The 14 year old’s mother left an old laptop in a closet and now alleges it’s adult sites’ problem that he watched porn.

A Kansas mother who left an old laptop in a closet is suing multiple porn sites because her teenage son visited them on that computer.

The complaints, filed last week in the U.S. District Court for Kansas, allege that the teen had “unfettered access” to a variety of adult streaming sites, and accuses the sites of providing inadequate age verification as required by Kansas law.

A press release from the National Center for Sexual Exploitation, which is acting as co-counsel in this lawsuit, names Chaturbate, Jerkmate, Techpump Solutions (Superporn.com), and Titan Websites (Hentai City) as defendants in four different lawsuits.

  • Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world
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    21 days ago

    Laptops are like guns. If you leave them unsecured, you are responsible if your kid gets a hold of them. Who even has a laptop without a password these days.

    • bollybing@lemmynsfw.com
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      21 days ago

      Guns are way more dangerous though. A 14 year old watching some porn is hardly life ruining. How many 14 year olds haven’t watched porn? If they’ve got access to the Internet they’re going to find it.

      Its much better to actually properly teach your kids about sex and porn so that it doesn’t fuck them up, than to try and protect them by restricting access to it.

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          21 days ago

          I’m not sure how the websites could even be responsible. What can they do other than go “are you old enough to access this website”.

          The only other option would be for the government to implement some kind of ID system (not that I’m advocating for that you understand), but that would be the government’s responsibility not the individual websites.

      • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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        21 days ago

        There is a lot of harm that can come from children using the internet

        Look at Roblox or other pedophile chatrooms as an example

          • NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world
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            21 days ago

            Given everything I’ve learned about Roblox over the years, if I had a kid I’d much rather find them watching Chaturbate than playing Roblox. To my knowledge, nobody has ever tried to kidnap, rape, or kill a child, or anyone for that matter, for watching Chaturbate.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      21 days ago

      My laptop is set up to unlock automatically if it’s on my Wi-Fi network. But if I take it out of the house and try and access it then I do have to use either a password or my fingerprint.

  • Donjuanme@lemmy.world
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    22 days ago

    The right wings infatuation with the government needing to parent for them. Tucker opening to an audience with “Daddy’s coming home” and talking about how the left thinks of the government as being the nanny state (how much protection??)

    Eminem had it right, “shouldn’t you have been watching him? Apparently you ain’t parents”

      • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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        22 days ago

        Well, they want to ban LGBTQIA+ people. This is just the infrastructure they intend to use.

        Once it’s in place, they’ll simply declare any media about people they hate “obscene”.

      • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        22 days ago

        The porn ban is more focused on banning trans people. They have been systematically redefining LGBTQ+ people as pornographic, especially trans people. So if they manage to ban porn, they can use that to wipe any and all LGBTQ+ representation. Gay romance novel? Banned cuz it’s porn. Two female characters happened to hold hands? Banned cuz it’s porn. Trans people existing in public? Banned cuz it’s porn.

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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    21 days ago

    One hates having to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but since the Cheeto government is working hard on prohibiting porn, one wonders about the timing for this. One wonders if this is just another paid asshole who happily uses their family to lie and cheat to get anti porn laws to pass

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      Sort of a perversion of Public Interest Law.

      Conservative political interests have become well-versed in the strategy of promoting and funding cases that can provoke rulings to achieve legislative consequences at the court level. Citizens United, Janus v. AFSCME, and Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization being classic recent examples.

      Very possible we’ll see a “Porn is de facto illegal” court case inside the next four years.

      • RedditIsDeddit@lemmy.world
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        20 days ago

        We’ll watch it fail. That’s for sure. Just look at the case against Larry Flynt and Hustler magazine from a few decades ago. This isn’t the first time they’ve tried this shit. They lost miserably last time.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          20 days ago

          Just look at the case against Larry Flynt and Hustler magazine from a few decades ago.

          That was under a very different composition of judges.

