Several porn sites are under fire for alleged violations of Florida’s age-verification law.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier is suing the parent companies of XVideos, XNXX, Bang Bros, Girls Gone Wild, and TrafficFactory for violating a law that requires porn sites to verify that visitors are 18 “using either an anonymous or standard age verification method.” Anonymous methods must be “conducted by a nongovernmental, independent third party.”
According to Uthmeier, the sites in question “have openly defied HB 3 since it took effect” on Jan. 1. He says he sent letters to two of the companies in April, asking them to comply or face legal action, yet they “made no changes.”
As Axios notes, XVideos.com currently features a banner that slams “the SCAM of age verification.” In June, it said in a blog post that “We’ll have to implement AV wherever it is legally mandated. It’s not like we have a choice. Legal challenges were our only option — but now, even the courts have been swept up in the hysteria.”
XVideos is the second most popular porn site in the world after Pornhub. It is free to access and receives close to 3.5 billion monthly visits globally. Several million of those, according to Uthmeier, are from Florida alone. Pornhub parent company Aylo, meanwhile, has blocked its sites in Florida (and more than a dozen other states) since December in protest of the law. Most people can get around the restrictions using a VPN.
“We are taking legal action against these online pornographers who are willfully preying on the innocence of children for their financial gain,” Uthmeier says.
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Florida’s law also blocks social media use for kids under 14 and restricts it for 14- and 15-year-olds. NetChoice and the CCIA, organizations representing social media giants Meta, Snap, and X, sued Uthmeier in October last year, alleging violations of the First Amendment. In June, a federal judge ruled in favor of the organizations and temporarily blocked the law, stating that it was likely unconstitutional. The Florida AG, however, has appealed, Engadget notes.
Age-verification laws in general, however, were handed a win in June when the US Supreme Court upheld the Texas version.
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About Jibin Joseph
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