7 ms·

So, are states like Texas, which need age verification, gonna ask for it for X too? This could get pretty wild considering the whole bot situation and the way

So, are states like Texas, which need age verification, gonna ask for it for X too? This could get pretty wild considering the whole bot situation and the way Red States are handling adult content these days...

freedomben 2y ago
This could be a fascinating development to watch actually. Made much more interesting too by the fact that Elon has a lot of business in states like Texas and Florida. X is also increasingly viewed as a "right wing"[1] place, which might make states like Texas a lot more sympathetic to their "free speech" position because they won't feel like it's a "left wing" tactic to poison minds. [1]: I'm not saying it is a right wing place, I have no idea as I have no data (not even anecdata because I don't really use it), but I've certainly noticed an uptick in people sharing that view on sites like HN since Elon took over. Have also heard that there is a decent balance of viewpoints on X. My guess is that both are probably true (and are not mutually exclusive), but again I have no data.
- pavlov 2y ago
  Are dedicated porn sites like PornHub and friends considered somehow left wing? Or is it just that their NSFW freedom of speech isn't significant because it's not to the benefit of a billionaire that these politicians happen to like.
  - freedomben 2y ago
    Yes I think a little of both: > Are dedicated porn sites like PornHub and friends considered somehow left wing? Not directly no, but since the overlap between right-wing and religious (mostly Christian) are so significant, and many right-wing Christians believe that there is a spritual war going on and that porn is a sin/evil, and it can lead to atheism, and atheism is so frequently associated with left-wing, I think there's some consideration there. > Or is it just that their NSFW freedom of speech isn't significant because it's not to the benefit of a billionaire that these politicians happen to like. I'm sure that's a factor as well. No (or very, very few) politican of any ilk is going to stand up for Big Porn and risk becoming the porn candidate. Personally I'd sure love to see them at least stand up for Big Porn in the name of free speech, but I'm not expecting it anytime soon.
  - dotnet00 2y ago
    Dedicated sites have the issue of being targeted from all sides, right wing hates them for porn, left wing hates them for not being able to filter out exploitation, revenge porn etc and then they also have to fight payment processors who, for some ridiculous reason, are still allowed to screw with any business with zero accountability. I think all those factors combine to make them have to be kind of politically neutral.
    - seadan83 2y ago
      I think you might be drawing a false equivalence. Left wing solutions to things like porn, gambling, drugs, sex work, abortion - is to regulate them so that they are "safe" (harm-reduced) & then find ways to reduce those activities in first place & provide support for people to get out of those activities. Left wing considers these as social problems - not legal. In contrast, right wing views these as problems to be solved also with the legal system. Ban entirely and enforce with police and criminal sentences. Thus the "hates" I don't think is quite equal between the two. I will concede for sure though that if you go far enough left the degree of 'hate' levels out between right & left, but the number of people on the two sides is different. The "silent majority" part of the right wing, the old Reagan coalition for a long time was a pretty sizable part of the Republican party. Meanwhile, the twitter left progressive wing of the Democratic party is not as large compared to the republican religious-conservative right. If we think to the OG far-left hatred of porn - that was there before revenge-porn etc were even concerns. Those OG left-wing concerns that did want to ban porn - were concerned about how porn disempowers women, can glorify violence, further genders inequality, etc.. As a general left/right difference, the approach is not equal. In the cases where the approach is to ban entirely - there are just different numbers of people in the far left "porn should be banned" camp compared to the "porn is sin" camp.
