang of drug addicted rapists playing loud music.

Ymmv

Definitely psychotic murdering rapists. They are so good at it that they have managed to conceal their heinous actions from the crime statistics. Millennials are clearly supervillains.

You're right. How do you square that with the fact this generation is also having less sex and having a harder time meeting romantic partners?

There may be some typo discrepancy ;)

>US states where Pornhub and other US states are blocked

>those states have passed laws requiring porn websites to verify that their users are under-18

No adults allowed, their eyes couldn't handle it :)

These laws just push people towards shadier sources of porn that have far less oversight or accountability. Even if we were to implement one of the reasonable-sounding age verifications systems mentioned in the article, the outcome would still be more young people discovering porn via torrents or Discord servers or whatever kids use these days, instead of PornHub.

Related article from CNN, yesteday, "More than a dozen states have passed new laws that led to restrictions on pornography. Now, the Supreme Court will weigh in" https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/11/politics/invs-porn-age-verifi...

No direct mention of homomorphic encryption but from an Australian review some time ago the privacy commission here was reasonably OK with robust 3rd party privacy preserving cryptographic methods.

I get that the debate here is not about technocrats, it's a society issue not a which technology issue.

Society issues change every 4 to 8 years so standby a bit and it’ll change

Takes longer sometimes. Hawke proposed "Australia card" in 85 and the wave of nup was tsunamical. It's been nupped out for 40 years. The frog is boiling very slowly behind mygov ID.

Wait, I thought every pornsite already had age verification, that modal that pops up and says "are you sure you are over 18?"

If your in several states they'll ask for a picture of your ID now.

All of these privacy arguments seem a little silly to me given that you have no privacy anyhow. The site is getting an IP address and a browser fingerprint, and that’s enough to uniquely identify a person in most cases.

As soon as you have to provide an ID or a credit card to access a site, we’re talking about PII which is a whole different ballgame for privacy.

Maybe from a legal standpoint, but from a practical standpoint, any website who cares to identify you can do so with good probability if they're willing to buy the appropriate databases. Perhaps in some imaginary idealized version of the internet you can just browse sites without it going on your permanent record, but this hasn't been true for a number of years.

The party of small government wants to control what you browse. Your browser, my choice.

> In July 2024, Donald Trump ally and Project 2025 contributor Russell Vought sat down

The article lost all credibility by that one statement.

How so?

* Russell Vought absolutely is an ally of Trump. He served in the first administration, it's been announced he will serve in the second.

* Russell Vought very publicly is a Project 2025 contributor.

* Russell Vought did sit down, multiple times, in July 2024. The specific case intended here has been captured on film.

The article attempts to subtly link Trump with Project 2025, despite his explicit denials. While some claims may have merit, the publication's decision to make such connections without concrete evidence undermines its credibility. As an impartial observer, it's concerning that the article resorts to speculative associations rather than focusing on verifiable facts. This approach damages the publication's reputation and risks misleading readers who may not critically evaluate the sources. Trump has categorically denied any involvement with Project 2025, yet the article chooses to highlight potential connections without acknowledging his refutations. This selective reporting undermines journalistic integrity and potentially loses readers' trust in the publication's ability to provide balanced coverage of important issues.

Citations:

[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-i-have-nothing-t...

[2] https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/2024-election/trump-l...

> The article attempts to subtly link Trump with Project 2025,

There are explicit links between the two; firstly the core authors are former Trump staffers, secondly after the publication several have been invited to work in the second administration. These are links.

> despite his explicit denials.

Trump has history, both before and during his political career, of lying; promises he never carried through on, denials of things later shown to be true. From his apprenticeship with his slumlord father through until the present he has been a consumment grifter. All politicians lie, true, few have lied as much as Trump.

In short, the link exists and his denial carries no weight.

So NOTHING matters then! Have a nice day.

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