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I know smut may seem like a frivolous thing to be upset about, but crushing it is part of fascism. Controlling all forms of sexual expression is fascism. Only allowing certain kinds is fascism. Smut peddlers are always canaries in the coal mines.

Controlling telecommunications in order to "fight pornography" sound like they're creating a problem to get to the solution they really want. Any platform speaking out against them gets shut down, since there was "porn" on it somewhere. Trust us on this claim though, since we already deleted it.

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I will stand firm in the belief that the ability of the govt to control them has long since passed in the US. They have tried before. They will try again. But they forget at this point the government relies more on the carriers than vice/versa and the carriers answer more to their shareholders.

Even the DoD’s network (outside of tactical/combat comms) is handled by commercial carriers. They may have dedicated circuits, but those are provided by the big backbone companies. And those companies could easily turn them all off in protest of laws they couldn’t possibly comply with.

But they make a lot of money off the government and certainly aren't responsible for or interested in maintaining the civil rights of their subscribers. Telecom companies have eagerly complied with the rapid decay of the 4th Amendment at SCOTUS and law enforcement, well beyond what's required by law

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They make a lot of money off the government but they make more off the private sector. Mass surveillance was never supposed to be discovered and it didn’t impact customers, and it was “comply and get more federal contracts” It made sense for them to do that…

I don't think the majority of their corporate clients are going to go to court to fight government anti-pornography measures. They'll just shrug and say they already outsourced this problem - to the telecoms.

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Not to mention that if you really wanted to ban all porn and other “thoughtcrime” you would also have to ban or backdoor all encryption. Otherwise, there is no way to know exactly what people are looking at. Corporations would fight that, because it’s the only way to keep anything confidential.

{conspiracy hat on} Ban all encryption, you say? Maybe that's their end goal with this whole situation. Knowing what people are looking at is a really useful tool for controlling what people get access to and how. Especially coupled with being able to shut down services by shouting "porn" at them.

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Today we have fully open-source crypto that nobody can break, barring weaknesses in individual implementations. The algorithms are sound, even the government is using them. That ship has sailed.

My guess is that kind of technology would be on their hit list too. As long as they can find a way to exempt their own crypto dealings.

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Something else I just realized: the Chevron SCOTUS case potentially guts the power of the regulatory agencies to interpret laws. Which means any law restricting cryptography would have to specify every type and use case not allowed, and something not covered by that law would be quickly developed.

Unless they introduce an overarching law that prohibits all forms of cryptography, and allows the courts to decide on a case-by-case basis whether a specific use should be allowed or not. Once again shifting the power over to SCOTUS to be the final adjudicator in such matters.

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Once upon a time only governments had strong crypto. Both improving our own and breaking others is a big reason the NSA was formed. But then DES was declassified, presumably after NSA was capable of breaking it. So the public used it, but wanted better. Then RSA leaked and AES was openly developed.

Point being that stopping crypto is like stopping piracy. You literally can’t do it. It’s baked right into the hardware of every modern device. If the government said “AES is now illegal” then Apple would say “ok, we’re just gonna have to brick every iPhone” which would cripple the government too.

They tried in the 90s. Well, not ban it, but to backdoor everything above “export-grade” they could already break. The Clipper chip. Corporate America did NOT buy in, because they knew if the govt held all the keys, they could just hand over one company’s secrets to a competitor, if it suited them.

Potentially using these proposed laws to spy on competitors is more a selling point for a lot of the money behind the campaign. They want to restrict privacy and open the doors on other people's systems, while at the same time maintaining their own. Using twisted morality cries does just that.

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The telecoms are who I’m referring to losing customers en masse or being seized by the government. If a certain ISP or carrier blocked porn, millions of people would jump to another. Or they would use a VPN, and telecoms can’t realistically block those, making them in violation of the law anyway.

I think you vastly underestimate what bald exercise of state power looks like. Project 2025 literally seeks to allow the federal DoJ to preempt local prosecutors. Mass arrests of CEOs who fail to comply means most operators would quickly fall in line. Conservatives don't believe in rule of law.

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