> 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.