(NewsNation) — A battle is brewing between adult content websites and states who want to better protect children from accessing them.
In Texas, residents can no longer access the pornography website Pornhub after its parent company Aylo disabled access to the site in protest of the recent age verification law, which requires adult content websites to take additional action to protect minors from obscene material.
“In Texas, companies cannot get away with showing porn to children. If they don’t want to comply, good riddance,” Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton posted on X.
Other states with age verification laws include Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Utah and Virginia. The Free Speech Coalition said as many as 30 more states could introduce similar bills this year.
Now, Pornhub’s disabling of its site is throwing Texans for a loop.
Google searches in the Lone Star State for “Texas VPN” have skyrocketed over the weekend, according to new data by SlashGear. VPNs, or virtual private networks, allow users to disguise their locations online. The new data revealed a 1,700% increase in VPN searches in Texas over a single-day period.
Texans who visit Pornhub are met with a message from the company that criticizes the state’s elected officials who are requiring them to verify 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.”
“As we’ve seen in other states, such bills have failed to protect minors by driving users from those few websites which comply to the thousands of websites with far fewer safety measures in place which do not comply,” Pornhub’s statement continued.
The announcement from Pornhub follows the news that Paxton was suing Aylo for not following the newly enacted age verification law.
Paxton’s lawsuit is looking to have Aylo pay up to $1.6 million from mid-September of last year to the date of the filing of the lawsuit and an additional $10,000 each day since filing.
The Free Speech Coalition and pornography companies lost a bid in court to block the age verification law, and Paxton released a statement March 8 calling the ruling an “important victory.” The court ruled that the age verification requirement does not violate the First Amendment, Paxton said, saying he won in the fight against Pornhub and other pornography companies.
The state Legislature passed H.B. 1181 in June of 2023, requiring companies that distribute sexual material that could be harmful to minors to confirm users of the platform are older than 18 years. The age verification law asks users to provide government-issued identification or public or private data to verify they are of age to access the site.
Pornhub said access will continue to be completely disabled until a “real solution is offered.” The website offered a solution, saying the age of the user should be verified on the device itself, not the website.
