Commentary

The Big Chill: If You Can Get People to Self-Censor, You Don’t Need a Ban By Morley Safeword

Cold weather

A couple years back, when many of the state laws requiring age verification on the part of adult websites were merely proposals floating around in state legislatures, a state legislator from one of the few states that already had such a law on its books publicly noted that Pornhub had begun blocking all traffic from the state, which meant the law was “already working” as intended.

I remember seeing a clip online of the legislator saying this and wondering if she knew just how right she was. The law she was talking about may have been presented as a measure to deter kids from accessing online porn, but in truth, it was about making it harder for anyone to access online porn.

While you might not realize it if you were to review some of the blatantly unconstitutional stuff they dream up, most state legislators do know they can’t simply ban speech they don’t like. They know this is true whether the speech they dislike is sexually-explicit material like porn, speech intended to “annoy” or “offend” people who share their sensibilities or speech from Jimmy Kimmel.

Legislators, censorious activists and other vile creatures of darkness also know the next best thing to a ban is an effective effort to cow people into silence, whether by criminal law or civil sanction.

When attorneys and scholars who are familiar with the First Amendment and free speech issues discuss these things, you’ll often hear them reference the “chilling effect,” which in the context of legislation refers to “government unduly deterring free speech and association rights through laws, regulations or actions that appear to target activities protected by the First Amendment,” as the Free Speech Center at MTSU puts it.

When the Supreme Court recently upheld the Texas law requiring websites that offer over a certain amount of content deemed to be “harmful to minors” to verify the age of users before displaying any such content, the court effectively said the chilling effect of the Texas law is insubstantial, easily outweighed by the government’s “compelling interest” in deterring minors from accessing pornography.

A casual observer might think: “Good! Why shouldn’t adult sites be required to do the same thing the store on the corner has to do before selling someone porn?” But the casual observer maybe hasn’t thought this one all the way through.

The casual observer probably hasn’t considered the difference between briefly flashing your ID at a bored store clerk who probably didn’t give it much of a look anyway before waving you onward, and uploading a copy of your government issued ID, with your home address on it, to some third-party age verification service about which you know nothing.

The casual observer also may not have thought much about the websites that aren’t even arguably “porn sites,” but could still host enough content deemed “harmful to minors” to be covered by the law.

Worse still, this chilling effect is attached to a measure that isn’t particularly effective at its stated purpose. When Louisiana’s law was first passed, it took a matter of minutes for users to find a workaround – one that didn’t even require knowing what the acronym “VPN” signifies.

As a beloved old teacher of mine used to say about things of dubious value, these laws appear to be “worth their weight in sawdust” – except when it comes to their chilling effect.

As Hannah Wohl, an associate professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, put it in a post for The Hill, age verification laws “fail to protect minors and threaten the free speech of all Americans in ways that go far beyond pornography.”

“This chilling effect is by design,” Wohl added. “Pornography has long been the canary in the coal mine for other restrictions against free speech. Indeed, some conservatives have acknowledged that age verification laws are a back door to fully criminalizing pornography.

No, age verification laws are not “blocks” or “bans” on pornography. But they certainly are barriers – and we’re not supposed to go around erecting barriers to protected speech in America, willy-nilly. There’s supposed to be a damn good reason (that “compelling interest” of the government’s), some indication that the law serves its purpose in furthering that interest, and an assurance that the law doesn’t burden too much speech that’s legal for adults to consume in restricting minors’ access to that same speech.

Or, as Vera Eidelman, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, put it when talking about the Supreme Court’s decision on Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton: “With this decision, the court has carved out an unprincipled pornography exception to the First Amendment. The Constitution should protect adults’ rights to access information about sex online, even if the government thinks it is too inappropriate for children to see.”

Unfortunately, to many of those who support and advocate for these laws, the chilling effect bemoaned by their critics is a design feature, not a bug.

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What Was “Verified,” Really? By Stan Q. Brick

Age verification image

As a guy who crossed the magic line of his 18th birthday over 35 years ago, it has been a damn long time since I was last asked to present identification documents as part of purchasing any age-restricted product.

More accurately, I should say it had been a damn long time – until last week, when I tried to log in to the members area of an porn website of which I’ve been a member for several months now.

Rather than simply being prompted to enter my username and password, I was presented with a dialog box informing me that before I could gain access to the site in question – a site to which I’ve already prepaid for nearly 90 more days of access, by virtue of a billing rollover that took place weeks ago – I needed to verify my age.

This struck me as odd and more than a little irritating. I was aware my home state is among those that have passed an age verification law directed at porn websites, but I had assumed existing customers, particularly those whose credit cards had been successfully billed several times already by the merchant involved, might somehow be “grandfathered in,” at least with respect to members’ area access.

No such luck, though. If I wanted to continue to access this site – in other words, if I wanted to receive the full benefit of the membership I’d already paid for – I would have to do business with whatever third-party service they’ve employed to perform the act of age verification on the site’s behalf, as well.

My immediate reaction was to close the browser, so I could weigh the question of whether to continue as a member of the site, cancel my account, or cancel my account and demand a refund. Nowhere in the agreement I ‘signed’ as part of joining the site did it state I’d have to do business with a third party to maintain future access to the site. Foisting that requirement on me without notice seemed dicey.

