Not necessarily. According to the Supreme Court, "implicit in the history of the First Amendment is the rejection of obscenity as utterly without redeeming social importance".
That seems asinine to me, and it's just one in a long line of reasons to hold the court in utter contempt. But they're in charge and I'm not.
Until you realize that child pornography would be protected by the First Amendment without obscenity carved out.
The Miller Test is what defines obscenity, and it seems pretty reasonable to me: is it about gross sex according to the average person (not the most Karen person), and does it lack serious literary, political, scientific, or artistic merit.
Honestly, I'm not aware of a Supreme Court case that held something to be obscene that was IMO wrongly decided. Pornography is fine. Even lolicon (cartoon sex of children) has been protected under the First Amendment and not deemed obscene.
The problem with opening the "which obscene is protected" door is that it gives the government (presumed to be correct in judgement by default) too much power. See Bush W admin's leaning on credit card processors to freeze out content they didn't like.
If a Miller bargain must be struck, then "not allowing pornography to be exposed to minors (and no other limits for everyone else)" seems a better line.
Then putting some safeguards in around what can and cannot be used as an age test in order to maximally preserve privacy (e.g. independent, non-government company, no identifiable information persisted, non-id verification options, etc) and what constitutes pornography (and what isn't).
I'm a free-speech maximalist, but "porn for kids" is a tough hill to die on. Even if there are sound technical reasons why that should be allowed, there are too many social ones to make that the all-in bet in a democracy.
Production of child pornography is illegal even without obscenity laws
That doesn't criminalize possession, and arguably there's a compelling interest to do that. But I hate the dance that lawyers do, pretending to legal rigor while simultaneously carving out exceptions that the text cannot justify.
No. It serves as a defense for people to criticize government. Its why I can insult and talk terrible of president Turnip (spit) and not fear the gulag.
People who 'advocate' for threats, assault, or death of people should never be permitted. Like, for example, Kiwi Farms. They've advocated for online bullying, threats, and ended up getting a bunch of people killed.
I disagree. The core of freedom of speech is freedom of thought, conscience and belief, without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. Die Gedanken sind frei is older and more fundamental than the right to criticize the government.
Threats, assault, and murder is different since they represent real and substantial harm that is universal recognized. Thoughts are permitted, but the acts are not, which include threats. The line between thoughts and threats might be fuzzy, but the distinction is not.
The legal question around Kiwi Farms has nothing to do with freedom of speech and everything to do with the legal theory of assisting, and platform liability.
> No. It serves as a defense for people to criticize government. It's why I can insult and talk terrible of president Turnip (spit) and not fear the gulag.
> Theres different ways to protest. Being an obvious target isn't what I do.
The point is that your statements here are completely contradictory. First you say:
> "Its why I can insult and talk terrible of president Turnip (spit) and not fear the gulag."
But then you say:
> "But I also stay quiet publicly. Speaking out is a way to get the hammer."
In other words, you're afraid to exercise your first amendment rights. You feel that you can't, in fact "insult and talk terrible of president Turnip" without unacceptable consequences.
A lot of people get angry when I call out people as liars, but sometimes these people are just fucking lying to everyone and you have to call a spade a spade.
that site routinely indulges in slander and defamation of its subjects .. which are civil rather than criminal matters .. nonetheless, not 1a forms of protected speech unless it has the affirmative defense of being truthful.
in some cases it hosts published content that is criminal on paper (federally: non consensual intimate images under take it down act, or state charges: PII under californias anti doxing law just to name one. There are others), this simply has not been enforced or litigated successfully, nor defended on strictly 1a grounds yet.
So far it has racked up multiple successful defenses hiding behind section 230, not 1a.
There have been a couple of incidents where someone may have had standing to sue a poster (on any of the aforementioned grounds) who “could not” be identified. [0]
At the present time 230 keeps KF itself from being a defendant.
[0] The same guy who tells cops and courts that he shreds his logs after 30 days somehow finds a way to call out a user who has exclusively been using Tor for two years, (oh. Now he has logs going back several years.) but I digress.
This identity verification business for porn sites is a nightmare for privacy. Will just result in more personal info being hacked and blackmail given the subject matter.
That’s a good call out, I should be more careful with my words. Practically, I haven’t seen age verification implemented online without some kind of identify credential furnished. But I didn’t mean to imply some kind of IAL2 compliant identity assurance or something
I works with KYC, there seems to be no viable way right now. I've heard discussions about using bone measurements similar to those used in sports to detect age cheaters.
Because in an environment with personal computing devices and where consumer tech companies' primary business is surveillance, the two are equivalent.
(Personal computing devices make it so anyone of a certain age can run software that proxies their credentials to another user (either for profit or activism), and the primacy of the surveillance business makes it so that third parties can never be trusted to mask your identity)
This doesn't work, because something still has to be stored (unless you like the idea of being nagged everywhere you go online (including just clicking links) to "verify your age"). That upends the entire "well it's just like verifying your age at a bar" idea.
This is why I don't by alcohol online for delivery: the delivery person is required by their company to scan my ID. Places I order from already know enough about me - they don't also need a copy of my identification.
In the UK all delivery apps [0][1][2] will prompt the driver/rider to ask for ID when the customer purchases age-restricted items like alcohol or cigarettes.
I am not sure why the apps don't get the customer to upload a photo of their ID once rather than get the delivery person to request it for every restricted order?
I bought a rackmount case on ebay that for some reason got shipped "Adult signature required", which is seemingly for alcohol shipments. The Fedex delivery guy repeatedly pestered me to scan my ID. I had already shown him my ID, signed for the package, and had possession of it. But he didn't speak English and couldn't understand me telling him we were done, so he just kept repeating "scan" and shoving the terminal at me. He also kept trying to steal the package back from me as if it hadn't been delivered, and I had to keep getting very aggressive to make him back off. He then insisted I speak to his supervisor on his phone (the ones who are now unreachable when you have a problem). The supervisor then continued badgering me about their policies and threatening to call the police (I told him go right ahead). Eventually they did give up and leave. No police ever showed up, and Fedex continues to deliver to me just fine. What an all around dystopian nightmare, though.
Couldn't most of that encounter have been avoided by just walking back inside your home with your package and closing the door? I don't understand why you'd even want to engage with someone like that.
Second, just because I went back inside the house doesn't mean that the situation would magically be over - they'd still be outside, right? And I'd have to monitor them until they left.
Third, it seems doing that would have encouraged them to pigeonhole the situation into the usual problem of "package getting stolen" for which they presumably do call the police and frame the situation that way. The police coming would then make for an escalated situation which I would have to deal with. Heck with the way police often defer to the status quo of how businesses frame problems, they might have even insisted I follow Fedex's desired procedure of scanning my ID despite it being legally unnecessary.
One of the big problems here is companies deploying user-facing agents that can't even communicate in the common language. There is another driver whom I've tried a few times now simply to work with her to get packages delivered (eg I'll bring them in from the street because I'm in the middle of shoveling snow), but communication is needlessly difficult. I'm sure many of the destructionists are faced with similar frustrations and then go on to blame "illegals", as if purifying society will compensate for bad incentives. But as usual, it's actually the corpos pitting us against one another in a race to the bottom.
I think much of it is just LLM/TTS at this point. But even well before then it was a call center agent who would put in a "ticket" for nobody to call you back.
Unfortunately no. In my state all the bars and nightclubs near colleges scan IDs and keep a copy.
The fakes are so good now that the state basically admits they can't expect the bouncer to detect them. So they keep an image to prove "hey we tried our best".
> We age gate other harmful objects: firearms, alcohol, driving, et cetera.
We can easily prove those have harms.
> trouble you can cause with an Internet connection
Why don't we age gate hands? Number one source of human problems right there. Perhaps we should outfit our children like Harrison Bergeron until they reach the age of majority?
Hands are part of your body. Pornhub is a commercial website distributing age-restricted content. We already require ID for buying alcohol, cigarettes, and lottery tickets without it being a constitutional crisis. Requiring age verification to access porn isn't a First Amendment issue any more than carding someone at a liquor store is. This comparison makes no sense.
Pornhub is always age gated everywhere in the world. Because internet access typically involves you to prove you're an adult.
Just like the liquor store, verification happens at point of sale. Past that, all bets are off.
If I got buy a beer, verify my age, and then go home and give it to a kid, there's nothing anyone can reasonably be expected to do about that. Similarly, if I buy internet access, and then turn around and just give it to my kid, there's nothing anyone can reasonably be expected to do about that.
We don't expect the store clerk to follow you home and watch you drink the beer.
Making this sort of reductio ad absurdum doesn't make you seem witty or clever. It just makes you seem pedantic and unable to reason about things like a functioning adult.
I don't think you're adding anything to this discussion with that kind of comment.
The idea of age-gating hands is to demonstrate that overly broad age gating IS ridiculous and the lack of sufficient targetting by Texas is precisely why the judge is throwing it out.
Please try to engage with commenters with a little bit more respect and hopefully better understanding.
It's discrimination, should be 65 like everywhere else.
