Age Verification Law Forces Pornhub to Disable Access in Texas

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Age Verification Law Forces Pornhub to Disable Access in Texas. Texas residents can no longer access Pornhub without a VPN. As of Thursday, when people in Texas try to access any porn site owned by Aiello, formerly MindGeek, they will see a lengthy message protesting age verification laws.

The laws that require age verification for adult sites have already been put into effect in several states, including Louisiana, Mississippi, Virginia, Utah, Montana and North Carolina. However, Texas the law on age verification was blocked by a group of industry activists and other companies fought against the law and led an US District court judge to decide that enforcement could be detrimental to freedom of speech rights. In the last week the US Court of Appeals has ruled that Texas is able to enforce the law.

While these laws are meant to stop minors from accessing adult-oriented content, advocacy organizations such as The Electronic Frontier Foundation and think group R Street have been against age verification on websites for a long time as they may compromise the security of information and privacy. Instead of instituting age-verification checks that Pornhub has declared “haphazard and dangerous,” the site has blocked access to states with laws like these.

“Since age verification software requires users to hand over extremely sensitive information, it opens the door for the risk of data breaches,” Pornhub posted in its blog. “Whether or not your intentions are good, governments have historically struggled to secure this data.”

Pornhub was not always following this route. Louisiana was the very first state to implement this law prior to the beginning of 2023. In the beginning, Pornhub complied with age verification using its state-run LA Wallet app, which connects to an Louisiana citizen’s identification. That’s right, you had to legally verify your ID with the government in order to access porn.

When these laws were extended into other states Pornhub as well as Aylo’s various websites took a different route. If you live in a state that requires verification of age to access adult-oriented websites, you’ll be welcomed by a video that is safe for work of porn actress Cherie DeVille. She exposes Pornhub’s position on privacy concerns involving data.

Adult actors living in these states may access Pornhub using their accounts as creators because they’ve verified their identity in order to upload content to the site.

The changes to the state’s internet laws are coming at a time that internet access is a topic to debate in Congress. There is a debate in Congress about the Kids Online Safety Act and similar bills are gathering momentum within Congress after numerous meetings with tech CEOs on the safety of children’s online use, however the general consensus is that the safety measures may backfire in the hands of bad actors. Additionally lawmakers in the House of Representatives passed a bill last week that could prohibit TikTok as well as other “foreign adversary controlled applications.” The TikTok bill is scheduled to be discussed in the Senate which could also have broader implications for the government’s involvement in the field of technology.

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