When you pull out your phone, tablet, or laptop — or sit down at a desktop computer — what Internet content should you not need the government’s permission to view?
It’s a simple question and the only correct answer is “all of it.”
But Florida’s politicians, following those of several other states, are stomping their feet, declaring themselves your babysitters, and yelling that if you want to view particular web sites, you need to beg for their permission first.
HB3, which came into effect on January 1, includes two silly components and one truly terrible implementation hook.
Component #1: HB3 restricts access to social media for those under 14 years of age, and requires parental consent for 14- and 15-year-olds to use social media accounts. Fortunately, that part has been blocked by the courts … for now.
Component #2: HB3 requires users to be 18 years of age or older to access “material harmful to minors” — that is, pornography. But there’s already a federal law (18 US Code § 1470) against providing pornography to those under 16. It’s not Florida politicians’ job to enforce that law or to change its age threshold.
The implementation hook is a requirement that social media platforms and porn sites implement “age verification” protocols for all viewers.
How are these platforms supposed to “verify” your age? By requiring you to show them your government-issued identification card, of course.
So even if you’re an adult, you’re not allowed to view pornography on the Internet, from Florida, anonymously.
Some porn sites are complying with the law. Others are blocking access from Florida IP addresses. And still others are simply ignoring the whole thing.
Fortunately, the whole matter remains entirely in the hands of Floridians, thanks to Virtual Private Networks (VPNs).
These handy-dandy services — some free, some paid, and of varying reliability and variety — allow you to disguise where you’re from when visiting web sites.
For example, you might be at your desk in Gainesville, Florida, but access Pornhub (one of the sites blocking Florida IPs) “from” the Netherlands. Yes, I just did that. Purely for research purposes, of course.
Unsurprisingly, according to media reports, Floridians’ use of VPNs has increased by a factor of ten or more since January 1.
Are some of those Floridian VPN users minors? Of course. I’d rather children didn’t view porn, but I know they’re going to (I feel old; when I was a kid, my friends and I didn’t have the Internet and had to raid adults’ hidden print magazine stashes). Forbidding it just makes it more attractive.
The cool thing about VPNs isn’t that they make it possible to view porn when politicians don’t want you to.
It’s that they make it possible to view ANYTHING, whether politicians want you to or not, and without those politicians even being able to know you viewed it.
Internet freedom and Internet privacy are important — which is why it’s important that HB3 fail, and fail spectacularly, and be SEEN to fail spectacularly, in its mission of making politicians our Internet babysitters.
Fortunately, it’s doing just that.
Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.
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