On Sept. 11, Michigan representatives proposed an internet content ban bill unlike any of the others we’ve seen: This particularly far-reaching legislation would ban not only many types of online content, but also the ability to legally use any VPN.
The bill, called the Anticorruption of Public Morals Act and advanced by six Republican representatives, would ban a wide variety of adult content online, ranging from ASMR and adult manga to AI content and any depiction of transgender people. It also seeks to ban all use of VPNs, foreign or US-produced.
Main issue I have with this article, and a lot of articles on this topic, is it doesn’t address the issue of youth access to porn. I think any semi-intelligent person knows this is a parenting issue, but unfortunately that cat’s out of the bag, thanks to the right. “Proliferation of porn” is the '90s crime scare (that never really died) all over again. If a politician or industry expert is speaking against bills like this, their talking points have to include:
- Privacy-respecting alternatives that promise parents that their precious babies won’t be able to access that horrible dangerous porn! (I don’t argue that porn can’t be dangerous, but this is yet another disingenuous right-wing culture (holy) war)
- Addressing that vagueness in the bill sets up the government as morality police (it’s right there in the title of the bill, FFS), and NOBODY in a “free” country should ever want that.
- Stop saying it can be bypassed with technology. The VPN ban in this bill is a reaction to talking points like that.
- Recognize and call out that this has nothing to do with protecting children and everything to do with a religious minority imposing its will on the rest of the country (plenty of recent examples to pull from here).
Unfortunately this is becoming enough of “A Thing” that the left is going to have to, once again, be seen doing “something” about it. So they have to thread a needle of “protecting kids,” while respecting the privacy of their parents who want their kids protected and want to look at porn, and protecting businesses that require secure communications.
NO VPN!
And the corporate world comes to a screeching halt.
These fuckwads don’t even understand anything about what they’re trying to legislate.
When shit starts being monitored, I want to see the legislators’ traffic public first.
Corporate VPNs generally don’t route www traffic, keeping that separate is kind of the point.
So unless you can convince your job to provide you porn, you’re out of luck.
Corporate VPNs generally don’t route www traffic.
Few corporate VPN’s don’t route www traffic. split tunnel in a large corporation It’s an infoleak waiting to happen.
And the corporate world comes to a screeching halt.
In theory, businesses would be required to register their VPNs and… idk, this would limit access to them somehow?
Much like with the Assault Weapons Ban and the assorted online porn bans and strip club bans and dry counties and SEC rules on insider trading, etc, etc, etc a lot of this boils down to “how hard do you want to work in order to enforce this?”
And the short answer is “we only want an excuse to arrest people arbitrarily”. So a VPN can quickly because a “everyone with an Internet connection is a criminal suspect”. And then you just harass the people you want to harass under cover of “we thought you had kiddie porn” as an excuse
I once worked for a banking transaction company (or something like that, I did their network and telecom support, none of the actual business) and they had offices in Russia. I was told that since VPNs are more restricted there, but required for the business, they had to have a special application with the government to be allowed to have the site to site VPN work.
I imagine they’d try to do the same, as well as grant them another way to be in the pocket of or have some control over businesses. If the government has to approve your necessary security software, you’ll want to stay on their good side.
It also seeks to ban all use of VPNs, foreign or US-produced.
That doesn’t sound like they plan on any exceptions. That sounds like the end of all business in that state.
When shit starts being monitored, I want to see the legislators’ traffic public first.
Oh my sweet summer child. Of course these laws won’t apply to them.
And if they do, they will make up shit to use the dirt you dug up against them against you.
Kind of like how when a cop shoots a black guy they look for whatever parking ticket they got 10 years prior as proof he is a cracking smoking cap busting gangsta who was itching for a bullet. Never being slightly concerned for the cop’s violent history or misconduct in various police forces.
Now now I didn’t say they were going to allow that.
Bro can we not?
I thought I got lucky to be born into a family that was able to leave China, and I could browse the internet freely in the US. What the fuck y’all? Just let me have my unlimited access to entertainment in peace mmkay?
So… fucking… cooked…
Blatent First Amendment violation.
I mean what even is gonna be the difference between fucking CCP and this BS.
(Canadaaa plssss lemmme innn? 🥺👉👈❓️
Australia? 👀)You seem to be picking the absolute worst countries if you’re looking for freedom, especially online. Australia is already worse than the US in many ways, and Canada not too far behind. How about Europe?
I mean what even is gonna be the difference between fucking CCP and this BS.
Most notably, I’d say the fact that the CCP is a competent government leading the country into its golden age, while the Republican US government is driving its country into collapse. We can all have differing opinions about the CCP, but at least we have to give them credit where it’s due.
This is all your fault for sending those dmails :/
Um, how the actual fuck are businesses supposed to operate where some regressive dumbfucks have outlawed VPNs?
Also, never underestimate the ability of a set of dumbasses doing some damage to this country - for one thing, see the asshole in the WH right now doing all kinds of self-owns to this country.
Secondly, I’m old enough to remember things like the V-chip and the Clipper chip and the government going after Phil Zimmerman. All of these things were rather stupid. And that was during the Clinton administration, which, sure, they were right-leaning as well…were not fucking crazy right wing.
Oh, businesses will get an exception for their company owned hardware, I’m sure. Suck it, pleb!
Um, how the actual fuck are businesses supposed to operate where some regressive dumbfucks have outlawed VPNs?
Hardwire connections in the office. Finally they’ll be able to undo all the good things that came from covid!! I mean, who doesn’t thrive in an environment where you’ll be constantly monitored so they can sell your work behavior for privately targetted ads? (/s, but only partial)
I know a great many companies - especially larger ones - have forced people back to the office. I see also that the unhinged government has also force people to stop working remotely, for purely ideological reasons.
