I (unfortunately) live in Utah where they passed laws against being able to view porn without verifying your age. Some sites (like xhamster) just have you make an account and do a face scan and your golden.
Pornhub has chosen to instead just block Utah (and Mississippi, Virginia and Louisiana) rather then do any kind of age verification. Honestly since the purge of videos so its only “amateur” porn from verified users I stopped using it almost completely so it wasn’t a big loss.
Now today I went to check my notifications on Spankbang and I was redirected to Spankbanglive, a cam only site and asked to verify my age. I couldn’t sign into my account and do it so I made a junk account to see whats going on. Even after verifying my age I can’t access the normal spankbang site. That means I can’t view/download videos from other users here, I cant access my normal account or videos I’ve uploaded and this is also for the other states (4 total as mentioned above) as far as I can tell by trying to search out the issue.
So again, I recommend we all stop using these sites until they stop out right blocking us. Spank’s already paying for the age verification to the cam site so there is no reason to block us also.
As a guy who’s been dealing with this in one of the other three states you’ve mentioned – yeah, just grab a VPN and enjoy your porn again. No need to make a big deal out of it tbh. What happens, happens.
If you don’t want to use a VPN for any reason, there’s tons of video downloading sites/resources I’ve been using to circumvent the whole thing. (Savethevideo is fine, yt-dlp and jdownloader are great)
In reference to the “I recommend we all stop using these sites until they stop out right blocking us” statement, I don’t personally think any major porn site is going to care that our ~200-500 people stop going to their site and suddenly change their business tactics.
So yeah, just enjoy your porn with any of the resources I mentioned. Have a good one, man.
There are free VPN’s and then there are good VPN’s. In the case of my sending all my dodgy data via one server i dont own, i would prefer a service that is not vunerable to law enforcement, high performance to the extent of being able to stream tens of thousands of video channels, not using any of my bandwidth for anything but me, with presence in most important countries, and lastly one that isnt going to sell my data or browsing history.
I used to run IT for a chunk of an entity with 1.3 million employees. We were also highly security conscious, and only used vetted safe as possible providers. I was amused our choice of VPN, most of the organisation used NORDVPN not because it is domiciled out of the reach of the EU US and UK, or that its servers keep no logs or data, but it actually has real support and very good performance, it also has real state of the art anonymising capabilities, eg its one of the few that you can globally stream BBC TV from without interruption in that war. For literally a few dollars a month its worth it.
There are a few other providers that are worthy, most online reviews are advertising = monetised, i know nord is one of the big players. Be careful, some VPN ‘services’ use your device/internet connection to aggregate data for others, some just snd you adverts, some even have plugins that do some bitcoin mining.
NB they also support onion VPN with constantly changing IP’s, double VPN to hide within another VPN, and some special setups that chinese users are keen on. As you would expect the apps are on just about any platform, including your router though this is not recommended as a pipe is of coure not prioritised correctly by your ISP - unless you run multiple VPN and non VPN connections.
I think Firefox has a free VPN built into it. Or pay $5 a month for Proton, get encrypted email and VPN and be happy. TBH, you should be using a VPN where possible anyway these days.
Plus, if you do go with Firefox, you can set up a profiile within FireFox that clears your cache and history to clear out all traces of porn browsing when you exit/switch to a regular profile. It’s good security.
This seems to be a trend on this site that if something is inconvenient for one person, or the very few, it’s suggested to make a change that will impact everyone. As others suggested, you have other options that you can take that will solve your issue and won’t impact everyone else (VPN or simply ask the poster for an optional hosting solution like MEGA). But you rather impact everyone else instead of taking any extra effort on your own part. Sounds selfish to me. VPN sounds like your best bet.
Speak up to change your local laws, or spend a few dollars per month for a vpn. Norton antivirus is cheap and comes with free vpns. You can’t expect an entire international community to protest for you online because you live in a religious area.
