Today’s decision in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton is a direct blow to the free speech rights of adults. The Court ruled that “no person—adult or child—has a First Amendment right to access speech that is obscene to minors without first submitting proof of age.” This ruling allows states to enact onerous age-verification rules that will block adults from accessing lawful speech, curtail their ability to be anonymous, and jeopardize their data security and privacy. These are real and immense burdens on adults, and the Court was wrong to ignore them in upholding Texas’ law.
Putting it in the same perspective as the number that access porn.
So it’s a scale problem for you? What number is acceptable?
No, it’s not just a scale problem, but to even suggest that kids looking at graphic violence videos on YouTube etc is as prevalent as or as big of an issue as kids looking at porn is absurd. There are studies galore linking the consumption of porn in children to all sorts of behavioural issue, and studies showing that it’s increasing dramatically.
I have nothing against porn, I don’t think it should be censored or banned or anything - but age restrictions done properly (ie securely and privately) are long overdue.
And before you say it - yes, I think the same should apply to other not-suitable-for-kids content like extreme violence, vulgarity, etc. The difference is that all the streaming sites and other content hostels already have age verification. You can’t just click “yes I’m over 18” and watch R18+ or X rated content.
This does not exist.
It is claimed to exist, but you can’t name a single technology that guarantees security and privacy from the user to the source of the verification.
Are you willing to trust pornhub with your personal information? Xhamster? Kink.com? Motherless? Draft porn? PervertTube? And on, and on, and on.
You trust that every, single, individual, porn site is going to have both the know how, and scruples, to keep this data 100% secure and private?
Because I don’t even trust that a site can keep my credit card information private and secure, as has been shown to be a good bet over and over again despite there being a plethora of laws on how to handle such information.