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Comment by GameOfKnowing | Hacker News Reader

Hey— performer & small site owner here. Most of the hypothetical cases in the media (and these comments) relate to Pornhub, OF, etc— companies that definitely can afford to implement age verification even if it hurts their bottom line. This totally misses the vast majority of porn sites that are very small, operate on licensed technology that may not even be maintained, and would have their ~low-5-digit annual income nuked by the cost of compliance. In these cases, geo-blocking states one by one as they implement these laws becomes the only option. Yeah VPNs exist, but HN users faaaaar over-estimate the technical knowledge & ability of the average American used to having the net served to them on a silver platter.

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Most of the time they'll go on Twitter or the noncompliant websites instead. That being said, published numbers have shown VPN subscriptions skyrocket. Public tech skills aren't what they were in the 2000s, but people who can't/won't verify ID are motivated. It is a powerful force after all.

I hope you’re right! There’s certainly nothing inherent stopping a widespread shift toward VPN usage and other technical work-arounds that have been part and parcel of internet usage in many countries for decades.

Just make sure it is not a Facebook owned VPN which is actually used to spy on its users.

https://www.techradar.com/computing/cyber-security/facebooks...

> They would use a method known as "SSL man-in-the-middle" to decrypt Snapchat's protected traffic to inform Meta's business decision-making.

This particular story seems moot to the worry porn viewers would have of Facebook ratting them out to law enforcement.

I think it's silly to think that any VPN isn't spying on you, for profit or for government compliance.

Mullvad?

It might help short term profit, but ultimately a VPN company relies on their customers trusting it, so spying is likely to hurt them - once a reputation gets trashed their customers are going to switch.

Government compliance depends on which government has jurisdiction, so it makes a lot of sense to avoid authoritarian jurisdictions.

e.g. NordVPN was originally Lithuanian, but is now based in Panama due to its privacy-friendly laws.

> It might help short term profit, but ultimately a VPN company relies on their customers trusting it

I read that as, the best long term financial move would be to secretly work with the government. ;)

> Yeah VPNs exist, but HN users faaaaar over-estimate the technical knowledge & ability of the average American used to having the net served to them on a silver platter.

We can evaluate this by considering the results of DNS blocking ThePirateBay.

ref: https://kagi.com/search?q=How+effective+was+dns+blocking+the...

That's not a reference, it's just a list of search results.

Do you have a direct source for how many Americans accessed TPB after it was DNS blocked in all of the US?

> That's not a reference, it's just a list of search results.

Results are references. Links pasted in HN can leave some doubt what's at the other end. Usually that's fine but by presenting those same links thru a search engine, you get some text to help indicate whether they have the info you want.

The results may also include links you would want - but maybe I wouldn't choose.

> Do you have a direct source for how many Americans accessed TPB after it was DNS blocked in all of the US?

This is a very narrow scenario you've presented. It doesn't seem to address the aspects of the thread in a helpful way.

The regulatory burdens on most companies have been gradually increasing, to the point that it is very difficult to run companies with <100 (some might say <1000) employees in most non-software industries. I am sorry to hear that it will negatively impact you, but you don't have the most sympathetic story, and nobody seems to care about this issue anyway, so there's little hope of reprieve, and you'll likely just have to bear it or quit.

Why is the story not sympathetic?

Voters don’t seem to sympathize or at least support pornographic performers or distributors; see Operation Choke Point for an example of how they were lumped in with ‘unsavory’ industries, and cut off from essential services (with no substantial corresponding outcry).

As a performer and small site owner, am I to understand that you usually sell sexual material and you don't perform any check to make sure that they are not kids? How are you making sure that users are of age other than the "I am 18: ENTER" button? Maybe you take credit cards and can check their age through that? Do you take crypto or wallets that don't require 18+?

Do CC issuers report the owner's age?

I am not sure whether the issuers report that to the processors (though I doubt it), but you cannot get that information from a processor.

It would be not very reliable because kids could take parents' card under some excuse (I want to ride an electric scooter, they allow only adult users so I need a card).

If they can do taht they can probably make copies of their parents ID too

I'm not an expert but it would be helpful to look into the similar field of gambling. I read that there's lots of teenagers that are gambling and presumably they would evade controls in the same way, use parent's credit card or get them to fund a wallet of sorts. And maybe steal their parent's ID and use that for verification.

High tech verification that requires the ID to be photographed along with a facial verification largely solve this problem I believe, but I imagine kids go to gambling sites that are either unregulated or loosely regulated in some sketchy jurisdiction (which can be accessed with VPNs even if banned in a country.

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