Seriously, I won't limit the maximum age, but would rather use a cognitive ability assessment. It in fact already exists, e.g. as the TV debates for presidential candidates. Were the voters paying attention,..
what's the difference between porn and any arbitrary category here? even with porn isn't it just arbitrary that porn has been defined as "adult?" presumably Texas could just legislate that all apps are "adult" content, and then this would apply, no?
given the same judge per the article did this block which ultimately was overturned by the Supreme Court, I doubt this will go differently
This is already a solved problem. Medical schools teach anatomy, art museums display nude sculptures, sex education happens in schools, and National Geographic shows indigenous tribes without being classified as pornography. Courts have been distinguishing obscenity from protected speech for decades, and content platforms make these determinations millions of times per day. The existence of edge cases doesn't mean the distinction is impossible, it just means edge cases exist.
I think you might find it not so arbitrary that kids should watch 6 men “use” a young man or girl; or even 3 grannies using a young boy as a toy. Is it really arbitrary?
The problem is you can't draw non-arbitrary lines.
Consider an example I ran into a few years back. It was a web project, lots and lots of closeups of female genitals. Porn? No--educational, the purpose was to provide as wide as possible a sampling of what's normal so people don't get focused on the idealized representations in porn.
One of the sports companies did something similar with breasts, it was accepted.
Yes, if the botany app shares sensitive information like their exact location and possibly home/workplace then the app is to blame if it allows children and even adults to publish such information without explicit share-with-world opt in design.
No, the tracking data is anonymous and not a threat to the user.
The problem is that it exposed the locations it's users were going to. Anonymous, but a bunch of people going somewhere suggests either that it's interesting or that there's something there. (Doesn't always mean it's useful information. I was looking at the Strava global map, what in the world is this trail in my usual hiking area?? I eventually realized the reason it was bonkers was it was a ski run.)
Strava isn't the problem - educating the military personnel about not broadcasting their location is the problem. Even if someone isn't using Strava, they could just post a message on any social media platform giving away their exact position/coordinates.
Not wanting 8-year-olds to access hardcore porn on their phones isn't "Christian Taliban," it's basic child protection that exists across cultures and political spectrums. If other states wants different standards, they can set them locally. That's how federalism works. Texas passing age verification laws for porn sites isn't imposing anything on other states.
I guess you didn't read the article or understand the SINGLE MAIN POINT: this case isn't about PORN. IT'S EXPLICITLY NOT ABOUT PORN. You couldn't have made a more off-topic, entirely wrong comment if you had tried. Here is the first two paragraphs since you were unable to load it yourself.
>Over the summer, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority upended decades of traditional First Amendment standards to say that Texas could put in place an age verification law if that law was intended to keep kids away from porn. As we argued at the time, the ruling had all sorts of problems, but even leaving those aside, it was still pretty clearly limited solely to situations involving age gating adult content. Not news sites. Not fitness apps. Not therapy platforms. Porn.
>Texas, predictably, heard “you can age gate porn” and decided that meant “you can age gate everything.” Because why respect constitutional distinctions when you can just pretend they don’t exist?
If you want to keep thinking about porn then do it somewhere else. We're not discussing your obsession. This federal case, this article, this comment thread are about Texas trying to apply the age-gating for porn to non-porn things.
Texas overreaching doesn't invalidate the underlying principle. The Supreme Court was right to allow age verification for porn, and Texas writing an overly broad law that tries to age-gate news sites and fitness apps just means Texas wrote a bad law. The solution is striking down the overreach and writing narrower statutes that target actual age-restricted content, not abandoning age verification entirely. Courts exist to enforce those distinctions.
Your framing that this is about abandoning age gating entirely is just as wrong as the previous poster saying this was about porn. This is about the unconsitutional application of age-gating to non-harmful things the state of Texas doesn't like on a whim.
I don't necessary like this law or precedent, but there are several major issues I have with the opposition.
One is that it is not individuals that have their speech restricted, I have a very big problem with companies continuing to be treated as if they're people, they're not. Individuals have rights by default, companies have only obligations, unless explicitly stated by the government as a right of incorporated entities, ideally at least.
There is also the issue of "freedom of speech is not freedom of reach", as in you can shout fire, but being able to reach a mass audience is reach. At least as far as content creators are concerned.
Lastly, I don't know of the union has a chance of lasting if we can't allow states to enact ridiculous laws we don't like. Resistance to state law by the federal government should be rare and only in defense or actual harm being caused to citizens. My point isn't that freedom of speech is a minor right, but that the requirement to prove harm (since everyone agrees, speech isn't a right if there is harm) should not be strong on the part of states.
The mere subjective opinion that the moral character of texans would be corrupted (as if! lol) by the content should be enough. why? because democracy, that's why. it's what texans keep voting for, states should have some level of self determination, otherwise they're just federal provinces.
I don't think anyone serious is arguing that porn for children is fine. The problem is everyone else having to pay for it by verifying age. You may have a strong opinion on this, as do I, but if the democratic government of texas chooses to levy burdens on adults to protect children (at least in their view and belief), why should outsiders intervene or have an opinion on it?
I would argue, that the burden of proof here to require the intervention of the federal government and legitimate invoking of federal rights should only be done if the plaintiff can prove harm was done to them, in this case by being required to verify their age. Or the content creators not being able to reach enough consumers.
I think a lot of the core issues we have in the US are caused by a now entrenched culture, where states are required to have similar laws. Let's say you're a mormon or something and want to raise your kids in a strict state, if states can't age verify, what choice do mormons have left? You may not care for mormons, but this stuff adds up. You'll have a large voter base (I argue - that's what MAGA is in a way) that is consistently left out of options, because the terrible, ignorant, backwards, etc.. views they have can't be represented by any state. It all becomes a federal matter, eventually the only way to solve it would be conflict.
I think enforcement of the civil right act/voting rights act set this precedent. It was the right thing to do, because it had to do with people's participation in voting, education and government, the very things which need to be protected so that states can claim they're representing the views of their population when passing disagreeable laws.
But if the sentiment is that porn creators and consumers' rights in this case trumps states' rights, then we no longer have a system of government where different states can pursue different democratic experiments. The voters of federal/general election swing states determine every aspect of amercians' lives, their views are tyrannically forced upon everyone else.
You realize Nixon's attempt to show pornography to be harmful actually concluded that they could find no evidence of any harm even to minors, let alone adults. (That is not to say that an adult couldn't use it in an attempt to victimize a minor.) And note how the discussion of the harm stems from an unrealistic portrayal of sex, not from simply portraying sex.
doesn't matter, i think you missed what i said. Do texans think it will be harmful or not? Democracy is not technocracy, what is actually factually correct is not what the law enforced but what the people believe is correct. If Texans believe electricity causes cancer, they can ban electricity in Texas.
I don't think your argument addresses the substance of the judge's opposition, which is that the law as proposed will apply to all apps and all websites, not just ones that might do harm. That does seem like genuine overreach, and it is not even likely that it's what Texans were really asking for in the first place. It's just a bad law.
If you're saying Texas is planning on gatekeeping the entire internet, it is indeed a bad law. But if they're simply giving themselves power to identify what is "bad" and require that site to age-verify, that isn't really a new power states are getting is it?
Id say even if you ignore the first amendment case, the federal government still has legitimate constitutional grounds to review these kinds of laws since it is definitely in the realm of interstate commerce.
Let's be real, they can do whatever they want. The question is, should they? I don't think this is a clear violation of free speech, restricting speech from the ears of children has always been a thing in every modern government. It was always possible to buy porn magazines for example, but states required id verification in stores to sell them. You can watch porn on cable channels, but only because they were paid and an adult consented to it.
Another way to look at it is, porn is a sexual encounter, minors can't consent. From Texas' point of view, they are simply prohibiting a non-consensual sexual encounter.
It is not interstate commerce, because commerce isn't regulated here, free porn sites are included. If states can tax websites, they can also regulate content.
I like the way you've stated your position, but I do have some questions.
> Lastly, I don't know of the union has a chance of lasting if we can't allow states to enact ridiculous laws we don't like.
I can understand the idea that people in one state may enact laws that people in other states disagree with (although see below), but saying we must allow ridiculous laws seems to be stretching it a bit far. It seems to me that the purpose of having different levels of government is that more local levels can enact their own policies, while at the same time higher levels can restrict those local jurisdictions from egregiously misusing their legislative power.
It then just becomes a matter of what kinds of laws are "too ridiculous" to be allowed. Maybe this is and maybe it isn't, but if you allow that any laws within one jurisdiction can be overridden by laws from a larger encompassing jurisdiction, then you must accept the underlying principle that the will of the whole can override the will of a part. Of course we can also debate what threshold must be met (e.g., will you require a supermajority of some sort at the federal level), but still the underlying principle holds. And I think we must all accept this principle, because the alternative is to accept that state law can do literally anything (e.g., execute people at random) as long as it is duly enacted by the state government.
The debate is then no longer about the theoretical balance between state and federal governments, but about the concrete question of whether this particular policy is too ridiculous to allow. As I'll say more about below, I tend to think that this is where almost all arguments about federalism lead. Unless you are prepared to allow one level or the other to have untrammeled power, it always comes down not to procedural questions about jurisdictions but to substantive questions about the actual content of the policies involved.
> The mere subjective opinion that the moral character of texans would be corrupted (as if! lol) by the content should be enough. why? because democracy, that's why. it's what texans keep voting for, states should have some level of self determination, otherwise they're just federal provinces.
