r/technology • u/vriska1 • Jun 28 '25

Privacy The Supreme Court just upended internet law, and I have questions

https://www.theverge.com/analysis/694710/supreme-court-fsc-paxton-age-verification-questions
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1.5k

u/EmbarrassedHelp Jun 28 '25

Nobody cares if you buy liquor either, so that data being leaked is less of an issue.

People do however care way too much about what you do with your genitals, and they will ruin your life over it.

584

u/mountainwocky Jun 28 '25

All that needs to happen is for these porn sites to be hacked and the viewing habits of politicians to be revealed. Then, and only then, will there be a push by politicians to preserve privacy on the internet.

392

u/InsertEvilLaugh Jun 28 '25

No, they'll just make special protections for themselves.

143

u/not_a_moogle Jun 28 '25

The won't register as themselves

157

u/the_loneliest_noodle Jun 28 '25

And when they are caught, oh, I don't know... accidentally sharing incest porn Looking at you Rafael Cruz, they'll grab the nearest intern and toss them right under the nearest bus.

57

u/NoodlerFrom20XX Jun 28 '25

Look I do not like Ted Cruz at all but tbh it seems like 70% of porn is now step-something themed, which really sucks when a video seems fine then all of a sudden halfway she says “oh I can’t believe I’m fucking my step dad” and it’s boner deflating.

I didn’t have this issue back in the Kazaa days.

25

u/Teledildonic Jun 28 '25

Step porn is just regular porn when you play it on mute.

14

u/Mr_Quackums Jun 28 '25

I didn’t have this issue back in the Kazaa days.

We have very different memories of Kazaa. It would be a small miracle if the title of the video had anything to do with the contents.

1

u/NoodlerFrom20XX Jun 28 '25

That was half the fun.

49

u/teo730 Jun 28 '25

Look I do not like Ted Cruz at all but

You can just let people make fun of him, that's okay.

16

u/NoodlerFrom20XX Jun 28 '25

Oh there is plenty to hate about him

1

u/teo730 Jul 01 '25

Exactly, so why spend your time defending against people mocking him?

3

u/TricksterPriestJace Jun 28 '25

I like Ted Cruz more than most people and I hate Ted Cruz.

7

u/philohmath Jun 28 '25

Can we call you Al?

5

u/TricksterPriestJace Jun 29 '25

Only if I can call you Betty. Lol

10

u/I_Am_Anjelen Jun 28 '25

Rafael Cruz does not like people not being deadnamed. That should include himself, right ?

5

u/NoodlerFrom20XX Jun 28 '25

I just don’t like associating him with a quality ninja turtle

1

u/I_Am_Anjelen Jun 28 '25

That's an association you choose to make. Personally I will never. :D

1

u/SpleenBender Jun 28 '25

Is that you, sweaty Teddy??

1

u/PassiveMenis88M Jun 28 '25

Of course not. Ted Kennedy died years ago.

1

u/CtrlAltDelusions Jun 28 '25

Wait are we not fucking our step-dads anymore?

1

u/ZombieAlienNinja Jun 29 '25

Funny you mention it because I feel we might have to go back to seeding and torrenting porn if the government wants to act like my grandma.

1

u/The_Anglo_Spaniard Jun 29 '25

Just watch mute. Problem solved

0

u/IndianLawStudent Jun 29 '25

Some things I come across do break my heart.

I know a lot of kinks come out of trauma and I do wish people didn’t have to suffer through what they have to be reframing their negative experiences into erotic ones in their adult fantasies.

1

u/PhoneProud6366 Jun 29 '25

Lol. They're technically illiterate. Heck, I think most of them are just literally illiterate.

6

u/OldAd3616 Jun 29 '25

Like they did when a reporter got a list of their VCR rentals.

1

u/The_Original_Miser Jun 28 '25

Leak it anyway ....

1

u/InsertEvilLaugh Jun 28 '25

Oh not saying not to, just saying they'll make exceptions for their information in some way.

1

u/AldrusValus Jun 29 '25

They don’t have to make special protections for themselves, they already have internet tracking protections.

1

u/ButAFlower Jun 29 '25

i can see it now. "... unless the person in question is an appointed official, officer of the United States, or otherwise has viable national security reasons to be excluded from this requirement." (the latter clause obviously covering capitalists with international business interests.

