The War on Porn

WASHINGTON — Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson sent letters Thursday to the chief executives of PayPal, Stripe, Visa and Mastercard, warning against debanking practices, including denying access to financial services based on a customer’s lawful business activities.

“It is inconsistent with American values to deny law-abiding individuals the ability to run their legitimate businesses and feed their families because they attracted the ire of rogue American officials, overzealous activists, or, more worryingly, foreign governments seeking to control public discourse,” the letters state. “That is why President Trump’s August 7, 2025, Executive Order on debanking makes clear that it is unacceptable to debank law-abiding citizens due to ‘political affiliations, religious beliefs, or lawful business activities.’”

The executive order prohibits banks, savings associations, credit unions and other financial service providers from restricting access to accounts, loans or other services based on a customer’s lawful business activities that the institution may disagree with or view unfavorably for political reasons.

Following the order, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued a report on debanking that identified several sectors, including adult entertainment, as facing potential discrimination due to activities considered inconsistent with certain financial institutions’ values.

Ferguson’s letters state that companies engaging in deplatforming or denying services to such customers could face Federal Trade Commission investigations and possible enforcement action.

Possible Pressure on Banks via Card Brands

The letters to Visa and Mastercard also reference the role of payment networks and providers, noting concerns about financial institutions that restrict access to services for these reasons. Ferguson wrote that it is “critical” for card networks not to allow unlawful debanking by member institutions, including banks that process transactions on their systems.

“Consumers cannot reasonably avoid this harm, particularly where, as is almost always the case, the First Amendment-protected activity that triggered the adverse action against them had no logical connection to, or material bearing on, their commercial relationship with the payment provider or network,” Ferguson wrote.

The letters suggest that payment networks may play a role in addressing practices by financial institutions that deny services under these circumstances.

The potential for additional oversight comes as questions remain about the extent of regulatory action from banking agencies, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the National Credit Union Administration.

Proposed rules would restrict those agencies from taking action against institutions for providing services to individuals or businesses engaged in lawful activities that may be viewed as presenting reputational risk. However, those rules would still allow banks to make decisions regarding customers based on considerations tied to safety and soundness.

It remains unclear how enforcement priorities will be applied across different industries, including those identified in prior regulatory reports.

WASHINGTON — Following the progression of a package of children’s online safety bills in Congress, FSC Executive Director Alison Boden traveled to Washington, D.C. to share the adult industry’s experience with age verification policies and proposals for improving legislation currently under consideration at the federal level. The delegation included performer and advocate Allie Eve Knox, Julian Corbett of the OpenAge Initiative, and members of the government affairs team from FS Vector.

Background

On March 5, the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved the KIDS Act, which incorporates more than a dozen bills related to children’s use of the internet, including the SCREEN Act. The updated language in the bill is more detailed and revised from earlier versions, though concerns about certain provisions remain.

In the Senate, the Commerce Committee, led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), is expected to consider its own set of online child safety bills after Congress returns from a two-week recess in mid-April. It is not yet clear which proposals will be included in the Senate package.

Industry Position

FSC has previously engaged with more than 50 congressional offices on issues related to banking fairness but has only recently expanded its outreach on age verification. As a trade association representing segments of the adult industry affected by age verification laws in the United States, the group presented members’ experiences with existing policies and discussed approaches that emphasize privacy and device-based verification.

How it Went

According to FSC, congressional offices from both parties engaged with the delegation’s concerns, including questions about the effectiveness of site-level verification and the privacy implications of requiring users to submit biometric data or government-issued identification. FSC said there was interest among staff in the concept of device-based verification systems. The organization expects to continue discussions and policy briefings in the coming months.

What About the SCREEN Act?

Prospects for federal children’s online safety legislation advancing this year remain uncertain. Congressional staff from both parties have indicated that interest in age verification is expected to continue into the next Congress, which begins in January 2027. As more states adopt age verification laws and the Federal Trade Commission signals potential rulemaking in this area, federal legislation is expected to remain under consideration. Future proposals could include reintroduction of the SCREEN Act or similar measures.

What’s Next?

