This implies the creation of an infrastructure for the total surveillance of citizens, unlike age verification by physical businesses.
How do you reconcile porn sites as a line in the sand with things like banking or online real estate transactions or applying for an apartment already performing ID checks? The verification infrastructure is already in place. It's mundane. In fact the apartment one is probably more offensive because they'll likely make you do their online thing even if you could just walk in and show ID.
I mean, we're talking about age verification in the OS itself in some of these laws, so tell me how it doesn't.
Quantity is a quality. We're not just seeing it for porn, it's moving to social media in general. Politicians are already talking about it for all sites that allow posts, that would include this site.
So you tell me.
California is also stupid for creating liability for service/app providers that don't even deal in age restricted apps, like calculators or maps. It's playing right into the "this affects the whole Internet/all of computing" narrative when in fact it's really a small set of businesses that are causing issues and should be subject to regulation.
There is also the problem of mission creep. Once the infrastructure is in place, to control access to age-restricted content, other services might become out of reach. In particular, anonymous usage of online forums might no longer be possible.
OS-level ability to verify the age of the person using it absolutely provides infrastructure for the OS to verify all sorts of other things. Citizenship, identity, you name it. When it's at the OS level there's no way to do anything privately on that machine ever again.
Ok, suppose the strip club is the website, and the club's door is the OS.
Would you fine the door's manufacturer for teens getting into the strip club?
How do we fight? It seems like agree or disagree, this isn't going to stop. There's so much money behind it in a time where the have nots can barely survive as is.
These are often clear cut. They're physical controlled items. Tobacco, alcohol, guns, physical porn, and sometimes things like spray paint.
The internet is not. There are people who believe discussions about human sexuality (ie "how do I know if I'm gay?") should be age restricted. There are people who believe any discussion about the human form should be age restricted. What about discussions of other forms of government? Plenty would prefer their children not be able to learn about communism from anywhere other than the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.
The landscape of age restricting information is infinitely more complex than age restricting physical items. This complexity enables certain actors to censor wide swaths of information due to a provider's fear of liability.
This is closer to a law that says "if a store sells an item that is used to damage property whatsoever, they are liable", so now the store owner must fear the full can of soda could be used to break a window.
So again, assuming we have decided to restrict something (and there are clear lines online too like commercial porn sites, or sites that sell alcohol (which already comes with an ID check!)), why isn't liability for online providers the obvious conclusion?
The crux is we cannot decide what is protected speech, and even things that are protected speech are still considered adult content.
> why isn't liability for online providers the obvious conclusion?
We tried. The providers with power and money(Meta) are funding these bills. They want to avoid all liability while continuing to design platforms that degrade society.
This may be a little tin-foil hat of me, but I don't think these bills are about porn at all. They're about how the last few years people were able to see all the gory details of the conflict in Gaza.
The US stopped letting a majority of journalists embed with the military. In the last few decades it's been easier for journalists to embed with the Taliban than the US Military.
The US Gov learned from Vietnam that showing people what they're doing cuts the domestic support. I've seen people suggesting it's bad for Bellingcat to report on the US strike of the girls school because it would hurt morale at home.
The end goal is labeling content covering wars/conflicts as "adult content". Removing any teenagers from the material reality of international affairs, while also creating a barrier for adults to see this content. Those who pass the barrier will then be more accurately tracked via these measures.
Anatomical reference material for artists with real nude models?
What about Sexual education materials? Medical textbooks?
Women baring their breasts in NYC where it's legal?
Where is the clear cut line of Pornography? At what point do we say any depiction of a human body is pornographic?
Plenty of people would prefer that children not learn about scientology from pro-scientology cultists too. It's not that they can't know about scientology (they probably should, in fact, because knowledge can have an immunizing effect against cults)...
And it's not that they can't know about communism (they probably should, in fact, because knowledge can have an immunizing effect against cults)...
This is a comment section about large corporations lobbying against our ability to freely use computers and you break out the 80's cold war propaganda edition of understanding a complicated economic system that intertwines with methodology for historical analysis with various levels of implementations from a governmental level.
You're either a mark or trying to find a mark.
Physical businesses nominally aren't selling their items to people across state or country borders.
Of course, we threw that out when we decided people could buy things online. How'd that tax loophole turn out?
It turned out we pretty much closed the tax loophole. I don't remember an online purchase with no sales tax since the mid 00s.