Pornhub goes dark in Arkansas after age verification law kicks in

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Pornhub operator MindGeek has blocked all users in Arkansas from the site after the state’s new age verification law went into effect on Tuesday.

The Arkansas law, SB 66, doesn’t ban Pornhub from operating in the state, but it requires porn sites to verify that a user is 18 by confirming their age with identifying documents.

On Wednesday, Pornhub blocked all traffic from IP addresses based in Arkansas in protest, arguing that the law, which was intended to protect children, actually harms users.

“While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users, and in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk,” MindGeek wrote in a message replacing the site’s front page for affected users.

Responding to this wave of bans, MindGeek has decided to block access to its sites from states where the laws have gone into effect.

So, instead of rolling out age verification systems, it says it decided to block access entirely, calling on users to contact their state representatives to oppose these laws.

I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Good bot! I didn't know I missed having a summary until now
- Having one in link posts really should be mandatory in the rules for most communities
Good bot
What is the expectation for compliance here? Are users supposed to scan their physical ID and upload that to PH, then PH checks age against that?
- The bill says that commercial entities serving pornography are required to do age verification through either verifying a driver's license, verifying another piece of government-issued identification, or through the use of any commercially viable age verification mechanism.
  
  So, yeah, I'd imagine compliance to look like either uploading a photograph or scan of an identity card or document for the site operators to check, or uploading it to an affiliated service which does age verification on their behalf.
  
  Which is obviously horrendous from a privacy and information security standpoint for the consumer, and exposes the site operator to costs and legal risk associated with verifying and storing sensitive personal information.
Good bot

Arkansas: your kids should be working in a mine, not wanking online

Arkansas: where the people rule! (Until we, the ones decidedly ruling over the people, decide we don’t like what you’re doing and think it’s icky.)
- Everyone in Arkansas is still watching their porn, from the pimply teenagers on up to the crotchety old politicians who came up with this shit.
  
  It's all a political stunt so that the (significant) bloc of evangelical/social conservative voters in the state can feel like they got a win, and in turn they'll reelect the old white guys that signed it into law next fall.
  
  Politicians get a win, evangelicals get a "win", and everybody keeps on watching exactly the same amount of Internet porn as they were before this law went into effect.
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- no one gives a shit about karma here, son

Wanna control the media your kids consume? Take away the screen. Or at the very least watch with them to filter their intake.

Sidenote: I live in AR and my very republican boss is livid about this. Reap what you sow, my dude.

small gov party btw
- Small government taxation of the rich party
- I know a lot of Republicans that hate how both parties have become. We need some independents to vote for. There's a lot of us that are caught in the middle. I agree with the small govt part of traditional Republicans, and agree with a lot of what the left has. For whatever reason. All we get is some bullshit extreme from either side.
  
  What about normal ass people that just want people to leave them the fuck alone, pay taxes, keep their roads working, and stop wasting (literally stealing) our fucking money
To be fair, porn is a little lower on the "first they came for the -----" list than he was probably expecting. He likely thought he had a few more marginalized groups to take the fall before the leopards started eating HIS face. But yeah, reap what you sow.
So your boss found out at about this at work? 🤔
- Laid back work atmosphere. We talk about all kinds of shit.
I dunno, I would feel weird watching porn with my kids.
- I don't like child porn myself, but... Different folks, I guess...
"We must blame them and cause a fuss, before somebody thinks of blaming us!"

Oh no. I'm in Arkansas.

Guess I'll turn on the VPN.

I’m in Arkansas

I'm sorry.
- I grew up there. The northern part of the state is honestly one of the prettiest parts of our country. It is also filled with some of the most vile people. Vile people from everywhere else go there to retire and add to the smegma pot.
- It is a beautiful state, especially the part in the ozark mountains. But there is no way I could live there because of the people. It also lacks a single great city (Little Rock is a dump).
- Me too :( I hate it here (For reasons other than Pornhub)
Oh no. I'm in Arkansas.

That’s putting it mildly
I recommend using Tor browser as an alternate option. For anybody who can't use a VPN or doesn't want to.
- I'm not sure if streaming 1080p video over Tor would be very appreciated by the rest of the network. Or that it would be a very pleasant experience.
- Definitely not the right scenario for tor. If you dont care about your privacy and just want to see some titty boombom Fanny maracas then even the cheapest VPN would be a better experience.
  