Do you believe that this specific policy (or various others) in fact reflect the will of the people of Texas? The reason I ask is that I believe there are many policies (in some cases "policies of omission") at the state and federal levels which do not reflect the will of the people. As an example, polls, consistently show overwhelming support for universal background checks for gun purchases, and yet that is not the policy we have. It seems that the reason for this is that people have attached themselves to certain procedural characteristics of government (e.g., the constitution, certain mechanisms of legislative districting, etc.) rather than to more basic principles like "democracy".
If we're going to resort to fundamental principles like "because democracy", then it is hard to see why we should not insist that all policies directly reflect the will of the public in this way. I think indeed our system would benefit from removing certain anti-democratic features (e.g., the absurdly high bar for amending the constitution). But at the same time there is legitimacy in the desire to "lash ourselves to the mast" and declare certain policies off-limits ahead of time. Thus again we are really arguing not about "democracy" but about the substantive content of the laws and whether certain laws in their substantive content warrant some kind of special procedures or consideration.
Moreover, there is an interaction between the two points I made. If we allow that "ridiculous" laws should sometimes be allowed, and we also want democracy, then why can we not allow the larger jurisdiction (e.g., the federal government) to pass a "ridiculous" law restricting the actions of smaller jurisdictions? In other words, if 51% of Texans want to pass such-and-such a law, but 51% of Americans don't want any jurisdiction to be able to pass such a law, which democracy wins? It is hard to decouple the philosophical notion of democracy from concrete questions about where the boundaries are in which you're counting votes.
> You may have a strong opinion on this, as do I, but if the democratic government of texas chooses to levy burdens on adults to protect children (at least in their view and belief), why should outsiders intervene or have an opinion on it?
> I think a lot of the core issues we have in the US are caused by a now entrenched culture, where states are required to have similar laws.
My question with these issues of federalism is always the same: why is it particularly a concern when this is about state governments and federal governments? What if the democratic government of the city of Podunk, Texas wants to do something, while the democratic government of Podunk County (in which Podunk sits) wants the opposite? And then what if the Texas government wants something else and the federal government something different yet? And what if even within Podunk there is a neighborhood of four square blocks or so where the residents overwhelmingly disagree with the majority view within the city?
People often try to answer such questions by referencing the constitution, but I don't consider that a legitimate answer if we want to take seriously concepts like "democracy". If democracy is our goal, we need to be prepared to question whether the US Constitution achieves it, and so be willing to engage with the entire mess of how we resolve "51% vs. 51%" disputes of the type I mentioned above.
> Let's say you're a mormon or something and want to raise your kids in a strict state, if states can't age verify, what choice do mormons have left?
Let's say you like pork and want to eat some bacon, but most people in your area consider pork unclean and have banned the production and import of pork. What choice do you have? Or let's say you think 5G towers cause cancer, but most people in your area disagree and have allowed the construction of 5G towers. What choice do you have? Let's say you want to build a small nuclear device (for research purposes only, of course!), but the people in your area have decided to ban the possession of plutonium. What choice do you have? Let's say you're a member of a certain cult and want to raise your kids in a really strict state where you're allowed to beat them with a heavy stick if they fail to recite the Flying Spaghetti Monster's catechism with perfect accuracy. What choice do you have?
My point is simply that there are endless questions of this sort, and the answers people are comfortable with ultimately have nothing to do with "states' rights", because people disagree more about certain matters than others. People think of some things as "well that's not for me but that's cool if you want to do it", and other things as "I don't think anyone should do that but I guess it's your choice" and other things as "No one should ever do that and I am prepared to forcibly intervene to stop you from doing it if necessary". You cannot resolve these questions with an appeal to "federalism" without considering the substantive content of the policies. (And when you do, you then can run up against the universal-background-checks problem mentioned above, where you have a policy that everyone seems to want but is somehow blocked by a tiny minority.)
There is no getting around the fact that sometimes if you are in the minority you are not going to be able to do what you want. We can try to make allowances and provide protections, but still there is going to come a point at which the majority will say that the minority position is "too ridiculous" (or "too burdensome") and simply will not be accommodated.
And this has nothing to do with federalism! The issue is just that the consensus within a group of people may not match the consensus within every subgroup. Federalism is just our word for talking about a very particular instance of this, which we have convinced ourselves has some special status because a piece of paper written many years ago uses the word "state" a lot. But if we want to think about democracy we need to broaden our view a bit.
> It seems to me that the purpose of having different levels of government is that more local levels can enact their own policies, while at the same time higher levels can restrict those local jurisdictions from egregiously misusing their legislative power.
That's not the purpose at all. Who decides what is egregious? It's a simple question of democracy. In a federal government, states represent their population democratically, and as such the federal government restricting what they do is a direct inhibition of the state's residents' voice. Where the federal government intervenes is in matters of inter-state affairs, immigration, and matters which even if the majority of the state's residents want things a certain way, the impact on the minority of the state's residents is found to be intolerable by the country's population. Ridiculous is fine, so long as it doesn't harm the minority or interfere with federal jurisdiction.
> you must accept the underlying principle that the will of the whole can override the will of a part.
Can and should are different things, we can get rid of state governments or the constitution entirely using lawful means. The discussion here is what was the architecture and design behind the existing system of democratic federal governance? Since the outset, states had a decent level of autonomy, the idea was if you didn't like it one state, you had other options.
The part many gloss over so easily and dangerously, is that the United States is as the name implies, a union of states. States with their own constitution, military force,etc.. they're not administrative provinces. The country itself is not a country of its own, its identity and components are states. There is no America without states. States and their citizens have a very strong sense of identity and self-determination. Texas in particular is always threatening secession, it's just for show, but it does reflect on how unlike an administrative province, they can and have in the past been their own country.
> but about the concrete question of whether this particular policy is too ridiculous to allow.
Again, I disagree. Should swing voters on federal elections in Winsconsin or Pennsylvania have a say in what is too ridiculous or not? That's the question. if so , what's the point of a state?
The electoral college and allocations of house reps and senators the way it is done is considered acceptable because states have rights.
The population of the US is too diverse, with varying belief systems, economies,etc... to impose your view of what is too ridiculous is equal to imposing your beliefs and world views over them.
> Do you believe that this specific policy (or various others) in fact reflect the will of the people of Texas?
Yes, without a doubt. If texans had a referendum on this, they will ban porn outright, consumption, trade and production.
> Thus again we are really arguing not about "democracy" but about the substantive content of the laws and whether certain laws in their substantive content warrant some kind of special procedures or consideration.
No, still about democracy, the substance of the law is relevant only when states exceed their authority. The limits on state rights and federal rights are very clear in the constitution. What isn't explicitly legislated as federal law, can be legislated as state law.
FYI, in texas, there is still a law limiting the number of dildos a person can own. That's how ridiculous things can get there. If you don't understand why, that's because you're not in texas or understand their beliefs, and that's fine, that's why you don't get to tell them what laws are too silly for them.
> then why can we not allow the larger jurisdiction (e.g., the federal government) to pass a "ridiculous" law restricting the actions of smaller jurisdictions?
As i outlined earlier, technically the majority can, and they have, and that is precisely what is leading to the current path of civil war, i don't think the union will last down this path. If the majority of the country feel certain rights need to be protected for the minority of all states, then that should be a federal law, that should be the only threshold outside of explicitly outlined domains in the constitution such as interstate commerce and immigration.
> People often try to answer such questions by referencing the constitution, but I don't consider that a legitimate answer if we want to take seriously concepts like "democracy". If democracy is our goal, we need to be prepared to question whether the US Constitution achieves it, and so be willing to engage with the entire mess of how we resolve "51% vs. 51%" disputes of the type I mentioned above.
The main goal is really the preservation of the union. at some point, this becomes an unhealthy relationship, for how long should texans put up with their voices and views being trampled and ignored. Taxation without representation is literally how the country came to be, you're suggesting to repeat that. The people that live in a place get to determine their laws and fate. It just so happens, states are the units of government that are by design meant to legislate day-to-day aspects of people's lives (even more than municipalities which tend to focus on less impactful things not legislated by state govs).
> Let's say you like pork and want to eat some bacon,...
Are those things protected fundamental rights of all americans? If not, then you can't eat bacon, have 5g towers, private nuclear reactors, you can beat your kids,etc... but the last example is good, because corporal punishment is still a state thing and allowed in texas, but outright child abuse can be considered intolerable because those children didn't choose the state they're in and they must have some level of country-wide protections, but even then, such laws should only be passed if states are failing to do so, as a last resort that is. Not eating bacon isn't harming any minority population in texas, neither is 5g, but being physically hit obviously is. So the protection of the minorities is the exception there.
As i mentioned in another comment, if texans feel electricity causes cancer, they can go back to burning wood and living in the dark. The only question is was the election process they followed free and fair. Since people survived pre-electricity, no one can claim they're being harmed, so long as they're allowed to leave the state.
> There is no getting around the fact that sometimes if you are in the minority you are not going to be able to do what you want. We can try to make allowances and provide protections, but still there is going to come a point at which the majority will say that the minority position is "too ridiculous" (or "too burdensome") and simply will not be accommodated.
It isn't a scientific formula, people's views and attitudes change. But things should generally be left to states. Not liking it is not a good enough threshold. disagreeing with it isn't either. The country as a whole needs to agree that it should be a federal law, and proper federal laws need to be passed.