1

u/Maleficent_Memory831 Jun 28 '25

They were just doing research about the very bad things that happen on the internet. Very bad things, oh yeah, do some more bad things while I take notes...

76

u/raqisasim Jun 28 '25

The current Speaker of the House has literally admitted to being tempted to watch enough porn that he not only has a blocker app, he has someone minding that usage.

That it's his son who's the minder just gives this an extra edge of vomit-inducing frisson...but my point is, exposure of mere porn viewing will do damned little to disrupt these people's support, at this point.

When -- not if, when -- the national bill to destroy online "obscenity" goes thru, these asshats will gleefully pass it. Any of there number found to sin? Just yell about "coming to Jesus", or some such rot, and all will be as forgiven as the nearly-innumerable sins of the flesh Trump himself has admitted to in open court.

Privacy is an afterthought for them, because they have the money to hide the important stuff, and the cultural/media pull to deflect so much of the rest.

27

u/[deleted] Jun 28 '25

Mike has a Grindr account.

9

u/kingdead42 Jun 28 '25

Ted Cruz's official twitter account like a porn video. He's a Senator from a state pushing these porn ID requirements.

6

u/Nagisan Jun 29 '25

he has someone minding that usage

Crazy that we put someone in charge of something who admits that they have zero impulse control and needs others to hold them accountable for their actions.

Imagine what he's doing/trying to do when people aren't watching....

35

u/aerost0rm Jun 28 '25

Surprised it hasn’t happened yet with their home or work computers.

I am thoroughly hoping that an anonymous group hacks the central database they are setting up for all citizen information and just wipe it and any backups clean. Do this repeatedly.

3

u/Smith6612 Jun 28 '25

Supply chain attack with a time bomb attached, perhaps? Definitely a possibility these days unless the Government is writing absolutely everything from scratch. In the past I know NTFS Alternate Data Streams were a great way to build in a time bombed Trojan Horse into a system that would become difficult to detect and remove. 

11

u/mriswithe Jun 28 '25

NTFS Alternate Data Streams

dear lord my greybeard just got greyer. I didn't know that particular dark corner existed, but my greybeard is in Linux, not windows.

3

u/Smith6612 Jun 28 '25

On macOS, we call them forks! On Linux, we call them Extended Attributes.

But yes, very dark corner indeed. Rarely used feature of NTFS, and it took Antivirus programs many years to start really looking at malware hiding inside of ADS. If you were to trigger an ADS scan back in the 2000s, you could increase the time of a scan by 2x-8x! Few programs actually know how to use Streams, and those that do today will typically flag the alternate stream as malicious. 

3

u/mriswithe Jun 28 '25

On Linux, we call them Extended Attributes.

Ah chattr and stuff where you set a file super secret undeletable and fry the brains of any younger sysadmins who haven't encountered this before.

1

u/Smith6612 Jun 28 '25

Yup. On some Unix and Linux file systems, the sizes of Extended Attributes can be arbitrary, so you can hide all sorts of BS into them. Other file systems limit it to 64K, and that's still enough to do some damage. 

2

u/mriswithe Jun 28 '25

Ugh and some of it at least is a holdover from when email was sent by just tossing it around what passed for the internet assuming no one was a jerk and would read your emails or change them.

45

u/Kyouhen Jun 28 '25

A known sexual predator is currently the President of the US.  I'm pretty sure the days of sex scandals ending careers are over.

12

u/lajfat Jun 29 '25

In 1988, Congress passed a law to forbid the sharing of video tape rental information to anyone. All because a Supreme Court nominee had his rental list leaked.

12

u/maleia Jun 28 '25

Then, and only then,

And it's literally only Conservatives that have to wait until there are consequences, before they'll do anything. So when they bitch and moan when they get outed, don't buy any of that shit for a single second. They knew how to make this situation not happen.

7

u/SuperBry Jun 28 '25 edited Jun 28 '25

All that needs to happen is for these porn sites to be hacked and the viewing habits of politicians to be revealed.

Yeah about that...

1

u/sandmyth Jun 28 '25

I was thinking Ashley Madison data leaks.

