Comment by tivert | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tivert | Hacker News Reader

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> there's no way for PH to verify the age of users entering the site in the way the legislation demands

What exactly are those requirements, and how is there "no way" for Pornhub to satisfy what "the legislation demands"?

I ask because I'm tired of seeing (in general, not just PornHub) deceptive rephrasing of "we don't want to" as "it's impossible for us to." Companies too often take the attitude that they're entitled to their business model or being able to push externalities onto others, but that's obnoxious BS propaganda.

Edit: So according to the OP, the law "requires [PornHub] to verify the age of all visitors using a government-issued ID or 'public or private transactional data.'" I'm pretty sure they've already implemented that to verify the identify of performers (https://help.pornhub.com/hc/en-us/articles/19159382668435-Tr...), after much kicking and screaming, in the wake of that Nicholas Kristof article a few years ago. So a pretty straightforward implementation would be to require user accounts to view (at least for Texas), push users through PornHub's existing age verification flow, then give them access.

A much better way of phrasing my comment, thank you.

It's perfectly valid for PH to say "we don't believe the requirements of the law are reasonable so we're choosing to not do business in Texas rather than comply" - but that's a very different conversation than "the requirements the law imposes on us/other adult websites are impossible to satisfy from a technical perspective".

> I ask because I'm tired of seeing (in general, not just PornHub) deceptive rephrasing of "we don't want to" as "it's impossible for us to." Companies too often take the attitude that they're entitled to their business model or being able to push externalities onto others, but that's obnoxious BS propaganda.

Somebody posted their message to users from Texas.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39708615

I know you are just talking in general, but in this specific case, it doesn’t appear that they actually say they can’t do it. The idea that they can’t do it just seems to be a misunderstanding from somebody posting on this site.

I agree in general that it is annoying that companies say they “can’t” do something, mixing up “incompatible with my business mode” and “incompatible with reality.” But I don’t see anything like that in their comment.

WRT reusing their implementation for the actors, I’m not sure, is that possible? The actors upload videos of themselves so it ought to be easy to verify the fact that the face on the ID matches the face in the video, right?

In the case of a user, somebody could easily steal their parent’s ID or use a computer that someone else had left logged in, right? I mean, I don’t know how any of that works, but I could see why the site would rather not risk it.

I mean, this is a site full of webdevs, would anyone here want to take a chance at implementing something like this in-house, before best methods have been discovered? I suspect most people would rather wait for a lawsuit-tested turnkey solution. So, “can’t” in this context could mean something like: we aren’t aware of an existing solution that fits inside our legal risk tolerance. That’s still a business objection rather than a laws-of-physics one, but it seems a lot more reasonable.

The upload verification afaik requires: - copy of ID - clear photo of self holding up a hand-written sign saying either PornHub or a random phrase that is given

After that they manually compare the ID and photo.

But I can imagine there is going to be a market for verified accounts if access is given this way, and they can't do this process on every login. Plus it will require logins to access content in general, while I think most PH visitors never log in.

There is likely also a black market for the browsing history of verified accounts, or even just the verification act - for blackmail purposes. So the risk of a breach of such information would be another risk that the operator would have to manage.

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