[erenyeager]

Wow, good stuff Virginia. While VPNs certainly circumvent the purpose of this law, it will still have the effect of lowering exposure of minors to this content. Pornography companies have long been avoiding the negative externalities they cause. The false age-gates that are overridden with a button click were long overdue for some regulation.

At the same time there should be some education (parental or community) around pornography, healthy ways of coping with sexual feelings, etc given the wide access of internet, it’s not so easy to protect children these days yet.

[KnobbleMcKnees]

Or let's take another perspective:

Free VPNs are easily understood and accessed by minors, except now their browsing history is exposed to spurious, unverified, and foreign companies and actors that aren't held to the privacy standards of internet providers and mobile carriers.

This is "ten foot wall and eleven foot ladder" territory and we should be very wary of who is selling the ladder.

[erenyeager]

Domestic companies already are privacy disasters. The US can introduce privacy legislation like the EU if this is really an issue. But already porn is illegal for children under 18, so this is just a way to more effectively regulate with minimal externalities. Many people already pay for pornography which usually necessitates identification, so requiring ID for any porn site access is not a huge jump.

[KnobbleMcKnees]

>Many people already pay for pornography which usually necessitates identification, so requiring ID for any porn site access is not a huge jump.

The vast majority of people do not pay for porn, therefore for the vast majority of people it is a huge jump; and so this isn't a very compelling point.

And my point was that regulation with easy and free to access loopholes is regulation only by name. Did you know you can still buy drugs, download movies and watch bestiality porn on the Internet? How can this be when these things have been illegal/regulated for so long!?

[DangitBobby]

Ostensibly the purpose of this law is to prevent minors from accessing porn and not to reduce or eliminate porn use by forcing adults to de-anonymize to access it. This comment says the quiet part out loud, I guess.

[erenyeager]

Yes just like we have ID requirements for alcohol and tobacco purchase, the same can apply to pornography which much of it should not be exposed to minors. What educational or beneficial use is quickly outweighed by the many negatives of allowing unfettered access to porn to minors. Regulations on who can access pornography make complete sense and we already have them in the form of over 18 buttons, but these by and far are not effective. Hence since our society already agreed minors should not be exposed to porn, we can take more effective steps like have ID requirements.

[predictabl3]

No, no it won't. Christ, I'm 33 and I knew how to waltz around these protections as a 13 year-old and there was a lot less everything on the internet back then.

[erenyeager]

Clicking a button compared to ID checks are two different classes of barriers. ID checks will substantially restrict porn access to minors, and help keep pornography companies accountable.

[predictabl3]

.........

No. No, it won't, because for every porn site that complies, sixty thousand won't.

To be clear, I'm not some big porn proponent, especially for young people with developing brains. But, as always, proper parenting and framing is more useful than NetNanny - Now With State-Enforcement!

[erenyeager]

Hi, how do you suggest proper parenting and framing without also society-level interventions? It seems this is putting a lot of burden on parents, teachers, etc, when also regulation on this can be helpful. For example, smoking is prohibited for those below a certain age from purchasing. Or the intervention the government did with Juul to stop the spread of vaping among teens.

You say not every porn sure will comply, but if even the biggest players comply, don’t you agree this will significantly reduce minors being exposed to porn? And I’m sure with threat of legal action, just like is taken against other entities, can also be of help, even if it becomes a cat-and-mouse game,

I’m saying don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Education from parents to kids is a great effort but that will require a lot more work and dedication.

[predictabl3]

Wew, I don't know what to tell you. Your kid is going to google "boobies" and find them. Now, in six months, in six years, regardless of regulations because they're never going to be enforced anywhere near wide enough to keep a curious kid away. Not even for 3 whole minutes. So, what do you do? .... be a freaking parent.

Regulation of physical goods is leaky too. If you rely on the law keeping booze and cigarettes away from your kids, you're going to have a really, really rough time through their teen years.

>It seems this is putting a lot of burden on parents, teachers, etc, when also regulation on this can be helpful.

No, regulation can make lazy/bad parents feel better and feel like they can just ignore their actual responsibility which is teaching and guiding their rchildren.

> don’t you agree this will significantly reduce minors being exposed to porn?

No, lol, I'm sorry, it would be rude but I would laugh in your face openly if you tried to tell me that. Pick a state that has implemented this, and I'll record you a YouTube video of me finding porn in less than 30 seconds.

And honestly, mentioning Juul? Man, do you live in this same world as the rest of us? There are 6 dozen different disposable vapes that are easily accessible to kids. The Juul ban did absolutely beyond nothing to stop teenage vaping.

Yes, parents should do the most important part of their job as a parent instead of advocating for the STATE to track every single adult that wants to watch porn. Yes, I am absolutely saying that:

1. This will stop exactly zero kids from accessing porn.

2. The trade-off requires a STATE-RUN REGISTRY OF PORN WATCHERS. I don't even know where to begin on explaining what a horrendous idea this is.

