Age verification laws for sites

[Mr. X]

So some of the states are passing age verification laws. This is probably why gumroad and other sites are getting picky. Here is what I got from my Provider.

Currently, nine states (as of this writing) have active laws. These include Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Texas, Utah, and Virginia. Six more have passed, four of which are set to begin in July 2024 and two more in Jan 2025. They have already passed but set a start date for the future. Even more, states have bills working their way through the system but have yet to pass fully. And also, some states have tried but thus far had their attempted shut down. We hope someone challenges these and they win, and this whole thing can go away. But no one wants to be the test case for obvious reasons.

We have listed the states below, along with links to the House or Senate Bills for your viewing if you wish to read them:

Already passed into law:
Arkansas: https://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/Home/FTP ... ACT612.pdf
Louisiana: https://www.legis.la.gov/Legis/ViewDocu ... ?d=1332277
Mississippi: https://billstatus.ls.state.ms.us/docum ... 2346IN.htm
Montana: https://leg.mt.gov/bills/2023/BillPdf/SB0544.pdf
Nebraska: https://nebraskalegislature.gov/FloorDo ... LB1092.pdf
North Carolina: https://www.ncleg.gov/Sessions/2023/Bil ... H534v2.pdf
Texas: https://legiscan.com/TX/text/HB1181/2023
Utah: https://le.utah.gov/~2023/bills/static/SB0287.html
Virginia: https://legiscan.com/VA/text/SB1515/id/2810038

Passed and to be enabled by the end of the year or sooner:
Florida: https://laws.flrules.org/2024/42
Indiana: https://iga.in.gov/pdf-documents/123/20 ... 5.ENRH.pdf
Almost Passed - No Links Provided:
Idaho:
Kentucky:
South Carolina:
Kansas:

[sideshowbob4791]

I live in one of these dumb ass states. I'm pretty sure they're going to use this to prevent all access. Would a vpn be a solution if that happens?

[Mr. X]

I live in one of these dumb ass states. I'm pretty sure they're going to use this to prevent all access. Would a vpn be a solution if that happens?

Its more for us providers. Surfnet for example is set up to block states kind of what PornHub did with Texas. Then customers would have to vpn in. Age verification is a huge pain. Not even sure how it would be done effectively.

[Visitor]

The states cause the site providers to prove verification and then they test with minors to have an excuse to shut them down in their states or totally.

There are so many ways to bypass identification. Just look at alcohol and tobacco sales to minors. Online it's even easier because it would be a computer check and no way to prove user and ID used for verification are the same.

[Femina]

The states cause the site providers to prove verification and then they test with minors to have an excuse to shut them down in their states or totally.

There are so many ways to bypass identification. Just look at alcohol and tobacco sales to minors. Online it's even easier because it would be a computer check and no way to prove user and ID used for verification are the same.

Don't fool yourself. Once it's ILLEGAL to bypass identification they'll start to close your options down and getting around it will get harder and harder... Just look at the war between youtube and ad blockers. A few years ago it was easy as pie to enjoy the videos ad free, if you want to do it now it's a rock paper scissors game of using an ad blocker that gets around Youtube's sensors until they lock that method down and force you to find another... all as a counter ticks down each time it senses you've used one before it bans your account. You can make a NEW account sure... but that's ever more hustle and effort to get what you used to have for free and no hastle.

It's not shocking in the slightest to me that every single one of these states are puritanical hard right wing states. Separation of church and state is long gone. Guess we'll have to wait and see how severe they treat this. Where they assign the blame and responsibilities.

[joejanus]

I have no problem with the concept of blocking certain content from underage individuals. It's how to possibly enforce such a policy that's the problem. I could think of several methods, but none are foolproof. See how well ID checks work at your local bar. Worse, any such attempts would necessarily require the user's ID to be kept by the site in case they were ever audited. That would be a huge privacy liability.

So something most of us agree is reasonable, turns into a dystopian nightmare.

One individual has proposed a solution. His basic idea is you have a digital locker that controls your information and any web site you want to access can query it for specific information like, "Is this person over 18?" and get back a yes or no answer without actually accessing or keeping the information. Of course that would require states to set up such digital ID lockers with whatever precautions they can come up with, similar to how driver's licenses work now. It might not be foolproof, but at least it would put the onus for such identification on the government where it belongs is they want to enforce such laws. BTW, in case you want to check out the book (Not that I'm recommending it. I probably gave you all you need to know.), it's https://www.amazon.com/Pull-Power-Seman ... 1591842778.

