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.

  • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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    2 hours ago

    Noooo haha we we can’t fix your real problems that you want us to fix because of how we think some witch hunter in the 1600s relates to the constitution, and politics is just hard and moves slow :(

    Anyway, here, we shitcanned the constitution for something pretty much nobody asked for and won’t actually fix anything. Enjoy <3

  • JaggedRobotPubes@lemmy.world
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    11 hours ago

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

    What an absolute sign of weakness.

    • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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      8 hours ago

      Or, and hear me out on this one, you’re a member of a group, like various other groups, that want to control every aspect of human lives, including sex, to bind them to our little group forever so we can control them even more?

    • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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      2 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 prudishness.

  • Huckledebuck@sh.itjust.works
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    12 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.

    • samus12345@lemm.ee
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      2 hours ago

      Good luck finding a magazine anywhere any more. I assume they can still find it online from random small websites, like in the old days.

      • Huckledebuck@sh.itjust.works
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        13 minutes ago

        I was kind of just pointing out that a lot of kids don’t go out looking for porn. Porn somehow just shows up because adults are irresponsible.

  • ThomasCrappersGhost@feddit.uk
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    13 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”.

  • asteriskeverything@lemmy.world
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    20 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
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      8 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
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    22 hours ago

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

    • jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de
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      18 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.

    • sik0fewl@lemmy.ca
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      19 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?

  • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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    1 day 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.

    • Stovetop@lemmy.world
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      1 hour ago

      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.

      Not true. Some boys also want to look at dicks.

    • circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org
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      22 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.

    • TimeSquirrel@kbin.melroy.org
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      1 day 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
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        23 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
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        23 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.

  • reddig33@lemmy.world
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    24 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
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        1 day 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
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          7 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.

          • danc4498@lemmy.world
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            2 hours ago

            Just gonna say I’m fine with people owning guns. I just think the courts have interpreted the amendment very generously. More so than any other amendment by far.

        • kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          19 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

          • danc4498@lemmy.world
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            12 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
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            19 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
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              3 hours ago

              Your argument is a logical fallacy

              https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_a_disjunct

              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
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              19 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
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                19 hours ago

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

  • Nougat@fedia.io
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    1 day ago

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

  • minnow@lemmy.world
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    1 day 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.