Pornhub has disabled its site in Texas to object to a state law that requires the company to verify the age of users to prevent minors from accessing the site. Texas residents who visit the site ar…

Pornhub has disabled its site in Texas to object to a state law that requires the company to verify the age of users to prevent minors from accessing the site.

Texas residents who visit the site are met with a message from the company that criticizes the state’s elected officials who are requiring them to track the age of users.

The company said the newly passed law impinges on “the rights of adults to access protected speech” and fails to pass strict scrutiny by “employing the least effective and yet also most restrictive means of accomplishing Texas’s stated purpose of allegedly protecting minors.”

  • @Got_Bent
    78•2 months ago

    Just tried it. Yep, no access. Just a long message lambasting Texas politicians.

    I tried all the other regular sites, no issues.

    They’re gonna need an industry wide cooperation to successfully combat this.

    • @AquaTofana
      48•2 months ago

      I tried it, got the block message, and then tried it with a Kansas City VPN just to see if it would work. It did.

      I really liked the message though. Texas legislators are dumb af if they don’t think that this is going to push people to use websites without ID requirements and less stringent rules on content creation/safety.

      I mean, they were dumb af before this, but they’re extra dumb now too.

      • @[email protected]
        8•2 months ago

        Ironically, I just tried accessing PH with a VPN based in Dallas (I’m not in Texas) and got the normal site.

        • @jaybone
          5•2 months ago

          I wonder if they do it by ISP.

          I always wonder how they do these types of blocks. Sure you can get a city from an IP record, mine reports me as several counties away.

      • @[email protected]
        2•2 months ago

        The thing is, there’s hundreds, thousands, possibly millions of porn sites out there. There is no way any state is going to be able to block them all. Even if, by some miracle, they did manage to block them all - it won’t matter, people will still just use a VPN anyway.

    • @TexasDrunk
      5•2 months ago

      I turned off my VPN and same. I talked to a buddy and found out they’re doing it in NC and Virginia too.

    • ditty
      5•2 months ago

      Same lol. Pretty interesting read - Phub advocates for age verification on the device level rather than an individual website level.