Texas Age Verification Bill Would Plaster Health Warnings On Porn Sites

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Texas cannot yet enforce ID checks on porn sites | TechCrunch

Many states have enacted laws in the last year that attempt to keep children away from inappropriate content by age-gating adult websites.

techcrunch.com

Texas cannot yet enforce ID checks on porn sites​

Amanda Silberling@asilbwrites / 4:23 PM EDT•August 31, 2023

A Texas judge issued an injunction today to stall the enforcement of an online age verification bill.


The Free Speech Coalition, along with adult video sites like Pornhub, led the legal challenge against Texas’ HB 1181, arguing that the bill violates the First Amendment and infringes on rights guaranteed by Section 230.

“The Court agrees that the state has a legitimate goal in protecting children from sexually explicit material online,” wrote judge David Alan Ezra in the junction. “But that goal, however crucial, does not negate this Court’s burden to ensure that the laws passed in its pursuit comport with established First Amendment doctrine.”

Sponsored by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the bill would make porn sites check users’ IDs to be sure that only adults are accessing sexually explicit materials. The bill would also require that these websites display a “public health warning” in 14-point font or larger, which states that watching pornography can cause mental illness and increase the demand for prostitution and child sexual exploitation.

“Although these warnings carry the label ‘Texas Health and Human Services,’ it appears that the Texas Health and Human Services Commission has not made these findings or announcements,” wrote Judge Ezra.

Many states have enacted laws in the last year that attempt to keep children away from inappropriate content by age-gating adult websites. But digital privacy advocates have voiced concerns for many years about the ways in which online ID verification can backfire.

While HB 1181 does not allow companies or third-party verifiers to retain identifying information about its users, this is difficult to guarantee or enforce.



“Once information is shared to verify age, there’s no way for a website visitor to be certain that the data they’re handing over is not going to be retained and used by the website, or further shared or even sold,” explains the Electronic Frontiers Foundation, a nonprofit advocating for civil liberties online.

When a similar law passed in January in Louisiana, Pornhub conducted age checks via LA Wallet, a state-run digital drivers’ license app. So, in order for an adult to access one of the web’s most popular porn sites, they would have to share their government-issued ID.

Adult sites can be fined for not complying with these laws. Under the bill in Texas, for example, the Attorney General can sue websites for $250,000 each time a minor is found to have accessed sexual material.

Other laws like this have taken effect in Mississippi, Virginia and Utah. Learning from what happened in Louisiana, Pornhub decided to go dark in those states altogether. Instead, users will see a safe-for-work video in which adult actress Cherie DeVille explains why Pornhub doesn’t support age-verification as a way of keeping minors safe online.

“While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users,” she said in the video.

Sites like OnlyFans and Pornhub require adult actors to prove their age and identity to cut down on nonconsensual content and child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Still, Pornhub remains at the center of several pre-existing lawsuits regarding CSAM. But other porn sites have even fewer safeguards to ensure that actors aren’t uploading exploitative content.

The judge’s decision in Texas marks a departure from the precedent set by other states. But numerous other online age-verification bills like the Kids Online Safety Act are currently being considered.

“We’re pleased that the Court agreed with our view that HB1181’s true purpose is not to protect young people, but to prevent Texans from enjoying First Amendment protected expression,” said Free Speech Coalition Executive Director Alison Boden in a statement. “The state’s defense of the law was not based in science or technology, but ideology and politics.”

 

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Court Rules in Pornhub’s Favor in Finding Texas Age-Verification Law Violates First Amendment

Score one for Pornhub: A federal judge ruled Thursday that a Texas law requiring pornography sites to institute age-verification measures — and add prominent warning labels about the alleged …

variety.com

Court decision here:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txwd.1172751222/gov.uscourts.txwd.1172751222.36.0.pdf

 

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[Kyle C. Barker]

My sister was telling me she lost her license and walked into the DMV. They told her the nearest appointment is in September 90 miles away


But they got time for porn ID

Does your sister live in a state where you need a state v issued id to vote?