You see, in this case, it is judges making the law. If a federal law preventing states from implementing age-verification was passed, that would be democratic since texans are represented in the federal government also. But this is twisting and interpreting the constitution according to the views of plaintiffs. Since restricting by age access to content is nothing new, and it's been tried many times at the supreme court, an explicit federal law to override state law is needed. Even the voting and civil rights acts were federal laws. Ultimately, the federal government can override any state law, period. But like in the past, it is risking civil wars, and disunity. We are already in a state where the country is tearing itself apart. That isn't a hyperbole, when Biden took office, multiple historians warned him that in 10 or so years, there will likely be a civil war if i recall correctly (or was it more vague?).
> And this has nothing to do with federalism! The issue is just that the consensus within a group of people may not match the consensus within every subgroup. Federalism is just our word for talking about a very particular instance of this, which we have convinced ourselves has some special status because a piece of paper written many years ago uses the word "state" a lot. But if we want to think about democracy we need to broaden our view a bit.
No, it very much does. the concept of the state is literally in the country's name. As you noted, even the constitution can be changed, maybe smaller geographic regions should be states instead? Maybe we should have direct representation over the internet. Those are civic debates to be had and legislation that need to be passed.
Consider that in this case, Texas is trying to protect children (sincerely or not, it is the popular perception in texas). I'd say telling them they can't because the greater country feels like porn is a more important right sounds like an unhealthy relationship, one that should promptly be dissolved peacefully. But ideally, other states won't age restrict porn, and people who prefer that will move there. People who live in Massachusetts will hate the laws in Mississippi and vice-versa. California has lots and lots laws most of the south hates. It isn't a matter of legality but of politics to decide which ones should be forced upon all americans. If publishing porn or consuming it is a right of all americans, as opposed to a policy where americans are expected to leave the state if they don't like it, then it should be encoded as such, at least as a federal law (it isn't today).
Lastly, very long post, i made the effort to reply to it, but let's keep followups brief please? :)
Unfortunately I think we are talking past each other. The basic issue is that you are taking the constitution as a given, but my questions are about how government should be, not how it is. In my view, if you believe that our system of government is actually a good democratic system, you should be able to explain how it serves democracy better than possible alternatives; and if our system is not a good democratic system, then it doesn't really matter what the constitution says, because we should instead focus on what it should say. An argument along the lines of "the constitution says so" is nothing but an appeal to authority.
So no, I don't care that "states" is in the name of the country, nor do I care that the constitution says stuff about states, nor do I care about keeping the union together. Just about the only thing in the constitution that I wholeheartedly agree with is that the purpose of government is to promote the general welfare. :-) So I'm interested in what is the best way to do that, and everything is on the table in terms of retaining, throwing out, or adding whatever we want to the constitution to make it better.
In that line, my own view is basically the opposite of most of what you said above. :-) I believe that entrenching "states" as entities in the way the constitution does was a bad idea. Sure, we need different levels of government. But there's no reason to privilege states in the way we do, especially since their boundaries and accessions are at best arbitrary and at worst the result of political machinations. Democracy is about what people want, and I don't think our existing federal system is the best way to get at that.
There is how things should be and how they are. These are not separate things because how you enact the changes you want is either through existing ways of doing things, or war.
I don't think I can discuss about theoretical forms of government here and now, but in the US you have think in practical terms. That means what Americans expect, want and can tolerate. I'm a huge advocate of a constitutional convention to update the constitution for example. But concepts like a "state", in practical terms, can't be changed without a civil war. Even a state breaking up into smaller pieces on its own means it gets more representation than others now.
> So no, I don't care that "states" is in the name of the country, nor do I care that the constitution says stuff about states, nor do I care about keeping the union together.
Theoretically, I don't care either, in reality, I don't want to go through war, nor do I want millions to die to get any better form of government in place. Anything practical will require generations of campaigning, and actually convincing people that it is more important than more pressing matters. And frankly, it's too divergent of a topic from the original thread.
> the purpose of government is to promote the general welfare
That's not even true. Are you talking about the declaration of independence instead? Either way, governments have various expectations from them, the first and foremost being the safety and security of their people. If you ask everyday americans, they care about money after that. If only most americans agreed with you, we'd have solved the homeless crisis, poverty and universal healthcare already.
> I believe that entrenching "states" as entities in the way the constitution does was a bad idea. Sure, we need different levels of government. But there's no reason to privilege states in the way we do, especially since their boundaries and accessions are at best arbitrary and at worst the result of political machinations. Democracy is about what people want, and I don't think our existing federal system is the best way to get at that.
The people in texas to use this thread's example, don't agree with you. They very much like their state and its state-identity. So do most everyday people from most other states. Some big states could probably use being split apart to better represent their people for sure, but even that hasn't gained enough popular support in places like Texas and California. To repeat my point earlier, Americans care about money. In california for example, it is literally the 4th largest economy in the world, but if you split apart, not so much.
The thing you don't see I think is that there is power in numbers. Economic power as well as the power to get things done. Utah for example is full of Mormons, if it was split up, they will be less united and less able to get their mormon stuff encoded in the law. You're right that democracy is about what the people want, it isn't about what you and I as individuals want but what everyday people want. Without state governments and their rights, people lose lots of laws they like. To use texas again, they really like open-carry gun laws, can you still carry your ak-47 to bucky's in texas, if the federal government is deciding such laws (even more good reason for it due to all the mass shootings)? The people of taxis by a large pluralistic majority like the open carry laws, quite the opposite from california or new england.
To keep my reply not too long as well, let me stop here by saying that I think large metro areas should probably get their own state-like representation, and that a constitutional convention is not only called for, but the next amendment to the constitution to be requiring a convention every 10 years.
These are exactly the harmful and dangerous consequences of the social memes going around with delusions that 'screens' are harmful and that somehow multi-media from screens, despite not having any mechanism to directly alter incentive salience in any way, is just like addictive incentive salience altering drugs like cocaine.
When you use phrases like "internet addiction" "social media addiction" and the like these are the government uses of force you are supporting.
The judge asking for concrete evidence of these harms and them being unable to provide them, or even a hint of them probably won't change people's perceptions. Just look in this very comment thread for those ignoring the fact the entire article is about lack of proof of harms.
Because of this delusional grassroots support of the concept the authoritarian governments will just keep throwing this scientifically unsupported feces against the wall till it sticks. There's big money in the treatment camps (the anti-gay conversion camp people's new scam), etc, and big potential in the censorship and control of information.
We throw around terms like this because we see a very real effect even though we do not know all the details.
Worst is probably the feedback system. The social media is optimized to show you things it thinks you will look at. More of what you're interested in on the surface sounds like a good thing, but it ends up very able to lead people down rabbit holes.
Do not take this as supporting what Texas is trying to do, though--this isn't about harm, this is about exposing opposition.
A good saying I heard recently is that the first amendment doesn’t exist to protect the speech you like, it exists to protect the speech you hate.
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” — Voltaire
Not necessarily. According to the Supreme Court, "implicit in the history of the First Amendment is the rejection of obscenity as utterly without redeeming social importance".
That seems asinine to me, and it's just one in a long line of reasons to hold the court in utter contempt. But they're in charge and I'm not.
> That seems asinine to me
Until you realize that child pornography would be protected by the First Amendment without obscenity carved out.
The Miller Test is what defines obscenity, and it seems pretty reasonable to me: is it about gross sex according to the average person (not the most Karen person), and does it lack serious literary, political, scientific, or artistic merit.
Honestly, I'm not aware of a Supreme Court case that held something to be obscene that was IMO wrongly decided. Pornography is fine. Even lolicon (cartoon sex of children) has been protected under the First Amendment and not deemed obscene.
The problem with opening the "which obscene is protected" door is that it gives the government (presumed to be correct in judgement by default) too much power. See Bush W admin's leaning on credit card processors to freeze out content they didn't like.
If a Miller bargain must be struck, then "not allowing pornography to be exposed to minors (and no other limits for everyone else)" seems a better line.
Then putting some safeguards in around what can and cannot be used as an age test in order to maximally preserve privacy (e.g. independent, non-government company, no identifiable information persisted, non-id verification options, etc) and what constitutes pornography (and what isn't).
I'm a free-speech maximalist, but "porn for kids" is a tough hill to die on. Even if there are sound technical reasons why that should be allowed, there are too many social ones to make that the all-in bet in a democracy.
Production of child pornography is illegal even without obscenity laws
That doesn't criminalize possession, and arguably there's a compelling interest to do that. But I hate the dance that lawyers do, pretending to legal rigor while simultaneously carving out exceptions that the text cannot justify.
No. It serves as a defense for people to criticize government. Its why I can insult and talk terrible of president Turnip (spit) and not fear the gulag.
People who 'advocate' for threats, assault, or death of people should never be permitted. Like, for example, Kiwi Farms. They've advocated for online bullying, threats, and ended up getting a bunch of people killed.
I disagree. The core of freedom of speech is freedom of thought, conscience and belief, without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. Die Gedanken sind frei is older and more fundamental than the right to criticize the government.
Threats, assault, and murder is different since they represent real and substantial harm that is universal recognized. Thoughts are permitted, but the acts are not, which include threats. The line between thoughts and threats might be fuzzy, but the distinction is not.
The legal question around Kiwi Farms has nothing to do with freedom of speech and everything to do with the legal theory of assisting, and platform liability.
If you don't fear the gulag, you're not paying attention. He routinely attempts to put his political enemies in jail.
