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Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

(ellsberg.substack.com)
693 points macawfish | 2 comments | 12 Jul 25 18:14 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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al_borland ◴[12 Jul 25 18:53 UTC] No.44544145[source]▶
All these ID check laws are out of hand. Parents are expecting the government, and random websites, to raise their kids. Why would anyone trust some random blog with their ID?

If these laws move forward (and I don’t think they should), there needs to be a way to authenticate as over 18 without sending picture of your ID off to random 3rd parties, or giving actual personal details. I don’t want to give this data, and websites shouldn’t want to shoulder the responsibility for it.

It seems like this could work much like Apple Pay, just without the payment. A prompt comes up, I use some biometric authentication on my phone, and it sends a signal to the browser that I’m 18+. Apple has been adding state IDs into the Wallet, this seems like it could fall right in line. The same thing could be used for buying alcohol at U-Scan checkout.

People should also be able to set their browser/computer to auto-send this for single-user devices, where it is all transparent to the user. I don’t have kids and no one else’s uses my devices. Why should I need to jump through hoops?

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1. ndiddy ◴[13 Jul 25 05:37 UTC] No.44547788[source]▶
The actual point of these laws isn't to stop minors from viewing the material, it's to stop sites from hosting the material entirely. They're using "protect the kids from obscene content" as a wedge to get popular support. Acting like some technical solution to make authenticating as an adult more user-friendly would make the politicians who want this implemented happy is disingenuous. Let's take a look at how Tennessee has legislated their ID check should be implemented:

- ID must be verified either by matching a photo of the user to their photo ID, or by processing private transactional data (i.e. a credit card transaction).

- The user must verify their ID at the start of the session, and every hour the session is active.

- Historical anonymized ID verification data must be retained for at least 7 years.

- Anyone running a site that's viewable in Tennessee without the above ID verification rules is committing a class C felony, regardless of what state they reside in or host their site in.

This is clearly an attempt to stop any content they label as "obscene" (using a very broad definition of "obscenity") from being viewable at all in Tennessee. It's a completely unreasonable set of hoops to jump through that solely exists as a fig leaf because they know that making a law banning the content entirely would be ruled unconstitutional.

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2. BobaFloutist ◴[13 Jul 25 19:35 UTC] No.44552914[source]▶
7 years is crazy. I can't think of a single plausible justification for that that isn't dramaticallly expanding the purported scope of the law