 

[levitate]

I don’t know what the solution is, but it would be good to have some methods of preventing minors from seeing this type of material.

I thought at one point there was a push to put all pornographic material behind a .xxx domain…(e.g. pornhub.xxx, xvideos.xxx) With that, at least it would be easier for parents to implement blocking/filtering techniques.

 

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Pornhub Bans Texas

Hopefully, there are some other places to find porn on the internet.

gizmodo.com

Pornhub Bans Texas​

Hopefully, there are some other places to find porn on the internet.​

By Oscar Gonzalez

Published Yesterday
Updated Yesterday

Comments (48)

Image: Pe3k (Shutterstock)

It’s going to be a little harder to find porn in the Lone Star State. Pornhub is no longer available to Texas residents thanks to a lawsuit from the state’s attorney general.

Horny Texans saw a very unsexy message when visiting the previously mentioned porn sites on Thursday.

“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 reads. “Unfortunately, the Texas law for age verification is ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous. Until the real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in Texas.”

Pornhub’s sexy step-sister sites Redtube, Brazzers, and YouPorn are also showing the same message.

Back in February, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against Aylo, Pornhub’s parent company, for failing to enforce the state’s age verification law. The legislation went into effect last September and requires adult sites like Pornhub to obtain digital identification for users verifying they are of legal age to view porn. Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled in favor of Texas ruling that the state law doesn’t violate the First Amendment.

Aylo says it’s not finished in its legal battle for the right of every red-blooded adult American to access hardcore porn.

“This is not the end,” said Alex Kekesi, vice president of brand and community for Aylo, in an emailed statement Thursday. “We are reviewing options and consulting with our legal team. We will continue to fight for our industry and the performers that legally earn a living, and we will continue to appeal through all available judicial recourse to recognize that this law is unconstitutional.”

Texas is part of the growing number of states that are finding the largest porn sites are no longer interested in sticking around. Montana and North Carolina saw their access to Pornhub and its sister sites go away at the beginning of the year. Arkansas, Mississippi, Utah, Louisiana, and Virginia have also either lost access or will lose access due to their own age verification laws. The governor of Indiana signed his state’s age verification law on Wednesday.

 

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AI versus age-verification laws

The OnlyFake website disappeared for now, but it surely won't be the last service to offer digital fake IDs.

reason.com

AI Versus Age-Verification Laws​

AI tools churning out images of fake IDs could help people get around online age-check laws.​

ELIZABETH NOLAN BROWN | 2.7.2024 11:40 AM

Share by email Print friendly versionCopy page URL

(ALPHAVECTOR/Newscom)

A new AI-powered web tool seems tailor-made to help teens get around age-verification laws online—and showcases the futility of trying to set a minimum age for social media use.

In the old days, getting around a minimum-age requirement meant actually having a physical ID card to say that you were of legal age. But with online age verification, all one may need is an image of that ID card.

Enter OnlyFake, a website using AI technology to cheaply generate images of fake IDs.

"OnlyFake is claiming to use 'neural networks' to generate realistic looking photos of fake IDs for just $15," reported 404 Media earlier this week:

In our own tests, OnlyFake created a highly convincing California driver's license, complete with whatever arbitrary name, biographical information, address, expiration date, and signature we wanted. The photo even gives the appearance that the ID card is laying on a fluffy carpet, as if someone has placed it on the floor and snapped a picture, which many sites require for verification purposes.

The OnlyFake website disappeared (for now) after the 404 Media report. But it surely won't be the last service to offer digital fake IDs.

Carding People to Use the Web​

Measures to require people to prove their age before using social media or viewing porn platforms have been sweeping U.S. statehouses of late. A few have already passed, and a seemingly endless stream are in the works. The idea has also been gaining steam among federal lawmakers, too.

These measures tend not to say just how tech companies must verify user ages. But the easiest way—and thus the one most likely to get put into practice—is to require users to upload a picture of their driver's license (or another government-issued ID) either directly to the tech platform or through some third-party verification site.

