This happens to coincide with the date that a new law (singed May 12th) goes into effect in Virginia requiring commercial entities that publish or distribute "material harmful to minors" to verify the age of the users. Commercial entities violating that may suffer civil penalties.
Sounds coincidental. It doesn't have anything to do with pricing and NSFW content is still flowing to the remaining clients (as of right now). Reddit has never mentioned that law either as far as I know.
I don’t know law and am bad at technology too but I’m wondering if there is ways companies can get around these kinds of laws through a combination of geofencing, blocking IPs, and displaying messages that the service isn’t available in a particular state/country. I understand that it might make economic sense but just wondering if showing a certain amount of due diligence helps absolve them legally.
Part of the challenge with this one is it does that "civil right of action" where it's not the state suing the entity but private citizens. That makes it more difficult for the company to defend against it.
Though this gets into a "how much effort are you going to put into it" and "how much control do you have over the ways the content is distributed?"
This also is about liability for the backend service - not the ISPs or other providers (3rd party apps are in a gray zone as to if it is Reddit or the 3rd party app that would be liable for showing such content... and my crystal ball says it would probably end up being that Reddit would be solely liable).
https://legiscan.com/VA/text/SB1515/2023