The article reports the Texas law said "pornography sites would have been forced to display a “Texas Health and Human Services Warning” in at least 14-point font — one such warning was specified to read, “Pornography increases the demand for prostitution, child exploitation, and child pornography”
I not sure I can believe all that. I do believe porm can be addictive for some folks because I knew a guy who had barrels full of hard core porn magazines at his metal fabrication shop in Hollywood when I was young teen in the 70s. He must've had 1000s of them.
I'm not at all convinced that it "increases the demand for prostitution, child exploitation, and child pornography” though. With the few exceptions for prostitution all of that is already illegal in most places here in the U.S. and has been long before porn on the web became a thing, and "child pornography" has always been a crime.
I don't think a "warning" like that on porn sites will change any of that at all. It's nothing more than political bullshit.
Is this actually a thing? There's lots of people doing this professionally. There's lots releasing porn of themselves for free for fun. The system feels extremely saturated already.
I get the trafficking for prostitution, but is trafficking for porn actually a thing? Would it even make money?
Not every pornographic video is non-consensual or necessarily involves exploitation, but the reality is that there is no way for the average consumer of pornography to know which is which.
It's definitely a thing with organized crime. It has also happened in the past, but that was before laws on child exploitation were broadly adopted. Companies like ColorClimax filmed the rape of children as young as 2 and may have been involved in their trafficking.
> I not sure I can believe all that. I do believe porm can be addictive for some folks because I knew a guy who had barrels full of hard core porn magazines at his metal fabrication shop in Hollywood when I was young teen in the 70s. He must've had 1000s of them.
There is a massive difference in the content and consumption rate of your guy with the barrels versus the average 18 year old. It took him years to amass that much, and I doubt he consumed them all. Each one cost a few bucks, and he had to physically go to some seedy adult shop to buy them. There was friction involved in his "addiction" (if it's even that; some people are just collectors/hoarders).
Today, you can pull up infinite-scrolling pages and HD video of just about anything without leaving the house, for free. Your consumption ability is limited only by your penis not being torn to bloody shreds. Porn exists that breaks the fourth wall and directs the viewer to do everything from watching more porn, to consuming your own effluent, all the way to conditioning you to renounce your sexual orientation and getting a sex change. Something is different these days, and it doesn't appear to be a net positive, considering the suicide statistics.
Recovering and reviewing browser histories is a function of my day job; in my experience, escalation is real, but I do have to admit bias in that the instances I see are almost always suspected to be exploitation cases to begin with. It sounds absurd that someone could start with Playboy and end at CSAM but it does happen over the course of years, to people who consume porn like the rest of us eat, drink, socialize with friends and converse with our families. It becomes an entire lifestyle unto itself.
One case literally saw the guy progress from porn to nudism to swinging with his wife, then to him looking for rub-and-tugs (post-divorce), gay, then trans escorts (not judgment-- neither were available during his swinging phase due to known intolerance of both within that community), and then he was outed by a Chris Hansen-type when he attempted to meet a child for sex. Depression and a hypersexual lifestyle don't lend themselves to rational thought. This guy wasn't even gay or a pedophile (no previous history by any account, nor any CSAM artifacts I discovered), but as his timeline documented his downfall, it screamed desperation (at one point he did seek mental health treatment, failed to find it, and consoled himself with...porn. A therapist will see you for an hour next month. Porn is always there for you.). The "child" in this case, he didn't even seek out-- they approached him on a popular hookup app; he was desperate enough that he attempted to pursue the opportunity. (Yes, this was entrapment; no, he wasn't prosecuted-- but his family and friends were blasted with the footage.)
