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Published 10/25/25
If you’re wondering where I went, I have not yet died or gotten put in a CIA blacksite! I simply have been busy with another project over the last year or so. I intend to write more on here into the future, however.
Back in 2023, there were a series of bills passed in various states mandating age verification for pornography websites, including SB 1515 here in Virginia where I am located. There are two main perspectives on this legislation, the argument from the conservative crowd that this is good because:
1. The benefits of protecting minors from pornography outweigh any possible downsides.
2. The additional effects of this sort of legislation, that being dissuading even legal adults from accessing pornography, and harming the pornography industry, are good because pornography is harmful for anyone.
As well as the argument from progessive and libertarian types, the pornography industry, and privacy advocates that this is bad because:
1. It is unconstitutional, since pornography is protected speech under the first amendment.
2. There are privacy concerns with various pornography sites and/or third party companies having databases of people’s government IDs or pictures of them, which could potentially be leaked and tied back to their browsing habits.
3. This legislation is ineffective because people will just use VPNs to get around it.
Initially, I leaned more towards the former line of reasoning, because it is true that pornography is harmful for minors or for anyone. It’s seriously fucking up people, especially my generation. Gen Z has a lot of sexually deviant behavior going on and a lot of it comes from accessing this sort of stuff at an early age. And something probably should be done about it, ideally at the simplest, most local level, which would involve parents doing their job and being involved in what their kids are doing online. But the truth is that most parents aren’t doing their job at all. I am Gen Z and my parents were adamant about me not having a TV in my room, because their only point of reference on this sort of stuff is risque commercials at midnight for sex chat lines (or whatever they’re called) on the TV, which was all you could get in the ‘70s or ‘80s without going to a shop where they required ID to sell you magazines. But I was given a tablet when I was like eight years old, and a laptop in my room, with not even an attempt made at restricting access to what’s out there. It’s negligence, and something should be done. People in this generation grow up with this unrestricted internet access and it completely fucks up the way they relate to other people. It is destroying the social fabric, and it destroys the individual’s mind and body in many cases. And Gen X/boomers have no clue about it.
And make no mistake, this is by design. Pornography is a psychological weapon being wielded against us very intentionally.
So, I found the arguments from the other side to be unconvincing. Anyone familiar with the subject knows obscenity is not protected speech under the first amendment, and the argument in contradiction was disproven in June 2025 when the Supreme Court upheld this sort of legislation in Texas.
I do not use these sorts of sites, so there would be no privacy concern for me. My thinking went as such, that anyone concerned about the (very warranted) likelihood of a data breach or similar, could simply not use those sites. And people would get around it, but anything making it more difficult to access online pornography would be a net benefit. That was my thinking.
It’s been two years now since I heard about these laws, and I largely forgot about the subject until a few days ago. Now, as stated before, I do not use these sorts of websites, but I do use sites that have adult content present on them. And recently, I was wondering why nothing about these sites had changed after the legislation was passed. After all, I do live in a state which has had one of these laws for two years now. So, I looked into it. According to Axios, as of July, 65% of the top pornography sites have not changed whatsoever in response to the law in Virginia. Of 57, 3 required one click to access, 16 blocked the state entirely, and only four complied with the law, requiring age verification with a government ID.
This seems strange on its face, but this is because the law simply opens up the sites to be sued by private individuals for harm resulting from failure to protect minors as a result of not complying with the law. How that harm is quantified in damages is not yet established. It doesn’t really make sense. Why not take a more proactive approach, if the goals that supposedly served as the motivation behind this legislation are so important? These laws exist in many states now, and in Virginia, SB 1515 was unanimous.
If they really wanted to protect minors from pornography, they would just ban pornography altogether, but that wouldn’t be feasible. Going after the sites instead of relying on private lawsuits, however, would be trivial. But they’re not doing that, and people are getting around these laws, people are using VPNs. Surely the lawmakers knew that the laws would be ineffective the way they were implemented, which leads to the question, why bother with them at all?
What you have to understand is that this is one of many patterns that have emerged recently. The laws in various states are not the only legislation being passed, there is currently a case between the UK’s Office of Communications and 4chan/Kiwifarms regarding the companies’ failure to comply with requests for information from Ofcom, under the pretense of “protecting children from illegal content” under the UK’s Online Safety Act. This will likely end in the two sites being blocked in the UK, since 4chan/Kiwifarms refuse to pay the fines being demanded by Ofcom.
As you may be expecting, I do not think these laws are about protecting minors at all. I think they are a way to get people familiar and comfortable with the idea of submitting government ID to access things on the internet. It is being implemented slowly and sporadically, and there are ways to get around it for now, and that is by design, so that most people don’t protest. Some are protesting, but it’s not significant. The concern is not, as the privacy advocates say, simply a data breach or people’s porn viewing habits being exposed or sold to ad companies. The real issue is, as i have noted previously, that this sort of stuff only ever goes in one direction. Eventually these laws will be in every state. And then they will say that social media is bad for minors, so everyone needs to submit ID to use social media. Protecting minors is a pretext for the “solution” of implementing these age verifications, but the real goal is universal digital ID, where everyone in the country will be on a database and everything everyone does online will be tied to their real identity and it will be monitored with the help of these artificial intelligence-aided defense companies like Palantir and Anduril which work closely with the government. But it’s not so bad as long as you aren’t a criminal, right? Not so fast.
Over the past few months, the Trump administration has been pursuing a strange immigration deportation policy where ICE is conducting raids in many major cities, creating a lot of public outcry and attracting much attention from the media. However, this is not actually an effective system for deportation. The deportation numbers are actually quite low. If the administration was actually serious about getting the illegals out of the country, they would simply impose a heavy penalty on housing or employing the illegals, at which point they would leave, because they wouldn’t be able to work or live anywhere. So what’s the purpose of these raids? As a certain bald Madoka fan has pointed out, the purpose seems to be getting people accustomed to having federal agents throwing random screaming people into vans. Perhaps, soon this will start happening to people who aren’t illegals. Coincidentally, Attorney General Pam Bondi has stated that the Justice Department would start investigating and prosecuting incidents of “hate speech” in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death.
She later walked back her statements partially, but not entirely. Threats of violence are already illegal, so what's the point of saying this? Using the language of "hate speech" at all is very concerning.
Hate speech is a meaningless term, and it’s not hard to see how this could be expanded to anything the government doesn’t like. Since this administration seems to be primarily concerned with policing antisemitism, any dissidents talking about the real problems with most Western governments could very realistically come into the crosshairs if this pattern continues. Charlie’s death in general seems to have resulted in a post-9/11 type situation where people have been scared into begging for more government overreach. Many prominent right-wing influencers have advocated for government censorship of people under the notion that left-wing violence is a serious threat. Are we really going to pretend that Antifa or transgender mass shooters or things like that are a bigger concern than Palantir? It’s ridiculous, but this is how these things go. “Those who give up liberty for safety forfeit both and deserve neither”...
I really hope I’m wrong about all this, but these patterns only seem to point one way. Anyone who is a dissident should be concerned. I hope that people will protest this legislation and try to get it repealed, but the reality is that people don't care about this as long as they can still get their slop to eat up. If you have the means, I really would recommend getting out of this country.
Made with love by gray
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