Proponents of online age verification laws say they're needed to stop teenagers and children from using social media or seeing adult content. But even if you agree with this goal in theory, its implementation comes with some serious issues.

For one thing, rules requiring people to attach their real IDs to their social media accounts and other online activities would be a serious invasion of privacy for adults and minors alike. It could open us all up to hackers, pranksters, identity thieves, and government harassment. Gone would be the days when anyone could be truly or even nominally anonymous online.

Some say these tradeoffs are worth it to stop kids from having free range in the digital sphere. But would age-check laws even succeed in their stated goals?

The existence of sites like OnlyFake suggests that they would not. Using it, any teen with $15 could potentially thwart a social media or porn platform ID check.

Outsmarting the Age-Check Regime​

Of course, people can currently produce fake ID images with photo-editing tools like Adobe Photoshop. But AI promises to make the task simpler and quicker and, perhaps, produce better results. What was once a painstaking process that required some technical skill could soon be easily done by anyone employing the right AI tool.

Tech companies doing age checks could employ measures designed to discourage fakes, such as requiring people to submit a photo of themselves holding their ID. But AI-powered services could in turn generate fake photos of someone holding their fake ID card. And as AI tools inevitably get better, these will only get more realistic looking.

There are perhaps some metadata verification techniques that could be used here. But metadata can also be messed with, to some degree.

Some age-check measures— such as one passed in Utah last year—would require parental approval for minors to create social media accounts. But kids have been getting around parental approval requirements forever in the non-digital world. It's hard to imagine that this online approval couldn't also be faked with the right tools.

The big AI image-generation platforms may put in place systems to bar them from being used to generate fake images. (For instance, Instagram's AI service—which generates new images from user-uploaded images using user-inputted keywords—said it could not generate an image when my prompt was "fake ID.") But more underground services, like OnlyFake, can always step in to fill this void.

More and More Elaborate Verification?​

Tech companies (or the third-party verification services they rely on) could avoid the fake ID issue by employing services that essentially run background checks on all users.

But the more elaborate the ID checks required, the more cost these companies incur and the more time it takes. And most tech companies will want to do the bare minimum required to comply with any relevant laws, not go above and beyond in order to exclude more users from their platforms.

Perhaps if fake IDs are perceived as a big enough problem—and the penalties for failing to find them severe enough—we will indeed see elaborate identity-checking endeavors start taking off.

Will the keep-kids-off-social-media crowd be happy then? Will the teens be better off?

I doubt it. Even if teens aren't able to get around age verification laws—and even if we accept that social media might be bad for them ( something far from obvious)—we're looking at some serious potential for unintended consequences.

Because teenagers will find alternatives, and these may actually be more risky or more likely to encourage the behaviors people worry about. It's absurd to think that young people will simply say, "Well, can't create a TikTok account, so I guess I'll just go cruise the mall like it's the 1980s."

They'll just utilize platforms that don't technically fall under the purview of social media, like chat services, or private web forums—heck, even Google Docs would work. Or they'll visit websites and sign up for apps based in countries without age checks. And all of this will make monitoring what's going on—and countering any dangerous trends or things like bullying—more difficult, while also making it less likely that the places where teens are viewing or creating content will be responsive to U.S. authorities at all.

The bottom line is that young people have been thwarting minimum age laws to buy beer, see R-rated movies, and all sorts of other things for a long time. In some ways, technology has made this more difficult, with things like state-specific holograms and laser embossing making driver's licenses less easy to fake than they once were. Yet tech has also provided all sorts of new tools for forging realistic IDs—particularly if these IDs aren't intended to be examined in physical form.

A lot of hype about the power of AI might be overstated but its potential to create realistic-looking images is undeniable. Score one for the 16-year-old who just wants to post memes online.

 

[3rdWorld]

I thought America was a free country..where does all this control freak behavior come from???

 

[Charlie Hustle]

I thought America was a free country..where does all this control freak behavior come from???

Incels. MF just happy to grab a flabby arm.

 

[Richard Glidewell]

Incels. MF just happy to grab a flabby arm.

That tree relatives need to finish the job.........

 

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