[Mr. X]

It's not shocking in the slightest to me that every single one of these states are puritanical hard right wing states.

Yeah I agree here.

[Femina]

I have no problem with the concept of blocking certain content from underage individuals. It's how to possibly enforce such a policy that's the problem. I could think of several methods, but none are foolproof. See how well ID checks work at your local bar. Worse, any such attempts would necessarily require the user's ID to be kept by the site in case they were ever audited. That would be a huge privacy liability.

So something most of us agree is reasonable, turns into a dystopian nightmare.

One individual has proposed a solution. His basic idea is you have a digital locker that controls your information and any web site you want to access can query it for specific information like, "Is this person over 18?" and get back a yes or no answer without actually accessing or keeping the information. Of course that would require states to set up such digital ID lockers with whatever precautions they can come up with, similar to how driver's licenses work now. It might not be foolproof, but at least it would put the onus for such identification on the government where it belongs is they want to enforce such laws. BTW, in case you want to check out the book (Not that I'm recommending it. I probably gave you all you need to know.), it's https://www.amazon.com/Pull-Power-Seman ... 1591842778.

I don't have any direct criticism here. I think that considering solutions is a fun exercise... but an ultimately futile one. They don't want an anonymous key that solves the problem without tracking your, they want you to do and say what they want you to do and say, and be able to track you as you do and say it. My concern here is that the government, particularly this puritanical wing, has and ALWAYS WILL utilize legitimate fears about an issue to push for a change that fails to ever bother attempting to fix the problem, while entrenching privacy invasive 'solutions' intended majorly just to track US citizens activity for shady reasons. They SAY 'won't somebody please think of the children' but they don't MEAN it. They don't give a shit about the children. Roe v Wade wasn't about the children, if it was they'd have ALSO provided new tools and avenues for all the women they are forcing to bear children to actually take care of and provide futures for those children instead of leaving all those children to fester in the poverty stricken American ghetos. Stealing our constitutional rights to abortion, regardless of how you feel about it, I am not starting a discussion based on the merits of or arguments for or against the 'morality' of it here... forget all that for now, there's no constructive arguments about it to be had here and will only confuse the real issue we're talking about... but stealing our rights to abortion wasn't about children to these people, it was about entrenching control to leverage for votes and gain... but they were more than willing to pretend it was about the children to convince people to support this precedent for government to strip their own rights away... and the same is true here. This isn't about protecting children, they're just using the same bullshit tagline to press the populace into fear for the children enough to consign themselves to further loss of their rights.

[ivandobsky]

Coming from the UK, I can't really talk, but "Land of the Free", LOL.

Must suck to be someone who escaped California for Texas. Go to New Hampshire!

[shevek]

Yes, it's puritanism. However I will offer facts and corrections:

There is no constitutional right to abortion.

Sorry, Ivan, but we are the Land of the Free. We have 1A and 2A. You have neither. You just have much better rock music.

[Femina]

Yes, it's puritanism. However I will offer facts and corrections:

There is no constitutional right to abortion.

Sorry, Ivan, but we are the Land of the Free. We have 1A and 2A. You have neither. You just have much better rock music.

They utilized what is affectionately called a 'technical loophole'... but It was essentially a constitutionally amended freedom, and it was taken away in these states. Any freedoms being taken away is almost always bad and provides the state new loopholes and avenues to take away more freedoms. With abortion there was a technical loophole available to them, next time they'll need a smaller loophole, then eventually they won't require a loophole at all. It's doubly ironic these are the spaces where they like to cry about their freedom of speech being attacked the most as well. Tell people it's the 'wokies' who are after your freedom with one hand, restrict your porn access with the other.

We used to require separation of church and state to protect religion from the state, it's fast approaching the point we need it to protect the state from religion... and we have absolutely zero infrastructure for that. The worst part about this nonsense is that America is at it's LEAST globally religious of all time... but it's still the largest worshipping body in America, and most of the people pushing religiously framed laws and amendments don't actually care about religion, just how they can use it to galvanize that voting block.

[shevek]

It was essentially a constitutionally amended freedom

I'm sorry we're straying from the topic, but no, it wasn't. And I'm pro-choice.

