Politico’s Weird Celebration Of 1st Amendment Violations When It … – Techdirt

from the here-at-politico-we-let-our-interns-just-make-shit-up dept

Here on Techdirt weve chronicled the rise of a bunch of terrible age verification laws, including many focused specifically on adult content. Weve also highlighted how MindGeek, the company behind a bunch of largest adult content sites, including Pornhub, have started geoblocking entire states in response to these problematic laws, while the Free Speech Coalition has been suing to get these laws tossed out as unconstitutional.

The whole premise of these bills is pretty clearly unconstitutional. This has been established multiple times by courts, which various state legislatures now wish to ignore.

But, no matter, Politico has published a bizarrely uninformed feature article celebrating these laws and the fact that MindGeek is now blocking entire states because the fact that these unconstitutional laws have created a chilling effect that has removed speech from the market is good? The underlying premise behind the article, written by author Marc Novicoff (who appears to be an intern with zero knowledge or expertise in the law or related issues, other than that an anti-porn advocate once spoke to him in high school), is that porn is bad and any law that causes adult content companies to block access must be effective. I mean, thats a take. Not a particularly intelligent or informed one, but its a take.

The article starts off by talking about the bills and the censorial excitement of the legislators behind them:

Though the first of its kind, Louisianas age-verification bill was not the last. Nearly identical bills have passed in six other states Arkansas, Montana, Mississippi, Utah, Virginia and Texas by similarly lopsided margins. In Utah and Arkansas, the bills passed unanimously. The laws were passed by overwhelming margins in legislatures controlled by both parties and signed into law by Democratic and Republican governors alike. In just over a year, age-verification laws have become perhaps the most bipartisan policy in the country, and they are creating havoc in a porn industry that many had considered all but impossible to actually regulate.

Unlike past efforts to curb online porn that had simply declared the sites a danger to public health, these laws are not symbolic. And they are having real effects on how the massive online porn industry does business.

First off, the claim that these are bipartisan is questionable. Every state named here has legislatures that are overwhelmingly Republican and all of them have Republican governors (Update: As pointed out in the comments, Louisiana does have a Democratic governor, though a Republican legislature, and is generally considered an extremely red state). The article is just factually wrong in claiming that these laws are bipartisan, let alone the most bipartisan policy in the country. It is true that Democratic-run states are passing their own stupid laws, like Californias Age Appropriate Design Code, which effectively requires age verification, but those laws are very different, and its not the same policy at all.

So the very premise that this is some bipartisan thing is just false.

Second, yes, if you pass an obviously unconstitutional bill designed to create a chilling effect on speech, is it any surprise that it creates a chilling effect on speech? It is not. I mean, excited censorial legislatures could also pass bills requiring interns at mainstream magazines to obtain a do you know how to do basic research? license before they could write an article for such a magazine, and it would be equally unconstitutional.

Would we call that effective in stopping ill-informed, ignorant interns from publishing nonsense? Or would we call out the obvious unconstitutional problems with it?

Politico, and Marc Novicoff, would apparently accept it as an effective tool in stopping the scourge of Politico publishing uninformed articles by those who would fail a journalism 101 class.

The article acknowledges that these laws are being challenged, but then immediately jumps to highlighting a single anti-porn advocate, who the author admits spoke at his high school a few years ago when he was a student there. The author appears to take her extremely one-sided (and not at all supported by the data) claims, as being really interesting:

Dines is not subtle about the ills of pornography and hypersexualization. When her speaking tour stopped at my high school in 2017, she told my junior class, I bet you, every woman here, all of you female students, could come up here right now, and you could do the fuck me look, referring to the Victorias Secret model displayed on the projector behind her. About a minute later, she told us, somewhat forlornly, Men who rape are not deviants. They are over-conformists.

While the reporter says he didnt believe it at the time and still thinks that Dines is overzealous, he relies on his personal experience watching online porn and internet forums to say that maybe she was actually on to something. Really. This is the quality of research that Politico gets from its interns apparently.

Six years later though, while I still find Dines to be overzealous (the porn-to-rape argument feels like a stretch), its hard not to question whether the sexualization of everything and the proliferation of internet porn were good for us. Visit any number of massively populated internet forums (combined members 1.4 million) if you dont understand what I mean; bask in the endless tapestry of loneliness, broken marriages and 20-something-year-old men who cant get it up for women theyre in love with, but have no trouble when theyre watching videos of strangers.

When experts go through the actual research (which Novicoff never bothers to do), they show that all of this is utter nonsense not supported by the data. There are all sorts of studies that show various impacts of porn (some of which is conflicting), but mostly the data just shows that for a small percentage of people who generally are dealing with other mental health issues, they may use pornography to justify certain actions, but for the vast majority of cases, adult content does not harm people. Some studies even show a reduction in sexual assault in response to greater consumption of adult content. The reality is that its complicated, but the Politico article, instead of dealing with any of that, simply accepts the claims of a very vocal one-sided advocate as accurate, because she spoke at his high school and because there are some lonely dudes on Reddit.

This isnt a high school newspaper its a major magazine. Politico, what are you doing?

While the article gives a brief statement from a lawyer from the Free Speech Coalition pointing out that, you know, the 1st Amendment matters, the article quickly dismisses all that with this astoundingly ridiculous paragraph:

Whether or not there are legitimate First Amendment issues at play will be a matter for the courts, but theres no arguing with the effectiveness of the laws. As Stabile explained, age-verification laws make traffic to porn sites drop precipitously. It turns out, unsurprisingly, that nobody wants to upload their drivers license or passport before watching porn. And, as Stabile added, at a cost to the operators of around 65 cents per verification, age verification is effectively business-killing.

