314
submitted 21 hours ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

Summary

The Supreme Court's hearing of Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton signals potential limits on First Amendment protections for online pornography.

The case involves a Texas law mandating age verification for websites with "sexual material harmful to minors," challenging the 2004 Ashcroft v. ACLU precedent, which struck down similar laws under strict scrutiny.

Justices, citing the inadequacy of modern filtering tools, seemed inclined to weaken free speech protections, exploring standards like intermediate scrutiny.

The ruling could reshape online speech regulations, leaving adults’ access to sexual content uncertain while tightening restrictions for minors.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] jaggedrobotpubes@lemmy.world 34 points 7 hours ago

You gotta be a really profoundly uncomfortable, nervous human being to think of sex as bad.

What an absolute sign of weakness.

[-] kent_eh@lemmy.ca 13 points 5 hours ago

You gotta be a really profoundly uncomfortable, nervous human being

That's an interesting way to say "religious".

Project2025 and it's evangelical backers are a major driver of this pridishness.

[-] Huckledebuck@sh.itjust.works 21 points 8 hours ago

Kids are gonna start finding porn the old-fashioned way: randomly coming across discarded magazines at the park. That was my first experience.

[-] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 19 points 7 hours ago

Or torrents... It would be funny if this just ended up teaching new generations how to torrent.

[-] ThomasCrappersGhost@feddit.uk 13 points 8 hours ago

I think Epstein highlighted that there is a much bigger problem going on than some 15 year old looking up “mum gets railed by football team”.

[-] kittenzrulz123 48 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

If we're banning content harmful to children why dont we start with Capitalist propoganda and religious indoctrination :3

[-] Skymt@feddit.nu 9 points 9 hours ago

And those brain washing shows on YouTube

[-] hmmm@sh.itjust.works 7 points 7 hours ago
[-] kittenzrulz123 3 points 3 hours ago

Both are accurate

[-] postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)
[-] ArsonButCute@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 hours ago

Ideally you wouldn't be using tor for clearweb sites but if you must I suppose that's an option, a VPN would be less detrimental to the tor network though, and is often both faster and more reliable from a user perspective.

[-] asteriskeverything@lemmy.world 43 points 15 hours ago

The vague threat of "think of the children maybe being exposed to sexual things" challenging our first amendment right but it becomes some huge debate if a woman is being harassed/stalked/threatened online.

**they are justififying destroying our rights for their feelings **

[-] nomy@lemmy.zip 3 points 4 hours ago

they are justififying destroying our rights for their feelings

Well yeah, the P stands for Projection in the party of "facts don't care about your feelings."

[-] esc27@lemmy.world 67 points 18 hours ago

So we can ban content that is claimed to be harmful to minors but not weapons that actually kill children...

[-] blazeknave@lemmy.world 4 points 6 hours ago

Jfc when you put it that way

[-] jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de 24 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

Even in terms of speech, it's ridiculous to claim that boobs are more harmful than a social media diet of assholes claiming women or racial minorities aren't people.

[-] catloaf@lemm.ee 12 points 16 hours ago

Well yeah it's never really been about what they say it is

[-] sik0fewl@lemmy.ca 5 points 15 hours ago

Close your eyes for just a moment and imagine the scales of Justice.

Imagine white kids on one side and brown kids on the other.

Why aren't the scales balanced?

[-] masterofn001@lemmy.ca 2 points 15 hours ago

Might as well just turn off the internet if they are this concerned about harmful content.

[-] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 122 points 21 hours ago

Notice how we're already asking past the sale with the tacit labeling of "sexual material harmful to minors," with the presupposed declaration that sexual material is automatically harmful to minors.

The all-consuming mission to look at boobies is essentially universal for all pubescent boys from about 12 all the way to the age of majority. This is well known, and none of us came off any the worse despite widespread availability of older brothers' back issues of Hustler, Usenet, dial-up BBS systems, and ultimately the world wide web.

If teens weren't naturally interested in sex where wouldn't been all them teenage pregnancies. Q.E.D.

[-] TimeSquirrel@kbin.melroy.org 41 points 21 hours ago

Just saying, the shit you can find on the Internet does not come even close to what Hustler was. There is instant access to all kinds of weird and fucked fetish shit that just wasn't accessible in the 90s and earlier.

[-] Cort@lemmy.world 25 points 18 hours ago

Bizarre fetish shit was very much available in the 90s and earlier. It just wasn't in hustler or playboy.

[-] frezik@midwest.social 9 points 18 hours ago

There's a vid on archive.org of the Spice Channel that must have been off someone's VHS tape. It flickers a lot and is barely watchable, but I was curious what we were all missing back then.

Turns out, way more softcore than I was expecting. Slightly more hardcore than Skinamax at the time, but not by much.

[-] circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org 19 points 18 hours ago

This is an excellent observation.

We now no longer have the debate over whether or not this content is necessarily harmful to minors. It's now automatically bad, and the new framing is: shouldn't we ban bad things?

Should expect more of this kind of newspeak/doublespeak as the Trump years continue.

