The Supreme Court seems eager to curb First Amendment protections for porn
The Supreme Court seems eager to curb First Amendment protections for porn
A major free speech argument about pornographic websites went disastrously for the porn industry.
Summary
The Supreme Court's hearing of Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton signals potential limits on First Amendment protections for online pornography.
The case involves a Texas law mandating age verification for websites with "sexual material harmful to minors," challenging the 2004 Ashcroft v. ACLU precedent, which struck down similar laws under strict scrutiny.
Justices, citing the inadequacy of modern filtering tools, seemed inclined to weaken free speech protections, exploring standards like intermediate scrutiny.
The ruling could reshape online speech regulations, leaving adults’ access to sexual content uncertain while tightening restrictions for minors.
Don't even act like the SCOTUS upholds the Constitution, they uphold the christian bible now. So unamerican.
The constitution is just the imperial bible.
My earliest memories of the internet was boobs, and then later a helicopter decapitation.
It's kind of annoying that so many id restrictions focus on porn. Maybe it's not normal for today's kids/teens to come across violent content, compared to people that mightve come across rotten, faces, 4chan, etc. back then.
it's so shocking that the right-wing's commitment to free speech was entirely performative and predicated on no principle whatsoever
You mean like genocide joe banning TikTok?
The same genocide Joe that said he's gonna leave the actual enforcement of the ban to Trump? That genocide Joe?
it's adorable how you think Joe Biden isn't right-wing lol
Democrats are just reasonable conservatives, Republicans are just fascist conservatives. All conservatives, still all dogshit, still all love genocide and imperialism.
SCOTUS working hard to install Taliban 2.0
Well, here we go. Hold onto your butts, this shit is going to get wild.
We're going to see a lot more of these challenges to SCOTUS precedent in the coming years. The Dobbs decision was them stating loud and clear that they will find any excuse to justify their prefud8ced decisions.
You gotta be a really profoundly uncomfortable, nervous human being to think of sex as bad.
What an absolute sign of weakness.
You gotta be a really profoundly uncomfortable, nervous human being
That's an interesting way to say "religious".
Project2025 and it's evangelical backers are a major driver of this prudishness.
They're godsdamned freaks is what they are. Their religion says sex is disgusting and evil. Mine says it's holy and pleasure is sacred. But neither of us should get to decide the law based on what gods we got. I know that. Jewish Americans know that. Hindu Americans know that. Muslim Americans know it too. And I ain't seen Buddhists trying to ban alcohol in any city in America, nor shinto folks trying to divert public school money to preaching about amaterasu. Turns out it's just the Christians round here who don't get that when your religion says you can't do something it means you don't get to do it, but the rest of us are more than free to.
It's fringe fanatical Catholics on the Supreme Court who are driving this. Maybe they couldn't find enough fundies who knew how to read.
You don't have to think sex is bad to think porn is bad for children and teens.
This Texas law and others like it are bullshit, but making strawman arguments about them isn't helping anything.
Noooo haha we we can't fix your real problems that you want us to fix because of how we think some witch hunter in the 1600s relates to the constitution, and politics is just hard and moves slow :(
Anyway, here, we shitcanned the constitution for something pretty much nobody asked for and won't actually fix anything. Enjoy <3
there's still porn on usenet.
This is why we gotta ban TikTok!!! \s
Seriously tho I can't believe the dummies who buy into this authoritarian garbage.
Notice how we're already asking past the sale with the tacit labeling of "sexual material harmful to minors," with the presupposed declaration that sexual material is automatically harmful to minors.
The all-consuming mission to look at boobies is essentially universal for all pubescent boys from about 12 all the way to the age of majority. This is well known, and none of us came off any the worse despite widespread availability of older brothers' back issues of Hustler, Usenet, dial-up BBS systems, and ultimately the world wide web.
If teens weren't naturally interested in sex where wouldn't been all them teenage pregnancies. Q.E.D.
The all-consuming mission to look at boobies is essentially universal for all pubescent boys from about 12 all the way to the age of majority.
Not true. Some boys also want to look at dicks.
And some genuinely could care less about looking at either.
And some girls want to look at boobies, too.
Just saying, the shit you can find on the Internet does not come even close to what Hustler was. There is instant access to all kinds of weird and fucked fetish shit that just wasn't accessible in the 90s and earlier.