  Really though a decent VPN should something everyone has access to though anyway.
- I think a vpn is simpler than tor personally. Also then videos gonna be buffering for a minute on tor lol
- I just use OperaGX's shitty free VPN if I need it. It works enough to get any vpn needed jobs done.
- Nobody is going to prefer tor to a vpn.
Very Pretty Neice/Nephew?
- We sleep with our cousins here. Not our nieces or nephews. That's Alabama.
- That's grim

The party of small government.

For a party that prides itself on being all about "small government" and "no nanny state," this is some surprisingly big government nanny state shenanigans
- The small government libertarian types were lowered in priority in the party after two decades of people pandering to them because there's basically nobody out there that's a fiscal conservative and a social liberal.
  
  Trump and his grip on the GOP are evidence again of that same thing. There are more "conservatives" that are actually fiscal liberals and social conservatives than there are right libertarians.
  
  The rich would (for the most part) love to get the tax breaks and allow people to do whatever they want socially, but that (and virtue signaling) are not enough to rile up the fascist voters and evangelicals anymore.
  
  They've crossed the Rubicon with Trump and now it's full on censorship and other Nazi tactics to take us back to the good old (non-existent) days.
In fairness, this is a state law. States rights being part of the Republican platform during my childhood. Just another reason not to go to/live in Arkansas
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- Small government is allegedly still at part of the Republican platform at the state level. For a small government party, they sure do like to dictate what's going on in people's bedrooms.
- Republicans only cry States Rights when the federal government is attempting to make someone's life better or when they want to take something away
- "just move"
- They used to claim they wanted a small government meaning not telling people what to Jack off to. It wasn’t solely about the federal government. Of course if you ask them you quickly find out it’s freedom for them to do anything they want while subjecting all of us to disgusting fascist fascinations

Who in their right mind would expect a free porn site to go to this level of hassle?

Or is this a puritanical measure in disguise?

It's the second one. I saw article where they talked how Florida was the first to pass it, pornhub put time and money into developing what they needed to comply and saw a 90% decrease in traffic because nobody wants to hand over their ID for free porn.
- Wouldn't even want to hand over my ID for a paid service.
- After MindGeek started complying with the Louisiana law earlier this year, the company said traffic dropped by 80 percent.
  
  It’s literally in the linked article lol
- Ohhhh fuck is it viewer's age verification.. I assumed it was the people in the porn... As if this is gonna stop horny kids from seeing porn
When this happened in Utah a few months ago, Google searches for VPN increased in like over 1000%.

The best Free VPN IMO is ProtonVPN,
- For a general user that just wants a comprehensive google replacement, proton unlimited at $12/mo is a pretty good deal. Comes with the VPN premium and a password manager (now).
VPN industry lobbyists disguised as morality crusaders if you like tin foil hats as much as I do. Most likely not though, just people who feel the need to control how others spend their time and precious bodily fluids.
I don’t think it’s especially disguised…
Especially since PornHub has an excellent point. Even though they theoretically could do an ID check, the sketchier porn sites simply wouldn't. All these laws would do is push minors to use more dangerous porn sites. They're not going to not watch porn just because the big, law abiding site checks IDs.

Didn't read the bill cause pdf and cause it's a bill, but found another article describing it, and it says at the end:

The bill also would apply to material that as a whole lacks serious "literary, artistic, political, and scientific value for minors."

Isn't that like 99% of the internet?

Why are you against Pdf files?

Edit: Though reading my question out loud I get it...
- (Are we anti postscript document format now? Did I miss a haters meeting??)
- Just don't like opening on phone, my browser doesn't open, so it asks to download, then i end up with a bunch of random useless files there. Don't u skip search results that lead to pdfs?
Sounds like all online games too

Things you aren't legally allowed to do in Arkansas: watch porn, have an abortion, read, write, or wipe your ass.

I get the impression not a lot of people were reading, writing, or wiping there even when it was legal.

Dang, if kids just had some kind of guardians that would be responsible for their media consumption while every media device out there had basic functionality to support such supervision.