FSC said it plans to continue outreach to congressional offices and work with other stakeholders, including parent organizations, privacy advocates, and technical experts, on approaches to age verification. The organization said it will provide updates to its members as discussions progress.

BRUSSELS — Four of the world’s largest adult platforms are now under closer scrutiny in Europe, as regulators take a harder look at how — or whether — minors are being kept out.

The European Commission has concluded  that PornHub, Stripchat, XNXX and XVideos may be violating provisions of the Digital Services Act aimed at protecting minors from adult content.

In May 2025, the Commission began gathering evidence to determine whether the platforms were putting in place age verification tools to safeguard minors from adult content.

According to a statement dated Wednesday, that investigation by the Commission has now indicated that the four sites failed to sufficiently identify and assess the risks their platforms pose to minors accessing their services, and also failed to implement effective measures to prevent minors from accessing their services.

The statement reads, “Despite stating in their Terms of Services that their services are for adults only, all four platforms allow minors to access their platforms by a simple click confirming they are over 18. The Commission finds that ‘self-declaration’ is not an effective measure, and it also considers that additional mitigation measures, such as page blurring, content warnings and ‘Restricted to adults’ labels, deployed by all of these platforms, do not effectively prevent minors from accessing harmful content.”

It is unclear whether these findings refer only to measures in place at the time the investigation began, or whether they reflect the Commission’s assessment of the platforms’ current age assurance measures.

“At this stage, the Commission considers that Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX and XVideos need to implement privacy preserving age verification measures to protect children from harmful content,” the statement notes. ”These findings do not prejudge the final outcome of the investigation.”

XVideos, XNXX, PornHub and Stripchat will now have the opportunity to review the Commission’s investigation files, reply to the preliminary findings and/or “take measures to remedy the breaches.” If the Commission’s views are confirmed, it may issue fines of up to 6% of the total worldwide annual turnover of each provider, and/or impose penalty payments to compel compliance.

Sometimes, when I read about legal and technological efforts ostensibly designed to protect people (usually minors) from various forms of harmful online content (usually porn), I’m reminded of a meeting I sat in almost 30 years ago.

The purpose of the meeting, as the executive from the company I worked for at the time put it once we’d all gathered in the conference room, was to “figure out how to completely secure the web servers” against potential hacking, denial of service attacks and the like.

A fellow named Randy, who led the company’s IT department, looked right at me after the boss said this. We both began to laugh, uproariously. The boss wasn’t amused, but he knew that if his lead tech and lead marketing guy both thought it was funny, there likely was something out of line about what he’d just said.

“You want a web server to be totally secure?” Randy asked. “The good news is that’s easy. All we have to do is power it down, unplug the network cable from the back and never turn it on again. Of course, that will make the server somewhat less useful than it is now, but it will be entirely hack proof, that much I can promise.”

Lately, Randy’s point has been swimming around in my brain as I read about the state of Utah’s efforts to put the internet porn genie back in the bottle. His point, as I saw it anyway, was that if you want to be online, if you want to be part of that great big global network called the internet, then you’re going to shoulder some risk in the process.

Occasionally, even people who actively lobby the government to restrict and regulate things on the internet, be it porn, social media, misinformation or some other type of content they find problematic, show some recognition of the fact the government can’t truly solve some of their online problems, because some of their problems are endemic to the internet, for lack of a better way to put it.

Take this recent article from the Deseret News, for example.  The article’s primary purpose appears to be to laud the Utah government for its new laws mandating that (some) adult websites must perform age verification checks on their users before displaying anything explicit to those users, as well as putting the onus on adult sites to do something about people use Virtual Private Networks to circumvent the state’s law.

Among other things, the piece introduces readers to a young anti-porn activist named Smith Alley, who talks about his own early exposure to online porn, the problems he says that exposure caused, his evolution into a full-fledged anti-porn activist – and why he thinks Utah’s new law is both great and overdue.

But a funny thing happens along the way. We learn from Alley that, even though he believes parents need the help of the state and of technology companies to solve the problem of minors being exposed to porn, some of the things his own parents did to help him kick his habit involved neither the state nor Big Tech.

“With the help of his parents, Alley decided to jump ‘20 years into the past,’ to a time before unlimited porn was just a click away, replacing his iPod Touch with a flip phone, and screen time with the outdoors,” the article informs us.