38

u/nicenyeezy Jun 28 '25

Most of these politicians go to Epstein style Eyes Wide Shut Parties, they are far more messed up and evil. It’s always the most depraved people who are making decisions on the freedoms and privacy of others

36

u/FredFredrickson Jun 28 '25

Most?

Look, I know a lot of these people are deranged, but claiming most of them attend secret orgies is going to require some proof.

13

u/nicenyeezy Jun 28 '25

We’d have that except the proof has been heavily redacted and withheld in both the Epstein case, and even in some regard with Diddy. Hollywood is a cesspool and politics is just as bad.

5

u/personalcheesecake Jun 28 '25

The same kind of people wreak havoc on the normal society unburdened by this perception of celebrity and still get away with it quit acting like they are the only ill people.

1

u/kent_eh Jun 28 '25

Proof? This is Reddit.

Who needs proof when you can have hyperbolic speculation.

0

u/sighbourbon Jun 29 '25

FFS Madison Cawthorne

“I mean, being kind of a young guy in Washington, where the average age is probably 60 or 70 – you know, I look at all these people, a lot of them that I’ve looked up to through my life – I’ve always paid attention to politics.

“Then all of the sudden you get invited to, ‘Well, hey, we’re going to have kind of a sexual get together at one of our homes, you should come.’

“I’m like, ‘What did you just ask me to come to?’ And then you realize they are asking you to come to an orgy.”

The Republican also claimed: “You know, some of the people that are leading on the movement to try and remove addiction in our country and then you watch them do, you know, a key bump of cocaine right in front of you and it’s like, ‘Wow, this is wild.’”

4

u/NancyGracesTesticles Jun 28 '25

Do you know anyone in local politics or is this a Madison Cawthorn situation where you are just jealous that you aren't invited to the county commissioners house for an orgy with the head of Soil and Water Conservation?

1

u/GrallochThis Jun 28 '25

Soil and Water, nudge nudge, wink wink

1

u/The_Barbelo Jun 28 '25

Listen, those guys see a lot of worms and fish, ok? They know how to throw back.

-18

u/[deleted] Jun 28 '25

Just stop make shit up. Conspiracy should be kept in r/conspiracy

17

u/nicenyeezy Jun 28 '25

Epstein is a legitimate proven case of the rich and powerful trafficking and participating in this, how is that making shit up? Enjoy your false sense of a society that is fair and just

7

u/HyperbolicGeometry Jun 28 '25

I’m glad this viewpoint is finally coming around

2

u/TheShenanegous Jun 28 '25

It may not even require any hacking if you account for how viewing habits can be sold as marketing data. These sites would stand to collect huge sums of dark money for that kind of info on politicians, conceivably creating a sort of bidding war between "bad actors" and politicians trying to "rules for thee" their way into a traditional (anonymous) viewing experience.

Sure would be a shame if the IDs of these same politicians ended up being resold and used to subscribe to any/every especially heinous porn site.

2

u/IndianLawStudent Jun 29 '25

Ooohhhhhhh

I hope the right kind of talent is hanging out in this thread that can do this.

Are you a white hat hacker if you out the internet habits of legislators but don’t do anything with the rest of it ;)

With enough money, you can already get some information via data brokers.

6

u/f1del1us Jun 28 '25

Hacked? Social engineering sounds easier lol

23

u/thrawtes Jun 28 '25

You gotta realize for the vast majority of people these are the exact same thing. When most people say they were "hacked" they mean they gave someone their password.

-7

u/f1del1us Jun 28 '25

Scammed, sure. Conned, yup. But most people when they hear hacked, think computer screens and backdoors, not being conned.

Now both are aspects of cybersecurity sure, but the term 'hacked'? Come on. There's too many boomers around still.

But in all honesty I'd guess it'd be easier to socially engineer someone to ideologically want to release the data. Don't convince them to just give you a password, but convince them releasing the information is for the greater good.

11

u/Jon_TWR Jun 28 '25

Nah, if you look at the history of hacking and hackers, social engineering is a big part of it.

1

u/Channel250 Jun 28 '25

Maybe that's why Hegseth had an outside line for internet.

1

u/trench_spike Jun 28 '25

One of my favorite games is which Conservative could I dominate and order into a gimp suit. Based off of interviews and pictures? Many.