You may deny the possibility because you haven't walked that path and never will-- good for you and godspeed. Inasmuch as porn can be an addiction (apparently this is up for debate?), there are high-functioning users, and there are total fucking trainwrecks. The latter are prone to progressively-increasing usage, at higher doses, escalating to eventual "overdose" when nothing does the job anymore. I'd attest the same thing with drug users happens here, because it's less about the vice itself and more about chasing diminishing returns of dopamine and the methods by which they are obtained. This isn't a porn-exclusive problem, but I do think in the context of porn there are some unfortunate side effects because of its private nature and low cost of consumption-- you can only hide gambling losses or excessive drug use for so long. With porn, there's an unusual danger in that it may take an arrest involving public humiliation, harassment and battery before you even know you have a problem-- because insight into your porn usage is necessarily concealed from anyone inclined to help you. Someone could have helped the guy above...if they knew he was struggling, and what with.
That said, I don't agree with Texas' approach--they're being too extreme--but try to keep an open mind. Porn obviously doesn't lead to these outcomes for most users, and it's fucked for Texas to assert that it does. The truth is found somewhere in the middle, between your own opinion and that of the state of Texas. In my experience, for some people, it really can be as bad as Texas claims.
This just sounds like a slippery slope, if you watch one thing it'll lead to the next.
Does this happen? I've yet to see this phenomenal be validated in studies, but the closest I've read is that certain individuals have really good gates or have a very narrow taste and thus keeps themselves restricted.
But overall there's no conclusive evidence that makes a person with a "normal brain" become a pedophile, a furry, a fetishist or whatever because they watch porn.
Otherwise we would see more of this escalation in other issues like drug usage or watching, reading or listening to violent content.
But we don't, the issue also is that studies about porn is so often junk because of the bias against it (one case 40000 studies looked over less than 1% was usable)[1].
Now again I need to stress I am not making the claim addiction does not exist when it comes to porn, but instead it's the "you start with seeing an attractive face and you end up a becoming pedo" slippery slope with no conclusive evidence beyong trust me, bro.
And it doesn't either help that a lot of anti-porn are driven by religious or political ideology when there are genuine concerns that you could chalk up to being anti porn but not due to an agenda (like addiction, body image, dangerous kinks, etc).
I think it's odd to draw a distinction between "genuine reasons" and "due to an agenda".
I'm anti-porn primarily because of the harm to women and girls. The pornography industry is built upon misogyny and abuse. There is a huge predatory aspect to it, with many of the performers being trafficked or otherwise coerced. It encourages its consumers to view women as subhuman sex objects to be degraded, abused and tortured.
Perhaps this could be considered a feminist agenda, but I consider these to be genuine concerns.
It's not odd because the fundamental issue with having an agenda is precisely that you will never buckle because your goal is not to try and fix the cause for concern but instead to push and push until you get what you want.
To give you an example:
Let's say you want to ban or put up several restriction in the road where you live because of playing kids or elderly people.
In this case you're not against the idea of cars existing and you main focus is to see a resolution that suits the concern at hand, no cars on the road or at the very least a compromise (speed limits, roadblocks, etc.) to that specific road.
A person with an agenda to say ban all cars will completely agree with your concern, however they will further push and push and demand the total ban and even push for banning associations with cars (if we take it to a more fanatical degree), because it might "entice" people to build their own cars.
And in both cases there might be studies and data that support both of your claims (traffic accident statistics, studies conducted by your department of transportation, news papers documenting murder/death/injury caused by cars, etc.) but even then it does not make the anti-car arguments untouchable.
With specifically using anti-porn from an agenda perspective, they do not want to stop at real issues with porn, they want it banned and criminalized - no matter if there are nuances.
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I do agree that there probably are cases as you state of trafficking victims casting as porn stars.
In fact in Russia it's far, far worse than that.
But I would also argue at the same time that even then, the fundamental issue isn't the foundation of porn, but instead the lack of society acceptance and subpar treatment and scrutiny of the industry.
Instead I would argue that what you seek is a similar push towards is what the Labor movement did for blue collar workers which is no exploitation, no coercion and full rights to unionization and labor rights enshrined in law.
Plus ending the stigma about "sex", not to the point where you can show up naked at a funeral, but at least we should treat porn actors/actresses and prostitutes with the same respect and dignity as the common worker ought to be.