Check out this map and ask yourself why Progressives champion the cultures of the Global South which don't permit abortion.
I bet there are lots of laws against porn in those places, too.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/count ... is-illegal

[joejanus]

Gee that deteriorated fast. We went from a practical discussion of whether and how legal adults can indulge their prurient interests online to abortion and the second amendment. Valid as everybody's arguments might be, our little niche in this forum is basically internet porn, so maybe those of us who are here are more interested in that. Ah well, so it goes.

[shevek]

Gee that deteriorated fast. We went from a practical discussion of whether and how legal adults can indulge their prurient interests online to abortion and the second amendment. Valid as everybody's arguments might be, our little niche in this forum is basically internet porn, so maybe those of us who are here are more interested in that. Ah well, so it goes.

Understood. I'll beg off, but my point was that a lot of the same progressive types who lament conservative states' restrictions on prurience are the same ones making endless excuses for conservative overseas cultures which much more severely limit the exact same freedoms, and then they want to bring those cultures over here. Identity politics and intersectionalism are fundamentally inconsistent within a universal moral framework, and depend on cultural relativism for their perpetuation.

Now, please return to discussing how to get around porn restrictions in conservative areas. That's a worthwhile pursuit.

[Mr. X]

We used to require separation of church and state to protect religion from the state, it's fast approaching the point we need it to protect the state from religion.

Its should apply to ALL special interest and not just religion.

1st amendment
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

10th amendment
"any powers that are not specifically given to the federal government, nor withheld from the states, are reserved to those respective states, or to the people at large."

So yes states can have religious laws.

[Visitor]

But a lot of state constitutions are modeled after the US version and in most states use the same language (because they are lazy). So moss states can't legally get away with that behavior and try to hide behind other reasons.

However the conservative groups have spent years packing the courts at state and federal level so overturning these laws is very hard. We've seen the US Supreme Court cherry pick arguments to fit the conservative decision. For instance gun laws are struck down because there is "no historical precedents" when there is plenty that were even more restrictive than current laws.

Now you get conservative states putting tighter restrictions on porn, then on other age restricted purchases like alcohol, tobacco, or firearms.

[GWalb]

I live in NYS, but despite it being a supposed 'liberal' state, that just applies to high taxes. when i comes to interfering with personal freedom our slimy legislators are just as eager to crack down as any southern state. A bad law like that is just the sort of idiocy that they are likely to pass as virtue signaling.

[shevek]

I live in NYS, but despite it being a supposed 'liberal' state, that just applies to high taxes. when i comes to interfering with personal freedom our slimy legislators are just as eager to crack down as any southern state. A bad law like that is just the sort of idiocy that they are likely to pass as virtue signaling.

Exactly. An addendum to my point above is that despite what you see in the OP with all of those links to blue states, it's not just the religious right that wants to crush porn. The rising far-left, way too vocal and powerful for its relatively small membership, has the same impulse but for different reasons, whether it be the misogyny of patriarchy, or increased corporate control and surveillance, or even just owning the incels. Remember Tipper Gore, for example. They're just not as focused right now on prurience because they have other fish to fry which gets them a lot more social media clicks, like Trump and Palestine and DEI. (Yes, there is a small group on the left which defends the right of sex workers, and that's a good thing, although I would argue that it falls in line with 1st Amendment arguments and is therefore simply Constitutionalist. But a lot of the far-left's fetish leanings are obsessed instead with things that average people don't understand because they are literal sexual headcanons, like non-binaries and furries.)

Classical liberalism (which goes hand in hand, to a great extent, with our own libertinism) is the only major American political philosophy which leaves porn mostly alone. For example, someone like Jordan Peterson might advocate for "young men" to avoid the trap of porn as an unproductive obsession (much like video games) but he's not going to advocate for the banning of it, I don't believe.

[five_red]

The Semantic Web isn't (and wasn't) a solution. And the book linked to above seems to be basically just trying to cash in on what was then an interesting idea by dangling the promise of getting rich quick.

Is there a solution..? Yes -- not a perfect solution, but a pretty good one. But first I need to do a little detour into Two Factor Authentication (2FA), and the problems it has for privacy.