It is completely unrealistic to control kids media consumption after a certain age without also infringing on their rights to privacy. Basically, you can't do it right as a parent. You are either helicopter parenting or you aren't controlling enough. It's funny how we shift blame entirely to parents on this while ignoring that it's an impossible task. And I am not even a parent.
- It's not hard to talk to your kids about porn or the existence of sex. Masturbation is ok and natural.
  
  I think unhealthy sexual behavior comes from denying that masturbation and sex are perfectly normal and healthy activities. It's important as a parent to let your kids know about the potential risks (STDs, pregnancy, porn addiction) and to educate on consent. Give your kids a roadmap and advice, but don't blanket ban or shame and they should be healthy about sex.
- Every phone and computer has parental control options that allow for as much control as you feel necessary. And obviously as you kids gets older you have to trust in your upbringing - but that's also completely on you, to teach your kids to deal with modern media.
Do you think the same way about physical media? Like, do you think we should be letting kids buy porn magazines? Or that it should be legal for someone to wait outside a school and hand kids porn as they walk home?
- Pretty sure it's already illegal to distribute porn online to kids.

In other, unrelated news, VPN’s are experiencing an unexpected spike in traffic. More at 5.

I don't understand why they use pornhub, it's so much easier for them to get actual sex with their favorite dating app: 23andme.
- 23.5andme
- Do Arkansans have a reputation for inbreeding ?

I wanna see over the next year how rape and sexual harassment rates change.

Oh man, if only we had statistics from countries where porn is banned, or some sort of scientific study from multiple countries where porn was banned and then unbanned to see what the change was...

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101130111326.htm

Spoiler: They'll probably go up slightly.
Not sure what the spirit is behind this comment, but for all the cases that could be made in advocacy for porn, I don't think this should be one. If porn is the only thing keeping rape cases from drastically increasing, there is something much more broken in our society, and access to porn won't fix that.

Edit: Holy shit, guys. I thought poor reading comprehension and inflammatory dog-piling was something that wouldn't be so commonplace, after moving here from Reddit. Where did I say I support anything about what these pieces of legislation are enforcing? Every single response I've gotten so far has been arguing different points of discussion, of which my comment has nothing to do with. All I said was "GIVE THE RAPISTS THEIR PORN SO WE CAN BE SAFE!!!" isn't exactly a strong angle to approach the issue from. One user is even sharing a study that includes data showing that giving pedophiles access to child pornography reduces rates of sexual assault with children. Like, no shit, but is the lack of child pornography really the core issue at that point? Don't bother replying to me if you just want to put words in my mouth, and assume my stances on topics which I so far haven't shared.
- The spirit is quite clearly that rape and abuse numbers will likely go up slightly anywhere porn is banned.
  
  Nobody said "drastically."
- Do you lock your door at night or when you leave? You shouldn't have to, but you currently need to. So it would be stupid not to.
- You'd rather rape rates be higher because the knob we know we can turn is slightly distasteful?
  
  Edit: GP is a coward and edited their comment rather than try to defend their pro-rape stance.
- It's not "our society." It's literally human nature, which is just a further illustration of how right Cattle Decapitation always has been.
  
  https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101130111326.htm
- No spirit at all. Genuinely want to see if / how these change.
  
  I have a feeling they wont.

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Vpn searches bout to go up

FTFY

Well, that basically is an age check. People of Arkansas are obviously not old enough to deal with porn when they support a government that produces such stupid laws.

Won't someone think of the horny Arkansans?

Seriously the Republicans are beyond the pale.

Reps are using The Handmaid's Tale as an instruction manual.
Arkansans

Arkansawns? While pronounceable, I don't think that is the correct way to personify that word.

I'm leaning towards Arkansinians
- We usually say Arkansan.
  
  Source: Am Arkansan
- https://www.englishclub.com/vocabulary/usa/states-demonyms.php
  
  Welcome to demonyms. Have fun.
- Well that was my best guess haha.

I remember reading about this before. This is so stupid. Making people verify with offical documents.. People are going to get their documents stolen so much more now. Nice job Arkansas!

i thought american don't have ID card? what kind document is official document?
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- They do like every other country..
- The government doesn't go out of it's way to give you one, but they usually aren't difficult to get. Driver's licenses and passports are commonly used as ID. Many states will also issue a state ID card, though the process for getting one varries by state.
  