If the Romans/Greeks/Egyptians and more could marvel at the natural state of man and woman, I think we can also do this without casting judgement as if these statues were a symbol of sin and degeneracy.
And I do agree with you there's a very unhealthy narrative within porn about how we ought to look at men and women and how we ought to be "judged" based on sexual characteristic (which sometimes is beyond our control), but I think it's a lost cause to throw in the towel and go scorched earth (not trying to make the claim that you are, just that it's all too common for anti-'anything' to move in that zealous direction).
One argument I've heard is say for instance that the meta story of porn movies have all but disappeared (the cheesy acting and cheesy plot) and instead shifted to hyper-accelerate instead onto the "act" or "object" and as such we've moved away from seeing the experience/plot as erotic to only merely the "perfect" sexual attributes.
>Something is different these days, and it doesn't appear to be a net positive, considering the suicide statistics.
It's the worse than the previous gilded age inequality causing all this despair that drives people to cope in increasingly self and society damaging ways, surely. Look a little further than porn. Porn (to that level) is a self administered medicine for the sick, not the disease.
The disease is despair. As a socialist I'd argue that despair is primarily caused by alienation from our labor and the fruits of that labor. For decades now we've seen X% increases in productivity increase our bosses wages X%, not decrease the amount of work we have to do to earn the same money, or make more money ourselves.
We see an increasing share of society confident our jobs provide no value. Porn drugs gambling over eating all the addictions are an attempt to quell despair.
And can we really be surprised a world where 3 own more wealth than the bottom 50% combined[1], is abundant in despair?
>at one point he did seek mental health treatment, failed to find it, and consoled himself with...porn
You say near as much here, to my ears.
>low cost of consumption
You're really on to something here though. It definitely is the easiest vice to consume. Like imagine if heroin were free in infinite amounts out of your computer I imagine a lot more people would become junkies.
>for some people, it really can be as bad as Texas claims.
And here too really on to something. This is a bar, if cleared, we deem acceptable and actionable. One we can and do warn all users for , look no further than cigarette packaging. Really interesting stuff here for something I never gave much thought to past blind rejection as ridiculous.
At the same time, this law was manifestly meant to serve as a foot in the door towards increased online surveillance (there is no such thing as "online age verification" for just minors) with the obvious aim of stifling constitutionally protected speech. Seems like a reasonable (and very straightforward) ruling.
1. They purportedly did a really shitty job of handling a report of CSAM 14 years ago.
2. They have the same problem with occasional abhorrent content every platform for user-submitted content has, except that they've taken stronger steps to reduce it by attempting to verify that everyone in uploaded content has consented to being in it.
Would we really call that 'pretty disgusting', if not for the consistent effort of conservative activists and thinkpiece journalists to frame the site in the most unfavourable terms possible?
Surely its just publicly documenting criminal acts for law enforcement purposes when looking at data privacy laws like EU GDPR?
Mind you, when will the legal system admit it non-consensually forces itself onto people from the day one is born? I wonder who does more harm especially as we are supposed to live in a democracy where we can pick and choose our politicians and thus legislators, and yet the state doesn't teach law to people in a tldr way.
The legal system is certainly dictatorial in a fascist dictator way, so does that make law abiding citizens little fascist dictators, who use a mere transgression of the law, to unload their pent up frustration of violence on those around them?
I will say this, the US constitution is so vague, its barely worth repeating let along harping back to for court cases.
Time to update the constitution for the 21st century, unless it should be viewed simply as a tldr in todays modern times?
The processes via which we update that Constitution. I wasn't speaking to historically I mean now. We cannot get amendments ratified through the normal Congress + States approach. We'd have to do the whole Constitutional Convention thing. That opens the entire Constitution up for changing. If that happens, because land means more than people, we'd have the chucklefuck brother-husbands in charge of the process.
Why would you have slavery back and no separation of the church and state?