(2FA is a way of identifying someone using two elements: (1) something known, and (2) something physically possessed. Most people were introduced to electronic 2FA as far back as the 1970s when it became standard practice for ATMs. Cash machines ask for two independent types of authentication: your PIN, something you know, and your card, something you possess.)

Imagine this scenario: you are a woman in the USA, you find out you're pregnant, you want an abortion, but you are in a deeply conservative state that has banned all abortion access and threatens to imprison anyone who seeks or assists with an abortion. If you travel to another state to seek the necessary procedure, your home state will arrest you upon your return, so you need to do this without leaving a trace. Fortunately you have friends in a liberal state who can help with travel and accommodation, and an abortion provider in their state is sympathetic, promising to protect your anonymity while also keeping any medical records private. But you still face one big hurdle -- even if you use a VPN to mask any electronic device's IP address, you still need to connect your phone to the cell network to receive any 2FA requests when you log in to email or messaging apps. That's because most people use their phone as the second factor in their 2FA. But when your phone connects to a cell tower, you will leave a potentially subpoenable record that is tied to the phone's owner. Your home state would have proof that you visited the liberal state, which is useful hard evidence to have if they ever suspected you.

Y'see, it isn't just people watching porn who need anonymity online. Groups who previously never had any reason to protect their identity are now becoming worried about the consequences of their digital footprint. Will joining that LGBTQ Facebook group hinder your ability to work in primary education? Will posting against pronouns prevent you from getting tenure are your college? We probably need privacy guarantees today more than we've ever needed them, simply because digital records are so hard to erase. But 2FA, with its requirement that you register something personal you own, often blows a hole in anonymity.

EDIT: The problem is that the phone is a multi-purpose device, so it is really difficult to use it for 2FA alone without one of its other functions leaving a digital trace. We need a method of proving identity that offers the protection of 2FA, while also promising to always be totally anonymous.

What's the solution? Rather than using a phone you could use some kind of FIDO2 based device, like a Yubikey. These are small USB devices that look like a tiny thumb drive. They can be plugged into a PC, or touched to a phone (using Near Field Communication), and provide a cryptographically strong second factor of authentication. When registering 2FA on an app or web site you can (often, although not always) choose to use a FIDO2 device instead of a phone. Then, when challenged for your 2FA, you plug in or tap the key, and voila!

But let's take the concept one stage further. Suppose we passed laws that guarantee these keys can be sold anonymously -- no state or law enforcement agency can insist keys must be registered to their owners or can forbid purchasing a key with a non-traceable payment method. Let's also suppose that if you provide proof that you are an adult at the time of purchase, that detail could be encoded onto the key. So now we would have a key that could be used for 2FA, provides proof of age, but is still totally anonymous in so far as we don't know the owner.

Sure, a dishonest vendor could sell an adult key to a minor. And yes, keys could be stolen by minors and then used to register accounts on adult sites. No system is perfect. True, currently FIDO2 keys are on the pricey side, but there's no reason they need to stay that way if their ownership becomes commonplace. Hell, if economies of scale play their role there's no reason people can't own multiple keys, some they use anonymously and others they don't. This would make it impossible to link users from account to account because they're using the same key.

We're 95% of the way there with the technology. What we don't have is widespread adoption, plus the extension that allows for age as well as identity verification. But given the way things are moving, and the way many people (not just watchers of porn) are becoming more and more concerned about digital footprints and tracking, I think any campaign to popularise and promote FIDO2 keys over cell phones would likely be an easy sell -- 'if' people knew about their existence and they became more affordable. But that's a big 'if' at the moment.

Just a thought.

R5

[Femina]

Gee that deteriorated fast. We went from a practical discussion of whether and how legal adults can indulge their prurient interests online to abortion and the second amendment. Valid as everybody's arguments might be, our little niche in this forum is basically internet porn, so maybe those of us who are here are more interested in that. Ah well, so it goes.

It's just for equivalency conversation I PROMISE. The topic itself is, unfortunately, politically entrenched because it has to do with actual politics... the conversation is in fact actually politics, as it's politicians and the government aiming to track pornographic consumption, but I figure since its politics that are directly relevant to the site it's valid for discussion. Agreed, I have no interest in discussing the morality/party dynamics of abortion or the second amendment on this site (though I sincerely doubt anyone here is that much in disagreement at all on the second amendment and it's validity and importance xD) the banning of abortion, and the mechanics of the second amendment are simply useful for the discussion here of Pornography being tracked, and the concern this trend could lead to some state actually banning it outright.

