Author: Thomas L. Knapp
If you live in Arkansas, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Texas, Virginia, or Utah, you can’t access Pornhub — one of the most popular “adult content” websites on the Internet.
In response to state laws requiring “adult content” sites to verify the age of their users and prevent minors from seeing videos of naked people doing you-know-what, Pornhub told its servers to simply deny connections from those states.
This is fantasy.
The fact is this:
Bypassing restrictions is so easy that most minors can figure out how to do it within a few minutes.
They don’t need to buy a fake ID, or steal their parents’ driver’s license, or anything like that.
All these minors — and adults who don’t want to give out their personal information — have to do is choose a free or cheap virtual private network (VPN) service.
Look! They no longer access the site from Arkansas, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Texas, Virginia or Utah, but instead from the Netherlands, Switzerland or Japan.
So why are these laws passed? If your 12-year-old wants to watch porn, there’s no way it’s going to “work” for them.
These laws are just one form of government “virtue signaling” from politicians.
These politicians stoke a moral panic among parents—“What if my 12-year-old sees porn? Oh my God!”—and then pander to that moral panic with legislation that won’t change anything , will only deliver a political message to those parents. The message is “I want to protect your children…vote for me.”
If you are a parent, I will assume that you are not a lazy or careless parent.
If that’s the case, you should be insulted by your inability to effectively police your children’s internet use, and you should tell those politicians to mind their own business and let you run your family as you see fit.
But as with any issue, there is a segment of the electorate that tends to fall into moral panic rhetoric and gratefully vote for any politician who makes them feel “safer” by passing stupid and ineffective legislation.
If you are a voter (and I won’t judge you if you are not), I urge you to resist the temptation to join any group of voters.
As with this particular issue, it’s your job, not the government’s, to police your children’s internet use. You still have to do the work because these laws can’t.