🚨Senate Commerce will hear Mike Lee's invasive SCREEN ACT — age-verification scans for all adults, for ANY site with "harmful content" AND required VPN monitoring. They're attempting to push through before recess and it's absolutely essential you call your Senators now. Call early and often.

Defend Online Privacy: Stop the SCREEN Act!

The Senate Commerce Committee will vote on the SCREEN Act on August 5. ACT NOW to stop it!

defendonlineprivacy.com

Free Speech Coalition@fsc.bsky.social · 6d ago

The Senate Commerce Committee will vote on the SCREEN Act on August 5, 2026. Take action now to oppose nationwide age verification in the US This bill would force every adult in the country to hand over identifying information just to use the internet. www.defendonlineprivacy.com/screen/

AI-written police reports! What could go wrong? www.techdirt.com/2026/07/30/a... (Reports about cops morphing into frogs, for one thing)

Carnegie Mellon ran a study on consumer willingness to age-verify, requesting IDs to watch R-rated movies. Only 28% of users were willing to verify. THAT'S LESS THAN A THIRD. Imagine what it's like when it's something more controversial, like porn or LGBTQ content. www.cs.cmu.edu/~sscheffl/do...

My educational YouTube channel about kink, safety, consent and the law was deleted without appeal. That’s what happens when platforms decide talking about sex is inherently suspect: we lose vocabulary, resources and places to find each other.

Remote work is a feminist issue and this study (and NYT op-ed) panning it are just plain silly reason.com/2026/07/27/n...

No, remote work is not making us miserable

The rise of remote work is a tech success story, despite what one new and very convoluted study claims.

reason.com

Here's the biggest misunderstanding: sex workers do not want to decriminalize violent clients. Violence is already illegal. Coercion, stalking, trafficking are already crimes. Full decriminalization doesn't touch those laws. It removes criminal penalties for the consensual exchange itself.

Let's clear something up: the Long Island serial killer case is not evidence that the Nordic Model works. And yet it was presented like a smoking gun - as if a man capable of stalking, torturing, and killing multiple women was one solicitation charge away from a moral awakening.

Adding one more charge to a list that already includes kidnapping and murder doesn't function as a deterrent - it functions as a rounding error he never even calculated. It's worth asking honestly: why would we expect a solicitation charge to succeed where homicide law failed?

Nonprofit groups serving sex workers are struggling. This is a chance to add some great names and get them some much needed funds.

SWR Data@swr-data.bsky.social · 2w ago

We're getting ready to launch our 2026 State of the Creator survey, which raises money for sex worker serving nonprofits. Last year, we raised over $8K, and hope to increase that this year. Compiling this year's beneficiaries now. Who are your favorite SW-serving orgs?

Cool, cool, cool, cool. 'A study, the first on large language models by the body, showed AI services were echoing the rules of countries that restrict ​speech and that bias could creep into services used ​by an increasing number of users.' www.reuters.com/business/met... @enbrown.bsky.social

Meta Oversight Board finds top AI models less likely to criticize repressive regimes

AI models from leading labs including Anthropic and OpenAI are much less likely to criticize governments known ​for restricting free speech, Meta's Oversight Board said ‌on Thursday.

reuters.com

Trump on his new Homeland Security task force: we’re protecting you from INVASION & TERRORISM & TRANSNATIONAL GANGS! The new task force: quick, we think a middle-aged immigrant woman got paid for a handjob! reason.com/2026/07/08/n...

New Homeland Security task forces target immigrants over sex work

Prosecutors framed the case as a blow against cartels, but the defendants were accused of running massage parlors where prostitution occurred.

reason.com

I hate this. 'All new cars manufactured and sold in the EU and in the US will have to include a mandatory infrared camera aimed at the driver's face at all times, which is alarming some privacy groups.' - @campuscodi.risky.biz news.risky.biz/risky-bullet... cc @enbrown.bsky.social

All new cars to include a camera aimed at the driver's face

In other news: Canada hacked a ransomware gang; Taiwan charges two execs with helping Chinese hackers; new vulnerabilities can bork Hoymiles solar panels.

news.risky.biz

Perhaps "adult" use cases for LLMs are a corollary. Despite the initial hype, there's been remarkably little success in attracting consumers to AI porn — digital twins, AI creators— than people imagined Chat is a different story. Fanfic, roleplay and virtual companions are far more successful.

Matthew Sheffield@matthew.flux.community · last mo.

No one thinks that Midjourney is alive--that's a huge problem for anyone who thinks that ChatGPT is My latest: plus.flux.community/p/large-lang...

People love age-verification because they think it just affects kids. But kids don't have IDs. And there are prohibitions on collecting their data. It's the adults, not the kids, who have to submit a face scan, upload a government ID or provide other personally identifying information.

Supreme Court allows Texas to enforce law requiring age verification and parental consent on apps

scotusblog.com

Scammers are hijacking government websites to upload ads for “leaked” OnlyFans content. Thousands of copyright complaints from adult creators are helping people avoid malicious links. www.wired.com/story/onlyfa...

OnlyFans Models Are Accidentally Making Hacked Government Websites Disappear

Scammers are hijacking government websites to upload ads for “leaked” OnlyFans content. Thousands of copyright complaints from adult creators are helping people avoid malicious links.

wired.com

Big news: The Eleventh Circuit just upheld the injunction blocking enforcement of Florida's Stop WOKE Act, affirming that professors have some First Amendment protections in the classroom. Judge Britt Grant wrote the opinion.

"The shooter calls for attacks on 'large pornographic industry conferences, the headquarters of international pornography companies, and prominent individuals who are pornographic actors or actresses themselves ... Porn and pornography are mentioned about 32 times in the manifesto.'

Anti-Porn Gunman Carries Out Attack Near Aylo's Montreal H.Q. AVN

A gun attack occurred Monday outside of the head offices of Aylo, the parent company of adult tube website Pornhub.com, in Montreal, which ended with three people dead, including a Jewish Canadian-Isr...

avn.com

"U.S. Senator Jim Banks of Indiana, who last month urged the Department of Justice to ramp up obscenity prosecutions, on Wednesday introduced a bill that would make age verification by adult websites federal law." www.xbiz.com/news/298803/...

Anti-Porn Senator Introduces Federal Age Verification Bill

U.S. Senator Jim Banks of Indiana, who last month urged the Department of Justice to ramp up obscenity prosecutions, on Wednesday introduced a bill that would make age verification by adult websites f...

xbiz.com

"There are now more births to women over 40 than to teens — not the worst thing" www.nationalreview.com/magazine/202...

Don’t Panic About Falling Birth Rates | National Review

Humanity adapted to a rising population and will adapt to a shrinking one.

nationalreview.com

What watching kids' movies is like in my household

Asawin Suebsaeng@swin24.bsky.social · last mo.

an american tail is so hilariously Jewish immigrant left wing pro trade unionist anti-czarist propaganda and I love all that but I struggle with it due to its anti cat racism

Trump’s new Homeland Security task forces are supposedly fighting an immigrant “invasion" & taking on human smuggling networks, foreign gangs, transnational crime, & “terror-related activities” But they seem mostly to be doing drug war, & going after U.S. citizens reason.com/2026/06/23/t...

Trump says his task force is fighting a foreign ‘invasion.’ It’s busting Americans for drugs instead.

How Trump rebranded the war on drugs as a fight against illegal immigration

reason.com

Piece by me this week - looking at the surging number of killings by police in the United States: www.economist.com/united-state...

American police killings are rising, even as murder rates fall

More aggressive cops are less restrained

economist.com

👎 Ohio. 'The Social Media Parental Notification Act "does not raise meaningful concerns about muting valuable protected discourse"' @enbrown.bsky.social: 'a mandate that everyone must attach their real name or face to every online account undoubtedly will chill speech' 💯 reason.com/2026/06/22/6...

6th Circuit backs ban on Ohio minors using social media without parental permission

The court said the law—which would require age verification for everyone—constitutes only a “marginal burden” and "does not raise meaningful concerns about muting valuable protected discourse."

reason.com

First (but *not* last) #SCOTUS ruling is in Cisco. For the usual 6-3 majority, Barrett effectively guts the Alien Tort Statute and forecloses aiding-and-abetting liability under the Torture Victims Protection Act. A really big (and bad) ruling for accountability for human rights abuses:

The UK is proposing age-verification — biometrics and government ID — for sexting. But don't worry, they're not taking away your rights! "Adults would ⁠still ⁠be able to take, ⁠share ​or view nude content through an age verification process"

Carded before sexting?

Starmer wants tech companies to stop teens from sending nude images. Critics say the plan could require intrusive age checks and monitoring for adults.

reason.com

But this is where we are. In like 2 years, we’ve gone from “we just want to make porn sites block kids” to “yes, it’s totally reasonable to make people submit their IDs or do facial recognition before they can even use a computer or phone”

Elizabeth Nolan Brown@enbrown.bsky.social · 2mo ago

"Adults would ⁠still ⁠be able to take, ⁠share or view nude content through an age verification process” is just such a dystopian sentence reason.com/2026/06/17/c...

"Adults would ⁠still ⁠be able to take, ⁠share or view nude content through an age verification process” is just such a dystopian sentence reason.com/2026/06/17/c...

Carded before sexting?

Starmer wants tech companies to stop teens from sending nude images. Critics say the plan could require intrusive age checks and monitoring for adults.

reason.com

Last week, Sen. Banks proposed a FTC-enforced national age-verification for site with "sexual material harmful to minors" — the SAFE for Kids Act. He believes this should include "gender ideology."

Indiana Republican senator moves to block kids from accessing porn online

Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind., introduced the SAFE for Kids Act requiring pornography websites to verify users' ages, citing data showing 73% of teens viewed porn.

foxnews.com

Really interesting post from @stephhmurray.bsky.social dispelling myths about Americans use of daycare. "Enrollment in childcare, and especially full-time, center-based childcare, isn’t terribly common among young kids in America. At any age," she writes stephaniehmurray.substack.com/p/rightsizin...

Rightsizing the Daycare Theory of Everything

"Baby warehousing" is less common than some of you seem to think.

stephaniehmurray.substack.com

Today, in my newsletter: The White House vs Anthropic (if it looks like retaliation and walks like retaliation...) UK to ban under-16s from social media, online gaming An Ohio police chief faces 70(!) counts of felony sex crimes Arkansas' librarian criminalizing law in court [...]

The White House vs. Anthropic's new AI model

The government says this is about national security. But given the history—and ongoing litigation—between the White House and Anthropic, something more may be going on.

reason.com