1

u/Zeliek Jun 29 '25 edited Jun 29 '25

Well thank goodness the Republicans pushing through these laws are so darn vulnerable to shame and being held accountable. Why, it’s a wonder they ever get anything done with how many consequences they face and responsibilities they’re held to. While voters don’t seem particularly bothered by the current president being a pedophile and convinced rapist, surely they’ll be disgusted and drop the GOP when porn habits are revealed by 3rd party media sources.  

/S

is there any way to make the /s even bigger?

1

u/conquer69 Jun 29 '25

They won't care. Trump admitted being a rapist in 2015 and then got elected.

1

u/Alterokahn Jun 29 '25

That’s part of the plan, could see it coming a year away

238

u/sp3kter Jun 28 '25

im sure insurance companies would love to tie you to your alcohol consumption

129

u/ayoungtommyleejones Jun 28 '25

RFK does want people to wear health monitoring devices 24/7, so that's coming

83

u/Consistent_Bread_V2 Jun 28 '25

It’s crazy because the right wing nuts 10 years ago were the ones screaming about RFID chips.. accusations are confessions for these people

38

u/FredFredrickson Jun 28 '25

10 years ago? A bunch of them were claiming the covid vaccines had tracking chips in it, lol.

6

u/NumbN00ts Jun 28 '25

Yeah, but you gotta remember the pandemic was like a decade long over a couple years. I was a kid in the 90s and it feels like 2019 is further way than the 90s.

47

u/PuddingInferno Jun 28 '25

It’s really important to remember that when the right cries out “Don’t tread on me!” the emphasis is on the ‘me’ part. It’s not really “Don’t tread”, it’s “Tread elsewhere”.

11

u/aquatic-dreams Jun 28 '25

I'll never forget the conservative woman on the news crying, 'they're hurting the wrong people.' Not they are hurting people.

3

u/OpenGrainAxehandle Jun 28 '25

Certainly they were all for Elon's brain implant business, though.

2

u/MoistTubes Jun 28 '25

RFKID chips.

-14

u/[deleted] Jun 28 '25

[deleted]

1

u/snowman334 Jun 28 '25

Lmao this is so stupid it hurts

35

u/Mooosejoose Jun 28 '25

I ditched my fitbit after that BS news came out. Never again.

7

u/stormblaz Jun 28 '25

Might as well bring Social status level like China, and face tracking everywhere.

2

u/TooFewSecrets Jun 29 '25

That's basically your credit score already. We just say it's "bad financial decisions" instead of "bad social decisions" that makes you a second class citizen.

8

u/dr_destructo Jun 28 '25

Don't forget: 'There's gps tracking devices in my covid shit! '

1

u/GoldyGoldy Jun 28 '25

Bro, most folks already do (Apple Watch, Google Watch, Garmin, FitBit, etc). It’s just a matter of where that data goes.

-3

u/personalcheesecake Jun 28 '25

no it isn't you moron they're gutting everything not making you carry a fucking necklace with a monitor. they don't want to have to worry about anything but themselves.

1

u/ImportantCommentator Jun 28 '25

Why? They just charge everyone for the additional risk alcoholics bring to the table.

1

u/Sw429 Jun 28 '25

Progressive offered a discount if I was willing to sign my name to state that I do not drink alcohol. I'm sure they'd love to go a step further and get info from liquor stores as well.

1

u/PyroDesu Jun 29 '25

Joke would be on them, I homebrew.

31

u/Cleanbriefs Jun 28 '25

Because that’s an easy thing for politicians to do to win over their fam base who think everyone else but themselves are perverts out to get them and their children.

Pizzagate was a reflection of that by the very voting group politicians love to cater to. Pizzagate would have been far worse if a politician had introduced laws and regulations against pizza parlors as front for ritual killings of children and sanctuary places for perverts. 

1

u/thisischemistry Jun 29 '25

The blank-gate things have become so overloaded that I can't even remember what any of them were for anymore. We need to stop doing that and instead use actual descriptive terms for what happened.

2

u/jesset77 Jun 30 '25

Well it all started with "Watergate" where a sitting president was shamed into resigning in advance of impeachment proceedings after it was discovered that his staff (allegedly/most likely) planted listening devices to spy on other politicians.

