Pornhub Is Now Blocked In Almost All of the U.S. South

Eric said:
Right but it's the masking of IP and geolocation that's key to all of it and it works as designed, I agree that it's only as good as your trust with the provider. I think of it like the iPhone, I have full faith in their security and any company risks a lot if they blow that trust. Nord is pretty reputable.
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Totally fair. Just seen a lot of false advertising and people misunderstanding what VPNs offer in terms of privacy and what they don't that it's always a point I feel warrants clarification. The services can have value, I just think it's important people use them understanding the value and not with false promises in mind
 
So if VPN’s can mask location, what are the odds that a greater percentage of teens will be able to access PH than Luddite adults?

So basically we have a law that “sounds good” to the voters but is essentially useless.
 
Herdfan said:
So if VPN’s can mask location, what are the odds that a greater percentage of teens will be able to access PH than Luddite adults?

So basically we have a law that “sounds good” to the voters but is essentially useless.
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I imagine two high school students:

"It's so comforting to know that our parents can't watch porn."
"Yeah, I know, right?"
 
Going way out in the weeds on this post. I rewatched The First Omen. SPOILER ALERT. For most of the movie you believe one of the characters is going to be the mother of the antichrist but find out later it's a different character. There were backup candidates. They hypothesized the reason it wasn't the original character they thought it would be was because she's too young. According to who? They didn't state her age, but the actress is 16 and looks about that old in the movie. I find it absurd that Satan would have some kind of self imposed arbitrary age of consent restriction. If anything, he would handle it at the first menstruation drop. Other then that, solid movie.
 
Herdfan said:
So if VPN’s can mask location, what are the odds that a greater percentage of teens will be able to access PH than Luddite adults?

So basically we have a law that “sounds good” to the voters but is essentially useless.
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To a point. If it turns into an issue, PH could turn to blocking VPNs as well (Netflix has been getting more and more strict on this over time as well under pressure from content owners). But ultimately, the company will do the minimum blocking required to remain "in compliance" as it eats money to play that cat and mouse game, and PH's goal again is to mostly be able to make the legal claim that they do not operate in Texas et al.

casperes1996 said:
The technology to achieve it definitely exists. But there's some major requirements and caveats to my proposed solution that make it practically infeasible for non-technical reasons.

For one, all parties would have to participate. That is all major OS vendors and browser vendors, Google, Mozilla, Apple, Microsoft, The Linux Foundation/community, etc. Also the content providers, so all the sites offering adult contents would have to participate and implement their side of the handshake. And for them to do that they need incentive, which means there needs to be a regulatory requirement, and if it's just a handful of states; Even 17, they're not important enough to push the needle on such a huge initiative; It basically needs to be all of EU + all of US to create the required infrastructure for my main proposal. All built on existing cryptographic primitives, but we'd still also need the concrete cryptographic details ironed out and prove it safe from Byzantine actors for the chain of trust to make sense from both the perspective of content vendors and privacy of users.

So technically possible I am certain, but unlikely to happen the way I'd want it to :(
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It's technically possible for sure, and these laws seem to even allow for some entity to come forward and offer it. But I agree it's other issues at play that make it difficult. Honestly, I think this is just a subset of a larger issue of confirming aspects of one's identity digitally. There are many who were around in the early internet that would prefer that we be able to have a pseudonym, and will fight the need to use identity clearinghouses to access things. That could of course change with the newer generations.
 
Nycturne said:
To a point. If it turns into an issue, PH could turn to blocking VPNs as well
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Why would they? They won't do any more than legally required to block users. This will be a case of the laws trying to keep up with technology and we know that doesn't work very well.
 
Herdfan said:
Why would they? They won't do any more than legally required to block users. This will be a case of the laws trying to keep up with technology and we know that doesn't work very well.
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Couldn't the states banning it mandate it? Technically speaking PH has the power to do it as mentioned.
 
Eric said:
Couldn't the states banning it mandate it? Technically speaking PH has the power to do it as mentioned.
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Maybe the states could. But could they keep up? Like I said, I think this is a "feel good" law so they can act like they did something, but know deep down it won't work.

Sure PH could, but why would they? People in states where it isn't banned probably use VPN's, so how would PH know if your connection via a VPN was from a banned state?
 
Herdfan said:
Why would they? They won't do any more than legally required to block users. This will be a case of the laws trying to keep up with technology and we know that doesn't work very well.
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That's why I said if it turns into an issue. I don't know what the next few years will bring in this space, or how the courts will rule on the inevitable lawsuits on such laws. I'm just pointing out that PH has further steps they could take if things don't go their way in court going forward.

The Texas law specifically is up in front of SCOTUS in a little over a week, and I'll be honest that I'm not sure if we'll see a repeat of Ashcroft v ACLU or not. 5th Circuit already put aside the existing precedent in it's decision to some extent (which is why PH blocked Texas in the first place and this case is up in front of SCOTUS).

Herdfan said:
Like I said, I think this is a "feel good" law so they can act like they did something, but know deep down it won't work.
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Eh, I'd wager it's more than that, more of a "if it reduces consumption of this material, it's still a win for us" law. The Texas law in particular compelled that site operators include some rather specific (and not well supported) "health warnings", which did get struck down by the 5th as compelled speech.
 
I think it is possible to block known public VPNs like Norton, because they have registered IP addresses and those ranges can be filtered. However it won't be possible to block private VPNs, like if I were to use the Campus VPN (I wouldn't), it just looks like normal traffic coming from our campus.
 
apnews.com

Judge largely blocks Tennessee's porn site age verification law as other states enforce theirs

A Tennessee law requiring pornographic websites to verify the age of its visitors was largely blocked in court before taking effect Jan. 1.
apnews.com apnews.com

In her ruling, Judge Lipman wrote that parental controls on minors’ devices are more effective and less restrictive.
She wrote that under Tennessee’s law, minors still could access adult sites using VPNs, or virtual private networks, that mask a user’s location.
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The prudinging begins. I just got this mark against my account today...

Screenshot 2025-01-15 102139.png
 
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