this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2025
240 points (98.4% liked)

Technology

60455 readers
4055 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

A trade group for the adult entertainment industry will appear at the Supreme Court on Wednesday in its challenge to a Texas law that requires pornography sites to verify the age of their users before providing access – for example, by requiring a government-issued identification. The law applies to any website whose content is one-third or more “harmful to minors” – a definition that the challengers say would include most sexually suggestive content, from nude modeling to romance novels and R-rated movies.

top 35 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 34 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Couldn't the site just host hundreds of test pattern videos, or something else that compresses super well in order to avoid that "one-third" bar?

[–] ITGuyLevi@programming.dev 13 points 17 hours ago

The devs just need to make the top 1/3 and bottom 1/3 of the screen blank bars. Boom, sight never contains more than 1/3 questionable material. As an added benefit, sales of old 4:3 monitors would go through the roof.

[–] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 49 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Fascism wants an internet where you have to verify your identity to use it at all. Capitalists want the same, and they've already built a turnkey totalitarianism mass surveillance precursor to big brother on behalf of neoliberal "democracies". They will 100% finish the job for fascism. This was always the endgame of mass surveillance.

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 1 points 1 hour ago

I’m a capitalist, and that’s not what I want.

[–] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 8 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Capitalists shouldn't want the same. You can't sell advertisements with "a million viewers" if you have to be honest about 990k of those being bots.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

You're applying very 1990s thinking to internet advertising. They have ways of telling which ads lead to clickthroughs and sales. You say "We got 100 million viewers!" They say "cool, we'll run ads on your program and give you five cents every time the unique link in those ads results in a purchase."

[–] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

No one is paying per sale. Click through, sure.

[–] Nougat@fedia.io 106 points 1 day ago (4 children)

The law applies to any website whose content is one-third or more “harmful to minors”

So ... Infowars, Fox News, OAN, Answers in Genesis, JW, Texas.gov ... right?

Or, all the porn sites should just put huge amounts of public domain works and open source repositories on their sites, so that less than one-third is "harmful to minors."

[–] BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 6 points 19 hours ago

Pretty much every social media site would probably count too.

[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 34 points 1 day ago (2 children)

They're the arbiters of what is "harmful to minors".

[–] Passerby6497@lemmy.world 22 points 1 day ago

Well yeah, they're experts in hurting children.

[–] taladar@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah, they would just say that those public domain works or open source repositories teach minors undesirable knowledge of some sort or compete with commercial software vendors and/or entertainment providers.

[–] nyan@lemmy.cafe 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That can be weaponized, though. US government publications are public domain. So is the Bible. We'd at least get to watch members of the Texas government tie themselves into knots worthy of a game of Twister as they try to argue that those texts are harmful on a porn site but not anywhere else.

[–] taladar@sh.itjust.works 4 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Who says that they would argue that they are not harmful anywhere else? Remember, the bible used to be only read by priests in Latin and interpreted to the masses and many governments would love to have less transparency as you can see in their opposition to freedom of information type initiatives.

[–] nyan@lemmy.cafe 2 points 23 hours ago

It isn't in their best interests to threaten the loony Christian sects that are one of the right wing's favourite brainwashing tools. Members of those sects rely on authority figures to "interpret" the Bible for them instead of actually paying attention to its content, but if you try to take it away from them, they'll throw a fit like a toddler does when you take away a toy they've been ignoring. Restricting access to the Bible in the present day would make religious brainwashing more difficult and create more people who actually think for themselves, which is anathema to bad governments like Texas'.

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 4 points 20 hours ago

"Flood the zone with bullshit" can work for both sides.

[–] 9tr6gyp3@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago

4chan will be okay, it hosts /pol/, a nazi board.

[–] timewarp@lemmy.world 75 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Can't they just threaten to release Republican's porn accounts? We know they got them.

It's like the pro-democracy version of the Ashley Madison hack.

[–] General_Effort@lemmy.world 7 points 22 hours ago

“harmful to minors”

Indeed, I find that few things have done more to ruin my sense of common decency than HC Andersen's The Emperor's New Clothes and that's a story all about public nudity.

[–] Telorand@reddthat.com 25 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I guess we're about to see how many favors they're going to give to the fundigelicals. Whee.

My guess is they side with Texas (because they've had too much normal adjudication lately), citing some impropriety statute from the Dutch Puritans circa 1683 as their core precedent, followed by pointing out that there's no federal law that supercedes it, so neener-neener.

[–] limer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 1 day ago

I guess all the corruption and moral collapse allows me, who has absolutely no clue about law, to actually have educated guesses how important cases are voted.

I simply ask myself “how would a bad person decide?

[–] werefreeatlast@lemmy.world 2 points 22 hours ago

Don't read this unless you're 18!

You read it, didn't you? But your 49! Dang dude! C'mon.

[–] Amoxtli@thelemmy.club -1 points 22 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Mbourgon@lemmy.world 2 points 19 hours ago

Wait, which group?

why would anyone challenge this law to a hostile court so the texas law becomes landmark and set precident