You guys can always move back to the blue states. One thing us progressive deviants pretty much universally champion is flying your freak flag. Pornography is not that likely to go anywhere in the blue anytime soon.

[MightyHypnotic]

It's a politically charged issue for sure. I don't have a problem with you all discussing it. It's when it devolves into a name calling slugfest, that's no fun.

However, the real issue lies with NCOSE They are the ones that are behind a lot of lobbying masquerading as "child trafficking" bills....Google them and read some of theie nut job initiatives. They go after performers, sites, and of course low hanging fruit politicians that they know will help push their agenda

[MightyHypnotic]

It's a politically charged issue for sure. I don't have a problem with you all discussing it. It's when it devolves into a name calling slugfest, that's no fun.

However, the real issue lies with NCOSE They are the ones that are behind a lot of lobbying masquerading as "child trafficking" bills....Google them and read some of theie nut job initiatives. They go after performers, sites, and of course low hanging fruit politicians that they know will help push their agenda

[MightyHypnotic]

Sorry, I'm using my phone to reply. Not sure how the mushroom wound up there but it's pretty cool.

[Femina]

I guess I just wish that if we're gonna keep folding to all these 'Won't somebody please think of the children!' laws.... the laws would ACTUALLY do something for the children you know?

[bushwackerbob]

Yes, it's puritanism. However I will offer facts and corrections:

There is no constitutional right to abortion.

Sorry, Ivan, but we are the Land of the Free. We have 1A and 2A. You have neither. You just have much better rock music.

They utilized what is affectionately called a 'technical loophole'... but It was essentially a constitutionally amended freedom, and it was taken away in these states. Any freedoms being taken away is almost always bad and provides the state new loopholes and avenues to take away more freedoms. With abortion there was a technical loophole available to them, next time they'll need a smaller loophole, then eventually they won't require a loophole at all. It's doubly ironic these are the spaces where they like to cry about their freedom of speech being attacked the most as well. Tell people it's the 'wokies' who are after your freedom with one hand, restrict your porn access with the other.

We used to require separation of church and state to protect religion from the state, it's fast approaching the point we need it to protect the state from religion... and we have absolutely zero infrastructure for that. The worst part about this nonsense is that America is at it's LEAST globally religious of all time... but it's still the largest worshipping body in America, and most of the people pushing religiously framed laws and amendments don't actually care about religion, just how they can use it to galvanize that voting block.

I am a conservative, but I cringe when conservatives intertwine politics and religion. I get this sort of uncomfortable, visceral reaction when I see a conservative politician use religion as a wedge issue to justify any manner of policy justifications or legislation like banning porn. It feels performative on the conservative politicians part, as if they are offering red meat to their true believer constituency. Where I come from, Boston, and at least as far as the northeast, from what I can tell, for most folks, religion is a personal, private matter we don't use as a battering ram to impose that on our politics. We don't wear our religion on our sleeves, we don't feel the need to. I see that more as a southern thing. I am always cynical about these new proposed laws, more often than not there are foreseeable and non-foreseeable pitfalls and dangers to enacting these new laws.

[shevek]

Where I come from, Boston, and at least as far as the northeast, from what I can tell, for most folks, religion is a personal, private matter we don't use as a battering ram to impose that on our politics. We don't wear our religion on our sleeves, we don't feel the need to. I see that more as a southern thing.

Nope, it's all over. Very prominent, for example. in what we lovingly call either "The T" because of its shape excluding Pittsburgh and Philly, or "Pennsyltucky". Not a ton of people, but a hell of a lot of wide open spaces.

For example, Clearfield County where Republican voters outnumber Democrats about 3 to 1. We vended two years in a row at a smaller Comicon there in DuBois. The people were super nice and it was a great time, and the guy who runs it comes down regularly to Pittsburgh to make connections. It's one of the places you are more likely to see events like Comicon happen in religious institutional buildings (like church community centers), and thus religion is intertwined with everyday life.

You'll see this phenomenon repeated all over the place in blue states: Central Illinois isn't much different than Central Indiana. The entire Eastern 2/3 of Oregon isn't much different than Idaho (and, in fact, is trying to join Idaho). And then, of course, you have a different version of the merging of religion and state, in places like Minneapolis and Dearborn backsliding into a *different* type of 'conservatism'.

