[ExI] Internet age verification spreads worldwide

[Kelly Anderson]

On Mon, Sep 1, 2025 at 3:34 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> And nowhere have I seen any serious attempts to find out if pornography
> (which seems to be the main target) is actually harmful to, well,
> anybody really. Even raising the question is probably liable to get you
> shut down, now.

Let me begin by saying I know far too much about porn and the porn
industry. If anyone is curious DM me.

Most of the porn sites, and Pornhub in particular, do not object to
age verification of their clients per se. So whether or not porn is
harmful to minors isn't the hill they are choosing to die on.

Rather, they object to having to do age verification on each and every
site individually. This creates barriers to entry for adults to their
content. What they are advocating for is age verification by machine
or login account. That way, you verify your age once, and it carries
forward to every adult site (whether porn or not) and it is a much
smoother method that doesn't have so much privacy violation for the
browsing public. I think their point is that age verification on a per
site basis makes it more likely their customers will be targeted by
scammers, and thus reduces the number of people partaking in their
product due to unrelated safety issues. Some sites claim that their
customer base will be reduced by 90% due to this. And that does seem
to be the ACTUAL intent of those passing the laws. They can't win a
fair fight on free speech, so they have to resort to playing dirty to
get their puritanical agenda through. As a matter of fact, the Project
2025 manual calls for outright banning porn. Not sure how they think
they are going to do that, but with the current Supreme Court, they
have a chance.

Nobody in the porn industry even attempts to make the case that some
porn isn't harmful to children. Certainly there are individuals in the
industry who have varying opinions about it, but porn covers a vast
spectrum and it would be VERY hard to say that the worst of it
wouldn't damage minor's view of sexuality and their mental health.
I've seen a few things I wish I hadn't seen, and I'm a fan and
promoter of most of it for adults.

And porn of children is something virtually NOBODY supports publicly.
Sick bastards. Of course a child of 17 years 11 months and 29 days is
only a couple days from being an "adult", and that's simply
ridiculous.

-Kelly