Gov. Ron DeSantis Signs Age Verification Into Law Because Florida Is Supposedly ‘Free’
from the great-timing-you-idiots dept
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who failed miserably in his run for president, signed a very controversial bill into law that requires age verification for porn websites and bans social media for minors under the age of 14. The act, House Bill (HB) 3, is one of the most restrictive laws of its kind to be implemented in the United States. The bill enters force on January 1, 2025, but it will be ripe for a legal showdown brought by social media companies and adult industry firms.
Like age verification laws implemented elsewhere in the country, HB 3 is broad and offers very little clarification on how to enforce the provisions of these laws. The Florida bill, in my view, attempts to do too much by simply relying on the “protect the children” narrative. According to HB 3, minors who want to use social media must get permission from their parents through an age check. Also, the bill tries to lump the age verification debate surrounding porn into a single issue. The legislation’s sponsors and Gov. DeSantis falsely present House Bill 3 as a data privacy measure protecting minors and adults alike. But, as we’ve seen time and again, mandatory age verification requirements – no matter how advanced or secure age verification technology can be – are actually a violation of a user’s right to privacy and anonymity on the internet as a whole.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida issued a warning discussing these very shortcomings in the law in the weeks before DeSantis signed HB 3. The warning itself fell on countless deaf ears at the Florida State House, as ACLU of Florida’s legislative director Kara Gross accurately said, “The age-verification requirements in HB 3 place barriers between users, whether they’re adults or minors, and their constitutional right to speak online. Age verification requirements blatantly chill the speech and threaten the privacy of adults by requiring them to surrender their anonymity to engage in constitutionally protected speech.” Gross isn’t wrong.
No matter how you handle age verification, you’re still verifying your age through the use of some sort of personal information. This ranges from government identification to artificial intelligence-assisted age estimation and (now, more than ever) biometrics. While the vendors of age verification software tout high-end security, they do so by significantly downplaying or overtly dismissing the most basic lesson in security studies: no system is impenetrable. And the assumption that requiring the broad use of age-gating software can suddenly serve as a silver bullet to protect minors from viewing age-restricted content on the internet is not only faulty reasoning but very dangerous.
Beyond that, I need to remind you all that all of the current legal and policy instruments being used to require age verification are unconstitutional.
Michael McGrady covers the legal and tech side of the online porn business, among other topics.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, age verification, data privacy, florida, free speech, hb 3, privacy, ron desantis, social media
Comments on “Gov. Ron DeSantis Signs Age Verification Into Law Because Florida Is Supposedly ‘Free’”
Remember kids, stop using social media! – posted to Twitter by Ron DeSantis.
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I could see platforms blocking Florida ip addresses, which is easily circumvented using Tor and/or VPN.
And then the rich will always get what they want since they can afford ways around it.
They want to take away any and every support system their abused children might find.
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Conservatism is nothing more than the perpetuation of generational trauma.
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Social media is not a support system, it is a breeding ground for mental illness.
That being said, this law is stupid and DeSantis is stupid for backing it. You should not be deprived of your right to use the Internet how you want just because Ron walked in on his kid watching Pornhub once.
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the buttom of your comment you actually are sane the top one not sane
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Oh hello, Mr DeSantis, I didn’t know you frequented these parts.
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“Social media is not a support system, it is a breeding ground for mental illness.”
That only explains about 60% of your obvious mental problems bro.
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it’s not the real matt its a different matt that has imposter syndrome
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I think my comment holds up either way.
Re: Re: Re:2 I feel personally attacked
Hey don’t blame me for this, it was Matt N. 😂
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are you different then the bratty matt and imposter syndrome matt?
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I am indeed
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good your the most sane out of the other 2 matts
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Woo hoo! Never been the sane one before. I’ve been lurking since Prenda actually, finally decided to sign up because all the other Matts were doing it lol
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Welcome home, brother. You and me, we’re kindred spirits. I think we’ll go far together.
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We are legion
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You misspelt “lesion”.
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Holy shit! Stop the presses! Strawb got a new joke and it was funny! Could anyone mentally competent have ever hallucinated this!?!?
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Found the abuser.
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You’re thinking of conservatism. Rational people use social media to positive ends all the time.