[SHL]

All of you really love talking politics huh?

IMO the future of this genre is underground. Like mole people. I shall start a cult myself and build an underground bunker. You'll have to hear my new films via AM Radio at 11pm.

For a SHIP forum about tormenting superheroines does anyone else dick invert with all this red and blue nonsense?

We should all eventually make an agreement if we are talking about red and blue it refers to wonder woman's costume. Or the color my dick makes when I squeeze it too hard.

[shevek]

We should all eventually make an agreement if we are talking about red and blue it refers to wonder woman's costume.

And Superman's. Meanwhile Batman is just totally blackpilled

Good point, Damien. Maybe there's a reason that the most popular heroic costumes combine primary colors! (not political, just psychological)
But that could *definitely* be a whole different thread.

But the sad fact is that, while not *everything* is political (a la one of the main Antifa talking points), "Age verification" certainly is, and it has been made so by attacks from both sides of the political spectrum.

People have been emphasizing in this thread how much "red states" have taken a stance on it, but the opposite scenario is happening, as well, and quite frequently. Whereas the main bastion of conservatism might be the typical State Legislature, the main bastion of progressivism is often the Corporate Boardroom or the Hollywood Production. That's why it's hilarious to see scruffy anarchists defend the actions of multi-billion dollar corporations like Disney.

And where we are seeing this come down a lot lately refers to another thread that I made recently: there's censorship from places like Gumroad, Patreon and Pixiv, much of that driven by decisions at payment processors. And the people at all these companies aren't making these censorious decisions just because of the laws of some red states - they are making them because of the beliefs which permeate these corporate boardrooms. Mind you, not all corporate boardrooms are like that (a lot of Wall Street is still decidedly based like Alex Keaton) but many are at this point, because colleges have been pumping out Long March graduates for a couple decades, and now they've infested all of these companies like the bugs in Starship Troopers.

Here's a good example:
Over at the Villainy Dischord, the general chat has been dominated for the past couple days about sleepy/chloro artists and writers getting banned or severely curtailed on DeviantArt. Note that there's still plenty of spicy art on DA that has been left entirely alone, but it's just the chloro stuff being attacked. The higher-ups at many tech-dominated companies like DeviantArt are, at this point, infested with progressives whose minds seriously explode at the thought of fantasy nonconsensuality. This attack, at least, is 100% from the left.

And so it goes. There's no political pendulum that swings back and forth anymore like politics used to be in the U.S. Now there's just polarization and constant ignominy from all sides.

The reason why a thread about Age Verification is simple. There are a few people on here who are experts in tech. They'll talk about it from a tech standpoint and that is much appreciated. But there are also many of us who don't understand that stuff, and so for us, it's the political dimension which is paramount.

[SHL]

We should all eventually make an agreement if we are talking about red and blue it refers to wonder woman's costume.

And Superman's. Meanwhile Batman is just totally blackpilled

Good point, Damien. Maybe there's a reason that the most popular heroic costumes combine primary colors! (not political, just psychological)
But that could *definitely* be a whole different thread.

But the sad fact is that, while not *everything* is political (a la one of the main Antifa talking points), "Age verification" certainly is, and it has been made so by attacks from both sides of the political spectrum.

People have been emphasizing in this thread how much "red states" have taken a stance on it, but the opposite scenario is happening, as well, and quite frequently. Whereas the main bastion of conservatism might be the typical State Legislature, the main bastion of progressivism is often the Corporate Boardroom or the Hollywood Production. That's why it's hilarious to see scruffy anarchists defend the actions of multi-billion dollar corporations like Disney.

And where we are seeing this come down a lot lately refers to another thread that I made recently: there's censorship from places like Gumroad, Patreon and Pixiv, much of that driven by decisions at payment processors. And the people at all these companies aren't making these censorious decisions just because of the laws of some red states - they are making them because of the beliefs which permeate these corporate boardrooms. Mind you, not all corporate boardrooms are like that (a lot of Wall Street is still decidedly based like Alex Keaton) but many are at this point, because colleges have been pumping out Long March graduates for a couple decades, and now they've infested all of these companies like the bugs in Starship Troopers.

