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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   26731 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 2025

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Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Paxton - Pornography 6-3 conservative opinion, Thomas. First Amendment does not prohibit Texas from requiring age-verification for pornographic websites. Kagan writes the dissent.

Telling a business to do age verification is equivalent to a ban if that will sufficiently impede their business model. Most of the subscription-based porn sites will likely be fine, but I imagine that the legal sites offering free porn will pull out of Texas, which was probably the intent all along.

I wonder how much this would generalize to other unpopular stuff some people say is corrupting the minds of the youth.

  • Reading the motte could certainly be damaging to some minors. I wonder how many people would participate if they had to send a picture of their driving license to the mods first.

  • Pictures of guns will turn our kids into school shooters (I could claim). Tell all the gun manufacturers, gun nuts influencers and gun safety people that they need to put in age verification or pixelate any weapons.

  • Rainbows and LGBT propaganda brainwash kids into being trans (I could claim). Just let any websites which discuss these topics implement age verification.

I would be more sympathetic to the attempt to make the internet kid-friendly if it was not so obviously doomed from the start. The thing is, the internet has been a cesspit of pornography since even before the web was a thing. Pornhub is only the tip of the iceberg, outlawing them will not change a thing. At the very least you would need a Texas-wide firewall which bans 20% of the international websites (and good luck with keeping the filter list up to date).

Either keep kids on a whitelisted tiny sliver of the web (and pray that they do not outsmart your filter) or teach them why it is a bad idea to search for beheading videos or bestiality porn.

Reading the motte could certainly be damaging to some minors. I wonder how many people would participate if they had to send a picture of their driving license to the mods first.

I wouldn't mind, I'd just be looking at my own driving license.

Hmm.. I wonder if there's room for "creative" thinking here. Every new member is automatically promoted to mod status temporarily, verifies their own ID, and then resigns with dignity before becoming a normal participant.

Mindgeek has already pulled out of Texas, supposedly. A coworker told me that pornhub comes up as a form asking him to contact his state rep and a link to a VPN. I'm unwilling to check this myself but I remember reading news articles about it.

This factsheet from <del>Mindgeek</del><ins>Aylo</ins> confirms it.

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