Oh I'm paying attention. But I also stay quiet publicly. Speaking out is a way to get the hammer.
Theres different ways to protest. Being an obvious target isn't what I do.
> No. It serves as a defense for people to criticize government. It's why I can insult and talk terrible of president Turnip (spit) and not fear the gulag.
> Theres different ways to protest. Being an obvious target isn't what I do.
How do you reconcile those two statements?
Think of https://www.cia.gov/static/5c875f3ec660e092cf893f60b4a288df/...
Pay close attention to section "General Interference with Organizations and Production" pages 28-32.
The point is that your statements here are completely contradictory. First you say:
> "Its why I can insult and talk terrible of president Turnip (spit) and not fear the gulag."
But then you say:
> "But I also stay quiet publicly. Speaking out is a way to get the hammer."
In other words, you're afraid to exercise your first amendment rights. You feel that you can't, in fact "insult and talk terrible of president Turnip" without unacceptable consequences.
I said it in the other comment to him.
He is lying or suffering cognitive dissonance.
You cannot rectify his statements in another way, beyond the third option that calls his mental faculties into question.
I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt and assuming he’s mentally all there, but that leads to my aforementioned options for them.
I agree, although I think lying is the least likely. It's more likely cognitive dissonance or simply cognitive limitations.
He is lying or suffering cognitive dissonance.
A lot of people get angry when I call out people as liars, but sometimes these people are just fucking lying to everyone and you have to call a spade a spade.
Even if that was true (it's not), freedom of speech is still more important than a few peoples lives
that site routinely indulges in slander and defamation of its subjects .. which are civil rather than criminal matters .. nonetheless, not 1a forms of protected speech unless it has the affirmative defense of being truthful.
in some cases it hosts published content that is criminal on paper (federally: non consensual intimate images under take it down act, or state charges: PII under californias anti doxing law just to name one. There are others), this simply has not been enforced or litigated successfully, nor defended on strictly 1a grounds yet.
So far it has racked up multiple successful defenses hiding behind section 230, not 1a.
There have been a couple of incidents where someone may have had standing to sue a poster (on any of the aforementioned grounds) who “could not” be identified. [0]
At the present time 230 keeps KF itself from being a defendant.
[0] The same guy who tells cops and courts that he shreds his logs after 30 days somehow finds a way to call out a user who has exclusively been using Tor for two years, (oh. Now he has logs going back several years.) but I digress.
Well there’s an opinion not to take too far...
This identity verification business for porn sites is a nightmare for privacy. Will just result in more personal info being hacked and blackmail given the subject matter.
I wonder why identity verification is even mentioned, when age verification is all that's needed.
That’s a good call out, I should be more careful with my words. Practically, I haven’t seen age verification implemented online without some kind of identify credential furnished. But I didn’t mean to imply some kind of IAL2 compliant identity assurance or something
Genuine question, how do you age verify without KYC?
Do we have any real world examples where this exists?
I works with KYC, there seems to be no viable way right now. I've heard discussions about using bone measurements similar to those used in sports to detect age cheaters.
Because that's what it is really about. Whatever label you put on it, it's really about removing privacy.
Because in an environment with personal computing devices and where consumer tech companies' primary business is surveillance, the two are equivalent.
(Personal computing devices make it so anyone of a certain age can run software that proxies their credentials to another user (either for profit or activism), and the primacy of the surveillance business makes it so that third parties can never be trusted to mask your identity)
A novel approach would be to verify age and then discard identity records, which is standard in the brick and mortar equivalents like bars.
This doesn't work, because something still has to be stored (unless you like the idea of being nagged everywhere you go online (including just clicking links) to "verify your age"). That upends the entire "well it's just like verifying your age at a bar" idea.
Session identity. You go to the verification website, your browser gets a token that you can use until you close your browser.
But that doesn't expose the political opponents, it would not be accepted.
Well I was originally thinking of a single bit "isVerified"
But if you were reverified every time, that would be closer to the bar analogy. Although it does increase cybersecurity risk by repeated exposure.
One place tried to scan my id recently. Hopefully others will speak up against it but I am not optimistic.
This is why I don't by alcohol online for delivery: the delivery person is required by their company to scan my ID. Places I order from already know enough about me - they don't also need a copy of my identification.
Interesting. I order alcohol online and have never had that happen.
In the UK all delivery apps [0][1][2] will prompt the driver/rider to ask for ID when the customer purchases age-restricted items like alcohol or cigarettes.
I am not sure why the apps don't get the customer to upload a photo of their ID once rather than get the delivery person to request it for every restricted order?
It wastes so much time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYEC_ooaC5A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILzfEaSiYf4
[0] https://riders.deliveroo.co.uk/en/delivering-alcohol
[1] https://help.uber.com/en-GB/ubereats/restaurants/article/how...
[2] https://courier-help.just-eat.co.uk/hc/en-gb/articles/103290...
Well, yeah, they ask to see ID, but they don't scan it. (I'm in the US though.)
I bought a rackmount case on ebay that for some reason got shipped "Adult signature required", which is seemingly for alcohol shipments. The Fedex delivery guy repeatedly pestered me to scan my ID. I had already shown him my ID, signed for the package, and had possession of it. But he didn't speak English and couldn't understand me telling him we were done, so he just kept repeating "scan" and shoving the terminal at me. He also kept trying to steal the package back from me as if it hadn't been delivered, and I had to keep getting very aggressive to make him back off. He then insisted I speak to his supervisor on his phone (the ones who are now unreachable when you have a problem). The supervisor then continued badgering me about their policies and threatening to call the police (I told him go right ahead). Eventually they did give up and leave. No police ever showed up, and Fedex continues to deliver to me just fine. What an all around dystopian nightmare, though.
Couldn't most of that encounter have been avoided by just walking back inside your home with your package and closing the door? I don't understand why you'd even want to engage with someone like that.
Maybe?
But first, that's generally not how I operate.
Second, just because I went back inside the house doesn't mean that the situation would magically be over - they'd still be outside, right? And I'd have to monitor them until they left.
Third, it seems doing that would have encouraged them to pigeonhole the situation into the usual problem of "package getting stolen" for which they presumably do call the police and frame the situation that way. The police coming would then make for an escalated situation which I would have to deal with. Heck with the way police often defer to the status quo of how businesses frame problems, they might have even insisted I follow Fedex's desired procedure of scanning my ID despite it being legally unnecessary.
One of the big problems here is companies deploying user-facing agents that can't even communicate in the common language. There is another driver whom I've tried a few times now simply to work with her to get packages delivered (eg I'll bring them in from the street because I'm in the middle of shoveling snow), but communication is needlessly difficult. I'm sure many of the destructionists are faced with similar frustrations and then go on to blame "illegals", as if purifying society will compensate for bad incentives. But as usual, it's actually the corpos pitting us against one another in a race to the bottom.
>"He then insisted I speak to his supervisor on his phone (the ones who are now unreachable when you have a problem)"
Soon, a chat only chatbot accessible through a widget on their app. Or worse a phone you call, but it's just an LLM with a TTS wrapped around it.
I think much of it is just LLM/TTS at this point. But even well before then it was a call center agent who would put in a "ticket" for nobody to call you back.
Unfortunately no. In my state all the bars and nightclubs near colleges scan IDs and keep a copy.
The fakes are so good now that the state basically admits they can't expect the bouncer to detect them. So they keep an image to prove "hey we tried our best".
[dead]
We age gate other things that are genuinely useful but can be harmful when used incorrectly or with malice.
Given how much trouble you can cause with an Internet connection, I’m surprised this hasn’t happened already.
> We age gate other harmful objects: firearms, alcohol, driving, et cetera.
We can easily prove those have harms.
> trouble you can cause with an Internet connection
Why don't we age gate hands? Number one source of human problems right there. Perhaps we should outfit our children like Harrison Bergeron until they reach the age of majority?
Hands are part of your body. Pornhub is a commercial website distributing age-restricted content. We already require ID for buying alcohol, cigarettes, and lottery tickets without it being a constitutional crisis. Requiring age verification to access porn isn't a First Amendment issue any more than carding someone at a liquor store is. This comparison makes no sense.
Pornhub is always age gated everywhere in the world. Because internet access typically involves you to prove you're an adult.
Just like the liquor store, verification happens at point of sale. Past that, all bets are off.
If I got buy a beer, verify my age, and then go home and give it to a kid, there's nothing anyone can reasonably be expected to do about that. Similarly, if I buy internet access, and then turn around and just give it to my kid, there's nothing anyone can reasonably be expected to do about that.
We don't expect the store clerk to follow you home and watch you drink the beer.
>Why don't we age gate hands?
Making this sort of reductio ad absurdum doesn't make you seem witty or clever. It just makes you seem pedantic and unable to reason about things like a functioning adult.
I thought it was witty and clever.
Ad hominem attacks can't be much better.
I don't think you're adding anything to this discussion with that kind of comment.
The idea of age-gating hands is to demonstrate that overly broad age gating IS ridiculous and the lack of sufficient targetting by Texas is precisely why the judge is throwing it out.
Please try to engage with commenters with a little bit more respect and hopefully better understanding.
That might be the case if they weren't correct. I notice you didn't actually say anything about what's wrong with the point.
Do I really need to waste my time explaining why age-gating hands is not feasible, realistic, or even worth considering?
Really?
You should look up the word "analogy".
