Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

Scope and impact of the ruling and laws

• Several commenters argue the decision doesn’t “nullify” the First Amendment but upholds narrow age‑verification rules for content deemed “harmful to minors,” not all sexual content.
• Others counter that vague “obscenity” and “harmful to minors” standards, plus strict liability and high penalties, inevitably chill legal adult speech and push small creators to self‑censor or shut down.
• Debate over whether state AGs can practically prosecute out‑of‑state publishers; some say jurisdiction limits make this unlikely, others note similar extraterritorial pushes around abortion and LGBTQ issues.

Free speech, partisanship, and “cancel culture”

• Many see the laws as driven by conservative Christian moralism and part of a broader trend (e.g., book bans, drag restrictions, anti‑LGBTQ framing of “pornography,” references to Project 2025).
• Some argue neither major US party is consistently pro–free speech: the right uses the state to censor “obscenity,” the left pressures institutions socially and via norms.
• Others stress the crucial difference between social/market backlash (“cancel culture”) and state criminalization.

Age verification: technical ideas vs. reality

• Strong resistance to sending government IDs or biometrics to “random blogs” or third‑party verifiers, given massive breach risk and blackmail potential.
• Proposals: zero‑knowledge proofs, attribute‑based credentials, government or wallet‑based digital IDs that attest only “over 18” without revealing identity; browser/OS‑level parental controls honoring content tags.
• Skeptics note traffic‑analysis side channels, implementation pitfalls, and likely data abuse even with “privacy‑preserving” schemes.

Privacy and surveillance concerns

• Many see mandatory ID checks as part of a larger loss of privacy: centralized logs of who viewed what, vulnerable to government subpoenas, commercial profiling, and leaks.
• Comparison is drawn to healthcare and financial data: even with legal protections, once collected, misuse and breaches are common and hard to detect or remedy.

Parents vs. state: who protects kids?

• One camp: it’s parents’ responsibility to supervise devices, use filters, or restrict access; others shouldn’t sacrifice rights because some parents are inattentive or non‑technical.
• Another camp: many parents are overworked or lack skills; relying solely on them is unrealistic, and some state intervention is justified, analogous to offline age limits for alcohol or cigarettes.

Slippery slopes and target creep

• Widespread fear that once infrastructure for ID‑gating “porn” exists, it will be extended to:
  • LGBTQ and trans content (already labeled “pornographic” in some rhetoric and policy documents),
  • sex education, queer and even mainstream literature,
  • eventually broader political or ideological speech.
• Some explicitly compare the trajectory to morality policing in places like China or to historical US obscenity and “states’ rights” campaigns.

Workarounds and uneven effects

• Likely outcomes mentioned: major porn sites geoblocking restrictive states or complying, while smaller sites die or move offshore, Tor, or .onion.
• Kids can still bypass via friends’ devices, foreign sites, VPNs, or borrowed IDs; adults and small publishers bear the real burden while effectiveness against minors is limited.

Debate over porn’s social harm

• Some insist ubiquitous, high‑intensity online porn is socially damaging (especially to young men and relationships) and welcome barriers, even if they oppose these particular laws.
• Others say evidence of large‑scale harm is weak, or that harms are driven more by broader consumerism and algorithmic platforms than by porn per se—and that censorship is worse than the problem it claims to solve.