The claim of no effect is belied by the figures reported in the Politico piece, and cited at the start of my essay. An 80% decline in traffic seems like a large effect.
Ceteris paribus, greater levels of regulation should force firm agglomeration as compliance costs rise. If other free sites are *in violation of the law*, it is much easie…
The claim of no effect is belied by the figures reported in the Politico piece, and cited at the start of my essay. An 80% decline in traffic seems like a large effect.
Ceteris paribus, greater levels of regulation should force firm agglomeration as compliance costs rise. If other free sites are *in violation of the law*, it is much easier to sink them with even simple state AG investigations and lawsuits than it is to sink the apparently more legally compliant PornHub.
If people are using VPNs to seem like they're in different states, wouldn't that look like drop in traffic from those states? I don't think that many people are using VPNs, but I don't think the "figures" show that.
State AGs could and maybe should look at other porn sites to determine whether they are violating the law. I hope this would not be an exact repeat of the pornhub episode, where pressure on credit card companies put the incomes of sex workers in jeopardy, but perhaps this would be for the best.
More importantly, a large decline in traffic to porn sites in these states is perfectly consistent with all of this traffic simply being displaced to other localities through VPNs. The point is to obfuscate the location so that the regulations don't apply, and these traffic figures would also be afflicted. We can to some extent observe that interest in VPNs in Utah spiked when the regulation came into effect, though I don't believe that data necessary to test how much traffic is simply diverted exists. https://www.techradar.com/news/porn-vpn-searches-soar-in-utah-amid-age-verification-bill
A related point that I forgot to make is that accessing a VPN can be as simple as changing your web browser. A number of small privacy-oriented browsers integrate VPNs, as does the more popular Opera, and Firefox is piloting a built in VPN in the US. https://financesonline.com/best-online-browsers-with-vpn/
This is why I would expect these regulations as written to do nothing. The modern web is in many ways oriented towards privacy and anonymity. Regulations that have teeth would require a radical departure that would not have political support. The circle can be squared with decentralized technology, but this cannot be created and deployed by fiat from moral virtue signalers.
The claim of no effect is belied by the figures reported in the Politico piece, and cited at the start of my essay. An 80% decline in traffic seems like a large effect.
Ceteris paribus, greater levels of regulation should force firm agglomeration as compliance costs rise. If other free sites are *in violation of the law*, it is much easier to sink them with even simple state AG investigations and lawsuits than it is to sink the apparently more legally compliant PornHub.
If people are using VPNs to seem like they're in different states, wouldn't that look like drop in traffic from those states? I don't think that many people are using VPNs, but I don't think the "figures" show that.
State AGs could and maybe should look at other porn sites to determine whether they are violating the law. I hope this would not be an exact repeat of the pornhub episode, where pressure on credit card companies put the incomes of sex workers in jeopardy, but perhaps this would be for the best.
More importantly, a large decline in traffic to porn sites in these states is perfectly consistent with all of this traffic simply being displaced to other localities through VPNs. The point is to obfuscate the location so that the regulations don't apply, and these traffic figures would also be afflicted. We can to some extent observe that interest in VPNs in Utah spiked when the regulation came into effect, though I don't believe that data necessary to test how much traffic is simply diverted exists. https://www.techradar.com/news/porn-vpn-searches-soar-in-utah-amid-age-verification-bill
A related point that I forgot to make is that accessing a VPN can be as simple as changing your web browser. A number of small privacy-oriented browsers integrate VPNs, as does the more popular Opera, and Firefox is piloting a built in VPN in the US. https://financesonline.com/best-online-browsers-with-vpn/
This is why I would expect these regulations as written to do nothing. The modern web is in many ways oriented towards privacy and anonymity. Regulations that have teeth would require a radical departure that would not have political support. The circle can be squared with decentralized technology, but this cannot be created and deployed by fiat from moral virtue signalers.