MANY Red States Now BLOCKED!

[Thoron]

The further the question, why is ISP address being used? Cant towers and GPS be used? The current method works for PCs, but mobile device users are being punished. I'm in Ouray Colorado but AT&T/ConsumerCellular is pushing it through an IP that's claiming I'm in Salt Lake City Utah which I have never stepped foot in or driven through. There needs to be a better way to determine location if you care that much about the site and thr user base.

Edited February 2 by Thoron
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On 2/1/2025 at 11:48 AM, Thoron said:

For whatever reason I'm in Colorado on cell network, AT&T/Consumer Cellular and I'm getting directed to MalePrime saying that in Utah. I haven't had issue with this for close to 9 or 10 months and this is cropping up again. Did someone muck with the site adminsettings or something? 

Cell networks are the most  likely to juggle IP addresses around, so not surprising.

 

On 2/2/2025 at 3:11 PM, Thoron said:

The further the question, why is ISP address being used? Cant towers and GPS be used? The current method works for PCs, but mobile device users are being punished. I'm in Ouray Colorado but AT&T/ConsumerCellular is pushing it through an IP that's claiming I'm in Salt Lake City Utah which I have never stepped foot in or driven through. There needs to be a better way to determine location if you care that much about the site and thr user base.

Websites have to request lat/long AFTER the page loads. AND it doesn't really work on anything but mobile, AND the USER has to be OK with giving the website pretty much their precise location. That isn't a solution that will work in 90% of the cases. If I had more time/energy I'd write some code to let mobile users exempt their IP AFTER the initial redirect to Male Prime, but I don't have the time/energy at the moment.

[BootmanLA]

I think I've covered this before, but here's a kind of "dumbed down" version of how IP addresses work with internet providers.

Each provider has licensed a batch of IP addresses that it can use to route content to its subscribers' devices. In layman's terms, that means "YourFavoriteISP" controls a bunch of IP addresses. When they license those addresses, they're registered with the giant servers that route the internet, so that if a website gets a request from a device at address 1.2.3.4, it can determine that said address is controlled by YourFavoriteISP, and that ISP's routing manager (called the "DHCP server") is located at, say, 1.2.3.240 - and that server is located in Bumfuck, Colorado.

So let's say 1.2.3.4 (your phone) requests content from a website. The website says, OK, I need to send this page back to 1.2.3.4, but I don't know exactly where that device even is. But I know it's managed by YourFavoriteISP, at 1.2.3.240, in Colorado, so - hey, 1.2.3.240, send this to your homeboy that's at 1.2.3.4. Then the DHCP server at 1.2.3.240 gets the page, asks itself - who did I give 1.2.3.4 to, the last time I gave that out? - gets the answer, and sends the page on. This all happens in fractions of a second.

The problem is when YourFavoriteISP also has routing servers in Shithole, Idaho and Dickwad, Montana. Most of the time, the Idaho server uses its own, separate pool of IP addresses from the Colorado one or the Montana one. But demand isn't static, and it's possible that Colorado's IP pool may get maxed out occasionally during tourist seasons. So YourFavoriteISP links the DHCP servers at all three locations so that, if any one of them is over capacity - it doesn't have any more addresses to give out - it can get an address from the others. So Colorado users may get an IP address that the internet authorities "think" is located in Idaho. Or Montana.

And normally that wouldn't matter, but because state laws are now making it a criminal offense to offer certain content to their residents without verifying the age of the user, places like this have to figure out where the user is coming from - BEFORE any content is actually displayed to the user. The only feasible way, at this point, is to use the database that says THIS address is registered to an ISP at a server in X location. And if X location is one that the website needs to block, it's going to block, even though it's possible the user is not in that location at all.

After all, that's what a VPN does: it tells all the internet sites you try to reach that you are, in fact, in whatever location you've specified - even though my device may be in Louisiana and it's using an IP address in Louisiana, the VPN service re-routes all my traffic to appear to be coming from Denver, Colorado, because the IP address belonging to the VPN is registered there.

These problems people are reporting are kind of almost a "reverse VPN" - the location associated with the IP address is one you didn't select, and doesn't reflect reality, but it's not one you can control. It's flagging you as being in a state that this site has barred. The good news is that you can still use a VPN to mask your "apparent" location and specifically choose one that is not on the blocked list. In other words, the VPN doesn't care where you got your IP address from; it's going to take care of getting you the content you want, and what IP address you have underlying it doesn't matter at all.

[hntnhole]

Thanks, BootmanLA, for that explanation.  

I think I follow - but it'll take a few more re-re-re-readings to be sure.  

[PozBearWI]

Dayum @BootmanLA  Can I use this as an example of a cogent reply if I ever  publish a dictionary?  🙂

[BootmanLA]

Anything I post is free for the taking, as long as the site's rules permit it.

[Thoron]

If its of any interest or care, maleprime has expired and needs to be renewed 😛

 

Though it may be out of date, but my understanding is that as long as the server is hosted in a state where the content isn't illegal there's generally jack didly squat another state can do about it.

[BootmanLA]

Just now, Thoron said:

Though it may be out of date, but my understanding is that as long as the server is hosted in a state where the content isn't illegal there's generally jack didly squat another state can do about it.

That's the question, though. Red states are pushing an interpretation of law that would render the providers liable anyway.

For decades, for example, the law about collecting sales tax on interstate purchases was that companies in other places couldn't be forced to act as the sales tax collector for the delivery state, the way an in-state vendor would be. The underlying principle was that the seller had to have a "nexus" with the state where the recipient lived. That could be a branch office or warehouse, for example. It might be attending trade shows in that state as an exhibitor/vendor. It might even be having a sales manager who lived in that state. But the key - for as long as anyone could remember - was that the nexus had to be physical. There had to be some physical connection between the company and the land of the state trying to make the company collect the tax.

Until it wasn't any more. In 2018, the Supreme Court upheld the idea of an "economic nexus" - that as long as the vendor made a certain amount of sales into a state, that state could require the vendor to collect sales tax.

So what does that concept - not the specific decision -  mean for cases like this? It's quite possible the Supreme Court will say, in effect, if you have a certain level of interaction with the citizens of a particular state, you can be required to adhere to their rules regarding content access. In other words, this is a legal action based on the Commerce Clause in the constitution.

That's a separate issue from the notion that states can impose governmental barriers to viewing the content in the first place - ie legal action based on the First Amendment. Right now, the primary argument against such laws is that you can't impose the requirement without simultaneously requiring the user to identify himself - and at least under current law, you can't do that, at least not in a way that lends itself to the government having/retaining that information.

So, for instance, if you were to buy a porn magazine at a newsstand, the store could require you to show ID to prove you're over 18. But they couldn't copy your license, they couldn't record it in a registry of porn buyers, and they certainly couldn't turn your name over to the government as a porn buyer.

The argument now is that there's no way to secure the ID information provided, either to the content provider or to a hypothetical third-party age verification service, remains confidential - that it's not placed into the digital equivalent of that registry of porn buyers. And that while keeping minors from accessing pornography may be a legitimate goal of government, it can't use a method that infringes on core First Amendment principles unless that goal or interest is "compelling" AND the way it's chosen to implement that is the least restrictive way of doing so.

[PozBearWI]

That would give those who wish to go after, let's say finally eliminate all those gay people so they won't reproduce, and then they will cease to exist...  Not unlike 100 years ago as Germany devolved into it's despicable outcome. 

[Erik62]

15 hours ago, hntnhole said:

Thanks, BootmanLA, for that explanation.  

I think I follow - but it'll take a few more re-re-re-readings to be sure.  

Few MORE😕😱. I'll be wearing aged diapers (NO, I do not have a Loose Hole problem) before my brain says, OK 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣.