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Let's be realistic. Porn, the subject of this discussion, is not illegal in the US; this is about age verification laws that apply to the website operators, who then self-block users from particular states. No one is going after Cloudflare for this information as there is no crime committed by the user.

Given Cloudflare's logging policy (https://developers.cloudflare.com/1.1.1.1/privacy/public-dns...) and data disclosure practices, the only way US authorities would get anything worthwhile is if they had a specific individual target and a valid legal process. Cloudflare, like most of the big tech companies, is actually very good on this front; they have robust processes and are transparent (https://cf-assets.www.cloudflare.com/slt3lc6tev37/Q1INAiyBub...) about the limited cases in which they do hand over any user data.

(I don't work at Cloudflare, but do work on these issues for another big US tech company.)



I don't think this subthread is about the US, but just as a sidenote on the US, Project 2025 directly calls for porn to be made illegal and for attacking Internet providers and companies like Cloudflare that enable its access (https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FOR...):

> Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.

Even in a Conservative-majority court this kind of ban would likely be ruled unconstitutional very quickly, but we should be clear when talking about this kind of thing where it is that a substantial number of Conservative foundations would like to go (https://www.project2025.org/about/advisory-board/). There is a non-trivial Conservative movement to to ban porn.


Agreed Cloudflare is a decent company, but some of us would rather not leave crumbs to pick up if/when things change for the worse.


The US is not the subject of this thread...

> [a] couple in the South-Eastern very conservative Turkish city of Mersin


Let’s be realistic - this is not about age verification but about restricting people from their rights to view a particular type of content because of how one religion feels about it. The age verification is just the smoke screen the Republicans use to take away your freedoms.




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