      - dotnet00 2y ago
        I'm mainly going off of the story of how IIRC a couple of years ago, PH was forced to wipe most of their site due to left-wing activists pressuring payment processors into threatening to block PH's basic means of doing business if they didn't meet the somewhat absurd demand of filtering out all harmful/unethical material. Sure, they technically didn't use the legal system, they just used the technicality that payment processors hold the same power over internet-dependent companies as a government.
  - seadan83 2y ago
    I think the arrow of causality is perhaps the other way. Recall the "moral majority", Jerry Fallwell, etc. It was a big right-leaning effort to ban porn starting in perhaps the 70s. Probably earlier. The republican party used to have religion as the main ideological component, and immoral porn was a plank in that platform - the party of "family values." That campaign to ban porn never really ended AFAIK, but my impression is the priorities of the party really shifted about 10 years ago to the point it's no longer an open policy (the word pornography no longer appears anywhere in the Republican party platform [1]) Remnants of the anti-porn part of the party can certainlystill be seen in the republican party, eg: Mike Johnson extolling his use of "covenant eyes" Thus the arrow is flipped. The anti-porn cause was very active against printed pornograpghy and continued into the internet age. A right-wing/conservative movement and efforts both predating the internet. [1] https://prod-static.gop.com/media/Resolution_Platform.pdf https://prod-static.gop.com/media/Resolution_Platform.pdf
- GeneralMayhem 2y ago
  Past research ([1]) has shown that Twitter disproportionately boosts right-wing political content. Qualitatively, you can find whatever you want there, but Elon Musk's personal connection with and admiration for a number of right-wing individuals makes them stand out. In particular, Twitter under Musk has a clear pattern of not applying its moderation policies to high-profile accounts; in the current year, it is right-wing politicians who most frequently post hateful or blatantly false information, so failing to hold them to a normal standard amounts to a tacit approval of what they're posting. [1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2025334119 https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2025334119
  - freedomben 2y ago
    Interesting, thanks! It looks like that's going to take at least 30 minutes to read through, and probably much longer to really understand, so I'll have to bookmark it for later, but it sounds intriguing!
  - shrimp_emoji 2y ago
    Please. More like the Internet (i.e., most of humanity) "disproportionately boosts right-wing political content". Before Elon, Twitter was an Orwellian algorithmic police state where everything right of Marx got shadowbanned and suppressed. (Like every other major social platform.)
tzs 2y ago
> So, are states like Texas, which need age verification, gonna ask for it for X too? I believe that the Texas law applies to sites where more than 1/3 of their content is sexual material harmful to minors. I don't know exactly how it defines "sexual material" and "harmful to minors", but I suspect that Twitter does not qualify as such a site.
- WWWMMMWWW 2y ago
  For Texas just have 2 gun pics per porn pic ... then you're OK.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    You joke, but depending on how the law is written, I could totally see content hosting companies implementing a system where, for every minute of new footage that gets uploaded, they automatically generate 2 minutes of a bald eagle flying across an American flag or something.