          This isn’t the first time they’ve tried this shit. They lost miserably last time.

          The Larry Flynt case was notable because it was a significant change in the federal standard. Historically, the puritan anti-sex sentiment has been actively enforced within US law.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_obscenity_law#Legal_issues_and_definitions

          The sale and distribution of obscene materials had been prohibited in most American states since the early 19th century, and by federal law since 1873. Adoption of obscenity laws in the United States at the federal level in 1873 was largely due to the efforts of Anthony Comstock, who created and led the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. Comstock’s intense efforts led to the passage of an anti-obscenity statute known as the Comstock Act which made it a crime to distribute “obscene” material through the post.

          Anti-obscenity laws endured for nearly a century prior to Miller. And the current government seems to be fixated on a return to that Old Thyme Religion.

            • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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              20 days ago

              They’re protected by court precedent citing the 1st amendment. Any five judges can change that, assuming they don’t simply wave through a decision from the circuit courts that amount to the same.

  • lemmydividebyzero@reddthat.com
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    22 days ago

    Imagine watching porn like everybody else and now your mom sues multiple billion dollar porn companies and everyone around you will know about her idea to do so…

    • adhocfungus@midwest.social
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      22 days ago

      When I was in 5th grade my mom tried to have a teacher fired for something and I was teased about it every day until I went to high school in a different town years later. This poor kid will never hear the end of it.

      • flandish@lemmy.world
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        21 days ago

        high school in the early 90’s. (trade school, granted) was great. doom on pcs after school with big 80’s era speakers echoing the shots in the halls. teachers who let us experiment. (electronics was my trade) with things like booze and “what happens if we fill every outlet with 12v electrolytic caps and turn the power back on?”

        learned a lot from that guy.

        he died early 2000’s from alcoholism. sigh.

    • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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      22 days ago

      “As you can see from these logs, my son viewed ChixWithDix_69 three times on Tuesday, once on Wednesday and two more times on Thursday, and I can see from my smart home lightbulb logs from the bathroom that he viewed them to completion.”

    • BananaOnionJuice@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      22 days ago

      At the schoolyard:

      So my mom commented on my tiktok dance, cringe!

      You think that’s cringe, I borrowed the laptop and now my mom is suing bunch of porn companies.

    • NatakuNox@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      These are boiler plate lawsuits by the religious right. No rational person would blame the porn sites for being a shit parent.

  • mechoman444@lemmy.world
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    21 days ago

    I would have sued the laptop manufacturer for making a device that doesn’t have adequate parental controls.

    If that doesn’t work I’m suing the person that made the table they put the laptop on for not providing a failsafe to where you can’t put a laptop that can access porn sites.

  • aceshigh@lemmy.world
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    21 days ago

    A this an actual law suit by an actual person? Isn’t the person named Jane doe or something?

  • Zenith@lemm.ee
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    22 days ago

    So they want us to use our ID card every time we use the Internet now?

  • OldChicoAle@lemmy.world
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    21 days ago

    Nothing is the parent’s fault. Blame the teachers. Blame the neighbors. Blame the corporations. Blame everyone but yourselves.

    Remember when people took ownership of their responsibilities?

    This generation of iPad-parenting is getting out of control. What do parents do nowadays anyway?

      • MBech@feddit.dk
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        21 days ago

        “That is fantastic”. How are these fucking idiots still falling for these traitors to the poeple?

        Edit. I know it’s an old video, but it shows that they never even fucking tried to hide how much they hate the working class, and only view them as slavelabour.

    • Halosheep@lemm.ee
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      21 days ago

      Remember when people took ownership of their responsibilities?

      When was that, again?

    • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      21 days ago

      Only when it suits them.

      When you try to do good things for kids, like free school lunches and sex education, then it’s all about “hurr durr it’s the parents’ responsibility”

  • KoboldCoterie@pawb.social
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    22 days ago

    We laugh, but that mom is the kind of person that wholeheartedly supports the ‘You must provide proof of age to access adult sites’ laws that’re poised to ruin the internet.

