Completely agree. The internet works differently than how people want it to, and filtering services are notoriously easy to bypass. Even if these age-verification laws passed with resounding scope and support, what would stop anyone from merely hosting porn in Romania or some country that didn't care about US age-verification laws. The leads to run down would be legion. I think you could seriously degrade the porn industry (which I wouldn't necessarily mind) but it would be more or less impossible to prevent unauthorized internet users from accessing pornography. And of course that's the say nothing of the blast radius that would come with age-verification becoming entrenched on the internet.

▲

armchairhacker 8 hours ago | parent [-]

> what would stop anyone from merely hosting porn in Romania or some country that didn't care about US age-verification laws

A government could implement the equivalent of China's great firewall. Even if it doesn't stop everyone, it would stop most people. The main problem I suspect is that it would be widely unpopular in the US or Europe, because (especially younger) people have become addicted to porn and brainrot, and these governments are still democracies.

▲

9dev 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That isn’t necessary because porn companies don’t exist to gift orgasms, but to make money. They need US citizens to pay them for premium content and subscriptions, and that dependency means they’ll have to comply with US laws.

▲

everdrive 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The words of someone who does not actually look at pornography. The vast majority of pornography-by-consumption is free / ad-supported. Customers are not "paying" and those ads are usually the bottom of the barrel with regard to sleaziness or legality.

	▲	9dev 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It’s still just a sales funnel for ads or subscriptions. Why do you think porn sites exist?

▲

2duct 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Plenty of porn exists for free, posted online by models or digital artists. It's archived in places that circumvent copyright, don't require payment or accounts, and are easily accessible.

	▲	SiempreViernes an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Sure: models need to advertise to find buyers too, but there's certainly not as many models or rehosts if there's no money to be made anywhere.

▲

big-and-small 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> A government could implement the equivalent of China's great firewall. Even if it doesn't stop everyone, it would stop most people.

Porn is not just political information about human right abuses, government overreach or heavily censored overview of concentration camps for "group X". People can live just fine with government censorship buying into any kind of propaganda.

Kids would find a way to access porn though. Whatever it VPNs, tor or USB stick black market. Government cant even win war on drugs and you expect them to successfully ban porn. What a joke.

▲

logicchains 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Even China hasn't been remotely successful at banning porn, and it already has the great firewall and porn is illegal there.

▲

a456463 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

eh... they are more like `dumbocracies` with these measures. None of this is to protect children. Except to satisfy rabid parents who think the world needs to serve them.