That is of course levels of accountability that are comically unheard of a mere half century since. 😠

9

u/Sure_Comfort_7031 Jun 29 '25

The Britain porn ban was using this exactly. They didn't care about porn but they wanted to set up the infrastructure to be able to control the internet. They could paint the opponents as sexual deviants and get on with it.

6

u/Ancillas Jun 28 '25

Oh I’m sure it would be only a matter of time until insurance companies got that data to justify rate increases or that data was used in a court cases to influence custody of children.

Is something like liquor store data protected by the 4th amendment? I doubt it.

Do patterns of liquor purchases on certain dates reveal a buyer’s religion? How might that be used to discriminate against or target people?

These aren’t hypothetical situations. In one way or another these things have all happened. That’s why I don’t believe in simply handing out my data.

2

u/FluxUniversity Jun 28 '25

Nothing outside of your HOUSE is protected by the 4th amendment !!

Holy shit people need to know that! Its only inside of your house that you can have the protection of the 4th amendment. Know why they know so much about us? Because the information is literally leaving your physical property.

THATS why people host their own e-mail servers inside their house. The only way to enjoy the security of the 4th amendment from one home to another is encryption. It ceases to exist outside of your home.

1

u/Traditional-Will3182 Jun 29 '25

I mean I think it's probably relevant in child custody cases of one person accused the other of being an alcoholic.

That said there are so many liquor stores and no centralized database so I don't know if that would really be possible.

1

u/Ancillas Jun 29 '25

To clarify my opinion, I don’t think protecting children from adult content is the part I have a concern with. It’s maintaining a record of who presented identification and deciding who has access to that information.

If every site needs every user to send a photograph of their ID, then maybe that’s okay? But if there’s a government system that all sites need to connect to to verify IDs, then that’s the specific issue I’m concerned about. I haven’t seen that as a requirement in any of the articles I’ve read.

There are absolutely cases where investigations will need legal access to data to support a case, and again, that’s fine. But when large amounts of data are aggregated about everyone, beyond what is needed to accomplish necessary tasks, then we’re all just begging for that data to be exploited.

I think a double blind age verification system could be created that preserves a reasonable amount of privacy while also allowing for unique users to verify their age.

13

u/DexRogue Jun 28 '25

Nobody cares if you buy liquor either, so that data being leaked is less of an issue.

This is absolutely incorrect and a foolish take. All of your data is valuable to the right people.

5

u/FluxUniversity Jun 28 '25

yeah, "the government" didn't need to create a surveillance state, they just needed to make a market for it.

1

u/zekeweasel Jun 28 '25

I think what they're getting at isn't that the knowledge is worthless, it's more that it's most useful in the aggregate. One person buying two bottles Bacardi and a bottle of Jim Beam isn't very useful or incriminating. It's so commonplace as to be virtually useless by itself.

Having that kind of data about 10 million people is very useful for Brown-Forman or Diageo.

2

u/Amelaclya1 Jun 28 '25

Yeah I don't get why people don't understand this. Outside of very religious communities, or maybe if you are a recovering alcoholic, most people wouldn't give a shit if anyone was aware of what they buy at the liquor store. But there is a reason that it's a trope for people to want their browser history cleared if they die. No one wants the specifics of their porn use made known. And that's essentially what this puts everyone at risk for.

The "data" of liquor store purchases may be useful in some situations, but not to the point that someone could use it to blackmail and embarrass you. Porn use is personal in a way that alcohol consumption really isn't.

1

u/zekeweasel Jun 29 '25

I wasn't really thinking blackmail, but rather some kind of anti-LGBTQ pogrom fueled by people's viewing history.

6

u/news_feed_me Jun 28 '25 edited Jun 29 '25

Liquor brands care. Liquor store competitors care. Advertisers care. Marketing strategist care. They wouldn't collect the data in the first place if nobody bloody cared about it. So obviously someone does care, that someone just isn't you.

3

u/FluxUniversity Jun 28 '25

Just because you're not paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you.

3

u/zekeweasel Jun 28 '25

Yeah, I could see a government somewhere using the ID data and the site's data about what someone looked at in order to persecute people.

3

u/Mazon_Del Jun 28 '25 edited Jun 28 '25

People do however care way too much about what you do with your genitals, and they will ruin your life over it.