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Life is a breeding ground for mental illness thanks to the degradations inflicted by capitalism and the patriarchy, both of which conservatives venerate. Social media allows marginalized people to form community outside of those controls, which is why certain people shout how much they love freedom while taking actions to suppress freedom like Musk the perpetual motion machine of hypocrisy.
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Listen, SugarTits–no one likes a mouthy broad, so wait to speak until you’re directly spoken to.
Women like you are a great example of why your sex should never have been allowed to learn to read, never mind vote.
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Ya know, that’s not how most people spell ‘unreasonably restrictive legislation’.
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Cope and seethe, bitter pornographer!
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fuck off troll clown
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said the sex pest right wing troll
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Mate you posted these two comments minutes apart. It is obvious you are the same person behind both of them. At least vary your grammar a bit if you’re gonna LARP.
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said bratty matty shut your bitch ass up
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shhh the adults are talking
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oh bratty matty so mad at 2 comments minutes apart cope and seethe matt the clown
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That’s not bratty Matty. It’s a copycat.
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i see still it’s pathetic they became just like them and for what attention?
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*I
*I see.
*Still,
*he became
*and for what, attention?
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Actually, the evidence suggests it’s Bratty Matty sock-puppeting with very similar names.
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“Cope and seethe”
That level of projection can only be measured on a galactic scale.
Republicans have long looked upon the great firewall of China and the massive state inflicted censorship with envious eyes and whispered to themselves ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we were in charge of that?’, inbetween public screams of censorship because right wing stochastic terrorists were suspended for 3 hours on twitter for massive violations of the rules they agreed to when they signed up.
People like DeSantis will not be happy until a republican minority get to decide what the majority of Americans can access online, and are going to spend the next decade nibbling away around the edges of free speech like rats while the republican supreme court justices advise them what they will need to change to get them to ignore precedent and the constitution. Just look at what they did with abortion and voting rights.
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that’s not minding the leopards both eat the faces of the ones they hate and the ones that support them
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doomerism much?
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It’s not doomerism, more an observation based on exactly the same crap they’ve pulled for the past 40 years. It’s hard to believe this time will be different and that they’ll surely just stop at banning porn, while watching the same people immediately start to go after IVF and contraception after their victory on Abortion.
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thanks for helping me understand it sounded like it was doomer speak but i guess not
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The hilarious thing is that I’ve seen some republicans try to “reinterpret” article 4, section 4, of the US constitution to mean that the Republicans should be in power, since it says that the US shall have a republican form of government…. Yes, I’ve legitimately seen such questions asked. Republicans are idiots of the highest order and should be excised from the world.
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A significant number of conservatives, both in power and not, tend to believe that Republicans alone have the divine right to rule—yes, that choice of words is knowing and deliberate—and any electoral victories by Democrats must be invalid or fraudulent because a Democrat holding public office is an invalid state of affairs by default. What happened on the 6th of January 2021 was an extreme consequence of this thinking. By no means will it be the last.
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Half of them seem to think their politicians are in fact divinely chosen by God, so it’s always going to be really hard to convince them of how terrible their choices are.
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I’ve even seen a right-wing argument that A4S4 must enshrine the political party because “Republican” is in the original Constitution with a capital R.
(To Hell with the Fact that at the Time, English capitalized most Nouns, the way German does even in the present Day, and the Framers also capitalized Important Words.)
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Also never mind that the republicans at the time would be today’s democrats…
Two things they’ve yet to prove harmful to anyone: social media and porn. I guess it’s good to be the king of stupid.
You don’t understand. Ron DeathSentance is a Trump-style republican (not to be confused with a Trumpist republican) and no freedom is more important to that breed than the freedom to oppress others…
“…Because Florida Is Supposedly ‘Free’ ”
Yeah, free to drink the Kool-Aid.
They coined the term woke, and now they become the Kool-aids…
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They absolutely did not.
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Read and learn, if you can be bothered to do so.
uphold the what?
desantis has made many moves against free speech over the last several years. this is just one.
DeSantas?
“bans social media for minors under the age of 14. ”
So now he is upset with competing with <14 year olds? on the internet?
Cant even win a debate with <14 year olds?
Aw come on folks. Give credit where credit is due hey!
This law will make porn and especially child porn, super expensive to buy in Florida. Ronnie’s secret porn company investments are sure to rake in a huge profit this year.
Now that’s true business sense. 🙂
There’s no freedom quite like the freedom to tell other people what they can’t do.