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

wat

[nitehawk214]

I have no idea who is being the bigger asshole here. But if any porn site can take on a government and win, its Pornhub.

Re:wat

[nitehawk214]

Also, submittors and editors, try paragraphs. They are not just for kids in school trying to pad the line count on their papers.

Re:wat

[maestroX]

Also, submittors and editors, try paragraphs

Geez, difficult enough thinking pornhub...

Premium content just for Russians

[haruchai]

"Vlad does Crimea" - HD short about a balding, bisexual failed hockey player who goes around Sevastopol looking for anal 3-ways

In America, you watch porn.

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, porn watches YOU!

Re:In America, you watch porn.

[ghoul]

Given that communism in Russia fell 26 years ago you were probably not even a gleam in your daddy's eye when Russia was Soviet. Find a new meme. Maybe in Killary's America.......

Re:In America, you watch porn.

[GNious]

"In Killary America, not 200.000 die from GOP-Care"
Like that?

Re:In America, you watch porn.

[ghoul]

How About ?In Killary's America USA provides arms and intelligence TO Al-Qaeda not AGAINST Al-Qaeda.

Hunting Season

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a way for them to track and hunt and the LGBT community.

Re:Hunting Season

[TimothyHollins]

Or you could read the TFS and see that PornHub doesn't send any information about what the user viewed.

Let me help you -

"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."

So, how about Russians on pornhub

[Snotnose]

I'll admit my sample size is small, but it seems like a lot of the stuff on pornhub stars Russian citizens. I'm gonna guess second only to Americans.

/ sample size, not unit size

Re:So, how about Russians on pornhub

[lucm]

I'll admit my sample size is small

You have to pace yourself. Think of it as a marathon, not a sprint, and it should help with your sample size.

Re:So, how about Russians on pornhub

[yobjob]

Russians are the largest Slavic group but they are outnumbered by the rest of the combined Slavic nationalities. But to a western audience it's easier to call them all Russians. It's porno not geography class.

Re:So, how about Russians on pornhub

[mjwx]

Russians are the largest Slavic group but they are outnumbered by the rest of the combined Slavic nationalities. But to a western audience it's easier to call them all Russians. It's porno not geography class.

Further more, how do you tell someone is Russian just by looking at them. A lot of English women can easily be made up to look Slavic despite being quite Anglo. Even with languages, unless you're familiar with the languages you probably wont be able to tell spoken Russian from Greek at normal speaking pace, let alone Russian from Latvian.

Besides, I would have thought after American produced porn, the Japanese had the next biggest slice of the market.

Well then...

[Anonymous Coward]

... that explains the big upsurge in XHamster wikipedia hits lately.

in post-soviet russia

[veron.claudio]

p0rn watches you.

Elementary, my dear Vatsov

[arth1]

"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."

One can safely presume that what they browsed was porn, da?

Re:Elementary, my dear Vatsov

[Guillermito]

"I just browse it for the articles"

Re:Elementary, my dear Vatsov

[arth1]

Yes, and I only browsed xhamster because my dear rodent had died. That's why I searched for "bad pussy" too.

Clap Clap Clap

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Just...

Bravo.

virtual number?

[ch0knuti]

Just checked the vk.com site. It is true that you have to give them a mobile phone number for them to complete the signup process (They send an SMS to confirm the number). Isn't it possible to use a virtual SMS number to defeat this? Just googling "online phone number to receive SMS" game me a whole lot of free sites that provide such a service, free.

Re: virtual number?

[Reverend Green]

Don't know about Russia.

Here is the USSA, almost all sites that require a phone number for identify verification block VOIP and other free services. 'Cuz if they allowed that it wouldn't be any good for tying internet logs to a specific citizen. And that would make the Gestapo very unhappy. Tyranny hates and fears anonymity.

What the fuck?

[nightfire-unique]

Jesus christ.

It's 2017. Can we please get over this negative attitude towards sex?

Re:What the fuck?

[gweihir]

It is still the same 0.1 "Caveman" model that far too many humans follow. No enlightenment to be had there.

Re: What the fuck?

[KGIII]

Belief that humans are, generally speaking enlightened, is sheer hubris. I suspect we will always retain our base instincts, prejudices, and predisposition for violence. We kinda suck.

Re: What the fuck?

[gweihir]

Indeed. Or put another way: Most humans understand nothing, including their own personality. Add that most humans do not really benefit from education either (they ignore anything they do not like, for example history and inconvenient hard scientific facts), and as a group, humans are complete losers. However, there is a persistent observation that in almost any group that was thrown together with some randomization, about 10-15% do not suck and do actually understand things and are capable of independent thought. It is almost as two different species have been mixed together on the mental side.

Re: What the fuck?

[KGIII]

LOL Nobody listens to that 15%, I don't imagine. Yeah, we kinda suck.

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:Probably not

[Kjella]

Oh please, we have playboys and prostitutes that have had sex with hundreds if not thousands of sex partners so pregnancies and STDs is pretty much solved except for drunken unprotected sex and religious hang-ups that prevent abortion. Pretty much the only unsolved problem is supply/demand, which is what leads to commercialized/weaponized sex. If both sides felt they could get their sex needs solved with toys and the dating scene became about finding love/relationships and not about scoring/hoarding access to sex organs we'd see the negativity go away. Until then there'll still be all sorts of problems as men want sex and choose to get it in foul ways as well as women using sex as a tool for power/money. And then there's some very fucked up honor systems with different rules for men and women, but that's a much bigger social/civil rights issue.