So far as I’m aware, there’s no law that incentivizes parents to take smartphones away from their kids and replace them with flip phones, nor is there a company out there encouraging people to do so. And yet, Smith Alley’s parents managed to do it anyway. Imagine that!

Near the end of the article, after learning that Alley is “ecstatic” about the law Utah has passed and is now enforcing and that he’s “proud to live in a state that is family-focused,” he starts to sound less like an anti-porn activist and more like… well, like me.

“(Alley says) these policy shifts must be accompanied by a cohort of parents who are willing to reverse the normalization of ‘iPad kids,’” the article informs us.

“Parents across the country need to really reduce the amount of technology they have in their house,” Alley said. “I just don’t think kids should have that technology in their life. I think we’d be better off without it.”

So, even with age verification laws on the books, even with a means to sue companies who fail to comply with the law and even with a porn tax in place to help offset the alleged harms of internet porn, the bottom line is that parents need to be more involved in the lives of their children – and technology needs to be less central to those same lives.

Just as there’s no way to live a risk-free life (and who would want to, really?), there’s no such thing as a risk-free way to raise your kids. And there’s sure as hell no way to let kids loose on a global computer network and have their journey therein be safe, respectful of their innocence and age appropriate.

When I was a kid, there were TV shows broadcast later than I was allowed to stay up. My parents didn’t want me watching those shows, so they forbade me from doing so. On the occasions when I’d get caught violating their rule, you know what they didn’t do?

They didn’t write to the FCC demanding that those programs be taken off the air. They didn’t get angry at Zenith and RCA and demand that television manufacturers put parental controls on every model they sold. Instead, my parents imposed consequences on me – and let the rest of the damn world live its life.

Yes, the world has changed since I was a kid. But what hasn’t changed – and likely won’t change, even when AI nannies inevitably become all the rage – is the need for parents to be involved in their children’s lives.

And no law, be it one that governs Utah, Texas, or that reaches across the entire country, is going to change that.

BRASILIA, Brazil — Brazil is beginning to map out, step by step, how it plans to enforce one of its newest online safety laws—and the roadmap is already taking shape.

The country’s National Data Protection Authority (ANPD) on Friday released a timeline detailing how it will monitor and enforce age verification requirements under the Digital Statute for Children and Adolescents (Digital ECA), which came into force earlier this week.

Earlier reporting noted that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed a decree on Wednesday establishing guidelines for regulations that will require adult websites to verify the ages of users in Brazil. The rules go beyond simple self-declaration and apply no matter where a site is based. They also extend to marketplaces and delivery apps offering adult or erotic goods and services, which must verify buyers’ ages and prevent minors from accessing those offerings.

Friday’s statement from the ANPD begins to answer the practical question many operators have been quietly asking: how, exactly, will this be enforced?

The agency has broken the process into three stages.

Stage 1 is already underway. Alongside Friday’s release of preliminary guidance for adopting what the agency describes as reliable age verification methods, the ANPD plans to launch an informational webpage about the Digital ECA and begin monitoring how app stores and operating systems are handling age verification tools. In April, the agency will also open a public consultation to collect feedback aimed at refining how the law is interpreted and applied.

Stage 2, scheduled to begin in August, will move into more detailed territory. The ANPD plans to publish more specific guidelines and technical parameters for age verification systems, followed by what it calls an “adaptation and monitoring period” for implementation. Starting in November, updated regulations will outline how inspections will be carried out and how administrative sanctions may be applied. During this phase, oversight will expand to additional regulated entities—including adult websites and platforms—based on insights gathered during the consultation process and assessments of risk across services.

Stage 3, set to begin in January 2027, will shift the focus to active enforcement. The ANPD will carry out inspection actions to ensure compliance and continue refining its procedures for investigations, regulatory oversight, and the application of penalties where violations are identified.

The agency also addressed early benchmarks for how age verification should be implemented, framing them as a way to provide “predictability and legal certainty” for platforms navigating the new requirements.

Those benchmarks echo approaches already seen in the United Kingdom and the European Union, emphasizing factors such as proportionality, accuracy, robustness, reliability, privacy protection and nondiscrimination.

