Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a bill Tuesday banning kids under 18 from joining a wide variety of social media sites without parental consent.

The bill, HB 18, requires social media companies to receive explicit consent from a minor’s parent or guardian before they’d be allowed to create their own accounts starting in September of next year. It also forces these companies to prevent children from seeing “harmful” content — like content related to eating disorders, substance abuse, or “grooming” — by creating new filtering systems.

“We’re disappointed to see Gov. Abbott sign into law a bill that erodes parental rights while violating the First Amendment and digital freedoms for every Texan,” Carl Szabo, NetChoice vice president and general counsel, said in a statement Tuesday. “This new law prioritizes government decree over Texan family values.”

Texas’ definition of a “digital service” is extremely broad. Under the law, parental consent would be necessary for kids trying to access nearly any site that collects identifying information, like an email address. There are some exceptions, including sites that primarily deliver educational or news content and email services. The Texas attorney general could sue companies found to have violated this law.

The law’s requirements to filter loosely defined “harmful material” and provide parents with control over their child’s accounts mirror language in some federal legislation that has spooked civil and digital rights groups.

The adult content website Pornhub blocked access in Utah on Monday due to new state laws requiring websites with adult content to verify users' ages before allowing them to access the platforms. Driving the news: Pornhub.com now opens on devices in Utah with a message that states the company has "made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in Utah." The move comes in response to Utah's age verification law, passed in March, the company wrote. That law takes effect Wednesday.

Pornhub's owner, MindGeek, put the same message on its other sites like Brazzers, YouPorn and Redtube. Pornhub confirmed to Axios that the messages went up on Monday in response to the age verification law. Utah's new laws require websites with adult content to obtain age verification each time someone tries to access the site. Companies that don't comply will be liable if they're sued because a minor accessed their content. They also require social media companies to verify all Utah users' ages, starting March 1, 2024, and block accounts of users who don't supply age verification. Pornhub's terms of service require users to be 18 years or older to use the site. "We believe that the best and most effective solution for protecting children and adults alike is to identify users by their device and allow access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that identification," the auto message to Utah users states.

The bill's sponsor, state Sen. Todd Weiler (R-Woods Cross) noted that Pornhub began verifying ages in Louisiana, which passed a similar law that took effect this year. "I expect they will eventually comply with Utah's as well," Weiler said. Of note: Louisiana has a state-created digital "wallet" that Pornhub uses to check users' digital driver’s licenses. Utah has no such verification tool, Michael Stabile, a spokesperson for the Free Speech Coalition, told Axios. Utah declared porn a "public health crisis" in 2016 — a move replicated in other states. Utah lawmakers have also tightened libraries' internet filters and required internet service providers to dispense information on parental controls. Pornhub and other MindGeek companies will probably not be the last to block Utah, Stabile said.

"I think that has a huge chilling effect on anybody who's operating in the sexual wellness space, as well as obviously, sexual speech of all kinds including adult content," he said. Some sites likely will neither block Utahns nor comply with the new rules, Stabile said — and MindGeek's statement and Stabile argued those sites could see an upswing in traffic. Age verification laws can "drive people to less regulated sites" that may operate abroad and whose owners do not fear civil liability in the USA, Stabile said. "They drive people to pirate sites, and sites that don't verify or they have illegal content" like child pornography. Mississippi and Virginia have passed age-verification laws similar to Louisiana's. "It's looking more and more like adult sites are going to block off a significant section of the country," Stabile said.

highdesert wrote: Sun Jun 18, 2023 9:28 am Let them create whatever rules they want for their own kids, but don't make laws that aren't really enforceable for everyone's kids. The "morals police" exist on both ends of the spectrum.

A majority of the Supreme Court signaled Wednesday that Texas may be permitted to require some form of age verification for pornographic sites, but left open the possibility that deeper First Amendment questions may not be resolved immediately.

After two hours of oral argument, the court’s conservatives appeared in sync on the idea that states should be able to impose some kind of requirement to ensure that minors can’t easily access obscene material online, while several justices flagged concerns about their ruling spilling over and affecting other First Amendment rights. Texas’ law is similar to more than a dozen others across the country that require users to submit some form of proof of adulthood. But the porn industry challenged the law, asserting that it chills the ability of adults to access protected content. While the court seemed skeptical of that argument, it also seemed likely to offload some of the thornier First Amendment questions to a lower court. Both the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals – and the Supreme Court itself, on an emergency basis – allowed the law to take effect last year. A decision is expected by this summer.

Chief Justice John Roberts, in a compelling series of questions, repeatedly questioned the usefulness of decades-old precedents given that the nature of technology and porn has changed. The issues at stake, he seemed to say, weren’t like the “girlie magazines” the court was wrestling with when it applied broad First Amendment protections in the 1960s. It’s a theme several of the conservative justices raised, comparing explicit videos on the internet with more benign images once published by Playboy. Are those changes, Roberts asked, the kind of thing that should require the court to revisit how it thinks about applying the First Amendment in such cases? “The technological access to pornography, obviously, has exploded,” Roberts said. “It was very difficult for 15-year-olds … to get access to the type of thing that is available with the push of a button today.” Is it something “we should at least consider,” Roberts asked, “as opposed to keeping a structure that was accepted and established in an entirely different era?”

That approach, if the court embraced it, would suggest a win for Texas. Derek Shaffer, representing the adult entertainment industry in the case, quickly responded to Roberts: “I respectfully urge you not to, Mr. Chief Justice.” Alito invoked the old joke about people reading Playboy for the articles, by asking the lawyer for the adult industry whether Pornhub, a major porn site, offered essays for visitors. “What percentage of the material on that is not obscene?” Alito asked. “Is it like the old Playboy – you have essays on there by …. Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr.?”

CDFingers wrote: Thu Jan 16, 2025 10:43 am Back when I was a teen, kids got together in secret to smoke pot. Now they'll gather in secret to use MyFace or what ever app...

CDF

Wino wrote: Fri Jan 17, 2025 10:17 am Looks like a red state religious backwards thing.