Most of these states banning pornography and asking for ID are Republican , conservatives States. It is very ironic that the government is now doing the job of the parents. Instead the government should give parents and students advice on the harm that excess that pornography causes and tools to protect kids from this content online , now the kids will learn to circumvent it because its “prohibited” just like the apple in the tree of Adam and Eve.

As an analogy, should governments allow children access to strip clubs and have parents handle it or should that be illegal and have kids banned from those physical spaces?

It’s interesting because I think banning kids from strip clubs is pretty popular, but the digital laws are not as popular. I don’t know of a way to enforce a ban in a digital space that doesn’t infringe on individual liberties though

The reason is a technical one. At a strip club, none of your information is being transmitted; it’s just the bouncer making sure you’re of age by looking at your ID.

Per the EFF:

Age verification systems are surveillance systems. Mandatory age verification, and with it, mandatory identity verification, is the wrong approach to protecting young people online. It would force websites to require visitors to prove their age by submitting information such as government-issued identification. This scheme would lead us further towards an internet where our private data is collected and sold by default. The tens of millions of Americans who do not have government-issued identification may lose access to much of the internet. And anonymous access to the web could cease to exist.

eff.org/…/age-verification-mandates-would-undermi…

I understand that completely, but if we’re saying kids shouldn’t see strippers, why should they be able to see far more graphic content?

I’m not saying I support these bills as written, basically for the reasons you’re saying. I do think watching extreme content online can damage children’s understanding of sex though. You have to go out of your way to find porn that looks like real sex.

which I think we all agree on. There are ways that we could enforce age verification (the best one so far is that the browser itself checks your age, then a website tells the browser that it must do an age check before loading, which then your ID is never transmitted or logged for these sites). But politicians don’t want to think about that, they love this because it plays into their surveillance state.

(the best one so far is that the browser itself checks your age

How? As a user I want to have total control over my browser and Internet is an open platform - any browser should be able to view any website even though google is trying to change that with their DRM.

I don’t know exactly but the two big things I’ve seen, and again I’m not the engineer of it or anything, but

Your browser would have to implement some sort of 3rd party ID checker that the results could then be stored in a non-adaptable way (specifically parental controls I think would need to be set up), then when a site is loaded it reports to the browser the minimum age limit and the browser decides if you can see it or

You could register your ID on a third party ID checker site that does not log data, only verifies that you are of age. Then on load websites could then check against this third party service to verify the user is 18+.

Know that yes this is a limitation of a browser, and that’s why it’s viewed as a compromise, a word that a lot of people have forgotten. None of us really want to have to prove it, but if there is a need to prevent children from accessing content (and tbh there is a need), then I’d rather have it be done in a privacy focused way.