More detailed, technical standards are expected to follow in future guidance, as regulators continue to shape how the law will operate in practice.

SAN FRANCISCO — OpenAI is expected to limit its planned “adult mode” feature so that it does not generate deepfakes or synthetic NSFW images, instead restricting the tool to sexually explicit text, according to a report published Sunday.

The report cited an unnamed company spokesperson who said the change is necessary, adding that a rollout timeline has not yet been finalized. The feature had already been delayed as the company reviews concerns related to mental health risks and other potential uses of the technology.

Members of an advisory council of mental health experts selected by OpenAI warned the company in January that the proposed “adult mode” could pose significant risks to minors. One council member, who was not identified, said the feature could potentially lead to the creation of what they described as a “sexy suicide coach.”

The report also indicated that OpenAI’s internal age verification efforts had been considered “spotty.” Chief executive officer and co-founder Sam Altman said in October that the company planned to deploy age assurance and estimation tools to identify users aged 18 and older. In January, OpenAI expanded those efforts by implementing technology from an online identity provider called Persona, which has faced criticism from some observers who described it as invasive and prone to errors.

SALT LAKE CITY — The conversation around online access just took another turn in Utah, where the rules are getting a little tighter—and, depending on who you ask, a lot more complicated.

Governor Spencer Cox on Thursday signed a bill into law that will tax adult websites and hold them liable if minors bypass geolocation safeguards.

In addition to updating how the state investigates and enforces age-verification requirements, SB 73 introduces a 2% excise tax on adult sites operating in Utah. The tax applies to transactions for “access to digital images, digital audio-visual works, digital audio works, digital books, or gaming services,” including streaming and subscription-based content.

Industry attorneys have pointed to potential legal challenges the tax could face. Still, Utah isn’t entirely alone here—Alabama passed a similar tax at 10% last year, and lawmakers in Virginia and Pennsylvania have begun exploring comparable measures.

Revenue from the new tax will be directed to a state fund supporting “(a) mental health treatment programs for minors affected by material harmful to minors; (b) educational programs for parents, guardians, educators, and minors on the mental health risks associated with material harmful to minors; (c) early prevention and intervention programs for minors at risk of mental health harm from material harmful to minors; and (d) research and public awareness campaigns addressing mental health harm to minors caused by material harmful to minors.”

VPN Requirements

The legislation also includes a provision addressing how location is determined. It states: “An individual is considered to be accessing the website from this state if the individual is actually located in the state, regardless of whether the individual is using a virtual private network, proxy server, or other means to disguise or misrepresent the individual’s geographic location to make it appear that the individual is accessing a website from a location outside this state.”

That language reflects a growing concern among lawmakers about how easily age-verification systems can be bypassed. VPNs, proxies—tools that once felt niche—are now part of everyday digital life, and policymakers are clearly trying to catch up.

In Ohio, a bill known as the “Innocence Act” would require adult websites to “utilize a geofence system maintained and monitored by a licensed location-based technology provider” to track a user’s physical location and determine whether they are in the state and subject to age-verification requirements.

Meanwhile, in Washington, the proposed Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act—aimed at establishing a federal age-verification standard—would require platforms to take “reasonable measures” to prevent users from circumventing those safeguards.

In Indiana, the state has taken a more direct route, filing a lawsuit against Aylo and its affiliates. Officials allege the company failed to prevent access by users using VPNs to bypass geolocation, even though current state law does not explicitly require platforms to account for intentional circumvention.

The VPN provision in Utah’s SB 73 could influence how the state enforces its own age-verification laws, and it may also raise broader legal questions about whether websites can be held responsible for users who actively try to work around location restrictions.

The law is scheduled to take effect on Oct. 1.

BALI, Indonesia — Three tourists have been arrested in Bali after local police accused them of filming pornographic content on the island.

A 23-year-old French woman, identified as Melisa Mireille Jeanine, was arrested on March 13 alongside a 24-year-old Italian man, reported as Nadir ben Said, as the pair attempted to leave Indonesia through Denpasar airport en route to Thailand.

