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.

  • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    4 hours ago

    This is why we gotta ban TikTok!!! \s

    Seriously tho I can’t believe the dummies who buy into this authoritarian garbage.

  • Freefall@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    15
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    9 hours ago

    Don’t even act like the SCOTUS upholds the Constitution, they uphold the christian bible now. So unamerican.

  • Good_morning@lemmynsfw.com
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    8 hours ago

    You’d think they don’t consider that decisions like this will create more Luigi’s, ironically enough from their own base.

  • AngryRobot@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    14 hours ago

    We’re going to see a lot more of these challenges to SCOTUS precedent in the coming years. The Dobbs decision was them stating loud and clear that they will find any excuse to justify their prefud8ced decisions.

  • Churlish_Witness@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    48
    ·
    20 hours ago

    it’s so shocking that the right-wing’s commitment to free speech was entirely performative and predicated on no principle whatsoever

      • Churlish_Witness@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        2 hours ago

        it’s adorable how you think Joe Biden isn’t right-wing lol

        Democrats are just reasonable conservatives, Republicans are just fascist conservatives. All conservatives, still all dogshit, still all love genocide and imperialism.

        • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          7 hours ago

          Coincidentally, I just rewatched this the other night (for like the thousandth time). I feel like it gets more and more poignant (and TLJ’s acting impresses me more) as I get older…

          And it does kind of apply here. In the film, Jones’ character is just at a loss as to “who the hell these people are” after witnessing their apparently nihilistic and seemingly random murder spree.

          I feel that in my bones now. Who the fuck are these psychopaths?

  • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    23
    ·
    23 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

  • Maggoty@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    11
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    22 hours ago

    I’m calling it right now. They use this as first amendment cover for TikTok.

  • JaggedRobotPubes@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    63
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    1 day ago

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

    What an absolute sign of weakness.

    • Bassman1805@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      edit-2
      18 hours ago

      You don’t have to think sex is bad to think porn is bad for children and teens.

      This Texas law and others like it are bullshit, but making strawman arguments about them isn’t helping anything.

    • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      28
      ·
      1 day 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
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      33
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      23 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.

      • futatorius@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        9 hours ago

        It’s fringe fanatical Catholics on the Supreme Court who are driving this. Maybe they couldn’t find enough fundies who knew how to read.

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        19 hours ago

        They’re godsdamned freaks is what they are. Their religion says sex is disgusting and evil. Mine says it’s holy and pleasure is sacred. But neither of us should get to decide the law based on what gods we got. I know that. Jewish Americans know that. Hindu Americans know that. Muslim Americans know it too. And I ain’t seen Buddhists trying to ban alcohol in any city in America, nor shinto folks trying to divert public school money to preaching about amaterasu. Turns out it’s just the Christians round here who don’t get that when your religion says you can’t do something it means you don’t get to do it, but the rest of us are more than free to.

  • Huckledebuck@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    36
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 day 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
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      23 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
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        21 hours 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.

    • ErrorCode@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      20 hours ago

      “Woods” or “Field” porn was surprising common. I was honestly surprised to hear that was so many of my friends (and my) introduction to porn.

      • Mpatch@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        7 hours ago

        Guess that’s one way to get kids outside these days. Just scater some porn mag pages in the woods, modern-day scavenger hunt.

      • spyd3r@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        9 hours ago

        Do kids even go wandering through the woods anymore, seems like all that land is housing developments now?

  • ThomasCrappersGhost@feddit.uk
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    27
    ·
    1 day 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”.

  • esc27@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    103
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    2 days 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
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      44
      ·
      edit-2
      2 days 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
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      2 days 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?