Missouri’s age verification law, enacted on November 30, is the halfway mark for the sweep of age verification laws across the country.

As of this week, half of the states in the U.S. are under restrictive age verification laws that require adults to hand over their biometric and personal identification to access legal porn.

Missouri became the 25th state to enact its own age verification law on Sunday. As it’s done in multiple other states, Pornhub and its network of sister sites—some of the largest adult content platforms in the world—pulled service in Missouri, replacing their homepages with a video of performer Cherie DeVille speaking about the privacy risks and chilling effects of age verification.

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  • ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
    142·
    4 hours ago

    Not downplaying that this is real dumb, but “half the US” is meant to be misleadingly attention-grabbing. The states that are doing this are not the most populous states. No law like this exists in NY or CA, for example.

    I don’t know the amount of the population living under these laws, but it is not nearly half, even if half the states have passed such laws.

    • brianpeiris@lemmy.caEnglish
      6·
      1 hour ago

      I did the math and it’s 49.37% of the population, based on the 2024 census data, or 49.94% if you exclude Puerto Rico and D.C. I suppose mostly due to Texas and Florida being in the list, but also Ohio, Georgia and North Carolina with over 10M people each.

      Here's the raw data

      Based on the table from Wikipedia, and the list of states in the article.

      State Population (2024) Requires Age Verification Population Requiring Age Verification
      California 39,431,263 0
      Texas 31,290,831 x 31,290,831
      Florida 23,372,215 x 23,372,215
      New York 19,867,248 0
      Pennsylvania 13,078,751 0
      Illinois 12,710,158 0
      Ohio 11,883,304 x 11,883,304
      Georgia 11,180,878 x 11,180,878
      North Carolina 11,046,024 x 11,046,024
      Michigan 10,140,459 0
      New Jersey 9,500,851 0
      Virginia 8,868,896 x 8,868,896
      Washington 7,958,180 0
      Arizona 7,582,384 x 7,582,384
      Tennessee 7,227,750 x 7,227,750
      Massachusetts 7,136,171 0
      Indiana 6,924,275 x 6,924,275
      Maryland 6,263,220 0
      Missouri 6,245,466 x 6,245,466
      Wisconsin 5,960,975 0
      Colorado 5,957,493 0
      Minnesota 5,793,151 0
      South Carolina 5,478,831 x 5,478,831
      Alabama 5,157,699 x 5,157,699
      Louisiana 4,597,740 x 4,597,740
      Kentucky 4,588,372 x 4,588,372
      Oregon 4,272,371 0
      Oklahoma 4,095,393 x 4,095,393
      Connecticut 3,675,069 0
      Utah 3,503,613 x 3,503,613
      Nevada 3,267,467 0
      Iowa 3,241,488 0
      Puerto Rico 3,203,295 0
      Arkansas 3,088,354 x 3,088,354
      Kansas 2,970,606 x 2,970,606
      Mississippi 2,943,045 x 2,943,045
      New Mexico 2,130,256 0
      Nebraska 2,005,465 x 2,005,465
      Idaho 2,001,619 x 2,001,619
      West Virginia 1,712,278 0
      Hawaii 1,446,146 0
      New Hampshire 1,409,032 0
      Maine 1,405,012 0
      Montana 1,137,233 x 1,137,233
      Rhode Island 1,112,308 0
      Delaware 1,051,917 0
      South Dakota 924,669 x 924,669
      North Dakota 796,568 x 796,568
      Alaska 740,133 0
      District of Columbia 702,250 0
      Vermont 648,493 0
      Wyoming 587,618 x 587,618
      343,314,283 169,498,848
      49.37%
    • Peruvian_Skies@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      1 hour ago

      I apologize in advance for how pedantic this comment will be but “half the US now requires” obviously refers to half the administrative units (states in this case, could be counties or municipalites etc) while “half the US is required” would refer to the population, so technically the post title is not wrong because of the population distribution.

      I’m going to wash my hands now so that my fingers forget they typed this.

    • chunes@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 hour ago

      I don’t know the amount of the population living under these laws

      And yet you felt the need to comment on it anyway.