(NewsNation) — On the heels of Pornhub blocking access to Texas-based users following the state’s age verification law for adult content, other websites could follow suit.
Pornhub’s parent company, Aylo, disabled services in Texas on Thursday after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of a law that requires users to verify they are at least 18 years old.
Other sites may choose to do the same, particularly sites that are not necessarily only for adult content, Christopher Terry, an associate professor of media law at the University of Minnesota, told NewsNation.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is looking “for somebody to make an example of, and I would suspect other websites that you wouldn’t necessarily think of as porn sites will be worried,” Terry said.
According to Terry, X (formerly Twitter), Reddit and Tumblr could also be subject to the law since adult content is also available on those platforms.
All three platforms did not immediately return a request for comment by NewsNation on what their policy will be in Texas after the ruling.
“There’s an incredible burden on these sites to collect this information, and so you’re putting them in a situation where they have to weigh whether access to their web content in the state outweighs the potential costs and risks of allowing people to have that access,” Terry said.
Pornhub decided that it’s not worth it, he said.
The standoff between adult content sites and the state set off after Texas passed H.B. 1181 last year, which required companies that offer “sexual material harmful to minors” to verify that its users are at least 18 years old using a government-issued ID or public or private transactional data.
Several companies, including Pornhub, filed suit to stop the law but suffered a blow after the appeals court ruled in favor of the state.
Pornhub called the Texas law “ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous” in a statement.
“Not only will it not actually protect children, it will also inevitably reduce content creators’ ability to post and distribute legal adult content and directly impact their ability to share the artistic messages they want to convey with it,” Alex Kekesi, Aylo’s vice president of brand and community, said in a statement.
The adult content company said it supports age verification on users’ devices but not through submitting an ID, which they said could compromise privacy.
Paxton hailed the court’s decision a “victory” and brushed off Pornhub’s decision to restrict access to Texas users.
“In Texas, companies cannot get away with showing porn to children. If they don’t want to comply, good riddance,” he posted on X.
Users trying to access Pornhub from Texas are now met with a statement calling out the Texas age verification law.
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 1,500% increase in VPN searches in Texas over a single-day period since Thursday.
At least eight other states, including Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Utah and Virginia also have some form of age verification laws to limit children’s access to certain content.
The Free Speech Coalition said as many as 30 more states could introduce similar bills this year.
“Anytime a website decides to limit itself in response to a government law they are afraid of violating, it becomes a violation of free speech,” Terry said. “It’s easy to make examples of people who deal in porn because some people object to porn, but you’re not a far leap from other types of protected expression, and all of a sudden, those will also won’t get full First Amendment protections just because they’re on the internet … and that’s a terrifying reality.”
