https://www.xbiz.com/news/287606/nyu-study-finds-age-verification-laws-dont-work
These types of laws are marketed as to protect the kids. The right has learned that if they want people to back banning something bring out the trope “of it is needed to protect the innocent littlest ones, the children”. They are trying to do it with everything they disagree with and always have. In the 1970s they went after gay people, especially teachers claiming it was needed to protect the kids from the evil gays. They did it with drag queens a few years ago and are using the same trope against trans people. They insisted any book or media that had any LGBTQ+ characters or plot had to be removed from libraries to save the kids. They seem to think reading a book with a gay kid somehow makes real life kids gay? These people just want everyone to live by what they preach, to live by their precepts. They have no respect for the rights of other people to live and do as they want. They want to force their restrictive morality on everyone else and to their Christian hell with anyone who disagrees with them. They are dictators of how others live. I just do not get their fear of sex and the enjoyment of it. Hugs’
it indicates that the laws are “effective” or “working” — contentions that imply the goal is to prevent anyone from viewing adult content, rather than just minors.
A group of university researchers has published a study whose findings suggest that age verification laws are ineffective at achieving their stated goal of preventing minors from accessing adult content.
In states that have passed AV laws, some adult websites, including Pornhub, have opted to block access rather than shoulder the legal burden of compliance.
A representative for Pornhub parent company Aylo told Mashable that after the company complied with local AV laws in Louisiana, the site’s traffic dropped 80% in that state.
Focusing on search behavior as an indicator of adult content viewing habits, researchers at New York University’s Center for Social Media & Politics found that searches for Pornhub dropped 51% in states with AV laws, while searches for noncompliant platforms rose by 48.1%, and searches for VPN services rose by 23.6%.
In other words, people living in states with AV laws who did not want to submit identifying information to prove their age did not stop watching porn.
Instead, according to Aylo’s statement to Mashable, “They just migrated to darker corners of the internet that don’t ask users to verify age, that don’t follow the law, that don’t take user safety seriously, and that often don’t even moderate content. In practice, the laws have just made the internet more dangerous for adults and children.”
Aylo’s statement takes issue with the way many states have chosen to implement AV laws, calling said implementation “ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous.” The company believes that children should be shielded from porn, but that the best way to do that is for parents to employ content filters on individual devices.
To test the effectiveness of the laws, the researchers created a “digital twin” — a computer simulation — of each state, and compared actual observed search trends in those states with their model of what search trends in those states would have looked like had they not passed AV laws.
This revealed that users faced with an age verification requirement to view an adult site searched for alternative sites that did not require age verification, and for methods of circumventing age verification, such as using a VPN.
The team then used multiverse analysis, a technique that considers alternative research approaches to the same question, to confirm that its findings remained reliable under various scenarios.
While the researchers admitted that using Google Trends is inherently flawed due to the limitations of its data — for instance, it is not possible to know what percentage of users searching for AV-noncompliant sites or VPNs may have been minors — the study nonetheless concluded that AV laws were ineffective, since users in states with such laws simply seek alternative ways to access adult content.
They also noted that such laws effectively punish compliant sites and function to limit general access to adult content, not just minors’ access.
“Our findings highlight that while these regulation efforts reduce traffic to compliant firms and likely a net reduction overall to this type of content, individuals adapt primarily by moving to content providers that do not require age verification,” the study reports.
Numerous backers of the current spate of state AV laws have asserted that when adult sites withdraw completely from states with such laws, it indicates that the laws are “effective” or “working” — contentions that imply the goal is to prevent anyone from viewing adult content, rather than just minors.
Scottie's Playtime 
Rightwingers are afraid, when porn’s accessible, that they can’t resist the temptation to indulge. It’s the same reason they’re misogynist. They can’t control their own selves, so they blame women. Then they just extend that to everything: gays, drag queens, trans people. I don’t know why rightwingers think they shouldn’t be content, but they do, and if someone else is content, that tempts the rightwinger, so they want all to be miserable.
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Hi Ali. Thank you. You have shed a lot of light on something I struggled to understand. I never understood these fears. Sorry but I am going to get a bit graphic but as you raised a male child I doubt you have not dealt with this issue. When I was in the church school they kept telling us boys not to touch our penis because of a story in the bible about a man not impregnating his brother’s wife and pulling out … “spilling his seed on the ground”. Before then I had no restrictions and had often been made to do it for the entertainment of others. So much about the story stood out to me more important in our modern understanding of morality than a man not finishing inside a woman he did not want a child with. What does that have to do with teenage boys with a terrible need their body is driving them to easily solve? And in truth almost all boys do it and the ones in religious families harbor lifelong guilt over it. I never felt guilty about it before being in the church and church school. Something I soon removed after I got out of the indoctrinations. I imagine it is the same with girls. They have the same body changes, urges, and needs. The just say no crowd are mostly older people, they forget what it was like, they forget how terribly bad the pressure was. They live in a fantasy of their own making.
Which leads me back to what you wrote. They can’t control, or they can’t accept their own needs or nature, so they attack that which temps them and those that are happy with how they are. How dare those people be happy and enjoy what I am sure is wrong, bad, against the orders of my god! What terrifies them is that others are happy. That others exist that are different from their life view, that others can live their life without the guilt they live with, and most important … that others can live without their god telling them the strict restrictions … which correspond with their own hates and their own temptations. So to please their god / themselves they must control the other people and what they do, stop them from doing what they enjoy. How sick and sad a way to live their lives.
Ron and I have had a wonderful rollercoaster ride in life. We have had businesses, we have been very poor, we have been discriminated against, we have had / have serious health issues but the entire 34 years have been grand! I wouldn’t trade them even for not having lived the abuse for my early life, because it was so much the best part of my life. I have someone who loves me and I love long term. Three times last night he saw me struggling to sleep and simply offered to cuddle me. Each time I was then able to sleep.
For those reading if you have never had a long term love you think you will never disagree, never argue, never get mad, never not want to speak to or touch your spouse. For those people sadly you’re wrong. People are individuals. Everyone has their own ideas, their own pasts, and they change over time. They have the right to change and grow. Sadly Ali as you already know some hide their abusive nature until you are already with them. Then that must not be allowed to be a long term relationship and the government along with NGO must facilitate people getting out of that situation. Anyway, loved the comment. Been a real busy day here. Hugs
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I hope that’s good news for the bathroom floor!
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Pretty much the worst is done, Ali. That was the crawling around and cutting and rerunning new plumbing pipes. The plan is to relax during the weekend and then on Monday go get plywood for the floor. But Ron only wants to do half the existing floor so we can put the second toilet in. We need to disconnect the bedroom bathroom toilet so we can move the wall it is next to. We have to move the wall in about 8 inches to give room to build the wall for the shower and give the shower the needed width. Once we get the wall moved we can put the shower where it goes and then the sink vanity. Then Ron will have to place the new sewer pipe for the bedroom bathroom toilet, but he set the stuff up so it will be easy for him to do. The hallway small bathroom will be done, our bedroom bathroom usable, and Ron can continue to finish the new family room I am moving my computers into. Hugs
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