  Driving, or at least being able to drive, is so ubiquitous that nearly everyone over 16 has some kind of driver's license. That's especially true of rural areas like Arkansas.
  
  For these kinds of things "official document" typically means a driver's license, passport, state ID, military ID, etc. Anything issued by a state or federal government that has your name, date of birth, and photo.

Freedum loving repubeicans inbound to other states?

They already go to the more liberal states for their abortions and their weed. Might as well download some porn while on the dispensary wifi.

Is this a scheme of VPN providers? Do they pay off politicians?

There are still tons of porn sites that don't give a fuck about those state laws and don't comply. No VPN needed, just browse to an unblocked site.

They can't force compliance of foreign hosts anyway
- This is part of a focused effort. Same as the "Gasp, Pornhub is full of revenge porn and CSAM" a few years back. Ars has a good writeup of that, but the gist of it is that it led to basically every credit card company blocking business to Pornhub. Which more or less killed their premium model. And most of the human trafficking horror stories that were dug up were revealed to either be fabrications or be more "general" ones with a lot of the resulting horror going to facebook and twitter.
  
  Same here. "Age verification" is a pretense to run campaigns to punish and destroy the companies trying to actually make good porn. Because "foreign hosts" only care if they can profit. And if the only people who CAN pay for porn are the ones who want to watch children being violently raped? Well, a lot of republican politicians like Matt "Eww, she turned 13?" Gaetz will still get their rocks off.

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Always have been 🔫
- What torrenting sites do you recommend?

It's downright hypocritical that MindGeek has been outright supportive of the UK government's efforts to push age verification checks on porn and have even tried to lobby our country to implement AgeID as the solution.

But the moment US states start demanding that they verify user ages, they start geoblocking.

My knowledge on this is very limited and I currently lack sources, but I believe the issue that Mindgeek has is not the implementation of age verification, but instead the fact that all of the work is being put on Mindgeek to implement it instead of the states. I believe they've been fine in the past implementing age verification if the system already exists and they just have to tie into it.
I'm pretty sure their main issue is that they don't want to be the ones doing the age verification. Louisiana set up a state run verification system, and pornhub has continued to operate their site in the state. I don't want porn sites to have my ID info.
Didn't the company also previously claim they were unable to effectively combat child porn?

Classy lot.
- No, they claimed they weren't able to let amateurs post and prevent child porn. So they took down an enormous amount of content.

Verification should be a 2fa letter with the logo on the envelope.

Request access to each video and wait for a letter with the title and thumbnail printed on the outside.
- Thinking back to dialup times, this made me laugh.

Xhamster is now requiring personal identification for EVERYONE in the whole US, not just in Arkansas. WTF?!

Xhamster is probably the last site I would want my personal info related with too lmao
Loaded up fine for me!
Uhh what? No they're not

Pornhub's site was already pretty dark. Like it's mainly black

Imagine using pornhub in light mode
- God can't see you fap if you use light mode, mostly cause he's fucking blind.

real chads are only using xnxx anyway

Alot of new VPN subs coming out of that state I bet.

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Does anyone know if it gives HTTP code 451? Always wanted to see that

That thumbnail looks like the underside of a shark.

It sorta of looks like the puffer fish eating a carrot meme. Bizarre.

They went darkansas

From that day on, nobody ever Arkansas porn again :(

Hah. Got some MAGAt relatives in AR and I bet this directly affects them.

It's funny how they never expect the things they vote for to negatively impact their own lives, only other peoples lives.

The fact that they're surprised every time it happens is just sad, since it shows that they are literally delusional.
DON'T help them with VPN.

Sheesh! Now a twars Billy Bob gonna geet his sexual gratifications from now? His goat? She's plum wore out!

There are a couple words I don't understand here. Can you help me make sense of them ? it's twars and plum.

And what accent are you imitating here ? Arkansas ?
- "plum wore out" is a phrase meaning "completely worn out." Twars I don't know. Where I'm from it would be more like "whar's billy bob gon git'is lovin from now?" Source: alabama
- Watch o brother where art tho. It will give a great insight to the language of the south.