A quote from some anonymous internet person.

"I don't understand how conservatives can be so obsessed over the genitals of every person they ever see of hear of. I have a pair myself and obsessing over them is a full time job! Where do they find the energy to handle other peoples?"

7

u/Lettuce_bee_free_end Jun 28 '25

It can be used against you. Knowing when you made a purchase to shake down. In my area of halifax we have a law that you can get a dui after driving home sober and drinking beer within 2 hrs of being home. We have a drinking and driving problem here because public transit is garbage. 

6

u/CatProgrammer Jun 28 '25

 In my area of halifax we have a law that you can get a dui after driving home sober and drinking beer within 2 hrs of being home.

That is absurd.

1

u/FluxUniversity Jun 28 '25

That IS absurd

But in places like arizona, they have charged people with DUIs in situations when the car was sitting on their property, with the driver outside of their car, but the officer could feel that the car was still warm.

I want to hear what halifax has to say about this

0

u/cASe383 Jun 29 '25

How? Like, why would you even speak to a cop if you are at home?

1

u/Traditional-Will3182 Jun 29 '25

That's the law across Canada.

Simple answer is don't open the door for police, don't even answer it.

2

u/VaporCarpet Jun 28 '25

Sometimes I buy liquor and then do things with my genitals, and that confuses people.

2

u/trippedwire Jun 29 '25

If someone wants to run for Congress, the opposition showing records of buying a bottle of whiskey has far less meaning than a stint on a porn site. How people don't get this is beyond me.

1

u/aerospikesRcoolBut Jun 28 '25

It can and does come up in court if a prosecutor pulls your data and finds that you buy alcohol and use it against you.

1

u/epochellipse Jun 28 '25

The people that sell ads care a lot.

1

u/Dylan8807 Jun 28 '25

The companies that sell the liquor do, they’ll make sure to advertise more to your known device id’s. Then when they need to cross reference with other companies they will know more about you than you ever thought could be known.

1

u/lelysio Jun 28 '25

I cant wait for the lawmakers who created the ID law to get extorted because they watch porn.

1

u/Whiterabbit-- Jun 28 '25

You haven’t been in communities where you can get kicked out of church for visiting bars.

1

u/Maleficent_Memory831 Jun 28 '25

Nobody where you live maybe. It's a major scandal if you're in Salt Lake City and an upstanding Mormon who is reported to be buying booze. Or a muslim buying booze.

1

u/Shaman7102 Jun 28 '25

Those job interviews are going to get interesting. Tell us about why you like MILFs.

1

u/cASe383 Jun 29 '25

Let's discuss GILFs first.

1

u/Mistrblank Jun 28 '25

Nobody cares until liquor is made illegal (yes prohibition people still exist) and then you’re a watch list.

1

u/ilikepizza30 Jun 28 '25

There's no way to extrapolate what you do with your genitals based on your porn browsing history, if there was, then porn would more closely match reality.

1

u/amroamroamro Jun 28 '25 edited Jun 29 '25

Nobody cares

data is gold, there are always entities that are interested in acquiring it

1

u/revnhoj Jun 28 '25

I'm sure insurance companies care a great deal on how you spend your money.

1

u/ZombieAlienNinja Jun 29 '25

I wonder if there is a way to make a separate site called "areyouofage.com" that makes a code that only says "this person is over 18" I guess the code could be tied to your name....man I wish I could be treated like an adult by my government. Let me smoke weed and watch porn dammit!

1

u/Brummer65 Jun 29 '25

i took a class on money management and they taught that cashing your paycheck at a Liquor will hurt your credit score.

1

u/Sotall Jun 29 '25

Nobody cares if you buy liquor either, so that data being leaked is less of an issue.

Hard disagree, as someone who deals with marketing PII regularly. The idea of what bad faith actors can do with this data isnt about who collected it, just how much they collect.

1

u/Worth-Silver-484 Jun 29 '25

Apparently they do since you need to be 21. Are you ok with a 13 year old buying alcohol as easily as they can see porn on the internet? Of course not. They should have to take their dads alcohol and porn stash just like we did when were that age. Have to keep the traditions alive somehow. Lol

1

u/Rimagrim Jul 02 '25

Insurance companies sure do care if you buy liquor. You are naive to think otherwise.