Re:Probably not

[maestroX]

And then there's some very fucked up honor systems with different rules for men and women, but that's a much bigger social/civil rights issue

Biologic issue--

Re:Probably not

[mjwx]

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.

Christ, how did the human race ever not die out if most women died in child birth.

Sounds like you need an education in history. Back in the Roman and Greek days, sex was free and easy. Prostitution was rife, gay sex between men wasn't given a second thought. At several points the Pharaohs of Egypt ordered wives to be naked at all times whilst at home to increase the birth rate. The modern hangups on sex occurred when Abrahamic religions took hold. Sex is an incredibly powerful motivator and the churches needed to control it. If you ever live in places that never had a huge Christian or Muslim influence, like much of Asia, they tend to be a lot more uninhibited about sex. They accept it as a part of life.

In the west, the old attitudes are dying. The church no longer gets to dictate things in the bedroom like it did in the 1950's.

Men still don't have effective contraception (condoms break) and women's contraception has their own troubles.

You also need an education about modern contraceptive methods. Condoms don't break that often. They only reason they say they're 99% effective is because there is a 0.0000000000000000000000001% chance of them not working and you can only use so many 9's before the audience stops you.

The biggest problem we have are the number of people using antibiotics to treat minor STD's... especially when they're self medicating because our society has made it Wrong(TM) to talk about sexual problems. People end up using antibiotics for fungal infections when they should be using an anti-fungal cream.

We're a long way off from solving all the problems related to sex or even minimizing them

The biggest problem we need to solve about sex is that sex is a problem that needs to be quashed. Attitudes like yours are the problem, churches are the problem. Anyone who stands in the way of proper sexual education is the problem. Most STD's can be avoided by taking the proper precautions. The really bad ones like HIV, Hepatitis C and E, so on and so forth are actually incredibly hard to contract (HIV is very difficult to transfer during normal vaginal sex, it requires both parties to have open sores).

The great AIDS epidemic envisioned 50 years ago in Thailand never came to pass... Why, because the Thai government took sex education seriously. Google Mr Condom for an education (See also: cabbages and condoms). Hell, but you wont because you've already made up your mind based on false information.

Re:Probably not

[dddux]

Well, using Pornhub is a really good way to avoid all these problems with unwanted kids and STDs. Isn't it? It is also a good way to give men who can't, for some reason, be in a stable relationship, have an outlet, so they don't get tempted to harass women and god forbid - rape them. IMHO

Re:The poster is the biggest asshole

[AHuxley]

The UK had its attempts too
UK Considering Automatic Web Filtering For Adult Content (June 29, 2012)
https://yro.slashdot.org/story...
The US goes after gambling online.
US Outlaws Online Gambling (October 03, 2006)
https://slashdot.org/story/06/...
Many nations have tried or floated different ideas to enforce their laws online.
But an AC always likes to remind us of Russia :)

Re:The poster is the biggest asshole

[quenda]

Russia is just angry because Pornhub rejected their "Golden Showers in the Moscow Ritz-Carlton" submission.

Re:Excellent Idea

[DivineKnight]

Right. Block all the pr0n sites. That will start WWIII.

Re:The poster is the biggest asshole

[Tanktalus]

You have to give the credit card companies your SSN? In Canada, the equivalent, the Social Insurance Number (SIN), is requested, but I explicitly cross out that field on every application. I've never been turned down.

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).

Very appropriate title

[jandersen]

...Pornhub Vice President Corey Price ...

It figures a company that deals in porn would have a president of vice.

And slashdot became fake news source too?

[NuclearCat]

The only thing did Pornhub - they require authentication by social network. Thats truth.
Requiring passport is manipulation of facts and lies at the end. How it is called, fake news? Is slashdot turned to fake news?
Here is why:
Social network need telephone number, mostly against spam, but not specifically russian telephone number. There is many neighbouring countries who sell SIM cards without passport.
Plus, in Russia there is black market in any metro station entrance and you can buy telephone number without any passport.
The only who will have problems to obtain such sim cards - very young children.
But still, they use their own number parents give to them, register another account (it's allowed), and just specify adult birthday date in social network, and free to go to access adult website.

Re:And slashdot became fake news source too?

[Plus1Entropy]

Sightly misleading headline, perhaps, but not fake news. From TFS:

[...] 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.

PornHub is recommending what they believe to be the easiest method to access their site legally. Yeah there's a black market for phone numbers but that just means you are breaking a different law. A better headline might be: "Russians May Need Passport to Legally Access PornHub".

Re:They can't win this way.

[Plus1Entropy]

In the US you supply your SSN by proxy [...] usually a credit card or license

You only have to provide a CC if you are going to pay the site for access. And seriously, what site asks for a driver's license? Do you keep a scan/pic of your license handy in case you need for a quick fap?

Re: The poster is the biggest asshole

[Brockmire]

Really? I don't need to provide social security number to apply for credit card in Canada. It's optional.