Eh, maybe theres a 1st Amendment issue, maybe not, this reporter isnt here to actually find out. Hes just going to opine on it, because he hangs out with incels on Reddit?

Again, yes, if you pass an unconstitutional law restricting speech, dont be surprised when it restricts speech. Thats not news. Thats almost the quintessential dog bits man story. Whether or not there are legitimate First Amendment issues at play is the entire crux of this debate, and its bizarre for the article to sort of toss them aside and say no matter what theyre effective!

Its also completely clueless. The reason why MindGeek is bailing out of these states is important, and not even remotely discussed in the article. Its doing it on purpose, to get people in these states, who regularly do visit adult content sites, to get angry with their censorial rights-stomping legislators. Its literally part of their public relations pressure campaign.

Which the article doesnt once acknowledge.

Instead, the article quotes someone claiming that you poll this, its like an 85-15 issue in support of anti-porn laws. Politico accepts this claim, offered up by a well known political activist who works for an organization famous for its reactionary, anti-LGBTQ views, as fact with literally zero attempt to check its veracity. There are some polls, usually with questionable methodology run by groups with names like institute for family studies that find a slight majority of the adults that they surveyed, support banning porn. The only study I could find that got up to 85% was in the not exactly trustworthy Sunday Times when the UK was going through this debate. Notably, when the UK passed a law like this it was deemed an utter failure.

Actual polls that are run by non-biased sources suggest otherwise. The Atlantic ran a poll just recently that came up with much more muted responses:

A recent Atlantic/Leger poll of 1,002 Americans largely supported this acceptance of porn. We presented participants with a list of questions about porn, and many of them yawned and said, So what? Most Americans have watched porn, according to the poll. But most spend less than 20 minutes a week watching it, and 79 percent of those who watch porn said they dont feel addicted to it (17 percent of respondents who had watched porn in the past year said they had ever felt like they were addicted to pornography). Only 6 percent of people said theyd begun watching porn when they were younger than 12. Most said that watching porn had no effect on them or their relationships, and 79 percent of those with children said they didnt struggle to control their childrens access to porn. And just like public-health experts, most respondents53 percentsaid they didnt think porn was a public-health crisis. Only 25 percent said it was.

But the Politico article simply accepted one extremists claim about how the public feels about this, just like he accepted the claim of another activist about the harm of porn backed up by a few subreddits he looked at.

This is not reporting.

He then claims, incredibly, that the only people against these laws are the ACLU and the adult content industry. Really.

So though the ACLU and the $100 billion porn industry are against the laws, they seem to be largely alone in that position. By Jan. 1, 2024 (when the Montana law goes into effect), around 54 million Americans will live in states where they are required to upload their identification to access pornography websites, if those pornography websites choose to operate there at all.

There is literally zero evidence supporting this claim. None. The fact that many states, mostly those dominated by Republican legislatures, are pushing these bills, does not mean that this position is widely accepted by the public.

Elsewhere in the article, Navicoff notes that the backers of these bills are literally high fiving each other that 1st Amendment protected speech is being suppressed.

According to Utah state Sen. Todd Weiler, the chief sponsor of Utahs bill, many of his colleagues are celebrating the improbable and unexpected retreat of the pornography behemoth. Weiler said his colleagues think its hilarious and have been high-fiving each other in boyish triumph.

Also notably absent from this article is the fact that an extremist anti-free speech religious group, formerly known as Morality in Media but now going by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) is behind these bills (just as NCOSE was behind FOSTA and now EARN IT) and their stated goal is for all pornography to be banned.

Other, more honest, and well reported articles that arent just thinly disguised anti-porn advocacy, have noted that this has all been orchestrated by NCOSE. Heres the Atlantic highlighting how the same Todd Weiler, whom Navicoff gleefully reported was high-fiving colleagues in a boyish triumph over suppressing free speech was inspired by NCOSE (who is not mentioned in the Politico article at all):

NCOSE seems to have pushed Utah state Senator Todd Weiler to support the public-health-crisis legislation in 2016. They told me, If you can pass this, we can get this passed in 15 more states. We just need one legislator to stick his neck out, Weiler told Governing magazine in 2019. Arizona state Representative Michelle Udall told me that she introduced her states public-health-crisis bill in 2019 after hearing from constituents involved with the anti-porn group Fight the New Drug, and that NCOSE gave her a booklet with data and studies on porn. She read that the average age at which children are being exposed to pornography is 11, and she had an 11-year-old at the time. She wanted the resolution to improve awareness of the issue, especially as we talk about children and their exposure, she told me.

And, of course, that 11-year-old stat is bullshit, as the Atlantics data shows.

NCOSE is pretty clear that its entire mission is about scrubbing the entire internet from any content that the prudes who work there find too scintillating.

But Politico seems to have zero problem publishing a misleading, terribly researched piece that literally suggests that the 1st Amendment concerns of these laws are not really important, and stifling protected speech should be cheered on with high fives. This wasnt reporting, it was reactionary, anti-free speech advocacy, pushed by extremist reactionary fringe groups, given the veneer of legitimacy by a kid who has spent too much time in porn subreddits.

Is that really the standard of journalism Politico is pushing these days?

Filed Under: 1st amendment, adult content, age verification, censorship, marc novicoff Companies: mindgeek, ncose, politico, pornhub

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