These tech companies leaving certain places to avoid regulation, while sucking up to censorship laws in Russia and the likes... They can shove it, if you ask me.

How do they know where you are to block you? IP location regularly locates my really far away from my actual location, like hundreds of kilometers away.

But you aren't living in Arkansas anyway - you know kilometers :-)

Well that’s a thumbnail lol

Not in Arkansas and not a porn consumer, but in this day and age how do you not already run thru a VPN or two?

Most people are technologically ignorant, friend
- Well can I Helen Keller them and then knock smarts into them?
What kinda adult would care about your ISP knowing you watch porn?

VPNs are often over blown. Their ads will make it seem like they're some critical privacy thing, but these days virtually every website is encrypted (HTTPS). Your ISP can know the IP address you're visiting (and thus typically the site), but pretty much everything else, including what page you're viewing on the site, is known only to you and the site in question. VPNs had a lot more merit before HTTPS was ubiquitous.

They're still useful if you're visiting illegal sites or using peer to peer technology (most particularly illegal torrents), but that's not the case for many and certainly not for just viewing normal porn.
- This is correct. I work in infosec and I set up and support corporate VPNs as part of my work, and I don't use a VPN for web browsing at home or on my phone.
  
  It's not needed with the other proper security controls in place, like security patches and adblockers. Unless you're doing illegal stuff online that is, then you might need a VPN, but I don't.
I'm lost here, why would you need a VPN running all the time?
- Some people say that a VPN is like a tunnel.
  
  This is actually incorrect. A VPN is actually like a condom.
- So your ISP doesn't have logs on where you surf. I run 2 to 3 at a time. No one (I hope) knows what I'm doing.
It may even speed up your connection.
Taken from information for end users of Swan Mobile:

If enterprise blocks, slows down or prioritizes selected ports or services, it will list them in the following table

There you may notice P2P being limted to 1Mbps and Video streaming to 2Mbps.
So... without VPN you can watch videos in like 360p. Oh, but it gets better, after you use 10GB on video streaming it drops to 1Mbps. So 240p? 💀
With VPN you just get the general FUP limit of 300GB without limits.
- Well I rip and run, so streaming isn't my bag baby.

can t they just use a vpn lol

Brother, the general population in Arkansas is not even smart enough to change their Wi-Fi password, let alone use a VPN.
For some, but I doubt it for many. Average users don't even know what VPN is.
- With the amount of ads I see for things like NordVPN or PIA openly advertising bypassing geo blocking I doubt many people haven't heard of them. (Those who haven't will soon hear about them from friends)
Add another fee to your monthly expenses.
As of right now, I heard you can use cellular data.

There are many options besides porn hub.

I search bing for naked booby. I get trillion results.

Joining Utah and Virginia

I don’t live in VA, let’s say nearby, but my ISP sometimes incorrectly shows VA. A couple sites started popping up saying I had to make an account to which I obviously immediately said suck my dick and started VPNing, which I should be using anyway probably.

Fuck these Christian fascist weirdos. Everyone knows their intent here is to lightly ban porn because no one trusts or even wants to upload their personal identifying information to sketchy companies.

And I know we all know you can use a vpn. For now. While there’s no criminal liability for you. What happens when these weirdos get Jesus’ wiener deep in their brains and decide these laws aren’t good enough… they want to make porn outright illegal. Who has faith the Supreme Court will stop them? Not fucking me. They should already be stopping these laws, but there’s zero indication that’s gonna happen. Crazy to me people still defend any of this.
And Louisiana

Oh no, anyway

This is really dark but I do wonder if crimes like sexual harassment and rape go up. I suspect they will sadly.

Pornhub is kinda shit now anyway. Not a big loss.

And the world was all the better

Can't believe the coomers here are defending a company that profits from non-consensual porn and facilitates child pornography.

Can't believe someone whose user name is inspired by Nietzsche is toeing the line for Christian misinformation and spreading their talking points while simultaneously misunderstanding how content moderation works in the real world.
Didn't they crack down on that stuff a while ago?
- tbf it's hard to and they got a lot of complaints for false positives