    • ComfortableRaspberry@feddit.org
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      22 days ago

      And all because she’s too lazy and / or too incompetent to properly parent her child. If you really think something is dangerous for your kid, you’re the number one person responsible to keep them away from it.

        • azimir@lemmy.ml
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          22 days ago

          I consider that analogy somewhat different. Being able to leave your home to travel safely is a basic human right. Cars on roads are inherently dangerous, even if you try to be defensive as a pedestrian. You can be sitting in your grassy front yard and vehicles can come crashing in to kill you. That happens on a regular basis in the US. You can be walking on the sidewalk and have a car run you down. The vision of kids running into the street to be hit isn’t the only risk, merely existing is. Hell, there’s plenty of people killed in their home by cars crashing into their houses!

          Car crashes are the #2 reason for children’s deaths in the US (#1 is now guns, it was cars until about 3 years ago). It’s the #3 reason for adults to die after heart disease and cancer. Those stats are actually low balling it because we’re finding the noise and pollution from cars jacks up many of the other categories (including heart disease, cancer, dementia). Living by car roads is just inherently dangerous, regardless of how you try to teach your kids to avoid being run down in their own neighborhood.

          The government building car only infrastructure, I feel, is an immoral and murderous act against the public. It’s categorically different from the parental preference of whether your 14 year old manages to see some porn using a computer you bought on an Internet connection you installed.

          • grue@lemmy.world
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            22 days ago

            The government building car only infrastructure, I feel, is an immoral and murderous act against the public.

            It ought to be considered malpractice on the part of the civil engineers.

          • Genius@lemmy.zip
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            22 days ago

            The government should be paying millions of dollars to the family every time someone dies of car.

    • thatradomguy@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      It’s honestly cringey to me thinking how it’s possible that the gen Alphas of tomorrow are likely to be in a timeline where their parents could very likely have porn floating on the internet. It’s just so f’d up to think about but my god I don’t get why people have this fascination with publicizing their sex life. It’s so gross. Ew ew

      • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
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        21 days ago

        Reminded of that story of the mother who sent her (adult) son nudes to spread around his workplace and advertise her onlyfans for him.

      • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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        21 days ago

        gen alpha are obssesed with being influencers, im not kidding. and alot of reports of them using AI to do all thier essay writing or work.

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          21 days ago

          The oldest gen alphas were born 15 years ago. What 14-year-old influencer do you know about?

      • frezik@midwest.social
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        21 days ago

        If you don’t want to see people publicizing their sex life, then you can stay off OnlyFans and Fetlife. It’s not difficult.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        21 days ago

        Yeah because video recording equipment didn’t get invented until about 10 years ago.

        Who has heard of VCRs, not me, they sound like a myth

        • thatradomguy@lemmy.world
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          20 days ago

          Point taken, but not very likely the same magnitude as what’s coming or is potentially already out there. Smart phones make it too easy now. It’ll only get worse…

  • cmeu@lemmy.world
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    22 days ago

    So if it weren’t a web site… would she be able to sue 7-11 if the kid found a playboy someone else in her house bought?

    Could she sue them if the employee was doing their duty, but a kid broke 7-11’s rule, snuck around and stole one?

    The site was illegally breached (accessed in violation of their terms) and the kid accessed content not appropriate for them.

    How is the site liable? Doesn’t dmca precedent here say the kid is at fault for bypassing access controls?

    • OldChicoAle@lemmy.world
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      21 days ago

      She should have used parental controls or I dunno, maybe password protected that laptop? Oh no, don’t blame the parent! It’s always someone else’s fault!!!

  • KuroiKaze@lemmy.world
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    22 days ago

    Let’s not get it twisted. If he was just watching videos on RedTube or something, I don’t think that would have been a huge issue. But what you don’t want is a minor in a chat app actively talking to groomers and what not. I feel like a lot of you would be way less judgy here if it had been a 14-year-old girl on a porn site with adult men.

      • KuroiKaze@lemmy.world
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        22 days ago

        You’re right, kids should grow up in a highly observed police state experience with constant observation so nothing is ever the fault of corporations. Turns out Mom has to work when kid is off school and trying to keep someone offline now is nearly impossible. There’s a myriad of endpoints. I think the parenting aspect here is the mom should be explaining to the son why sites like Chaturbate are extremely dangerous. It’s not parenting to constantly police your child. I find it hilarious that a generation that grew up just disappearing into the night until the lights came on for dinner advocates that anytime a parent isn’t directly looking at their child, they’re wildly irresponsible.

        I grew up with completely unfettered access to the internet. I first had sex with a married woman that I met on a site when I was 15. I think I largely turned out okay, but I can understand why someone may not want that to be possible for their child.

        • NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world
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          21 days ago

          All that was required to stop this entire situation was for her to put a password on the computer. I live alone and I have a password on my computer. If you’re too stupid to setup password protection then you’re too stupid to be operating a computer or raising children, this really is an issue of parenting.

        • Jyek@sh.itjust.works
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          22 days ago

          No, how about you just fucking talk to your kid? “Ew, no I could never talk to my kid about sex! How could I set boundaries in my home with the child I’m raising when I really really don’t wanna talk about the horizontal dance!”

          If you can’t be an adult and be involved in your children’s online activities and day to day life, then maybe you shouldn’t have done the things those actors are doing on the porn site? “Oh but it’s your right to have sex and reproduce!” If that’s the case then it is your responsibility to raise that child in an environment that you believe is morally and ethically correct.

          You don’t want porn in your house? Learn how to use parental controls on your home network. You don’t want your kid talking to strangers on the internet? Then you ought to make sure you know who they are talking to or stop them from talking at all.

          This isn’t black and white and you are being disingenuous suggesting that is the case.

          Some of us like porn and also privacy. This woman hates both. This woman wants her freedoms to supercede other’s freedoms.

          • KuroiKaze@lemmy.world
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            22 days ago

            Oh you mean like I explicitly suggested she do? I think you’re projecting things onto my comment that I didn’t suggest. I think people are just being way too savage on here without any moderate thought about what challenges might be there.

    • ZeroHora@lemmy.ml
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      22 days ago

      These type of sites required payment or at least a payment method to chat no? The kid could watch stuff but I really doubt they could chat with anyone.

      • KuroiKaze@lemmy.world
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        22 days ago

        Good point, I’m not up to date on what free offering gets you. If that’s true then that already acts as at least partial age assurance

    • CallateCoyote@lemmy.world
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      22 days ago

      No. The models on those sites don’t know the age of the people they’re talking to. It’s just another anonymous user watching or grey username saying stupid shit to them in the main chat. The vast majority of performers will not speak to users privately unless they pay. I don’t give a shit if a 14 year old girl is watching porn. That’s her business.

    • dustyData@lemmy.world
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      22 days ago

      Don’t change the gender, change the event. Teen shoots self on the foot while playing with parent’s unsecured revolver. Is Smith and Wesson responsible?

      Morally? Maybe. Legally? Hardly.

      If dems went on that basis to push gun laws Republicans would have a fit. That’s how you know the political attention and support around this event is an hypocritical act. This has nothing to do with protecting children, but all with exerting government control over citizen’s internet activity.

      Grooming happens everywhere on the internet, and Kansas laws aren’t aimed at that at all. Xitter, Facebook, tiktok, Snapchat, Instagram are way bigger vectors of child grooming. We’ve known for a decade that social media is the biggest source of CSAM, usually with way less moderation than porn sites. But this isn’t about children, it is about pushing a purinatical agenda to get support for a party to acquire control of free speech online and ultimately squash dissent and independent thinking.

        • dustyData@lemmy.world
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          22 days ago

          Sexual abuse and grooming children are life altering events that put psychological development and life in danger. How are they not on the same level of severity as a gun inflicted wound? You brought up the subject, not me.