Bizarre fetish shit was very much available in the 90s and earlier. It just wasn't in hustler or playboy.
There's a vid on archive.org of the Spice Channel that must have been off someone's VHS tape. It flickers a lot and is barely watchable, but I was curious what we were all missing back then.
Turns out, way more softcore than I was expecting. Slightly more hardcore than Skinamax at the time, but not by much.
This is an excellent observation.
We now no longer have the debate over whether or not this content is necessarily harmful to minors. It's now automatically bad, and the new framing is: shouldn't we ban bad things?
Should expect more of this kind of newspeak/doublespeak as the Trump years continue.
Because there's an underlying implication that allowing teenagers to seek out sexual content on their own is the same as an adult presenting it to them. They want you to feel like they'll call you a pedo if you disagree with their framing
I'm calling it right now. They use this as first amendment cover for TikTok.
Kids are gonna start finding porn the old-fashioned way: randomly coming across discarded magazines at the park. That was my first experience.
Or torrents... It would be funny if this just ended up teaching new generations how to torrent.
Good luck finding a magazine anywhere any more. I assume they can still find it online from random small websites, like in the old days.
I was kind of just pointing out that a lot of kids don't go out looking for porn. Porn somehow just shows up because adults are irresponsible.
"Woods" or "Field" porn was surprising common. I was honestly surprised to hear that was so many of my friends (and my) introduction to porn.
Most people don't realize that porn reproduces naturally in the wild if given the proper habitat, etc.
Guess that's one way to get kids outside these days. Just scater some porn mag pages in the woods, modern-day scavenger hunt.
Do kids even go wandering through the woods anymore, seems like all that land is housing developments now?
So we can ban content that is claimed to be harmful to minors but not weapons that actually kill children...
Even in terms of speech, it's ridiculous to claim that boobs are more harmful than a social media diet of assholes claiming women or racial minorities aren't people.
Jfc when you put it that way
Well yeah it's never really been about what they say it is
Might as well just turn off the internet if they are this concerned about harmful content.
Close your eyes for just a moment and imagine the scales of Justice.
Imagine white kids on one side and brown kids on the other.
Why aren't the scales balanced?
The vague threat of "think of the children maybe being exposed to sexual things" challenging our first amendment right but it becomes some huge debate if a woman is being harassed/stalked/threatened online.
**they are justififying destroying our rights for their feelings **
they are justififying destroying our rights for their feelings
Well yeah, the P stands for Projection in the party of "facts don't care about your feelings."
I think Epstein highlighted that there is a much bigger problem going on than some 15 year old looking up “mum gets railed by football team”.
Too bad he's not around to testify. They did a great job of murdering him behind bars.
Bars... Barr... hmm.
It’s just the first amendment.
Define "sexual material." What about the minors who get sexual gratification from Linux installation media repository mirrors?
sudo apt-get install boobiessparky is not in sudoers file. This incident will be reportedChat is this real?
To quote a former Supreme Court justice and asshole, "I know it when I see it."
Seems a bit redundant there.
Soon *nix will be the only legal fetish. Until they get to it.
They'll probrally say "nooo those programming socks and skirts are indecent, banned"
Get ready for the slippery slope. Anything conservatives don’t want you to see or read will be placed behind an “identify yourself” firewall.
And they will use the information they collect to blackmail you.
What's taught in schools: the parents should have a say! Don't let the government decide what to teach our kids!
Books in libraries and content on the internet: the government must step in and make certain content illegal!
Of course, fascists don't care if they're hypocritical. They say whatever gives them the most power in any situation, so calling out hypocrisy won't stop them. It's still good to do, though.
And they'll cry freedom the entire time
Don’t let the government
decide what toteach our kids!
Free speech for pornographers, but instant IP/device ID ban if you criticise Israel online.
some republicants cheering for the scotus ruling today will be scrambling to try to legislate around it tomorrow.. because their porn habits will get hacked and released.
The law doesn't apply to elite Republicans, so they'll just carry on as before.
Dark web mobile client?
Ideally you wouldn't be using tor for clearweb sites but if you must I suppose that's an option, a VPN would be less detrimental to the tor network though, and is often both faster and more reliable from a user perspective.
This is the first step on the path to outlawing VPNs.
Vpn
