The US constitution does not apply to citizens - it applies to the government.
Citizens in the US are implicitly allowed to do whatever they like, subject to laws that the government enacts. The constitution describes those areas where the government is allowed to pass laws. All other areas are off limits to the government, and left for the people to do as they like. To emphasize the point, the amendments specify certain areas that the government is extra-especially-not-allowed to create any laws about, like speech.
The extent to which this is observed today is quite dubious. There are lots of laws that the US government passes which have little to do with anything the constitution allows them to do - but they kinda hand-wave around that and gesture toward something, like the "commerce clause" or whatnot as justification.
But in theory - for any law passed - it is unconstitutional unless you can say exactly where in the constitution it is explicitly allowed.
* Having written all that, I will add that "government" above means the US Federal government, not all the other ones. State, local, have a lot of latitude to make whatever laws they want, unless a federal law specifically prohibits it.
> * Having written all that, I will add that "government" above means the US Federal government, not all the other ones. State, local, have a lot of latitude to make whatever laws they want, unless a federal law specifically prohibits it.
This is not entirely correct. In general many elements of the Constitution are incorporated and apply at all levels of government. It even outranks state constitutions where the two conflict.
No, in other words, states and local governments are also bound by the Constitution in many of the the same ways that the federal government is.
The major difference is the Tenth Amendment, which sets the states apart by specifying that any powers not "delegated to" the federal government are reserved exclusively for the states. (In practice courts have found many "implied powers" that are not explicitly enumerated).
This is exactly it. They are charging that price because that price will be paid, and this maximizes their overall profit. In other similar situations this would spur competition, which would ultimately drive down prices to a reasonable level. But in the healthcare industry competition is often prohibited or made very difficult by law. You can cite the patent system as an example of this, but another horrible one is the "certificate of need" laws, which should infuriate you.
Unfortunately that 2% was the part going to actual firefighters. The other 98% was administrative overhead. Both remaining firefighters are spread thin.
The folks who are interested in content like this will still search it out, but now they're more likely to end up on shadier sites instead. Pornhub (Aylo), as porn sites go, is legitimate and goes out of their way to remove problem content and follow laws and regulations. They are also based in Canada. I'm sure there are other sites that are much worse that will fill this vacuum.
The only thing PH doesn't seem keen on is compromising their users' privacy and serving as age-enforcer.
So this legislation seems to make things worse, not better. Sure, you can always say "well PH could just comply with the age-verification laws," but I applaud them for taking a stand on privacy, and also them saying "fine, if you don't like us here we'll leave." It's really a loss for exactly the states that are passing these laws. They'll just end up with people going to shadier sites.
What worries me most though, is that this will lead to people using VPNs more (which is fine), but then states making VPNs themselves illegal (they'll use terms like "tools to circumvent...") which is super bad.
I'll add that there's plenty of porn easily accessible on Reddit and Twitter and those websites haven't implemented any age verification measures yet. Chat apps like Discord and Telegram host a lot too.
My guess is if the lawmakers are successful in making porn websites comply with age verification then all social media websites will have to next.
> ... is legitimate and goes out of their way to remove problem content ...
This is blatantly not true. I know because I've reported a clearly illegal video on every avenue I could find (the report button, emailing support, etc..) and the video was only taken down when PornHub removed all videos expect the verified ones some years ago.
I didn't say that they remove every single piece of problem content, or that they remove every single thing a user flags. But I do believe that they go out of their way to do so. They make way too much money to do otherwise.
Also, they may (I hope) be a better company now than in the past, as your example seems to show (you indicate that they started requiring verification for uploaded videos). Maybe they grew up, or maybe they just realized that their revenue (or entire business) would be compromised unless they took serious, ongoing action.
In any case - Aylo/PH must certainly be better than many of the alternatives that are based in very permissive jurisdictions and just don't care. Those are the sites people in these Southern states are going to end up on now.
Yeah, no. They absolutely did not do everything in their capacity. The complete opposite is my anecdotal unsourced take.
I worked w/ a woman who used 1000s of sockpuppets of soldiers near military bases to try to wax out information about the aggression associated with their suggestion algorithms.
Pornhub is worse than YT when it comes to encouraging radicalism. She didn't even get to publish and she would receive dildos, fleshlights, and other horrific things. She left the country.
This isn’t a counterargument. Yes, mainstream US sites are not saints and have many serious issues. Also yes, they are least subject to US jurisdiction and can be held to some account. If these restrictions drive users to websites that are far, far worse then they will be doing more harm than good.
But whenever i've done so from alt accounts I get brigaded. I have literally paid people to edit comments to improve my tone and it makes no difference.
I'm just sharing a small, honest, account of lived experience. I come here for discussion. Not debate. certainly not argument. If i present myself incorrectly I try to act reflexively and openly.
Some people want to discount that and make everything fact based but sometimes sharing facts on the wrong forum just further reinforces injustice.
I do 20+ pushups, crunches, or burpees in between posts across the web. lol
Whenever I've hired a copy editor to help me deal with the line noise in my writing (sometimes a keyboard feels like a Ouija board to me) I've found they inject more errors (and more serious errors) than I do myself.
You seem to be having some communication misalignments. What ticked me off is the combativeness you displayed. Insisting hard on your side with words like “blatantly” and “Yeah, no”. Also doing burpees and pushups sounds interesting - are you overstimulated? Is that a form of stimming? Are you in the spectrum?
All aylo sites have a feature to take down content, it happens automatically and then content is sent for manual check. If it's a false report it's brought back online otherwise its permanently gone.
> So you're saying it was not true several years ago, but is true now?
IIRC, they only did anything because NYT op-ed writer basically went to war with them and shined a very bright light on all the shady stuff they were tolerating. That speaks to their true motivations.
It would be nice if we could allow for multiple viewpoints to be expressed in good faith, in order that we might argue ourselves closer to the truth and mutual understanding. But too often the loudest voices drown out the others and stifle and productive conversation, even in cases where the loudest voices are actually a small fraction of those who would want to participate in the discussion.
I'm fine with others arguing positions that I disagree with, and I would appreciate the opportunity to argue in response.
What is missed here is that this will create zero additional seats, it just changes the dynamic of how you get one.
There might have been an after-market for these reservations where you could buy one if you want to. But now what? I guess it's just a race to call the restaurant? Or to reload their reservations page over and over again on the day they open them for the day you want? If I want to eat a Fancy Restaurant, but they are normally fully booked - what do I do now?
The folks that resell reservations like this are addressing an actual problem in the market. Perhaps you do not like that they are earning money doing so, but preventing it doesn't fix the problem either.
To be a blunt as possible here: Then you don't get to go.
I recognize that the particular demographic that this board attracts probably doesn't like that answer. But among the general public, I'd say it's an extremely popular answer - and "addressing a problem in the market" this way looks like yet another way to make society unfair and biased to the rich, and the average person absolutely hates it. Which is why this law will have broad popular support.
What you do now is go eat at a different restaurant. Lots of good ones out there. I can't understand why any customer would be stupid enough to put up with that much hassle and expense just to eat at one particular popular restaurant.
And if you really like a restaurant enough to eat there all the time and become friendly with the staff then you can always get a reservation.
I thought the way people got reservations was to pay the concierge.
One way or another, you're going to have to pay to get a reservation at a hot restaurant.
It's like under communism, where the price of bread was set by the state. The result was shortages. So the real "price" a customer would pay was how long they were willing to wait in line. Customers would then pay other people to stand in line for them.
It's not possible for government to legislate away the price.