This is clearly 100% just the usual "moral conservatism as law" trope that it always is. People who want to encode their moral beliefs as law because they're too prudish? ignorant? I-dont-know-what? to talk to their kids about sex.

[_8j50]

I agree with you but that sentiment is unpopular in tech circles. I would go further and say porn should be decriminalized but regulated like drugs. Adults should be allowed to use it but their use should be only to allowed dispenseries/sites and monitored for "overdose" with addiction/rehab help provided at the dispensery/site and a large warning text about its harm like cigarettes. With the exception of small audience live videos or screenshots (onlyfans and sexting) being unregulated.

[shortcake27]

It’s unpopular because you’re advocating to oppress people based on your own personal opinion.

[_8j50]

In the same way cigarettes,alchol and hard drugs being controlled is opressing people?

[shrimp_emoji]

Oppressing people over human expression and totally endogenous mental/bodily processes in reaction to those expressions seems a little further down the slippery slope of some dystopic panoptiprison than controlling addictive drugs. If you think porn is on the same order of harm as alcohol, you need to lay off the sauce.

[_8j50]

Who is oppressed? Porn sites? Sex stores and brothels id people. Strip clubs is people and they are regulated already to make sure strippers are treated properly and work in a safe place. Why are you saying porn sites are different or special or why is making content different when it is done online?

As far as slipperlyslope, I suggest you look up the slipperyslope fallacy and why arguing some dire future condition possibly existing isn't an argument against a sepecific and scoped proposal.

> If you think porn is on the same order of harm as alcohol, you need to lay off the sauce.

I have no idea. Both ruin relationships or prevent healthy ones. But alcohol makes you fat, harms your organs and can lead to diabetes in the long term so I would say physically harmful things like alcohol are much more harmful than porn but that is bad whataboutism because even though you are right about alcohol that does not make porn any less harmful.

[omniglottal]

"Validate age" is not the same as "collect and sell identity".

[erenyeager]

Addictive drugs are also only amplifying existing human brain connections. And you can very easily liken porn to an exogenous substance that distorts how sex actually is and promotes fantasy. Measuring harm really depends on the context also. Porn production is often linked with human trafficking and exploitation of disadvantaged people.

[omniglottal]

Some of these things are illegal. Some are legal. When shutting down illegal things, it's a bad idea to target legal things.

[predictabl3]

"promotes fantasy". Gasp! Dear folks, if you have an honest, open relationship with your partner, and communicate about the kind of fantasy you enjoy, you can in fact achieve "fantasy" as well.

I'm sorry, this is losing the point a bit, but there really is something so telling about the projection behind "fantasy [bad]" and "you might have fantastical thoughts".

Yup, some of it's a bit wild, and I hope everyone has the joy of a partner to safely explore and experience that with, sans judgement.

[shortcake27]

Why are we debating the definition of oppression? You have an opinion about porn and you want to to have strict control over other people. That is a textbook definition of oppression.

Cigarettes and alcohol are known to cause harm, opposed to porn where the discourse is almost 100% opinionated. They are also not regulated to the extent you’re advocating for.

In terms of hard drugs, I don’t know what drugs exactly but I’m in favour of legalising drugs. The illegality of drugs causes more societal harm than legal use. Hence the current worldwide shift to legalisation.

If porn does cause harm (debatable), we need education. Regulating and monitoring people who like sex, treating them like criminals, makes no sense as we are, by nature, sexual beings.

[weard_beard]

What behaviors or socially impacting outcomes do you see from current standards and lack of regulation?

What makes pornography different from corn syrup is that over indulgence in corn syrup leads to fewer suitable recruits for our military and over indulgence in porn leads to fewer rapes.

Jesus, if he saw our culture, would be burning corn fields and flipping tables at fast food restaurants.

Pornography wouldn't even make his top 10.

Why do we need to regulate it?

[mindslight]

> over indulgence in corn syrup leads to fewer suitable recruits for our military

> Jesus, if he saw our culture, would be burning corn fields and flipping tables at fast food restaurants.

What the actual fuck? I know Christianity has long ago precessed and is often used to justify a whole host of horrible things, but this takes the prize in mental gymnastics.

[weard_beard]

America and southern conservative states and the military all skew more religious. Virginia is the vertex of each of those.

Please consider my statement to be… a framing of my true thoughts which I think would defibrillate the synapses of someone arguing in support of the opposite position.

[_8j50]

I am gonna ignore most of what you said since it is strawman argumenting and whataboutism.

But corn syrup is not addictive but porn is.

How about this though: The government should either regulate porn or stop regulating things that are harmful and addictive entirely. I am fine with either outcome but I would prefer if porn was regulated.

