Pornhub Pulls Out of Nebraska

And will be about as effective at prevention

What is the gold standard for age verification online? Is there one?

I could take my ID to the library / police station, have it verified, and then get given a USB stick with 16GB’s worth of signed government tokens from a big bucket of unmarked hardware. I guess a bad site could still narrow down who I am to my nearest library / police station though.

Proof-of-age tokens that aren’t tied to my ID have the downside that they are transferable. Kind of like a case of beer is transferable from an adult to a child.

Is there a better way of keeping are-you-old-enough separate from who-are-you?

So I'm in Texas and Pornhub already did the same thing here. What I don't get is all of the studio and professional aggregator sites that have existed for 30 years, well before user-generated video platforms were a thing, still operate in Texas. They use exactly the same age verification they've always used. Click yes on a splash screen before you can see free preview content, and submit a credit card to see paid content. If no one complains, we'll assume that was actually your credit card and you're thus 18.

Why is that good enough for every porn site in the world except Pornhub? I have still never seen a website ask for an actual ID except remote test proctoring stuff that popped up for IT certification exams after Covid closed the testing centers.

Someone in Nebraska should start a site named Cornhub.

How do they make money? What's their revenue stream? Who's paying $ when most content is for free, and when people really want to pay they go to OF. I know the phrase that when the product is free, then I'm the product, but even then, how do they make money from customers' mostly-incognito data?

I wonder what age verification system Pornhub would want. I mean if they actually do want one (dubious) and they don't want to deal with people's IDs (very sensible) then they could propose one.

I would have thought it's pretty easy. Have a government site that verifies your ID and just produces some kind of cryptographic token that porn sites can verify but reveals nothing other than the fact that you are over 18.

I mean realistically that's pointless because VPNs... but it's better than what they are currently demanding at least.

"Nebraska Legislative Bill 1092 went into effect on Friday making it a requirement for sites that show adult content to verify the age of users. This usually means some form of identification needs to be uploaded to the site to confirm the person using the site is 18 or over. "

Yeah, just upload your driver's licence to every sketchy site you browse to. What could go wrong?

I'm much more in favor of Leisure Suit Larry's approach:: give the user a quiz on things adults should know. Censor according to how well the user scores on the test.

Honestly, what we need are two internet(s):

- One for adults over 18

- One for minors under 18

All indications are that we will be heading in that direction.

The fact that this website simply refuses to do any kind of age verification says a lot about their leadership and possibly their motives...

This is good news. Here's hoping for a federal law that makes age verification for pornographic content a requirement across all states.

There's no reason why these sites shouldn't shoulder their share of the responsibility to prevent children from accessing this content.

It's really quite telling that Pornhub is removing itself from all markets where it's mandated to do this. Like all dealers of addictive and abusive substances, they want to hook their users in while young and impressionable.