just pay a decent amount for someone who's actually qualified to look at the ID's manually
I know for a fact they can afford hundreds of people like that. They just choose not to because it costs way more money than just pulling out of a state.
See Facebook being moderated by underpaid traumatized people for a similar real life example of a similar system. The only reason Pornhub doesn't do something like that is because the kind of person who knows how to verify US ID's probably can't be turned into basically free labor because they probably cost more on average to employ
A government ID is a proprietary information of each state. If someone showed you an ID from Montana would you know what each number and feature on the ID meant? No, you wouldn't because IDs are a way for the government to ID a citizen and not everything known about an ID is available to the public. In order for a website to be able to scan an ID, the state needs to provide the website with the appropriate software. If you buy alcohol at the grocery store, the grocery store uses state-issued software to scan the ID.
Texas as example passed a law which said that people are now allowed to sue pornhub for not scanning IDs and yet Texas did not give pornhub the necessary software to scan IDs. The intention was purely to manufacture a scenario for people of Texas to sue pornhub.
In the instance of facebook, I'm not sure that facebook actually scans the id, they just store a picture of it. Do you want every porn site to store photos of every ID of every visitor. What if the website gets hacked?
are we pretending these companies don't have the ability to just buy the creation of said software from the government? no matter the way you paint it it's still just them being cheap. nothing more, nothing less.
I'm not sure what you're not understanding about "all 50 states have different proprietary ID designs". Proprietary as in, secret, as in unknown to the public, as in you can't just make the software yourself. As in, each of these states are intentionally hiding the information because they don't want pornhub to be able to actually ID visitors. The answer to your question is "no". No they can't just pay the government for that software.
As I said, they already worked out a system with Louisiana. Louisiana actually cooperated. The other states are not cooperating. The other states are right wing dominated states that are being obtuse on purpose.
they literally can though. US politicians are famously buyable
This is the most absurd, ahistoric line of magical thinking that I've read in weeks. Why does pornhub simply not just buy politicians at the politician store? A real head scratcher, I'm really thonking now.
The answer is so simple. In the states that pornhub has blocked, the religious lobby and christian nationalists have more political power and capital than the porn industry. Every one of the states highlighted in red has a long history of sexual repression.
In Utah, a 1973 law made it illegal to have premarital sex until 2019, punishable by a misdemeanor and $1000 fine.
In Texas, it is illegal to buy or sell any dildo or artificial vagina sex toy.
In North Carolina, it is illegal for a man/woman couple to live in the same house if they are not married (cohabitation).
These are only a few examples. The states colored in red on the map have long history of discrimination against LGBT people, laws limiting or banning abortion, laws making it harder to divorce an abusive spouse, etc.
Here's a map of states that have banned access to gender affirming care for transgender people. It's literally the same states that have been blocked by pornhub. This map shows that 25 states have banned gender affirming care. 10 of the 12 states which have been blocked by pornhub also have banned access to gender affirming care.
Here's a map of states which have banned or heavily restricted abortion access. The map shows 21 states have banned or highly restricted access to abortion. Oh it's the same map again. 9 of 12 states which have been blocked by pornhub have banned or extremely limited access to abortions.
Here's a map of states where gay marriage is prohibited by the state constitution, although protected by federal law (for now). Same map again? What are the odds? 11 of the 12 states which have been blocked by pornhub also ban gay marriage in their state constitution.