I would just like to point out that @rogueleader_92 is a valuable member of this community who has made many important contributions here. From what I recall Spankbang is where they hosted their 2D conversions of VR videos. These conversions have always been remarkably well done and understandably took a lot of time and effort to create. Even if they had contributed nothing to this site, their concerns, fears, and frustration are valid. As all of us should be aware here, these are the types of laws that allow a society to effortlessly backslide into extreme forms of censorship and surveillance because no one is going to stand up and champion the cause of removing age verifications from Spankbang and Pornhub. I’m certain that many of us on this site are already living in those types of societies. Let’s try to be supportive as a community and educate each other so that we can ensure that all of us here are able to enjoy our hobby safely.
@Pati made a good point about using tools to download the video without having to go to the website. I always right-click, grab the address, and throw it into jDownloader myself just because it almost always works and makes things faster.
I have always heard good things about NordVPN, and after hearing what @l1511p said about it, I may invest in it myself.
I actually didn’t realize that Firefox now has a built in VPN. Thanks for bringing that to my attention @LeGrosFromage
I’m honestly not very knowledgeable on this topic so I would actually like to learn more too. I don’t have the problem that OP has (yet), but I currently use ProtonVPN for getting around MEGA’s transfer limits. There’s a free version that I think works well.
Maybe someone could chime in about using TOR? I tried to use it many years ago when it first came out, but I found it too complicated at the time.
I hope we can move this into a positive direction that benefits the community. Perhaps our more web savvy IT members can help us put together a wiki for educating our members on keeping themselves safe when it comes to government censorship and surveillance.
Thanks, @burtreynolds - like I said I -think- it has a built-in VPN, I haven’t checked. I do completely agree with you about this being the start of a very slippery slope into censorship and regulation.
(Does some quick checking to not look like a complete dick)
So I’m wrong - there isn’t a Firefox VPN, but there is Mozilla VPN - small sub fee for it:
I can’t speak to its effectiveness obviously, but like you (Burt) I use ProtonVPN and have nothing but good to say about it.
I’m more than happy to research/explain any tech people want to know about.
Also, I’m all for good conversation, but the “deal with it” comments aren’t really helpful. Let’s see if we can give the OP some useful info. @burtreynolds is a big deal around here as far as I’m concerned so if he says the @rogueleader_92 deserves help, then let’s help and try and come up with something useful.
@burtreynolds hit the nail on the head, im mot some leach who never contributes and I’m not so much complaining I can’t get the newest PMV hosted on spankbang, I’ve got plenty of friends here who would be more then happy to help me keep up on new videos.
I’m pissed I’ve lost access to my account that has all my vr->2d conversions and a bunch of videos I posted for my own scripts. Hell the video for my current script I’m working on was hosted on Spank so now I have to find a new matching source or edit it to match another.
@l1511p , thanks for the recommendations, if i do go VPN nord has been at the top of the list.
@AntiHeroJoe , I do what I can by voting for those who are actually for personal freedom (neither major party is, just what they want to pretend to be). There is a lawsuit but it was smacked down already and is supposed to be under appeal but the news is scarce on where it stands. For those who think this is just a small problem, give it time the morality police are focused on things like abortions but once they have time porn is an easy mark next.
A perfect example for how this is a greater issue than just one person needing a vpn.
I don’t want to derail the conversation, even though my point here is relevant to it, but they don’t have to stop focusing on abortion. Abortion is always a privacy/digital privacy issue. The tech they have, and are developing, to enforce anti-abortion laws can and will be used for other purposes too.
@rogueleader_92 Can you tell us if ProtonVPN (the free version) is able to solve your more immediate problem?
You’re one of the names I see a lot, with sensible and level-headed comments and appreciation for what people provide, so I have a lot of respect for that.
I’ve been using ProtonVPN free version for quite a while, for me personally it works like a charm without any issues and you got a fair selection of free servers too - in case I dont feel like launching it and I’m getting blocked I just use an inbuilt opera vpn - not perfect but also works.
I’ve been using NordVPN for about a year and a half now, and I can back up @l1511p 's recommendation if you’re looking for an easy-to-use paid VPN. It has a lot of servers spread around the globe so no need to worry about region-exclusives and all that.
If you are somewhat hesitant because of the price, you can look for sponsored YouTubers who give discounts.