If the Christian Church can recognise it needed a New Testament, then why not a new US constitution. I'm sure many of religious followers would accept the need for change and updates, as technology and business in general demonstrates on a daily basis.
Or is the resistance to change simply demonstrating peoples needs or desires to live in some rose tinted past of human history, that has white washed the abominations of the past?
If it does, should these people be making decisions for lots of people?
> There are viable and constitutional means to achieve Texas’s goal, and nothing in this order prevents the state from pursuing those means.
This is the correct way to appeal to authority. Being willing to notice that the authority, or a different authority, can achieve the same goals in a different way, no matter how it makes you feel to have that discussion or train of thought.
eg: One alternative the court discusses (page 43) is:
Plaintiffs propose adult controls on children’s devices, many of which already exist and can be readily set up.
This “content filtering” is effectively the modern version of “blocking and filtering software” that the Supreme Court proposed as a viable alternative in Ashcroft v. ACLU. 542 U.S. at 666–73.
Blocking and filtering software is less restrictive because adults may access information without having to identify themselves.
And the Court agreed with the finding that “filters are more effective than age-verification requirements.”
If the state can impose tough restrictions on a right, including criminal and age limitations for one enumerated constitutional right (the second) why can't it impose it for the first?
This particular attempt to do so was found to be unconstitutional because the details of the limits it imposed were, according to the court, much too broad.
Generally to impose limits on a Constitutional right there has to be some legitimate compelling state interest to justify it and the limits have to be narrowly tailored to avoid limiting the right more than is necessary for that.
More details in the court's decision, which is linked to in the article. The court goes into great detail to explain what is allowed and how the Texas law goes beyond that.
I don't see why the same restrictions to buy a firearm shouldn't apply to pornography, namely:
- ID required
- a half hour or more background check by a licensed dealer
- while it can be purchased online, said dealer must physically be present to hand possession of the material
- A prohibition to certain material, country wide
- individual states impose further restrictions on the material.
Im sorry, but just as I see no reason why an 11 year old should walk out of a store with a firearm, I also dont see a compelling reason why an 11 year old (the average age of a first time porn user) should freely be allowed to watch a woman be savagely sodomized by a group of men as is the case on a typical porn site's homepage.
EDIT: Oh, and states should be allowed to make databases of porn consumer's preferences and habitually leak them for their neighbors to know, just like NY did
Given your edit, I can’t quite tell if the rest of your comment is meant to be satirical or not. Anyway, I would argue that many of those sorts of restrictions on the second amendment are themselves grossly unconstitutional and should be overturned by the courts.
It was lathered in sarcasm, in that I also believe that many (not all) of the 2A restrictions are unconstitutional and should be lifted. The sarcasm a rhetorical device highlighting how we allow pre-teens to view terrible images of women being, essentially, raped but have age restrictions on firearms (and alcohol and tobacco) beyond the age of emancipation.
> I also dont see a compelling reason why an 11 year old (the average age of a first time porn user) should freely be allowed to watch a woman be savagely sodomized by a group of men as is the case on a typical porn site's homepage.
Epic straw man? Perhaps?
Nowhere in the ruling is any compelling reason claimed for what you just described.
And making Pornhub less private for adults won’t stop children from online searching for “woman savagely sodomized”.
Speech limits need to at least effectively limit something, if they are going to chill adults access to free speech, among other hurdles, or they are unconstitutional.
Your reasoning is sound.
However, the problem is, as pointed out by the document within the article, and I quote:
"The problem, in short, is that the law targets websites as a whole, rather
than at the level of the individual page or subdomain"
Basically, this law would do nothing to prevent minors from accessing porn. It would just single out porn companies that are based/operate in the USA. And would only prevent direct access to them. Search engine results, visual search, metadata based content linking/recommendations, etc. are completely out of the scope.
It also would not apply to any social media sites that carry less than 33% porn content. So basically you could still go to X or Reddit and search for porn there too. Even r/pornhub for pornhub reposts.