[-] passwordforgetter@lemmy.nz 16 points 15 hours ago

Free speech for pornographers, but instant IP/device ID ban if you criticise Israel online.

[-] reddig33@lemmy.world 48 points 19 hours ago

Get ready for the slippery slope. Anything conservatives don’t want you to see or read will be placed behind an “identify yourself” firewall.

[-] danc4498@lemmy.world 64 points 21 hours ago

It’s just the first amendment.

[-] mxcory 22 points 20 hours ago

Freedom of speech is so important it is literally the first thing they remembered to add in.

[-] danc4498@lemmy.world 22 points 20 hours ago

They didn’t even mention individuals having the rights to own guns, but god damn they had to add that one to the second amendment through the courts.

[-] Zink@programming.dev 1 points 2 hours ago

It does mention “the people” though.

I’ve always have trouble with this one. The second amendment is a big problem in this country, especially combined with our hatful culture. DC v Heller should have gone the other way because it would have saved lives and allowed some progress.

But when I read the amendment, to me it comes across very much like “the people have the right to guns so that the militia can be called to arms” and not just “the militia gets guns.”

The amendment is outdated and the framers could never have anticipated our current state, much less been in favor of it. Maybe they even misspoke and did only mean for the militia members to be able to keep their guns at home. But what they wrote sure reads to me like the conservatives want it to, at least as far as the individual right to own guns.

This is just an academic discussion anyway. These weapons are part of the personal identity of at least tens of millions of Americans, plus we have a fully Republican government incoming, plus the court that would have to do something about it is even more conservative and corrupt than before.

[-] kittenzrulz123 5 points 14 hours ago

"A well regulated militia"

Back then that meant a gun group with regular training, any civillian in the militia could also own guns for private use

[-] Forester@pawb.social 4 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

Militias are armed citizens...

[-] danc4498@lemmy.world 6 points 7 hours ago

My point is that the courts have been taking the most generous possible interpretations of the 2nd amendment.

An individual is not a militia, yet every citizen can own a gun based on the generous interpretation of the courts. Even if you aren’t in a well organized militia.

Open carry? They read the 2nd amendment and thought it said individuals should be allowed to open carry for any reason at all.

These are generous interpretations of the second amendment. But for the first amendment, the courts are much more eager to limit rights.

[-] Chip_Rat@lemmy.world 3 points 15 hours ago

Can you explain your position? Honest question, because if I just take your post "Militias are armed citizens" I can use logic to know that to be false. Militia can be comprised of armed citizens, but armed citizens are not militia....

A log cabin is made of logs, but a log isnt a cabin?

[-] Forester@pawb.social 1 points 16 minutes ago

https://www.britannica.com/topic/militia

military organization of citizens with limited military training, which is available for emergency service, usually for local defense. In many countries the militia is of ancient origin; Macedonia under Philip II (d. 336 bc), for example, had a militia of clansmen in border regions who could be called to arms to repel invaders. Among the Anglo-Saxon peoples of early medieval Europe, the militia was institutionalized in the fyrd, in which every able-bodied free male was required to give military service. Similar arrangements evolved in other countries. In general, however, the emergence in the Middle Ages of a quasi-professional military aristocracy, which performed military service in return for the right to control land and servile labour, tended to cause the militia to decay, particularly as political power became increasingly centralized and life became more secure. The institution persisted nevertheless and, with the rise of national monarchies, served in some measure to provide a manpower pool for the expanding standing armies.

[-] UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 2 points 15 hours ago

Can you explain your position?

'Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary' - Karl Marx

[-] Chip_Rat@lemmy.world 7 points 14 hours ago

I had no idea Karl Marx was an author of the constitution of the United States! Wow! Thanks!

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] Nougat@fedia.io 59 points 21 hours ago

Define "sexual material." What about the minors who get sexual gratification from Linux installation media repository mirrors?

[-] sparky@lemmy.federate.cc 2 points 5 hours ago
sudo apt-get install boobies
[-] kittenzrulz123 2 points 3 hours ago

sparky is not in sudoers file. This incident will be reported

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 21 points 21 hours ago

To quote a former Supreme Court justice and asshole, "I know it when I see it."

[-] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 8 points 21 hours ago

Seems a bit redundant there.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] minnow@lemmy.world 39 points 20 hours ago

What's taught in schools: the parents should have a say! Don't let the government decide what to teach our kids!

Books in libraries and content on the internet: the government must step in and make certain content illegal!

Of course, fascists don't care if they're hypocritical. They say whatever gives them the most power in any situation, so calling out hypocrisy won't stop them. It's still good to do, though.

[-] lolola 10 points 20 hours ago

Don’t let the government ~~decide what to~~ teach our kids!

[-] adarza@lemmy.ca 19 points 20 hours ago

some republicants cheering for the scotus ruling today will be scrambling to try to legislate around it tomorrow.. because their porn habits will get hacked and released.

load more comments
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2025
314 points (100.0% liked)

News

23851 readers
3226 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS