Comment on Half of the US Now Requires You to Upload Your ID or Scan Your Face to Watch Porn
ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com 4 days ago
Not downplaying that this is real dumb, but “half the US” is meant to be misleadingly attention-grabbing. The states that are doing this are not the most populous states. No law like this exists in NY or CA, for example.
I don’t know the amount of the population living under these laws, but it is not nearly half, even if half the states have passed such laws.
I apologize in advance for how pedantic this comment will be but “half the US now requires” obviously refers to half the administrative units (states in this case, could be counties or municipalites etc) while “half the US is required” would refer to the population, so technically the post title is not wrong because of the population distribution.
I’m going to wash my hands now so that my fingers forget they typed this.
That’s actually useful pedantism.
Thank you!
That is so technically accurate, I love it.
I don’t know the amount of the population living under these laws
And yet you felt the need to comment on it anyway.
brianpeiris@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
I did the math and it’s 49.37% of the population, based on the 2024 census data, or 49.94% if you exclude Puerto Rico and D.C. I suppose mostly due to Texas and Florida being in the list, but also Ohio, George and North Carolina with over 10M people each.
Here's the raw data
Based on the table from Wikipedia, and the list of states in the article. |State |Population (2024)|Requires Age Verification|Population Requiring Age Verification| |--------------------|-----------------|-------------------------|-------------------------------------| |California |39,431,263 | |0 | |Texas |31,290,831 |x |31,290,831 | |Florida |23,372,215 |x |23,372,215 | |New York |19,867,248 | |0 | |Pennsylvania |13,078,751 | |0 | |Illinois |12,710,158 | |0 | |Ohio |11,883,304 |x |11,883,304 | |Georgia |11,180,878 |x |11,180,878 | |North Carolina |11,046,024 |x |11,046,024 | |Michigan |10,140,459 | |0 | |New Jersey |9,500,851 | |0 | |Virginia |8,868,896 |x |8,868,896 | |Washington |7,958,180 | |0 | |Arizona |7,582,384 |x |7,582,384 | |Tennessee |7,227,750 |x |7,227,750 | |Massachusetts |7,136,171 | |0 | |Indiana |6,924,275 |x |6,924,275 | |Maryland |6,263,220 | |0 | |Missouri |6,245,466 |x |6,245,466 | |Wisconsin |5,960,975 | |0 | |Colorado |5,957,493 | |0 | |Minnesota |5,793,151 | |0 | |South Carolina |5,478,831 |x |5,478,831 | |Alabama |5,157,699 |x |5,157,699 | |Louisiana |4,597,740 |x |4,597,740 | |Kentucky |4,588,372 |x |4,588,372 | |Oregon |4,272,371 | |0 | |Oklahoma |4,095,393 |x |4,095,393 | |Connecticut |3,675,069 | |0 | |Utah |3,503,613 |x |3,503,613 | |Nevada |3,267,467 | |0 | |Iowa |3,241,488 | |0 | |Puerto Rico |3,203,295 | |0 | |Arkansas |3,088,354 |x |3,088,354 | |Kansas |2,970,606 |x |2,970,606 | |Mississippi |2,943,045 |x |2,943,045 | |New Mexico |2,130,256 | |0 | |Nebraska |2,005,465 |x |2,005,465 | |Idaho |2,001,619 |x |2,001,619 | |West Virginia |1,712,278 | |0 | |Hawaii |1,446,146 | |0 | |New Hampshire |1,409,032 | |0 | |Maine |1,405,012 | |0 | |Montana |1,137,233 |x |1,137,233 | |Rhode Island |1,112,308 | |0 | |Delaware |1,051,917 | |0 | |South Dakota |924,669 |x |924,669 | |North Dakota |796,568 |x |796,568 | |Alaska |740,133 | |0 | |District of Columbia|702,250 | |0 | |Vermont |648,493 | |0 | |Wyoming |587,618 |x |587,618 | | |343,314,283 | |169,498,848 | | | | |49.37% |
ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com 4 days ago
Ok, that is much closer to half than I thought. I’ll go eat some crow.
brianpeiris@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
It was a reasonable assumption, but the distribution didn’t pan out that way.