Texas residents no longer have access to Pornhub. If you try this, you will end up with a long argument against age verification laws.
States like Louisiana, Mississippi, Virginia, Utah, Montana and North Carolina have passed laws requiring age verification on adult entertainment websites.
But Texas’ age verification law stalled when a group of adult industry and business advocates challenged the law, leading a U.S. District Court judge to rule that the app could undermine free speech protections. Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that Texas can enforce this law.
Although These laws are intended to prohibit minors from accessing adult content. Advocacy groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the think tank R Street oppose age verification on websites for this reason can endanger data security and anonymity.
Instead of introducing age controls, which Pornhub has called “random and dangerous,” The site simply blocked access in states with such laws.
Because age verification software requires users to provide extremely sensitive information, it poses the risk of data breaches. Whether your intentions are good or bad, governments have historically had difficulty protecting this data.
These regulatory changes come at a time when access to online platforms is being debated in Congress. The Children’s Online Safety Act and similar bills are gaining traction in Congress following numerous meetings with tech companies about children’s online safety. The general concern is that many of these security initiatives could go wrong if used by malicious actors.