freedomben 2y ago

This could be a fascinating development to watch actually. Made much more interesting too by the fact that Elon has a lot of business in states like Texas and Florida. X is also increasingly viewed as a "right wing"[1] place, which might make states like Texas a lot more sympathetic to their "free speech" position because they won't feel like it's a "left wing" tactic to poison minds. [1]: I'm not saying it is a right wing place, I have no idea as I have no data (not even anecdata because I don't really use it), but I've certainly noticed an uptick in people sharing that view on sites like HN since Elon took over. Have also heard that there is a decent balance of viewpoints on X. My guess is that both are probably true (and are not mutually exclusive), but again I have no data.

pavlov 2y ago
Are dedicated porn sites like PornHub and friends considered somehow left wing? Or is it just that their NSFW freedom of speech isn't significant because it's not to the benefit of a billionaire that these politicians happen to like.
- freedomben 2y ago
  Yes I think a little of both: > Are dedicated porn sites like PornHub and friends considered somehow left wing? Not directly no, but since the overlap between right-wing and religious (mostly Christian) are so significant, and many right-wing Christians believe that there is a spritual war going on and that porn is a sin/evil, and it can lead to atheism, and atheism is so frequently associated with left-wing, I think there's some consideration there. > Or is it just that their NSFW freedom of speech isn't significant because it's not to the benefit of a billionaire that these politicians happen to like. I'm sure that's a factor as well. No (or very, very few) politican of any ilk is going to stand up for Big Porn and risk becoming the porn candidate. Personally I'd sure love to see them at least stand up for Big Porn in the name of free speech, but I'm not expecting it anytime soon.
- dotnet00 2y ago
  Dedicated sites have the issue of being targeted from all sides, right wing hates them for porn, left wing hates them for not being able to filter out exploitation, revenge porn etc and then they also have to fight payment processors who, for some ridiculous reason, are still allowed to screw with any business with zero accountability. I think all those factors combine to make them have to be kind of politically neutral.
  - seadan83 2y ago
    I think you might be drawing a false equivalence. Left wing solutions to things like porn, gambling, drugs, sex work, abortion - is to regulate them so that they are "safe" (harm-reduced) & then find ways to reduce those activities in first place & provide support for people to get out of those activities. Left wing considers these as social problems - not legal. In contrast, right wing views these as problems to be solved also with the legal system. Ban entirely and enforce with police and criminal sentences. Thus the "hates" I don't think is quite equal between the two. I will concede for sure though that if you go far enough left the degree of 'hate' levels out between right & left, but the number of people on the two sides is different. The "silent majority" part of the right wing, the old Reagan coalition for a long time was a pretty sizable part of the Republican party. Meanwhile, the twitter left progressive wing of the Democratic party is not as large compared to the republican religious-conservative right. If we think to the OG far-left hatred of porn - that was there before revenge-porn etc were even concerns. Those OG left-wing concerns that did want to ban porn - were concerned about how porn disempowers women, can glorify violence, further genders inequality, etc.. As a general left/right difference, the approach is not equal. In the cases where the approach is to ban entirely - there are just different numbers of people in the far left "porn should be banned" camp compared to the "porn is sin" camp.
    - dotnet00 2y ago
      I'm mainly going off of the story of how IIRC a couple of years ago, PH was forced to wipe most of their site due to left-wing activists pressuring payment processors into threatening to block PH's basic means of doing business if they didn't meet the somewhat absurd demand of filtering out all harmful/unethical material. Sure, they technically didn't use the legal system, they just used the technicality that payment processors hold the same power over internet-dependent companies as a government.
- seadan83 2y ago
  I think the arrow of causality is perhaps the other way. Recall the "moral majority", Jerry Fallwell, etc. It was a big right-leaning effort to ban porn starting in perhaps the 70s. Probably earlier. The republican party used to have religion as the main ideological component, and immoral porn was a plank in that platform - the party of "family values." That campaign to ban porn never really ended AFAIK, but my impression is the priorities of the party really shifted about 10 years ago to the point it's no longer an open policy (the word pornography no longer appears anywhere in the Republican party platform [1]) Remnants of the anti-porn part of the party can certainlystill be seen in the republican party, eg: Mike Johnson extolling his use of "covenant eyes" Thus the arrow is flipped. The anti-porn cause was very active against printed pornograpghy and continued into the internet age. A right-wing/conservative movement and efforts both predating the internet. [1] https://prod-static.gop.com/media/Resolution_Platform.pdf https://prod-static.gop.com/media/Resolution_Platform.pdf
GeneralMayhem 2y ago
Past research ([1]) has shown that Twitter disproportionately boosts right-wing political content. Qualitatively, you can find whatever you want there, but Elon Musk's personal connection with and admiration for a number of right-wing individuals makes them stand out. In particular, Twitter under Musk has a clear pattern of not applying its moderation policies to high-profile accounts; in the current year, it is right-wing politicians who most frequently post hateful or blatantly false information, so failing to hold them to a normal standard amounts to a tacit approval of what they're posting. [1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2025334119 https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2025334119
- freedomben 2y ago
  Interesting, thanks! It looks like that's going to take at least 30 minutes to read through, and probably much longer to really understand, so I'll have to bookmark it for later, but it sounds intriguing!
- shrimp_emoji 2y ago
  Please. More like the Internet (i.e., most of humanity) "disproportionately boosts right-wing political content". Before Elon, Twitter was an Orwellian algorithmic police state where everything right of Marx got shadowbanned and suppressed. (Like every other major social platform.)

tzs 2y ago

> So, are states like Texas, which need age verification, gonna ask for it for X too? I believe that the Texas law applies to sites where more than 1/3 of their content is sexual material harmful to minors. I don't know exactly how it defines "sexual material" and "harmful to minors", but I suspect that Twitter does not qualify as such a site.

WWWMMMWWW 2y ago
For Texas just have 2 gun pics per porn pic ... then you're OK.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  You joke, but depending on how the law is written, I could totally see content hosting companies implementing a system where, for every minute of new footage that gets uploaded, they automatically generate 2 minutes of a bald eagle flying across an American flag or something.