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

Others have said this, I'm sure, but this will move past porn _quickly_. Once there is agreed-up age verification for pornography, much of the professional internet will require identity verification to do _anything_. This is one of the bigger nails in the coffin for the free internet, and this true whether or not you're happy with all the pornography out there.

I don’t agree, at least as far as legal obligation goes. The average voter is far more worried about porn and other explicit content and not so much about anything else.

This doesn't really track with widespread and normalized use of pornographic materials, including written descriptions, by most adults in this country. There's a pretty wide gulf between "I don't think kids should be able to access this stuff" and "I think we need to supercharge the surveillance state and destroy the first amendment"

This doesn't destroy the first amendment any more than requiring an ID & background check to purchase a firearm destroys the second amendment. Which is to say that it might, but for exactly the same reason, so The People ultimately need to decide on a consistent choice of interpretation.

Except one person googling and watching porn has nothing to do with other people, very different from buying guns

It has as much to do with other people as buying guns does. What about the actresses in the porn content; people the world, clearly including you, so quickly forget about? The concerning number of women who are trapped into this industry, usually in third world countries, by men? What about the people on the other side of the personal relationships of individuals who consume this content; the averted gazes, their treatment of women, how that impacts their community and their children?

Asking id from the person watching porn has nothing to do with making porn illegal.

If you think it is harmful to the people doing the porn, then it should be illegal.

If not, asking for id is super useless.

Also if watching porn is bad for the person’s spouse then they shouldn’t do it, which has nothing to do with asking for id

But isn't harm minimization a thing? That's something we practice in other domains, like providing clean needles to drug addicts. After all, if drug use is harmful to the people doing drugs, then it should be illegal. So; making things illegal often doesn't solve the problem. Making it harder to consume porn reduces consumption which reduces the amount of money being funneled into the industry, which might be beneficial to those harmed by it (both producers and consumers). Versus, making it illegal might have a prohibition-style impact, and is, of course, legally tenuous anyway.

I agree but, then they can go after people producing porn, not people that watch it.

This is the same as going after the drug addicts.

This feels like going after the people on the more vulnerable side because it is easy. Which signals it is more about forcing people to not do something instead of trying to genuinely help them.

But going after people producing porn is a no no because they have money and they are organised.

Also imo the intention of people trying implement things like this is just about surveillance and has absolutely nothing to do with protecting the families, children, addicts etc. etc.