Do I really need to waste my time explaining why age-gating the internet is not feasible, realistic, or even worth considering?
Really?
Internet service is age gated by the provider and the prerequisites like a physical address and bank account
If you've got cash, you can go to Walmart and setup a prepaid cell phone with internet access. No ID or address required.
Human bare hands and teeth can be lethal if used skillfully. I wonder why isn't operating them age-gated.
Speaking can do a lot of harm, from emotional distress to swindling a victim out of millions through a scam.
World's safest place is a solitary confinement cell. It comes with some downsides though.
> I wonder why isn't operating them age-gated.
It is! Have you met a baby before... no teeth, severely diminished strength and muscle control
It would be like age gating a library.
Kids cannot check out adult materials. Nor can they attend a library alone until middle school. (At least around here.)
I guess the already normalized lack of liberty shouldn’t surprise me anymore.
Where do you live?
My son got his first library card at 5 and walked over there by himself when he was 6 or 7.
Middle school is way too late to build good reading habits. What a shame.
I live in the Midwest US. Plenty of kids can and do walk to our library. Though younger ones who come alone are questioned for their own safety.
Surely you must see the difference between what is a utility and...firearms and alcohol?
Age gate positions of power, that is, you can't hold them after you're 55
It's discrimination, should be 65 like everywhere else.
Seriously, I won't limit the maximum age, but would rather use a cognitive ability assessment. It in fact already exists, e.g. as the TV debates for presidential candidates. Were the voters paying attention,..
Isn't the median like 65 already? Seems like it's closer to the minimum.
what's the difference between porn and any arbitrary category here? even with porn isn't it just arbitrary that porn has been defined as "adult?" presumably Texas could just legislate that all apps are "adult" content, and then this would apply, no?
given the same judge per the article did this block which ultimately was overturned by the Supreme Court, I doubt this will go differently
This is already a solved problem. Medical schools teach anatomy, art museums display nude sculptures, sex education happens in schools, and National Geographic shows indigenous tribes without being classified as pornography. Courts have been distinguishing obscenity from protected speech for decades, and content platforms make these determinations millions of times per day. The existence of edge cases doesn't mean the distinction is impossible, it just means edge cases exist.
I think you might find it not so arbitrary that kids should watch 6 men “use” a young man or girl; or even 3 grannies using a young boy as a toy. Is it really arbitrary?
The problem is you can't draw non-arbitrary lines.
Consider an example I ran into a few years back. It was a web project, lots and lots of closeups of female genitals. Porn? No--educational, the purpose was to provide as wide as possible a sampling of what's normal so people don't get focused on the idealized representations in porn.
One of the sports companies did something similar with breasts, it was accepted.
“Because apparently tracking your morning run is a clear and present danger to minors.”
Well yes, Strava is a danger to at risk adults even let alone children. In fact, it is a risk to US bases around the world.
> In fact, it is a risk to US bases around the world.
If US army botany enthusiasts post a load of location data online on their favourite botany app, is that the app’s fault?
I’d say it’s the soldier and US army who are at fault.
Yes, if the botany app shares sensitive information like their exact location and possibly home/workplace then the app is to blame if it allows children and even adults to publish such information without explicit share-with-world opt in design.
As a Strava user, it’s blindingly obvious that’s it’s sharing location data and easy to turn off.
But if you’re doing some secret squirrel shit, are soldiers really allowed to use random location tracking apps from random companies?
No, the tracking data is anonymous and not a threat to the user.
The problem is that it exposed the locations it's users were going to. Anonymous, but a bunch of people going somewhere suggests either that it's interesting or that there's something there. (Doesn't always mean it's useful information. I was looking at the Strava global map, what in the world is this trail in my usual hiking area?? I eventually realized the reason it was bonkers was it was a ski run.)
Strava isn't the problem - educating the military personnel about not broadcasting their location is the problem. Even if someone isn't using Strava, they could just post a message on any social media platform giving away their exact position/coordinates.
The Christian Taliban disagrees and will find another way to impose their values on them.
Not wanting 8-year-olds to access hardcore porn on their phones isn't "Christian Taliban," it's basic child protection that exists across cultures and political spectrums. If other states wants different standards, they can set them locally. That's how federalism works. Texas passing age verification laws for porn sites isn't imposing anything on other states.
That's not what the ruling is about. Read the article.
I guess you didn't read the article or understand the SINGLE MAIN POINT: this case isn't about PORN. IT'S EXPLICITLY NOT ABOUT PORN. You couldn't have made a more off-topic, entirely wrong comment if you had tried. Here is the first two paragraphs since you were unable to load it yourself.
>Over the summer, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority upended decades of traditional First Amendment standards to say that Texas could put in place an age verification law if that law was intended to keep kids away from porn. As we argued at the time, the ruling had all sorts of problems, but even leaving those aside, it was still pretty clearly limited solely to situations involving age gating adult content. Not news sites. Not fitness apps. Not therapy platforms. Porn.
>Texas, predictably, heard “you can age gate porn” and decided that meant “you can age gate everything.” Because why respect constitutional distinctions when you can just pretend they don’t exist?
If you want to keep thinking about porn then do it somewhere else. We're not discussing your obsession. This federal case, this article, this comment thread are about Texas trying to apply the age-gating for porn to non-porn things.
Texas overreaching doesn't invalidate the underlying principle. The Supreme Court was right to allow age verification for porn, and Texas writing an overly broad law that tries to age-gate news sites and fitness apps just means Texas wrote a bad law. The solution is striking down the overreach and writing narrower statutes that target actual age-restricted content, not abandoning age verification entirely. Courts exist to enforce those distinctions.
Your framing that this is about abandoning age gating entirely is just as wrong as the previous poster saying this was about porn. This is about the unconsitutional application of age-gating to non-harmful things the state of Texas doesn't like on a whim.
Seriously, did no one read the article?
Do not forget the "Christian Taliban's" war on LGBT Culture.
I don't necessary like this law or precedent, but there are several major issues I have with the opposition.
One is that it is not individuals that have their speech restricted, I have a very big problem with companies continuing to be treated as if they're people, they're not. Individuals have rights by default, companies have only obligations, unless explicitly stated by the government as a right of incorporated entities, ideally at least.
There is also the issue of "freedom of speech is not freedom of reach", as in you can shout fire, but being able to reach a mass audience is reach. At least as far as content creators are concerned.
Lastly, I don't know of the union has a chance of lasting if we can't allow states to enact ridiculous laws we don't like. Resistance to state law by the federal government should be rare and only in defense or actual harm being caused to citizens. My point isn't that freedom of speech is a minor right, but that the requirement to prove harm (since everyone agrees, speech isn't a right if there is harm) should not be strong on the part of states.
The mere subjective opinion that the moral character of texans would be corrupted (as if! lol) by the content should be enough. why? because democracy, that's why. it's what texans keep voting for, states should have some level of self determination, otherwise they're just federal provinces.
I don't think anyone serious is arguing that porn for children is fine. The problem is everyone else having to pay for it by verifying age. You may have a strong opinion on this, as do I, but if the democratic government of texas chooses to levy burdens on adults to protect children (at least in their view and belief), why should outsiders intervene or have an opinion on it?
I would argue, that the burden of proof here to require the intervention of the federal government and legitimate invoking of federal rights should only be done if the plaintiff can prove harm was done to them, in this case by being required to verify their age. Or the content creators not being able to reach enough consumers.
I think a lot of the core issues we have in the US are caused by a now entrenched culture, where states are required to have similar laws. Let's say you're a mormon or something and want to raise your kids in a strict state, if states can't age verify, what choice do mormons have left? You may not care for mormons, but this stuff adds up. You'll have a large voter base (I argue - that's what MAGA is in a way) that is consistently left out of options, because the terrible, ignorant, backwards, etc.. views they have can't be represented by any state. It all becomes a federal matter, eventually the only way to solve it would be conflict.
I think enforcement of the civil right act/voting rights act set this precedent. It was the right thing to do, because it had to do with people's participation in voting, education and government, the very things which need to be protected so that states can claim they're representing the views of their population when passing disagreeable laws.
But if the sentiment is that porn creators and consumers' rights in this case trumps states' rights, then we no longer have a system of government where different states can pursue different democratic experiments. The voters of federal/general election swing states determine every aspect of amercians' lives, their views are tyrannically forced upon everyone else.
You realize Nixon's attempt to show pornography to be harmful actually concluded that they could find no evidence of any harm even to minors, let alone adults. (That is not to say that an adult couldn't use it in an attempt to victimize a minor.) And note how the discussion of the harm stems from an unrealistic portrayal of sex, not from simply portraying sex.
doesn't matter, i think you missed what i said. Do texans think it will be harmful or not? Democracy is not technocracy, what is actually factually correct is not what the law enforced but what the people believe is correct. If Texans believe electricity causes cancer, they can ban electricity in Texas.
I don't think your argument addresses the substance of the judge's opposition, which is that the law as proposed will apply to all apps and all websites, not just ones that might do harm. That does seem like genuine overreach, and it is not even likely that it's what Texans were really asking for in the first place. It's just a bad law.
If you're saying Texas is planning on gatekeeping the entire internet, it is indeed a bad law. But if they're simply giving themselves power to identify what is "bad" and require that site to age-verify, that isn't really a new power states are getting is it?
