TLDR

The idiocracy has won. AV is coming into force across multiple countries — many around the same time. We’ll be forced to verify your age, and we already know we’ll lose almost all our users in the process.

Only a few sites like ours are being targeted, so porn will remain available everywhere else. Minors won’t be safer — just redirected to social media platforms or darker, unregulated corners of the internet.

This is the result of an ongoing moral panic, carried by dishonest ideologues, opportunistic politicians, and a media class that thrives on fear and outrage.

We’re witnessing censorship disguised as “protection,” incompetence dressed up as virtue, and a total collapse of rational policymaking. And everyone will pay the price.

Not a news material per se, but an opinion piece from the large player in the industry, reflecting on current law changes, media coverage, logics behind AV push et cetera. It needs not to be taken as a single source of truth, but an interesting inside from their end of the deal.

If it’s not a good fit there, feel free to delete it.

I didn’t put NSFW tag because it’s a discussion on pornography without graphic details of any kind.

  • mspencer712@programming.dev
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    7 hours ago

    There’s a kernel of something positive in decentralization, though. Me pointing this out feels a little bit like someone saying how good COVID lockdown was for the environment, but I still feel like it’s an important point.

    An internet made of lots of small sites is better at resisting censorship and centralized control. People should remain accustomed to using a bunch of individual sites, not JUST the biggest sites on the internet, and amateur sysadmins should maintain their “host a public web server from an at-home business internet connection” chops.

    There being lots of small porn sites makes it harder for anyone to apply pressure and make certain kinds of affirming content disappear.

    That’s … just about everything positive I could say about this idea. Not a fan.

  • evenglow@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    No easy access to legal porn means illegal porn becomes more profitable. That’s very bad.

    • Yggstyle@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      Prohibition and the war on drugs sure worked out well when they were implemented. Surely this time …

      … I mean getting rid of standards and quality control … and testing can’t possibly have adverse effects here. Ah well. We’re speed running regression in just about everything else: what’s one more offering for the pyre?

      Surely the children will thank us for … saving them … when they are older.

      • Fluffy Kitty Cat@slrpnk.net
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        14 minutes ago

        It’s like drugs if you could Ctrl-c Ctrl-v an identical copy of your drugs Into existence out of thin air

        This is a super bad idea. You think they’re gonna fear monger off of the inevitable result of the problems they are creating?

    • Fluffy Kitty Cat@slrpnk.net
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      8 hours ago

      I trust Pornhub too not post illegal porn on their website. What happens when you throw everything, including safe for work books that talk about gay topics or anything Christians don’t like into one big bin called illegal?

      • Yggstyle@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        …or anything Christians don’t like into one big bin called illegal?

        Not to lump everyone into the same boat but I’ll take the low hanging fruit for the obvious low blow:

        I’ll tell you one thing that those churches seem to like that will definitely not see an uptick as we make legal outlets less accessible…

  • altkey@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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    10 hours ago

    One thing they didn’t focus on is how it explicitly makes sexual minorities feel unsafe. When Pornhub enabled age verification in my conutry via soc media authorization, I freaked out and stopped using it because I didn’t want my real identity being connected to my watch history in any way. It wasn’t disclosed on entry if the VA broker can collect info on what I’m interested in, and it is a major security risk if one’s state becames authoritarian and would get a handy database of people watching everything but vanilla.

    • Fluffy Kitty Cat@slrpnk.net
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      8 hours ago

      That is of course the point because they are nazis. Find a different websites, the internet will have porn not restricted by Fascism. It’s simply simply impossible not to

    • altkey@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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      10 hours ago

      I’d want to hear Lemmynsfw mods because it’s one thing when Pornhub or Xvideos as business get attacked by that, and the other - is non-monetized platform with a couple of powerusers and plenty small OC creators.

  • TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works
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    10 hours ago

    Also I use Private Browsing for porn, so if I have to sign in every time to some third party age verification service - which is never saved logins because it’s private browsing - that’s an additional roadblock to mainstream sites.