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Pornhub Pulls Out of Texas (www.404media.co)
submitted 8 months ago by UrLogicFails@beehaw.org to c/usnews@beehaw.org
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Archive link: https://archive.ph/Tol6G

Some key excerpts:

All of the sites in Aylo's network, including Pornhub, YouPorn, and Brazzers, are blocked in Texas, their homepages replaced with a message about the company's rejection of age verification laws.

Pornhub has blocked access to its site in Texas during an ongoing legal battle with the state.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed HB 1181 into law in June, which would require not only verification of age through government ID, but for all adult sites to display in large font a message claiming to be from Texas Health and Human Services about pseudoscientific “dangers” of porn.

Today, Pornhub and all of the sites in Aylo’s network are inaccessible if you’re visiting them in Texas.

there’s a message about the company’s objection to age verification legislation:

“Dear user, as you may know, your elected officials in Texas are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website,” the message says. “Not only does this impinge on the rights of adults to access protected speech, it fails strict scrutiny by employing the least effective and yet also most restrictive means of accomplishing Texas’s stated purpose of allegedly protecting minors. While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, providing identification every time you want to visit an adult platform is not an effective solution for protecting users online, and in fact, will put minors and your privacy at risk.”

Text from the Brazzers.com page that shows up if you try to access it in Texas. The text reads: Dear user, As you may know, your elected officials in Texas are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website. Not only does this impinge on the rights of adults to access protected speech, it fails strict scrutiny by employing the least effective and yet also most restrictive means of accomplishing Texas's stated purpose of allegedly protecting minors. While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, providing identification every time you want to visit an adult platform is not an effective solution for protecting users online, and in fact, will put minors and your privacy at risk. Attempting to mandate age verification without any means to enforce at scale gives platforms the choice to comply or not, leaving thousands of platforms open and accessible. As we've seen in other states, such bills have failed to protect minors, by driving users from those few websites which comply, to the thousands of websites, with far fewer safety measures in place, which do not comply. Very few sites are able to compare to the robust Trust and Safety measures we currently have in place. To protect minors and user privacy, any legislation must be enforced against all platforms offering adult content. Unfortunately, the Texas law for age verification is ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous. Not only will it not actually protect children, but it will also inevitably reduce content creators' ability to post and distribute legal adult content and directly impact their ability to share the artistic messages they want to convey with it. The safety of our users is one of our biggest concerns. We believe that the only effective solution for protecting minors and adults alike is to verify users' age on their device and to either deny or allow access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that verification. We call on all adult sites to comply with the law. Until the real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in Texas. In doing so, we are complying with the law, as we always do, but hope that governments around the world will implement laws that actually protect the safety and security of users. We encourage you to: A) Learn more about device-based age verification* solutions that make the internet safer while also respecting your privacy. B) Contact your representatives and demand device-based verification solutions that make the internet safer while also respecting your privacy. *Device-Based Age Verification refers to any approach to age verification where the personal information that is used to verify the user's age is either shared in-person at an authorized retailer, inputted locally into the user's device, or stored on a network controlled by the device manufacturer or the supplier of the device's operating system. Whether through pre-installed content blocking and filtering software, the disabling of web-browsing permissions, or other means, the user will then be prevented from accessing age-restricted content over the internet unless they are age-verified. To come to fruition, such an approach requires the cooperation of manufacturers and operating-system providers.

Texas residents join users in Montana, North Carolina, Virginia, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Utah, all states where age verification laws have passed and Pornhub has blocked access in response. Ohio faces the possibility of being next.

Critics of these laws have highlighted the privacy and security risks of handing over one’s ID to websites in order to view legal entertainment online. Adult industry advocates propose device-level controls, as the blocked sites’ messages mention.

In August, Pornhub and several other porn sites sued to block the Texas age verification law from going into effect, and a judge granted a stay.

But Paxton appealed to the court’s injunction with the Fifth Circuit, and the law went into effect.

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[–] acastcandream@beehaw.org 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

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