And fwiw, I never made the argument that porn should be regulated for moral or social-harm reasons. It harms the individual's mind and affects their lives long term. Also, porn production itself can be harmful to the sex workers.

Look at it differently, brothels are regulated right? Same thing, except I added that the brothels and porn sites also have warnings and help for both sex workers and users.

Of course you people only care about whatever extreme political spectrum you're clinging on to. Nothing I said prevents anyone from accessing legally produced porn. You just get a warning and help if you want it.

If you don't think there is harm or that people want help, look at r/nofap

So typical, sacrifice people at the altar of political conformity.

[shrimp_emoji]

I don't think you're using "addictive" in a medically-literate way. In the way you're using it, anything can be "addictive", from video games to books.

When used correctly, "addictive" refers to the dependence created by drugs like heroin. Not even caffeine could be classified as "addictive", let alone porn. It's in a different galaxy, conceptually.

And that's important because if you're worried about people getting too into media consumption, you're now collapsing everything down to some common denominator of psychological dysfunction that's absurd to hold society to universally. Few people will be "addicted" to porn when consuming it. Most people will be (actually) addicted to heroin when they consume it.

[_8j50]

There is chemical addiction and psycho-reactive addiction. For example, LSD is not chemically addictive but its effects on the person makes it psychologically addictive but even then not for everyone. Porn as you noted is similar to LSD. But addiction means something you do repeatedly and you have trouble stopping yourself from doing that thing even though you put in signifcant effort through will power to do so.

Your argument if I understand correctly is that there needs to be a chemical/physiological dependence for the addiction to be legitimate but that is not correct. Addiction only needs to be something you can't easily quit doing for it to be legitimate.

Caffeine and even sugar (imho for sugar) can be addictive. And regulating sugar use because it causes diabetes when addicted to it is something I support(some places already do this on sugar-high products). Caffeine shouldn't be regulated because the levels of caffeine consumed by an addicted person as far as I am aware is not harmful.

For something to be regulated it must meet either one of two sets of conditions. The first condition is for any single consumer obtainable dose/interaction to be harmful. The second is for it to be addictive and regularly consumed doses of it must lead to eventual harm to the user. Porn meets requirements for thr second condition. Media consumption may arguably be addictive but the only thing harmful about it maybe componets of a social media (like/dislike) not the media itself and those components, saying they on their own cause harm is quite a stretch but they do affect different people differently.

> Few people will be "addicted" to porn when consuming it. Most people will be (actually) addicted to heroin when they consume it.

No, most porn users are addicted. Few porn users actually want to stop. "I can quit any time" said every addict ever. If you can stop consuming porn for a month then you are not addicted. But it is so hard, there is a yearly challenge most people fail called "no nut november" and out of those who succeed, almost all fall back to porn despite not wanting to after seeing improvement in their lives.

As far as harm goes, the amount of people that speak of the improvement in life quality after quitting and the amount of harm they endured prior speaks for itself.

Now, I can see you arguing heroin is deadly but porn isn't and hands down I would agree with you. But a substance does not need to deadly for it to be harmful.

A better to explain my suggestion would be to consider how people who actively try to quit porn and fail and consider its effect on their lives significantly damaging might feel about the regulation I suggested. Givem the scale of porn consumption and widespread reports of addiction and harm, shouldn't this be regulated (not censored) at least to where mass consumption places (like brothels are for IRL sex) get regulated for content creation conditions and audited to make sure only allowed individuals have access (not minors or people in sexual offender db) and warnings/help made readily available?

Since I spent so much time replying, can you elaborate what part of that suggestion prevents you from accessing the porn you want or how any of that infringes on your rights? After all, having products display warnings/hell isn't new and neither is having rules that make sure working conditions and counsumer id'ing are in place at businesses like pharmacies, hospitals, bars, car rentals/sales,etc...

So why is porn so special if I may ask and given how regular porn consumers looking for legitimately/safely produced porn are unaffected, why would you or anyone in this thread have a problem with it? People are helped and harm is reduced and you are not affected. Only porn sites have reasonable but increased cost.

[erenyeager]

Medical definitions separate physician dependence from psychological dependence and generally a psych disorder is anything that causes social dysfunction including an addiction. So heroin has biologically addictive properties like it leads to withdrawal and tolerance, but also one can have a psychological dependence on heroin for example they associated it with a certain location they always use heroin In.

So the terms of addiction in the medical world are really more about where society draws the lines.

[erenyeager]

Any evidence for fewer rapes due to porn availability? I’ve seen evidence of porn encouraging violent behaviors in men towards women.

[shrimp_emoji]

Here's an article saying that both retrospective and prospective trials, flawed as they are, show that porn consumption decreases sexual assault: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-about-sex/201707...

[weard_beard]

Here’s a u/militaryporn link talking about the same thing every Iraq veteran talks about, everyone’s favorite Burger King, how they call it a royale with cheese, and dumpster diving for burgers after hours: https://www.reddit.com/r/MilitaryPorn/comments/vwjoax/us_sol...

