Russians Now Need a Passport To Watch Pornhub (vice.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VICE News: Pornhub, the world's biggest porn site, now requires users in Russia to log in using social media accounts linked to their passports and cell phones. Monday's change is the latest chapter of an ongoing feud between Pornhub and the Russian government. The site was blocked in Russia last September for allegedly spreading information detrimental to the development of children, then reinstated in April after instituting a requirement that users specify their age. At the time, Pornhub asked the Russian state media regulation agency whether officials there would lift the ban if they were given free Pornhub Premium accounts. Pornhub announced the change on its own Vkontakte page page by saying "now you can simply log in through your favorite social network" instead of filling in your date of birth. But the government policy that Pornhub says prompted the change presumably wasn't aimed at making it easier for Russians to watch porn. Instead, it may be a means of surveillance; to open a Vkontakte account, users need to enter their cell phone numbers. And to legally purchase a SIM card in Russia, you need to disclose your passport information. "While this exact method is not a condition [from the Russian government], we found this is the best solution for our users to comply with Russian access laws," Pornhub Vice President Corey Price said. "Also to be clear, Pornhub does not log or store any of your personal information, this is just a check to see if users are over 18. On [Vkontakte's] end, all they will see is see the request from that user, they will not know what that user browsed on Pornhub."

Comments

Probably not

[rsilvergun]

for thousands of years sex was incredibly risky. Most women died in child birth at some point. STDs were even less well understood. Then there's the high cost of raising children. And that's before we get into a discussion of the various forms of rape.

Men still don't have effective contraception (condoms break) and women's contraception has their own troubles. We'll a long way off from curing known STDs (and we're still discovering new ones). I suppose we've more or less solved women dying in child birth though.

We're a long way off from solving all the problems related to sex or even minimizing them. So no, we probably aren't going to do anything about negative attitudes towards sex in our lifetimes.

Re:The poster is the biggest asshole

[Raenex]

All the Russian govt has asked is verify age>18 which even the US govt asks. The way US sites do it is ask for a credit card.

This is not Insightful, it is Wrong. You don't need a credit card to access Pornhub or other porn sites in the US, legally or in practice. Attempts by the federal government to require this were repeatedly struck down as unconstitutional (Communications Decency Act and Child Online Protection Act).