Here's a good example:
Over at the Villainy Dischord, the general chat has been dominated for the past couple days about sleepy/chloro artists and writers getting banned or severely curtailed on DeviantArt. Note that there's still plenty of spicy art on DA that has been left entirely alone, but it's just the chloro stuff being attacked. The higher-ups at many tech-dominated companies like DeviantArt are, at this point, infested with progressives whose minds seriously explode at the thought of fantasy nonconsensuality. This attack, at least, is 100% from the left.

And so it goes. There's no political pendulum that swings back and forth anymore like politics used to be in the U.S. Now there's just polarization and constant ignominy from all sides.

The reason why a thread about Age Verification is simple. There are a few people on here who are experts in tech. They'll talk about it from a tech standpoint and that is much appreciated. But there are also many of us who don't understand that stuff, and so for us, it's the political dimension which is paramount.

Ironically I think you just argued against your own point in this message. If the pendulum no longer swings and both red and blue political parties are both antisex - then it kind of nullifies the “politics” doesn’t it? What’s the point in talking about democrats and republicans if it’s really just everyone vs kinksters

None of this is really new though. I remember in the late 2000s there were a ton of sites that shut down taboo kink stuff, payment processor purging, etc

The bubble was always going to pop - there are way too many people in SW getting way too casual with platforms. Platforms aren’t our friends, they never have been and never will be

Age and ID verification stuff for porn is scary, sure, and very inconvenient but like:..

We are a small enough community that we don’t really need to worry about what the government decides. For people who watch pornhub? Sure, it changes things. But for SHIP? You can literally just make an underground discord server and Noah’s ark this audience onto it

Arguably the real conversation for us should be - how front facing does this audience and fandom (SHiP) need to be? Cause I’m perfectly fine privatizing my content and community. I don’t need 200,000 followers on Twitter. I just need a couple hundred loyal customers

So IMO it really ain’t that serious

[Femina]

Age and ID verification stuff for porn is scary, sure, and very inconvenient but like:..

We are a small enough community that we don’t really need to worry about what the government decides. For people who watch pornhub? Sure, it changes things. But for SHIP? You can literally just make an underground discord server and Noah’s ark this audience onto it

This is true to a point I think... but Isn't that sorta just... 'for now'?

Sure when the laws comes down they won't affect everywhere, equally, all at once... and the smaller you are the longer it takes for it to reach you... but eventually they'll drip down into all corners of the internet as it simply becomes more inconvenient and dangerous to run unverified sites. Ban porn in even ONE state... and it becomes inconvenient for a porn site to operate without verification ANYWHERE because they'll be liable if someone in the one state consumes porn. With verification it's sort of the same. If it's illegal anywhere, its easier and cheaper to simply demand age verification for EVERYONE rather than building the infrastructure into your servers to locate where requests are coming from and discriminate which are allowed to consume without tracking and which ones aren't... and tracking is profitable so there'll be incentive to use this as an excuse to do it in other states and claim it's just unfeasible to distinguish between states. We'll need counter laws in other states to discourage that sort of data profiteering... and I have my doubts any such laws will ever come to pass with how profitable data trafficking has become.

If legislations in enough areas push for age verification, it may eventually come to be that no space on the internet allows you to go unverified anywhere, and that would include here as well as anywhere else. MH is a fun guy but I doubt he has any interest in putting himself in danger by making illegal websites to cater to the fetish. Move to discord, the government may well come to start demanding age verification for discord servers as well... We don't know any of this will or won't happen obviously, but it's worth pondering and being informed about since age verification for pornography is pretty directly correlating to the website here so people can keep an eye out for when its time to vote for or against such policies.

laws vs porn is fairly relevant to our pornographic website here I think, It's politics yes... but on the subject of not tracking people's porn habits I expect everyone on this website is fairly unified to 'some' degree of 'It Bad!.' so It's less of an 'argumentative' and conflict spurring political discussion. For example, I may not agree with Mr. X on just about anything in the world most days... xD but on this, I'm not even a little hesitant to say we are probably of one 'basic' stance.

[shevek]

Ironically I think you just argued against your own point in this message. If the pendulum no longer swings and both red and blue political parties are both antisex - then it kind of nullifies the “politics” doesn’t it? What’s the point in talking about democrats and republicans if it’s really just everyone vs kinksters

None of this is really new though. I remember in the late 2000s there were a ton of sites that shut down taboo kink stuff, payment processor purging, etc

The bubble was always going to pop - there are way too many people in SW getting way too casual with platforms. Platforms aren’t our friends, they never have been and never will be

Age and ID verification stuff for porn is scary, sure, and very inconvenient but like:..