[LocalH]

What right do you have to decide what I look at? I reject your desire to control the content intake of others. Choose what you want to view, and leave other people alone.

[_8j50]

What right does the government have to control what people smoke, drink or inject into themselves? If porn is harmless then I am with you there but it is addictive and harmful.

[shortcake27]

> If porn is harmless then I am with you there but it is addictive and harmful.

You keep spouting this nonsense to the point you’re confusing opinion and fact. There is little evidence to suggest porn is harmful to teenagers, let alone adults. The majority of discourse around porn is opinionated.

Porn has NOT been widely proved (as in, not just studies funded by groups with agendas) to be addictive and harmful in adults. Check yourself.

[LocalH]

> but it is addictive and harmful

That's not at all a given.

[Shaanie]

So is social media, and social media is likely worse, but hopefully you apply the same logic to that?

[jen20]

I can get behind this for porn if you can get behind the same for bibles.

[_8j50]

Are you saying bibles are addictive or holding a belief of some sort in itself is harmful? There is emprical proof of the addicticveness and harm for porn, I didn't call for regulating morality.

[defrost]

I'm pretty sure Jim Jones wasn't reading Playboy and suicide bombers aren't shouting Praise Hefner.

There's some empirical evidence for you re: harmful effects of religion.

Per capita what's the comparison with porn in terms of number and severity of extreme responses?

[_8j50]

And stalin was atheist so atheism should be banned because it isn't protected asa religion right? And islam should be banned right.

You changed to this strawman argument so let's have it.

People are responsible for their own actions. You can't blame information people consume because sane people have the ability to accept or reject information as correct or incorrect and killing people is one the most basic wrongs a sane person can discern. In effect your childish argument is that if a person uses some text as their reason for murdering then it is no longer that person who is responsible but the text that is bypassing their ability to tell apart from right and wrong and therefor that text should be banned?

Tell me, what belief system or lack of it do you accept where people who share that belief never harm anyone ever?

> Per capita what's the comparison with porn in terms of number and severity of extreme responses?

Again, strawmam! You yourself made the claim that porn is harmful to society, not I. But your asking me to defend your assertion lol.

While we are at, let's compare how many conservatives vs democrats are school shooters and pedophiles and I'm sure conservatives are more so let's ban the republican party and conservatism right?

If uninformed childish people like you had their way I am sure you would end up genociding everyone that looks thinks or believes in any way different than you.

You mistake the fact that your belief is popular and tolerated to mean you have the right to persecute others or use persecution as an argument or threat to fend off any disagreement.

Please try to argue in good faith and using sound arguments.

My argument is simple: porn is addicting, sex workers that make porn are not always in good conditions and porn overuse has a harmful effect to the user. So, much like drugs and prostitution people should be allowed to access it but in a way that is regulated and where rehabilitation and help is readily available.

You still get your porn, but your argument is that others shouldn't do it safely or be informed because... you hate bibles? Come on!

Maybe you could have said to me that bibles should have similar warnings and all that to which I would say unlike porn, religion is protected from such things but even if it wasn't, freedom of speech and religion exists and you are able to warn/discourse against the bible or any religion freely. So, unless the platforms that make the bible available to Christians (e.g.: the internet) don't allow your disagreeing belief to be made available (never mind the fact that schools teach things that disagree with thr bible but can't teach the bible!) then all you're doing is displaying your hate in bad faith here.

[DangitBobby]

Not a compelling response. I'm going to have to award the point to the "if you ban porn you should ban Bibles" argument.

[erenyeager]

Curious where would social media sites that are used sometimes for pornographic purposes fall under this? Obviously something like PHub only serves to distribute porn. But things like Twitter, Reddit, etc. are well known for their “secondary” purposes.

For example there are many chat apps aimed towards teenagers that are prolifically used for exchanging videos and pictures between adults and minors (at least de facto, even if de jure it is against terms). Of course there’s a big difference between a porn production company versus an individual, but often social platforms are conduits for more “black hat” behavior.

[_8j50]

That's what I was addressing with the "small audience" or one-to-one messaging. So long as the sender is sending to a small number of specific individuals (i.e.: small subreddit or DMing small number of people) it should be unregulated.

The consensus is that humans just can't maintain meaningful relationships with more than 150 people so that should be the "small" threshold. The moment the number of viewers/receivers is more than that, it becomes a felony if they fail to follow regulations and notices to users. So if a private group chat grows to have 151 users then everyone sending nudes in that chat is criminally liable unless the group chat has the neccesary warnings and links to where people can get help and moderation to make sure shared content is consensual and legal as well as making sure participants are of legal age.

For "children", the solution is enabling parents to regulate what content kids consume (not just porn but anything really).