But there are still a whole lot of people working from home, either fully, or as part of a hybrid arrangement.
I’m assuming this regressive and idiotic bill would have carveouts for the “right” people to be “allowed” to use VPNs, but if they didn’t…wow. The business use for VPNs are more than just working from home.
is it doesn’t address the issue of youth access to porn. I think any semi-intelligent person knows this is a parenting issue
There sure are a lot of stupid fucking people then, huh?
Unfortunately this is becoming enough of “A Thing” that the left is going to have to, once again, be seen doing “something”
Personally I think the left should hammer in on “The right are too lazy and incompetent to raise their kids. They want the government to do it for them. No one who’s too unwilling or unable to spend time with their kids should be in government” or something like that. Just rub their noses in how stupid, lazy, and incompetent, the right is. Because they are. They are the worst people.
There sure are a lot of stupid fucking people then, huh?
I mean… yeah? Seen any election results in the past few years?
The fact that Republicans get any votes past the year 2012 is enough to convince me that about 1/3 of Americans are dumber than a box of rocks.
Take the average person and remeber half the people are dumber then that.
Then there is an entire political group, dumber than THOSE people, at their best.
So are the third that don’t bother voting.
we built our national public education system around breeding compliant factory workers, then cut all the factory jobs.
Amen to your point about rubbing their faces in it.
The absolutely stunning level of hypocrisy from the Republicans who claim to be the party of small government has become such a laughing stock. Or at least I would be laughing if they didn’t have control of everything right now. Fuck.
Can we get a list of the names of the representatives supporting this?
Any other identifiable information would be great as well.
Fuck this social contract.
how about their browsing histories?
What, and violate their privacy? Know your place peasant. /s
All vpns including ones for work? Not a snowballs chance in hell
What, you got something to hide bro?!
Sure, lots of spreadsheets with sales data.
With a name like that I would have figured some sort of mind map or Gantt chart
Huge tracts of sales data!
They’ll start with banning all the personnal VPN providers to make it harder for people to acquire the service.
Nah, they’ll start by banning everything, then realize why that doesn’t work, then stumble over themselves trying to fix the mess they created.
They will ban legitimate businesses in capitalism? Hmm… sounds like a lawsuit.
“If you removed all the porn from the internet you would be left with one website, titled “Bring Back the Porn””
Scrubs was way ahead of its time.
I just masturbated to these representatives. Legally that makes them pornography, and they are also required to be banned under this bill’s provisions.
Taking one for the team.
It was a challenging fap.
but your proudest
Will it ban their Grindr access though?
Only for non-closeted gays. But for Republicans who only do it to remind themselves of the evils of gay sex it’ll be readily accessible.
Corporate media’s job is to manufacture consent. Please do not accept their spin uncritically.
This has nothing to do with kids or porn, those are always easy bells for censors to ring. It’s about control and tracking. They want to be able to tie anonymous online activity to your real identity.
Politically, we really need to stop accepting their framing that they’re trying to protect kids. These bills are only about collecting data.
“Banning VPNs” has some real " I declare bankruptcy!" vibes.
Why not also ban cash? That can be used to evade detection as well and is notoriously used by criminals.
they kinda did in australia. If you want to withdraw more than $10K you need proof of what you’re going to pay with it.
In Canada it is the same. And in Quebec carrying more than $3K Canadian is considered proof that you are up to no good and will get you arrested.
It’s never been about the children, either. It’s been about reigning control and power which is why a lot of Liberals get on board with these bills too. One of the reasons i felt so disgusted to vote for Hillary Clinton was because of her stance on censorship in the 90’s. Today it’s succeeding in porn. Tomorrow it will start succeeding in literature.
The Clintons are actual shitstains who are part of this two-pronged approach to siphon as much power away from the people and into the hands of the ruling class as possible.
The representatives proposing this bill must have some really embarrassing search history.
This fuck needs to be under a microscope.
This is a test balloon. One state is needed to overcome all the technical hurdles like clearing VPNs for work. Once that is done it will be roled out everywhere.
Without ruling out VPNs, all the other internet laws don’t make sense. So this step is necessary and almost inevitable.
Yup. It’s their strategy and they’ve used it multiple times with great success.
Release the Epstein files
We are so past that shit.
Never. The administration continues to play keep-away precisely because they are afraid of the files coming out. And the sooner the files do, the less complete the stranglehold on power, the more damage the files being released would do.
the more damage the files being released would do.
Trump could start tossing toddlers in wood chippers on the (remains of) the white house lawn and two days later his supporters will be wearing wood-chipper T-shirts.
He owns the executive branch, the judicial branch and has a collar around congress and makes them lap up water from a dog bowl. He wouldn’t face consequence more than light-night comedian jokes and produce a lot of content for leftist youtubers to rant about.
Our real problem here is the work being done in the background that is stripping rights from workers, defunded oversight panels and watchdog groups in the government, and basically all departments that rely on science and factual knowledge, as well as the slow, creeping work being done from state to state to dismantle privacy as a concept. To say nothing of the massive amount of money being shuttled out the back door in inside trading every time the white-house pulls the tariff lever.
Literally everything else we’re distracted with is just that, a distraction. Epstein, ICE, the lies and performances and dance routines to get everyone screaming at each other about what’s the biggest problem to address. The scattershot method of lighting too many fires for anyone to target is working spectacularly. As evident by the fact that we’re still here trying to get justice about something that will NEVER see justice.
We need to be dismantling his support system with focused efforts at ousting congresspeople and senators and redrawing district maps to stay ahead of their own gerrymandering, as well as campaigning for local and state lawmakers who aren’t subservient to Trump’s clan.
Nope, keeping it alive for reminder to MAGA . Charly Kirk is past .