We are a small enough community that we don’t really need to worry about what the government decides. For people who watch pornhub? Sure, it changes things. But for SHIP? You can literally just make an underground discord server and Noah’s ark this audience onto it

Arguably the real conversation for us should be - how front facing does this audience and fandom (SHiP) need to be? Cause I’m perfectly fine privatizing my content and community. I don’t need 200,000 followers on Twitter. I just need a couple hundred loyal customers

So IMO it really ain’t that serious

No, I didn't argue against my own point so I'll explain. Democrats attack porn because fourth-wave feminism. Republicans attack porn because right-wing religion (and we can place Islamists in that category, too). Yes, they both attack porn but for highly different reasons, even if both are fanatical. That was my point: it's not just the right or the left, it's both extremes - although I think a lot of centrists in the middle simply don't care, since there are a lot bigger problems to worry about in the U.S., like inflation and crime and the border and giving billions in foreign military aid.

So, in the sense that we are united as "kinksters" you can almost consider us a "third party" political group (like a Yang Gang, but with some Wang and Bang) who defends the right to fetish against these large uncaring outsider forces. The problem is that we have very little political influence, so yes, the best solution is to simply go underground (I only need a couple hundred loyal customers, as well - it's even fun to know everyone by name!) but as Femina says, that might not work forever.

[SHL]

Ironically I think you just argued against your own point in this message. If the pendulum no longer swings and both red and blue political parties are both antisex - then it kind of nullifies the “politics” doesn’t it? What’s the point in talking about democrats and republicans if it’s really just everyone vs kinksters

None of this is really new though. I remember in the late 2000s there were a ton of sites that shut down taboo kink stuff, payment processor purging, etc

The bubble was always going to pop - there are way too many people in SW getting way too casual with platforms. Platforms aren’t our friends, they never have been and never will be

Age and ID verification stuff for porn is scary, sure, and very inconvenient but like:..

We are a small enough community that we don’t really need to worry about what the government decides. For people who watch pornhub? Sure, it changes things. But for SHIP? You can literally just make an underground discord server and Noah’s ark this audience onto it

Arguably the real conversation for us should be - how front facing does this audience and fandom (SHiP) need to be? Cause I’m perfectly fine privatizing my content and community. I don’t need 200,000 followers on Twitter. I just need a couple hundred loyal customers

So IMO it really ain’t that serious

No, I didn't argue against my own point so I'll explain. Democrats attack porn because fourth-wave feminism. Republicans attack porn because right-wing religion (and we can place Islamists in that category, too). Yes, they both attack porn but for highly different reasons, even if both are fanatical. That was my point: it's not just the right or the left, it's both extremes - although I think a lot of centrists in the middle simply don't care, since there are a lot bigger problems to worry about in the U.S., like inflation and crime and the border and giving billions in foreign military aid.

So, in the sense that we are united as "kinksters" you can almost consider us a "third party" political group (like a Yang Gang, but with some Wang and Bang) who defends the right to fetish against these large uncaring outsider forces. The problem is that we have very little political influence, so yes, the best solution is to simply go underground (I only need a couple hundred loyal customers, as well - it's even fun to know everyone by name!) but as Femina says, that might not work forever.

It’s wasted conversation on me. I don’t care about political afflictions, hence me talking about what a buzzkill it is for politics to be an active part of the fetish community

[MightyHypnotic]

OK, so...normally, I would agree that we don't need to inject politics into our genre but THIS is one of the few exceptions where we really need to monitor what is going on with the decision-making within our country.
A lot of us are one pen-mark away from existing, literally.
To put things into perspective, I remember talking with Jim Hunter back in 2005 abiout the impact of 2257 which was a BIG deal back then. The govt was putting the screws to us and it was really the first time we felt some extra legislation and governance, and it was scary!
But, soon after, there was a new lobby against our industry that thankfully went the other way and 2257, while very prevalent in the beginning, soon tucked out.
Anyway my point is, normally I wouldn't discuss politics but in this case, if it's well presented, I think it warrants a discussion. The last thing we need is a political party attempting to censoring us...