Another man, a 26-year-old French national known only as ERB, was arrested in Canggu, Bali, on Monday. Police described him as the woman’s “manager.”

Police chief Joseph Edward Purba of Bali’s Badung district said the trio were being held on suspicion of creating and distributing pornographic content for profit.

A 23-year-old French woman, Melisa Mireille Jeanine, was arrested alongside two men.

The trio were accused by Bali police of making pornographic content.

“Their motivation to do the (alleged) crime is seeking profit from pornographic video content,” Purba told a press conference on Tuesday.

“All the three suspects are now facing Indonesian electronic information and transaction laws for making and spreading the content.”

Purba said police seized three mobile phones, a camera, a MacBook laptop and a motorcycle taxi vest from the suspects.

Pornographic content is illegal in Indonesia, and those convicted can face up to 10 years in prison on pornography charges, along with an additional six years for online distribution.

Although Bali is predominantly Hindu, Indonesia is a Muslim-majority country with strict laws regarding pornography.

On January 2, Indonesia implemented a new Criminal Code that introduced and revised laws criminalizing premarital sex, cohabitation and public drunkenness.

Under the code, adultery, premarital sex and cohabitation can carry penalties ranging from six months to one year in prison.

Legal experts say these provisions require a formal complaint from certain parties before authorities can take action.

“These alleged crimes cannot be processed by the police without a complaint which can only be filed by the legal husband or wife, parents or children of the perpetrator,” said Retno Murni, a legal expert and founder of the People’s Law Centre.

“Therefore, foreign tourists cannot be arrested, raided, or prosecuted simply for staying or residing with a partner, unless there is a valid complaint from these parties.”

Murni added that tourists who follow local laws and customs have no reason for concern.

The arrests follow a separate case in December 2025 involving British adult content creator Bonnie Blue, who was detained and later deported from Bali.

The 26-year-old was subsequently barred from entering Indonesia for at least 10 years, according to immigration authorities.

During a press conference outside Bali’s Ngurah Rai Immigration Office, Immigration chief Heru Winarko said the British national and her team had violated the terms of their visas.

“They have misused the visa they have to make content in Bali,” Winarko said.

“They will be black-listed from entering Indonesia for at least 10 years (that) could be extended.”

The performer, whose real name is Tia Billinger, was arrested along with 17 male tourists during a raid at a studio in Badung, Bali.

Fourteen of the men, all Australian nationals, were released without charge while authorities continued their investigation into Billinger and three others.

After two days of interviews, Badung Police said they had not identified pornographic elements during the raid, and Billinger was released without charge.

Officials said those present at the studio told investigators they were participating in the production of reality show content.

Some folks who favor suppression of sexually explicit materials are more forthright about what gives life to their censorious zeal than others. Say what you will about the old “Morality in Media” brand, back when the organization went by that moniker, everybody knew where they were coming from just by reading the sign on their door.

Perhaps because the folks at Morality in Media perceived they were limiting their demographic reach with the judgy-sounding, clunky old name, they opted for a rebrand back in 2015, becoming the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. Suddenly, with the flip of a logo, they sounded less like angry Bible thumpers out to cancel your favorite sitcom and more like a serious nongovernmental agency out to prevent real harm.

You know what didn’t change when MIM became NCOSE? The president of the organization. Patrick A. Trueman ran the joint on both sides of the rebrand, from 2010 to 2023. Before that, Trueman was prosecutor at the U.S. Department of Justice during the administration of George H.W. Bush, which also happens to be the last time federal prosecutors aggressively enforced the nation’s obscenity laws. Trueman remains the President Emeritus of NCOSE to this day.

Just as I doubt Trueman lost his zest for cleaning up American media when his organization rebranded, I don’t buy that a lot of the organizations most strenuously supporting various age verification mandates at the state and federal level are really in it to protect minors from harmful materials online – unless one happens to define “harmful” the same way they do, of course.

Referencing remarks recently made by Rep. Leigh Finke, a transgender member of the Minnesota Legislature who has criticized elements of her state’s proposed age verification law, Rindala Alajaji, Associate Director of State Affairs at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and Molly Buckley, one of the organization’s legislative analysts, call attention not only to the impact of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, but the nature of the organizations supporting Texas in the case.