Id say even if you ignore the first amendment case, the federal government still has legitimate constitutional grounds to review these kinds of laws since it is definitely in the realm of interstate commerce.
Let's be real, they can do whatever they want. The question is, should they? I don't think this is a clear violation of free speech, restricting speech from the ears of children has always been a thing in every modern government. It was always possible to buy porn magazines for example, but states required id verification in stores to sell them. You can watch porn on cable channels, but only because they were paid and an adult consented to it.
Another way to look at it is, porn is a sexual encounter, minors can't consent. From Texas' point of view, they are simply prohibiting a non-consensual sexual encounter.
It is not interstate commerce, because commerce isn't regulated here, free porn sites are included. If states can tax websites, they can also regulate content.
I like the way you've stated your position, but I do have some questions.
> Lastly, I don't know of the union has a chance of lasting if we can't allow states to enact ridiculous laws we don't like.
I can understand the idea that people in one state may enact laws that people in other states disagree with (although see below), but saying we must allow ridiculous laws seems to be stretching it a bit far. It seems to me that the purpose of having different levels of government is that more local levels can enact their own policies, while at the same time higher levels can restrict those local jurisdictions from egregiously misusing their legislative power.
It then just becomes a matter of what kinds of laws are "too ridiculous" to be allowed. Maybe this is and maybe it isn't, but if you allow that any laws within one jurisdiction can be overridden by laws from a larger encompassing jurisdiction, then you must accept the underlying principle that the will of the whole can override the will of a part. Of course we can also debate what threshold must be met (e.g., will you require a supermajority of some sort at the federal level), but still the underlying principle holds. And I think we must all accept this principle, because the alternative is to accept that state law can do literally anything (e.g., execute people at random) as long as it is duly enacted by the state government.
The debate is then no longer about the theoretical balance between state and federal governments, but about the concrete question of whether this particular policy is too ridiculous to allow. As I'll say more about below, I tend to think that this is where almost all arguments about federalism lead. Unless you are prepared to allow one level or the other to have untrammeled power, it always comes down not to procedural questions about jurisdictions but to substantive questions about the actual content of the policies involved.
> The mere subjective opinion that the moral character of texans would be corrupted (as if! lol) by the content should be enough. why? because democracy, that's why. it's what texans keep voting for, states should have some level of self determination, otherwise they're just federal provinces.
Do you believe that this specific policy (or various others) in fact reflect the will of the people of Texas? The reason I ask is that I believe there are many policies (in some cases "policies of omission") at the state and federal levels which do not reflect the will of the people. As an example, polls, consistently show overwhelming support for universal background checks for gun purchases, and yet that is not the policy we have. It seems that the reason for this is that people have attached themselves to certain procedural characteristics of government (e.g., the constitution, certain mechanisms of legislative districting, etc.) rather than to more basic principles like "democracy".
If we're going to resort to fundamental principles like "because democracy", then it is hard to see why we should not insist that all policies directly reflect the will of the public in this way. I think indeed our system would benefit from removing certain anti-democratic features (e.g., the absurdly high bar for amending the constitution). But at the same time there is legitimacy in the desire to "lash ourselves to the mast" and declare certain policies off-limits ahead of time. Thus again we are really arguing not about "democracy" but about the substantive content of the laws and whether certain laws in their substantive content warrant some kind of special procedures or consideration.
Moreover, there is an interaction between the two points I made. If we allow that "ridiculous" laws should sometimes be allowed, and we also want democracy, then why can we not allow the larger jurisdiction (e.g., the federal government) to pass a "ridiculous" law restricting the actions of smaller jurisdictions? In other words, if 51% of Texans want to pass such-and-such a law, but 51% of Americans don't want any jurisdiction to be able to pass such a law, which democracy wins? It is hard to decouple the philosophical notion of democracy from concrete questions about where the boundaries are in which you're counting votes.
> You may have a strong opinion on this, as do I, but if the democratic government of texas chooses to levy burdens on adults to protect children (at least in their view and belief), why should outsiders intervene or have an opinion on it?
> I think a lot of the core issues we have in the US are caused by a now entrenched culture, where states are required to have similar laws.
My question with these issues of federalism is always the same: why is it particularly a concern when this is about state governments and federal governments? What if the democratic government of the city of Podunk, Texas wants to do something, while the democratic government of Podunk County (in which Podunk sits) wants the opposite? And then what if the Texas government wants something else and the federal government something different yet? And what if even within Podunk there is a neighborhood of four square blocks or so where the residents overwhelmingly disagree with the majority view within the city?
People often try to answer such questions by referencing the constitution, but I don't consider that a legitimate answer if we want to take seriously concepts like "democracy". If democracy is our goal, we need to be prepared to question whether the US Constitution achieves it, and so be willing to engage with the entire mess of how we resolve "51% vs. 51%" disputes of the type I mentioned above.
> Let's say you're a mormon or something and want to raise your kids in a strict state, if states can't age verify, what choice do mormons have left?
Let's say you like pork and want to eat some bacon, but most people in your area consider pork unclean and have banned the production and import of pork. What choice do you have? Or let's say you think 5G towers cause cancer, but most people in your area disagree and have allowed the construction of 5G towers. What choice do you have? Let's say you want to build a small nuclear device (for research purposes only, of course!), but the people in your area have decided to ban the possession of plutonium. What choice do you have? Let's say you're a member of a certain cult and want to raise your kids in a really strict state where you're allowed to beat them with a heavy stick if they fail to recite the Flying Spaghetti Monster's catechism with perfect accuracy. What choice do you have?
My point is simply that there are endless questions of this sort, and the answers people are comfortable with ultimately have nothing to do with "states' rights", because people disagree more about certain matters than others. People think of some things as "well that's not for me but that's cool if you want to do it", and other things as "I don't think anyone should do that but I guess it's your choice" and other things as "No one should ever do that and I am prepared to forcibly intervene to stop you from doing it if necessary". You cannot resolve these questions with an appeal to "federalism" without considering the substantive content of the policies. (And when you do, you then can run up against the universal-background-checks problem mentioned above, where you have a policy that everyone seems to want but is somehow blocked by a tiny minority.)
There is no getting around the fact that sometimes if you are in the minority you are not going to be able to do what you want. We can try to make allowances and provide protections, but still there is going to come a point at which the majority will say that the minority position is "too ridiculous" (or "too burdensome") and simply will not be accommodated.
And this has nothing to do with federalism! The issue is just that the consensus within a group of people may not match the consensus within every subgroup. Federalism is just our word for talking about a very particular instance of this, which we have convinced ourselves has some special status because a piece of paper written many years ago uses the word "state" a lot. But if we want to think about democracy we need to broaden our view a bit.
> It seems to me that the purpose of having different levels of government is that more local levels can enact their own policies, while at the same time higher levels can restrict those local jurisdictions from egregiously misusing their legislative power.
That's not the purpose at all. Who decides what is egregious? It's a simple question of democracy. In a federal government, states represent their population democratically, and as such the federal government restricting what they do is a direct inhibition of the state's residents' voice. Where the federal government intervenes is in matters of inter-state affairs, immigration, and matters which even if the majority of the state's residents want things a certain way, the impact on the minority of the state's residents is found to be intolerable by the country's population. Ridiculous is fine, so long as it doesn't harm the minority or interfere with federal jurisdiction.
> you must accept the underlying principle that the will of the whole can override the will of a part.
Can and should are different things, we can get rid of state governments or the constitution entirely using lawful means. The discussion here is what was the architecture and design behind the existing system of democratic federal governance? Since the outset, states had a decent level of autonomy, the idea was if you didn't like it one state, you had other options.
The part many gloss over so easily and dangerously, is that the United States is as the name implies, a union of states. States with their own constitution, military force,etc.. they're not administrative provinces. The country itself is not a country of its own, its identity and components are states. There is no America without states. States and their citizens have a very strong sense of identity and self-determination. Texas in particular is always threatening secession, it's just for show, but it does reflect on how unlike an administrative province, they can and have in the past been their own country.
> but about the concrete question of whether this particular policy is too ridiculous to allow.
Again, I disagree. Should swing voters on federal elections in Winsconsin or Pennsylvania have a say in what is too ridiculous or not? That's the question. if so , what's the point of a state?
The electoral college and allocations of house reps and senators the way it is done is considered acceptable because states have rights.
The population of the US is too diverse, with varying belief systems, economies,etc... to impose your view of what is too ridiculous is equal to imposing your beliefs and world views over them.
> Do you believe that this specific policy (or various others) in fact reflect the will of the people of Texas?
Yes, without a doubt. If texans had a referendum on this, they will ban porn outright, consumption, trade and production.
> Thus again we are really arguing not about "democracy" but about the substantive content of the laws and whether certain laws in their substantive content warrant some kind of special procedures or consideration.
No, still about democracy, the substance of the law is relevant only when states exceed their authority. The limits on state rights and federal rights are very clear in the constitution. What isn't explicitly legislated as federal law, can be legislated as state law.
FYI, in texas, there is still a law limiting the number of dildos a person can own. That's how ridiculous things can get there. If you don't understand why, that's because you're not in texas or understand their beliefs, and that's fine, that's why you don't get to tell them what laws are too silly for them.
> then why can we not allow the larger jurisdiction (e.g., the federal government) to pass a "ridiculous" law restricting the actions of smaller jurisdictions?