The first decision I made was not to act at all, right then. Among other things, the unexpected access-block had pissed me off a bit, and anger is never a good frame of mind for making decisions. I joined the site because I like the content they make and because I like watching it; should requiring me to show my ID really be so off-putting as to make me cancel, let alone demand a refund?

I sat on the decision for a couple days, straddling the fence on whether I’d jump through the age verification hoop that had been presented to me. Finally, I decided it made sense to see what the process required, how invasive it was of my privacy – and how effective or ineffective it seemed towards the stated end goal of verifying the users’ age and deterring minors from accessing the site. I could always back out before submitting anything, I reckoned.

The site in question offered only one option for an age verification service, one based in the United Kingdom. The system informed me that to verify my age, I’d need to upload a scan of one of several state-issued forms of ID: a driver’s license, a state ID, a passport, or state-issued military ID. It also referenced the possibility of uploading a selfie, in which I’d be holding the ID – so my face could be compared to that on the ID, presumably.

I wasn’t thrilled about doing any of this, for a variety of reasons. For starters, I don’t trust the promises from these third parties to not retain any of my “personally identifiable information.” I believe most online companies will look for every means available to monetize any piece of data they collect on their users (and seek every loophole in every law preventing them from doing so), and my assumption is that companies offering age verification services will be no different from their peers in that regard. And if such companies collect and store this data, malicious hackers will access it eventually, rest assured.

Beyond privacy concerns, I kept thinking about the lack of notice involved here. One day I’m a member of a porn site who can log in any time and check out the latest updates, then the next day, I’m forced to hand over my name, contact information and ID to some company out of the UK, just for the honor of accessing content I’d already paid to access? Even if that’s not an illegal or tortious arrangement, such a transition certainly doesn’t feel right.

Ultimately, despite my reservations, I decided to go ahead with the age verification process. As much as anything, I was now curious to see just how onerous it was and what all it would require of me.

A funny thing happened though; after uploading a photo of my ID, I was told I’d been verified and could now continue to the members area – no selfie required, no further personal information, just the email address I’d already given them on the previous page of the form and the scan of my ID.

Maybe I should be pleased by the fact I didn’t have to upload a selfie, but instead I’m struck by the pointlessness of it all. All this service had done was verify that someone had uploaded a driver’s license belonging to a man in his 50s, but in no way had they established it was the man in his 50s himself who had uploaded it.

The good news, I suppose, is that now I have access to the content for which I’d already paid. The bad news is… well, the bad news is unknowable, really. But when the bad news comes, with it may come answers to several questions I now have.

How many members of this same site will opt to cancel their memberships, or demand refunds, as I considered doing, rather than go through with the age verification process?

How many minors will find out about how easy it is to circumvent the age verification process of this age verification vendor?

Is this vendor truly not storing age verification documents? If they are storing such documents, will I learn that’s the case via an extortionate email threatening to reveal my porn preferences to my employer or family members?

But the biggest question, at least as I sit here right now typing, is this one: Through this age verification process, what was “verified,” exactly?

Exactly. I don’t know, either.

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A History of Gendered Censorship and the Costs of Faith-Based ‘Porn’ Panics

Michael McGrady opines on faith based porn panics:

What happens when a small faction of politicians attempts to impose their faith-driven vision of “American values” at the expense of free speech, queer visibility, and secular governance? The growing wave of anti-pornography proposals—ranging from full bans on adult content to invasive age-verification laws—illustrates how far the far-right is willing to transform moral panic into legislation, regardless of constitutional limits or practical absurdity.

One striking example comes from Michigan state representative Josh Schriver, a Republican known for racist, homophobic, and inflammatory rhetoric. In September 2025, Schriver went viral after introducing a proposal to completely outlaw online pornography in Michigan’s digital sphere. Even many conservatives expressed skepticism, acknowledging the proposal’s blatant overreach into free speech protections.

Schriver’s bill, House Bill 4938—formally titled the “Anti-Corruption of Public Morals Act”—would impose sweeping criminal penalties and steep fines for distributing or possessing what it vaguely defines as “prohibited material.”

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Why the Online Safety Act has become a political nightmare

An opinion piece on CityAM about how the Online Safety Act is causing censorship in the UK.

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Wyoming and South Dakota Age Verification Laws Could Include Huge Parts of the Internet

South Dakota and Wyoming are targeting many other types of websites with their age verification laws, not just adult.

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Age verification laws are sweeping the US, changing the future of online speech

The Tennesseen writes on how age verification laws are happening all over the United States.

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Experts break down reasons new porn laws are going to ‘destroy the internet’

Unilad with an opinion piece about how new laws against porn are going to destroy the internet.

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UK government celebrates ruining entire internet for whole world to save zero children from harm

A sarcastic piece about the UK Online Safety Act.

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Is Texas Overlooking the Threat of Ghost Dildos?

Ben Suroeste opines and makes fun of the Texas age verification law on sex toys.

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Oh, Texas: Lone Star State’s Long War on Sex Toys Revived

YNOT’s Gene Zorkin opines on Texas’ war on sex toys.

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