Pornhub challenges effectiveness of Texas age-verification rules
Pornhub is pushing for states like Texas to rethink their age-verification laws, saying they're ineffective in preventing minors from accessing pornographic content on the internet.
Last week, the company sent a letter to state officials across the United States, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton, calling the current age-verification laws "performative, ineffective, and unenforceable."
What they're saying:
"We are serious about protecting minors, and lawmakers like yourselves must recognize that these laws have failed at that objective," Pornhub wrote. "These laws demonstrably do not work and, as a result, have put your constituents' children and adults' personal data at risk. If you truly intend to protect minors online, you must acknowledge the fats and introduce a real solution."
The company said platform-by-platform age verification is "impossible to enforce at scale, easy to evade, weak at protecting minors and increases the privacy risk for adults." They argue that using the current system leads to more people searching out riskier, non-compliant sites that open up users to data risks.
By the numbers:
Pornhub said that Google searches in Texas for free adult content showed nine out of the top 10 search results did not require age verification.
"Search results are constantly replenished with new, non-compliant sites, demonstrating how easily new players can enter the market," they said. "This revolving door means the internet remains wide open to unmoderated, unverified and potentially unsafe content, regardless of how many times authorities attempt to crack down."
Big picture view:
Beyond seeking out adult websites that do not adhere to age-verification laws, Pornhub said some were using virtual private networks to work around restrictions by hiding their phone's location and bypass firewalls.
The company suggests lawmakers should put the responsibility on major tech companies like Apple, Microsoft and Google to make parental controls the default setting on their operating systems, instead of using site-specific verification requirements.
Texas age-verification law
The backstory:
Abbott signed House Bill 1181 in June 2023. The law bans minors from viewing explicit content online by requiring websites, such as Pornhub, to have users verify their age.
The law requires commercial entities that show sexual material to "use reasonable age verification methods […] to verify that an individual attempting to access the material is 18 years of age or older."
The law applies to any website with one-third of content considered obscene for minors.
A federal court in Austin initially kept the state from enforcing the requirement, but the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals lifted the order.
Pornhub stopped operating in Texas, citing both technical and privacy problems in complying with the law.
The Supreme Court sided with Texas over the law last year in a 6-3 ruling.
A group representing the adult entertainment industry, including websites like Pornhub, challenged the law, claiming it violated the First Amendment.
Texas argued that minors are able to get around current age verification requirements too easily.
The Supreme Court said age verification is part of a state's authority to prevent children from accessing sexually explicit content.
The Source: Information in this article comes from a letter sent to state officials by Pornhub in July and previous FOX Local reporting.