As i outlined earlier, technically the majority can, and they have, and that is precisely what is leading to the current path of civil war, i don't think the union will last down this path. If the majority of the country feel certain rights need to be protected for the minority of all states, then that should be a federal law, that should be the only threshold outside of explicitly outlined domains in the constitution such as interstate commerce and immigration.
> People often try to answer such questions by referencing the constitution, but I don't consider that a legitimate answer if we want to take seriously concepts like "democracy". If democracy is our goal, we need to be prepared to question whether the US Constitution achieves it, and so be willing to engage with the entire mess of how we resolve "51% vs. 51%" disputes of the type I mentioned above.
The main goal is really the preservation of the union. at some point, this becomes an unhealthy relationship, for how long should texans put up with their voices and views being trampled and ignored. Taxation without representation is literally how the country came to be, you're suggesting to repeat that. The people that live in a place get to determine their laws and fate. It just so happens, states are the units of government that are by design meant to legislate day-to-day aspects of people's lives (even more than municipalities which tend to focus on less impactful things not legislated by state govs).
> Let's say you like pork and want to eat some bacon,...
Are those things protected fundamental rights of all americans? If not, then you can't eat bacon, have 5g towers, private nuclear reactors, you can beat your kids,etc... but the last example is good, because corporal punishment is still a state thing and allowed in texas, but outright child abuse can be considered intolerable because those children didn't choose the state they're in and they must have some level of country-wide protections, but even then, such laws should only be passed if states are failing to do so, as a last resort that is. Not eating bacon isn't harming any minority population in texas, neither is 5g, but being physically hit obviously is. So the protection of the minorities is the exception there.
As i mentioned in another comment, if texans feel electricity causes cancer, they can go back to burning wood and living in the dark. The only question is was the election process they followed free and fair. Since people survived pre-electricity, no one can claim they're being harmed, so long as they're allowed to leave the state.
> There is no getting around the fact that sometimes if you are in the minority you are not going to be able to do what you want. We can try to make allowances and provide protections, but still there is going to come a point at which the majority will say that the minority position is "too ridiculous" (or "too burdensome") and simply will not be accommodated.
It isn't a scientific formula, people's views and attitudes change. But things should generally be left to states. Not liking it is not a good enough threshold. disagreeing with it isn't either. The country as a whole needs to agree that it should be a federal law, and proper federal laws need to be passed.
You see, in this case, it is judges making the law. If a federal law preventing states from implementing age-verification was passed, that would be democratic since texans are represented in the federal government also. But this is twisting and interpreting the constitution according to the views of plaintiffs. Since restricting by age access to content is nothing new, and it's been tried many times at the supreme court, an explicit federal law to override state law is needed. Even the voting and civil rights acts were federal laws. Ultimately, the federal government can override any state law, period. But like in the past, it is risking civil wars, and disunity. We are already in a state where the country is tearing itself apart. That isn't a hyperbole, when Biden took office, multiple historians warned him that in 10 or so years, there will likely be a civil war if i recall correctly (or was it more vague?).
> And this has nothing to do with federalism! The issue is just that the consensus within a group of people may not match the consensus within every subgroup. Federalism is just our word for talking about a very particular instance of this, which we have convinced ourselves has some special status because a piece of paper written many years ago uses the word "state" a lot. But if we want to think about democracy we need to broaden our view a bit.
No, it very much does. the concept of the state is literally in the country's name. As you noted, even the constitution can be changed, maybe smaller geographic regions should be states instead? Maybe we should have direct representation over the internet. Those are civic debates to be had and legislation that need to be passed.
Consider that in this case, Texas is trying to protect children (sincerely or not, it is the popular perception in texas). I'd say telling them they can't because the greater country feels like porn is a more important right sounds like an unhealthy relationship, one that should promptly be dissolved peacefully. But ideally, other states won't age restrict porn, and people who prefer that will move there. People who live in Massachusetts will hate the laws in Mississippi and vice-versa. California has lots and lots laws most of the south hates. It isn't a matter of legality but of politics to decide which ones should be forced upon all americans. If publishing porn or consuming it is a right of all americans, as opposed to a policy where americans are expected to leave the state if they don't like it, then it should be encoded as such, at least as a federal law (it isn't today).
Lastly, very long post, i made the effort to reply to it, but let's keep followups brief please? :)
I'll keep my comment briefer than before. :-)
Unfortunately I think we are talking past each other. The basic issue is that you are taking the constitution as a given, but my questions are about how government should be, not how it is. In my view, if you believe that our system of government is actually a good democratic system, you should be able to explain how it serves democracy better than possible alternatives; and if our system is not a good democratic system, then it doesn't really matter what the constitution says, because we should instead focus on what it should say. An argument along the lines of "the constitution says so" is nothing but an appeal to authority.
So no, I don't care that "states" is in the name of the country, nor do I care that the constitution says stuff about states, nor do I care about keeping the union together. Just about the only thing in the constitution that I wholeheartedly agree with is that the purpose of government is to promote the general welfare. :-) So I'm interested in what is the best way to do that, and everything is on the table in terms of retaining, throwing out, or adding whatever we want to the constitution to make it better.
In that line, my own view is basically the opposite of most of what you said above. :-) I believe that entrenching "states" as entities in the way the constitution does was a bad idea. Sure, we need different levels of government. But there's no reason to privilege states in the way we do, especially since their boundaries and accessions are at best arbitrary and at worst the result of political machinations. Democracy is about what people want, and I don't think our existing federal system is the best way to get at that.
There is how things should be and how they are. These are not separate things because how you enact the changes you want is either through existing ways of doing things, or war.
I don't think I can discuss about theoretical forms of government here and now, but in the US you have think in practical terms. That means what Americans expect, want and can tolerate. I'm a huge advocate of a constitutional convention to update the constitution for example. But concepts like a "state", in practical terms, can't be changed without a civil war. Even a state breaking up into smaller pieces on its own means it gets more representation than others now.
> So no, I don't care that "states" is in the name of the country, nor do I care that the constitution says stuff about states, nor do I care about keeping the union together.
Theoretically, I don't care either, in reality, I don't want to go through war, nor do I want millions to die to get any better form of government in place. Anything practical will require generations of campaigning, and actually convincing people that it is more important than more pressing matters. And frankly, it's too divergent of a topic from the original thread.
> the purpose of government is to promote the general welfare
That's not even true. Are you talking about the declaration of independence instead? Either way, governments have various expectations from them, the first and foremost being the safety and security of their people. If you ask everyday americans, they care about money after that. If only most americans agreed with you, we'd have solved the homeless crisis, poverty and universal healthcare already.
> I believe that entrenching "states" as entities in the way the constitution does was a bad idea. Sure, we need different levels of government. But there's no reason to privilege states in the way we do, especially since their boundaries and accessions are at best arbitrary and at worst the result of political machinations. Democracy is about what people want, and I don't think our existing federal system is the best way to get at that.
The people in texas to use this thread's example, don't agree with you. They very much like their state and its state-identity. So do most everyday people from most other states. Some big states could probably use being split apart to better represent their people for sure, but even that hasn't gained enough popular support in places like Texas and California. To repeat my point earlier, Americans care about money. In california for example, it is literally the 4th largest economy in the world, but if you split apart, not so much.
The thing you don't see I think is that there is power in numbers. Economic power as well as the power to get things done. Utah for example is full of Mormons, if it was split up, they will be less united and less able to get their mormon stuff encoded in the law. You're right that democracy is about what the people want, it isn't about what you and I as individuals want but what everyday people want. Without state governments and their rights, people lose lots of laws they like. To use texas again, they really like open-carry gun laws, can you still carry your ak-47 to bucky's in texas, if the federal government is deciding such laws (even more good reason for it due to all the mass shootings)? The people of taxis by a large pluralistic majority like the open carry laws, quite the opposite from california or new england.
To keep my reply not too long as well, let me stop here by saying that I think large metro areas should probably get their own state-like representation, and that a constitutional convention is not only called for, but the next amendment to the constitution to be requiring a convention every 10 years.
These are exactly the harmful and dangerous consequences of the social memes going around with delusions that 'screens' are harmful and that somehow multi-media from screens, despite not having any mechanism to directly alter incentive salience in any way, is just like addictive incentive salience altering drugs like cocaine.
When you use phrases like "internet addiction" "social media addiction" and the like these are the government uses of force you are supporting.
The judge asking for concrete evidence of these harms and them being unable to provide them, or even a hint of them probably won't change people's perceptions. Just look in this very comment thread for those ignoring the fact the entire article is about lack of proof of harms.
Because of this delusional grassroots support of the concept the authoritarian governments will just keep throwing this scientifically unsupported feces against the wall till it sticks. There's big money in the treatment camps (the anti-gay conversion camp people's new scam), etc, and big potential in the censorship and control of information.
We throw around terms like this because we see a very real effect even though we do not know all the details.
Worst is probably the feedback system. The social media is optimized to show you things it thinks you will look at. More of what you're interested in on the surface sounds like a good thing, but it ends up very able to lead people down rabbit holes.
Do not take this as supporting what Texas is trying to do, though--this isn't about harm, this is about exposing opposition.
It's a slippery slope into big mother, arrogant removal of freedoms claiming they "know what's best for you better than you".
I have always been chronically online, but now I'm online seeing stupid short form videos for hours on end, and everyone around me is doing the same.
Half the population watching 4 hours of short form content online is a problem.