“The Paxton case, and the coalition behind it, illustrates exactly how these laws can be weaponized,” Alajaji and Buckley write. “They weren’t there just to stand up for young people’s privacy online—they were there to argue that the state has a compelling interest in shielding minors from material that, in practice, often includes LGBTQ content. Ultimately, these groups would like to age-gate not just porn sites, but also any content that might discuss sex, sexuality, gender, reproductive health, abortion, and more.”

Alajaji and Buckley add that the “coalition of organizations that filed amicus briefs in support of Texas’s age verification law tells us everything we need to know about the true intentions behind legislating access to information online: censorship, surveillance, and control.”

“After all, if the race to age-gate the internet was purely about child safety, we would expect its strongest supporters to be child-development experts or privacy advocates,” the authors note. “Instead, the loudest advocates are organizations dedicated to policing sexuality, attacking LGBTQ+ folks and reproductive rights, and censoring anything that doesn’t fit within their worldview.”

The thing about appealing to people’s desire to protect children is that it works – and for a good reason. It’s a good thing to want to protect your kids. God knows they need protection, including from themselves. Parents should do all the reasonable, rational, normal things they can do to protect their kids.

But if you’re denying a gay or trans kid access to information from people who have been through the same things that kid is going through and can offer guidance, support and maybe a little solace for the kid, you’re not protecting that kid; you’re stifling, aggravating and alienating that kid. Shit, you might be killing that kid – even if you earnestly believe you’re helping.

I can also understand why the idea of age-gating the internet might sound good to people, especially frightened people who are raising kids who are online much more than their parents. But fear is a state of mind that can make people suggestible – and that’s when opportunists don their superhero capes and make a dramatic entrance, promising to make the world (wide web) a safer, better place for you and your kids—without really mentioning the part about how they’re actually in this to keep The Gays from enacting their Sinister Agenda, or whatever it is that animates some of these zealots.

I guess what I’m saying is this: You can’t save your kid from drowning by throwing someone else’s kid into the deep end of the pool with lead boots on. And some of the people promising to provide your kid a life jacket are heavily invested in lead.

BRASÍLIA, Brazil — President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Wednesday signed a decree setting out how Brazil will move forward with new rules requiring adult websites to verify the ages of users accessing content from within the country.

The decree follows the Digital Statute for Children and Adolescents (Digital ECA), which took effect Tuesday. The law is aimed at strengthening protections for minors online and requires adult content providers to implement age verification measures that go beyond simple self-declaration, regardless of where those platforms operate.

The scope extends beyond traditional websites. Marketplaces and delivery applications offering adult or erotic products and services must also verify the age of customers and block minors from accessing those products.

Enforcement authority rests with the National Data Protection Authority (ANPD), which was recently elevated to the status of a regulatory agency and contributed to drafting the decree.

The ANPD has also released a question-and-answer document outlining how the law is expected to function in practice. According to that guidance, platforms must verify a user’s age before granting access to adult material. If explicit content is visible prior to verification, it must be hidden or blurred by default. The rules also require platforms to prevent minors from creating or maintaining accounts.

Penalties for noncompliance begin with a warning and a 30-day window to correct violations. After that, regulators may impose fines of up to 10% of a company’s revenue in Brazil or up to 1,000 Brazilian reais (approximately $195) per registered user, capped at a total of 50 million reais (approximately $9.73 million).

The ANPD has not yet issued a formal compliance timeline or detailed technical standards for age verification systems. The agency indicated in its guidance that additional rules and best-practice recommendations will be released at a later stage.

Industry response has already begun to take shape. The Brazilian Association of Adult Entertainment Industry Professionals (ABIPEA), launched in September, has offered to provide technical and institutional guidance to companies operating both inside and outside Brazil as they adapt to the new framework.

ABIPEA is also preparing to host a dedicated space at the Intimi Expo trade show, scheduled for March 20–22 in São Paulo, focused on “educating and guiding the adult industry regarding the Digital Statute for Children and Adolescents, its practical implications and compliance strategies.”

For now, the framework is in place. What comes next will depend on how it’s applied — and how the industry adjusts once the rules move from paper into practice.