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.
The government already has access to what sites you visit btw. They already know if you’re a big booty fan or a gagging kinda guy. They’ve got their fingers in every ISP
I think that a few independent secure age verification services will pop up soon enough. Wouldn’t surprise me if the parent company of pornhub or one of those sites makes it themselves. There’s huge money to be made in it.
Hell I might start asking around with my lawyer friends to see what would be required. Could knock it out in a weekend. The hardest part would be finding the consequences/legal issues of verifying based on fake documents.
And yes countries like the US, UK, and Australia are all fast approaching a digital id that will be used to access the internet. Australia will be the first. We’re basically the testing ground for authoritarian tracking and control laws, and our population are too dumb as a whole to understand what is going on. We’re already getting a Digital ID system soon, and our banks are going cashless. Currently whenever you try to take cash out of more than a few hundred bucks you get a free game of 20 questions and they will refuse to give you your own money if they don’t like your answers.