> Where exactly have they put forward a proposal?

Literally a banner ad in front of Utah users, the exact thing you asked for (https://kslnewsradio.com/2003298/adult-website-pornhub-block...):

> "Please contact your representatives before it is too late and demand device-based verification solutions that make the internet safer while also respecting your privacy."

This is silly. The language here could not be clearer. You asked for a banner ad, they literally put a banner ad up saying, "contact your representatives and ask for device-based verification." RTA headers are a completed standard for content filtering. The fact that they're not implemented widely is because they're not legislated and have never been legislated.

> So what's been proposed? To which lawmakers have they presented these proposals? Have they just gone completely ignored? Where are their press releases urging people get their solution passed?

Quite frankly, this was not hard to Google. From https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/07/tech/pornhub-age-verification...:

> The video’s release coincides with a previously unreported effort by Pornhub — and its private equity owners, Ethical Capital Partners (ECP) — to convince the world’s largest tech companies to intervene in the wider debate over age restrictions for digital porn and social media. [...] In recent weeks, ECP has lobbied Apple, Google and Microsoft to jointly develop a technological standard that might turn a user’s electronic device into the proof of age necessary to access restricted online content, according to Solomon Friedman, a partner at ECP. [...] One possible version of the idea, Friedman told CNN, would be for the tech companies to securely store a person’s age information on a device and for the operating system to provide websites requesting age verification with a yes-or-no answer on the owner’s behalf — allowing sites to block underage users without ever handling anyone’s personal information. [...] “We are willing to commit whatever resources are required to work proactively with those companies, with other technical service providers and as well with government,” Friedman said.

You are wrong. Porn companies are putting effort into this. You're moving goalposts for how much effort you think is fair, but what's wild is even with you moving those goalposts, you're still wrong.

What you're right about that we haven't seen much progress in this area. Why not? Well, from the same article:

> But it is far from clear the effort is succeeding. Friedman declined to say how, or even if, the companies have responded to Pornhub’s communications. Microsoft declined to comment for this story; Apple and Google didn’t respond to requests for comment. [...] Friedman characterized the discussions as being in “early stages,” though his other remarks implied the talks may be largely one-sided.

So companies reach out to tech companies and encourage law makers to pass laws, they're ignored, and then you come along and say "well, they should have said something". They did. They have been saying something. You came along and argued that these companies have said nothing. That there's been complete silence. You're wrong.

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> That we put some liability on sites and browser/OS vendors to implement RTA headers? Including non-commercial (e.g. FOSS) distributors? That seems like a much larger abridgement on speech

Well... it's not. It's not completely absent 1st Amendment concerns, but it certainly has less of them. Liability on the level of distributors is a much clearer 1st Amendment problem, we literally have Supreme Court precedent on the books saying that blocking distribution of porn can be unconstitutional. Congress passed laws about communication decency that got shut down -- that's why despite you suggesting otherwise, there is no federal ban on distributing adult material to children. We tried it, and the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional (https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/we...). And all of those issues still exist for these bills.

This is something you should do more research on; I glossed over some of your earlier comments about "it's already illegal to give porn to kids", but since we're talking about 1st Amendment challenges, I should point out -- it's not federally illegal to give porn to kids, and attempts to make it illegal have been struck down before.

> and without it, you could trivially work around the filter by e.g. running Konqueror off a flash drive.

If I may quote a wise commenter: "It's not perfect, but that's a silly reason not to do it."

Part of parental controls on an iPhone, Windows, or Android device could be restriction of installation of 3rd-party software. And it's not clear to me that legislation of non-commercial software or platforms is even required here. All of the major browsers (Firefox included) are commercial browsers owned by commercial for-profit businesses. That's even questioning whether they'd need to be regulated: like I said earlier, every one of these browsers already has controls for setting DNS settings through administrative policies.

If you're worried about non-commercial escape-hatches, bear in mind that the current bills you're championing only apply to commercial sites, which would not limit resharing, re-uploading, or access to sites that are operating outside of the US. I promise you that shady porn sites will still be available in Utah after this decision. You seem to believe that's an easy problem to solve, but you also seem to believe that it's an impossible problem to solve when we talk about filters, so who knows? You seem to believe a lot of incompatible things.

Nor do they limit VPNs and it is not that hard to find a non-commercial or free VPN or proxy. Every Google Fi Android phone ships with a free VPN that doesn't monitor what you're accessing. Apple has been pushing for mobile VPN support through iCloud as well, although their setup is a bit more limited and doesn't (yet) obscure your state. At some point your child will have a VPN available to them literally just because they have an iPhone and you buy iCloud.

Device-based filtering using parental controls isn't perfect, but it is a better solution. Because even ignoring the constitutional issues, the privacy issues, and the security issues -- I hate to tell you this, but there's porn on Mastodon. As you've pointed out, there's porn on Reddit. None of these laws target those sites, none of those sites have been sued.

The current laws being passed do not protect kids from porn. Objectively, factually -- we know this because the laws are in effect, and Reddit and Mastodon still serve porn in those states. This is not something that's debatable.

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> but at the "device level" whatever that means (likely it doesn't mean anything).

Very, very obviously, it means age verification would be handled through parental controls on the device. This is not complicated.

Yes, a law would need to elaborate more on what parental controls were sufficient, but that's part of writing a law. You're confused at what "device level" protections are, but have no issue with laws offering zero definition of what reasonable standards of verification are?

Nevertheless, if you're genuinely somehow confused, Pornhub itself clarifies what it means by this on its own blog (where once again, it encourages users to push for alternate ID solutions): https://www.pornhub.com/blog/age-verification-in-the-news

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> The ruling from the 00s was based on technology at the time, and considered what seemed to be the least invasive way to feasibly do it.

Citation very much needed, rulings from 00s are still established case law. Nobody at the Supreme Court has said, "hey y'all just ignore these that was back when we thought networking was easier."

Also... you can still block network requests. A general reminder that uBlock Origin, 1.1.1.3, browser-level malware blocks, and Piholes are all things that work today and are going to continue to work for the forseable future even with encrypted DNS lookups.

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> You said they placed large banners in certain states. Why not in all states? Or are they only placing banners after they've already had regulation passed against them?

You're moving goal posts. The fact is, you claimed that porn companies had made zero efforts to propose alternatives. And that's not correct, they have proposed alternatives. You claimed that they had never come up with standards for labeling. That's wrong, they came up with standards all the way back with IE6.

But now you can move to saying that the problem is that they didn't do enough advocacy. Personally, I feel (and the constitution agrees with me) that when an alternate solution for furthering state interests exists that doesn't abridge free speech, the state is obligated to pursue it -- that's part of what strict scrutiny requires.

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> They also have the now-standard exceptions for things with literary/artistic/political/educational value. The "porn is speech" issue is tautologically handled by saying the laws only apply to the non-speech variety.

God, please grant me the confidence of a HN commenter saying that speech distinctions are handled by a bill saying "don't infringe speech." There is no reliable test for where to draw that line, it's silly to let the government decide where that line is on a case-by-case basis, there have been multiple Supreme Court cases pointing out that the government drawing that line on a case-by-case basis is unconstitutional, and we have political leaders on the books saying that they want to use proposed Internet filtering laws to abridge LGBTQ+ rights.

You yourself aren't applying those qualifications when you think about this -- you've argued elsewhere that somewhere between 30-40% of Reddit content is porn. How much of that porn has artistic/literary/political/educational value? What percent of Reddit porn is and isn't speech? Of course, that's not an easy question to answer.