It does not apply to apps that do search porn through API calls to porn sites that can be easily installed from the appstores.
Want to actually regulate this stuff?
Make all internet connection capable devices be verifiable at the hardware level. Make it so apart from logging in to Google/Apple you have to also log in with a government issued ID through your ISP to some kind of verification portal/account. And link that verification to government developed software running within the device's OS which would block functionalities and can't be turned off/blocked without the device completely freezing.
Want a less draconian/90% solution? Make the top 3 search engines(Google, Bing, Yahoo) and the top 5 social media sites that carry porn (X, Reddit, Facebook, etc.) block access to pornographic content through Government issued ID verification.
Good luck with actually enforcing any of those though.
And I would say workarounds are within reach of the average teenager. Mainly in the 90% solution. Just change the search engine.
People are ostensibly downvoting you because you're baselessly linking porn to "population collapse."
Plenty of people think that porn is bad or, more weakly, that it's a mild social ill that requires counter-education to help (mostly) young men understand that porn isn't the same thing as a healthy adult relationship. You can believe these things without catastrophizing.
It seems to be entirely possible that someone can simultaneously believe that porn is bad and that the government should have no particular insight into whether you watch it.
I'm not a libertarian. It's just a pointless, wasteful, and manifestly stifling incursion on something that needs social education (much like booze, you're never going to kill porn).
Please read comments charitably. This site has rules to that effect.
Social education means that the government should commit funds and other resources to educating the public (especially young men) about the un-reality of pornography and its insufficiency as a substitute for normal human intimacy. This is what other developed countries do[1].
Edit: and note: this is an obviously non-libertarian position to hold.
I don't watch that much porn anymore, but we still sometimes put a Dorcel (or any 'porn with plot' movie) to get in the mood, especially in winter. I think it's a positive in my sexual life.
Anyway, this is clearly government overreach. I'm not against age verification but it has to be an anonymous system. Privacy is worth fighting for.
It’s unlikely there are many here are advocating for porn per se; instead, they are advocating for a particular right in the US Constitution. Even there, it’s a nuanced discussion. But it’s one that is completely short-circuited by ad hominem comments such as this.
Say what you will about the state of the judiciary in the US but there remains a rule of law; and restrictions to rights have to be based in something more than preferences, no matter how sincerely held.
Who said that? The issue is that the "Free Speech Coalition" isn't actually about free speech broadly, but has a single-issue focus on empowering the notoriously exploitative pornography industry.
On the opposing side you have evangelist Christians claiming to protect children, while they consistently refuse to acknowledge the large amounts of child abuse and exploitation within churches.
If you want to protect children, ban them from the churches.
Kind of disgusting that states see a problem with this, but the constant stream of abuses of children within state care doesn't seem to be a problem. In those cases, the state is fighting ... to protect the perpetrators.
Nobody in this game is in it to actually improve living conditions for children, either in or outside of state care. Not the porn industry, obviously (though you regularly see arguments that they provide "a way out" for some youngsters, some of it is bound to be true). But also definitely not the state. If they wanted to improve children's living conditions, the youth services residential facilities need SERIOUS upgrades, all of them, to the point that children are often better off at home, abused, than in state care. They are regularly denied necessary medical care. It seriously looks like state legislators are in this fight exclusively to look good while making things worse.
Yet this is supposedly the reason we're having a discussion about it at all.
I not sure I can believe all that. I do believe porm can be addictive for some folks because I knew a guy who had barrels full of hard core porn magazines at his metal fabrication shop in Hollywood when I was young teen in the 70s. He must've had 1000s of them.
I'm not at all convinced that it "increases the demand for prostitution, child exploitation, and child pornography” though. With the few exceptions for prostitution all of that is already illegal in most places here in the U.S. and has been long before porn on the web became a thing, and "child pornography" has always been a crime.
I don't think a "warning" like that on porn sites will change any of that at all. It's nothing more than political bullshit.