Internet News

Pornhub recently had to make the difficult decision to block access to users in Virginia and Mississippi due to newly passed Age Verification laws. These states have joined Utah and Louisiana where, earlier this year, similar laws were introduced. While these new laws claim to protect children from accessing harmful material online -- something we fully support -- they not only fail to do this, but also jeopardize user safety and privacy.

What does age verification mean?

In the context of these laws, age verification requires users to prove that they are 18+ to view adult content.

There are multiple ways that a user can prove their age, but any effective method requires them to submit some form of personally identifiable information ("PII"). By assigning this responsibility to the platform(s) visited by a user, this means submitting private information many times to adult sites all over the internet, while normalizing disclosure of PII across the internet. This is not a privacy-by-design approach.

It also creates a substantial risk for identity theft. Since age verification software requires users to hand over extremely sensitive information, it opens the door for the risk of data breaches. Whether or not your intentions are good, governments have historically struggled to secure this data. It also creates an opportunity for criminals to exploit and extort people through phishing attempts or fake AV processes, an unfortunate and all too common practice.

Age verification is a good thing, if done correctly

Safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission. We firmly believe age verification can make the internet a safer space for everyone, when it is done right. Unfortunately, the way these new laws are executed by lawmakers is ineffective and puts users' privacy at risk. Those seeking adult content will inevitably end up on irresponsible sites that don't enforce safety, privacy, consent, or content moderation.

Back in January, we saw the outcome of this firsthand when Louisiana passed a similar law. Pornhub was one of a tiny handful of websites to comply with the new state law requiring websites prevent minors from accessing them by employing age verification solutions.

The Louisiana law and other copycat state level laws have no regulator, only civil liability, which results in a flawed enforcement regime, effectively making it an option for platform operators to comply. Consequently, traffic to Pornhub dropped by approximately 80% in Louisiana, but we know that people didn't stop consuming porn overnight because of this new law. They just very easily moved to pirate, illegal, or other non-compliant sites that don't ask visitors to verify their age. Very few sites are able to compare to the robust Trust and Safety measures we currently have in place to protect both the users viewing content on Pornhub from engaging with potentially dangerous content and provide a safe platform for creators to monetize their content and engage with fans. Most other sites unfortunately do not take these same extensive measures towards community protection and without barrier to entry, is where viewers risk ending up. Therefore, these laws have not only failed at protecting children, but have introduced further harm by displacing traffic to sites with few or zero Trust and Safety measures.

What you need to know -- a device-based solution

More of these laws are coming, and the safety of our users is one of our biggest concerns. However, the best and most effective solution for protecting children and adults alike is to identify users at the source: by their device, or account on the device, and allow access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that identification. This means users would only get verified once, through their operating system, not on each age-restricted site. This dramatically reduces privacy risks and creates a very simple process for regulators to enforce.

Who will these new laws affect?

These new laws will affect everybody differently. For example, Content Creators will get redirected to a separate login flow that will still allow them on the site to upload content. This is because, as verified users on Pornhub, which is the required status for anyone wishing to upload, they have already verified their age with government issued ID using Yoti. However, for site visitors in Utah, Mississippi, and Virginia, they are greeted by a video featuring Cherie Deville who explains why we had to make the difficult decision to block them from accessing Pornhub.

What is the ideal solution?

The only viable solution that will make the internet safer, preserve user privacy, and stands to prevent children from accessing material harmful to minors is performing age verification at the source: on the device itself.

What can community members do?

To fight against these haphazard and dangerous laws, we encourage all members of our community to stand up for your freedom to enjoy and consume porn privately. There are a few ways you can do this.

First, spread the message on social media. Using your platform to raise awareness and to help your fans understand the implications of these poorly designed laws is the first step in making a change. Be loud, be vocal, and show how important it is for us to get this right. We believe the only way for these laws to be effective is to have age verification on the devices used to access adult content.

Second, contact your local government and encourage your fans to do the same! Change begins when the public applies pressure and contacts lawmakers. Write them letters or emails, call their offices, tweet at them, demand changes and demand answers. It is their job as civil servants to respond to concerned citizens. In your letters, you can request device-based age verification solutions. By doing this, your safety and privacy, as well as the safety of your children, are protected much better than entering your ID every time you want to visit an adult website. In the meantime, share this blog widely to help spread the word!

And third, stay informed on legislative updates. Please check back often on the Free Speech Coalition AV page.

Don't give up! We know that normalizing sex work and sexual expression is an uphill battle, but it can be done. We must be vocal about it. Change begins with raising our voices, educating others, and engaging in these important conversations on our socials to spread the message. For more information, visit the Free Speech Coalition .

According to Indonesia's Ministry of Communication and Informatics, Twitter  was blocked because the domain had previously been used by sites that disregarded the nation's cesnorship laws on gambling and pornography.

EnGadget quoted Usman Kansong, the director general of information and public communication at the ministry, as claiming that X had been contacted by the government to provide further information about the site's purpose.

Due to the change, the platform, which purportedly has 24 million members among Indonesia's 270 million people, was inaccessible to Indonesians.

Turkey's internet censors at the Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK) is fighting to force Twitter to bow to its censorship rules. It its banning Turkish citizens and corporations from placing ads on Twitter.

The move is a reaction to Twitter's failure to comply with a contentious digital law that requires the appointment of an official local representative to oversee censorship on the platform.

The BTK's resolution against X Corp. formerly known as Twitter Inc has prohibited any new ads from natural and legal persons. This decision was published in the Official Gazette, following the company's non-compliance with Turkey's new digital law adopted in 2022.nUnder the new law, social media companies are obliged to designate official representatives within Turkey. These individuals would be accountable for processing government demands and notifications, which would predominantly encompass requests for content removal.

For those who defy the new rule, the penalties include fines for any person or company placing advertisements on Twitter. Furthermore, the law contains a stringent clause whereby continued non-compliance from Twitter may result in the halving of the platform's bandwidth within the country.

Apple says it will remove services such as FaceTime and iMessage from the UK rather than weaken security if new UK government proposals are made law and acted upon.

The government is seeking to update the Investigatory Powers Act (IPA) 2016. It wants messaging services to clear security features with the Home Office before releasing them to customers. The act lets the Home Office demand security features are disabled, without telling the public. Under the update, this would have to be immediate.

Currently, there has to be a review, there can also be an independent oversight process and a technology company can appeal before taking any action.

WhatsApp and Signal are among the platforms to have opposed a clause in the Online Safety Bill allowing the communications regulator to require companies to install technology to scan for child-abuse material in encrypted messaging apps and other services.

The government has opened an eight-week consultation on the proposed amendments to the IPA. , which already enables the storage of internet browsing records for 12 months and authorises the bulk collection of personal data.

Apple has made a  9 page submission to the current consultation opposing the snooping proposal:

It would not make changes to security features specifically for one country that would weaken a product for all users. Some changes would require issuing a software update so could not be made secretly The proposals constitute a serious and direct threat to data security and information privacy that would affect people outside the UK.

Meta, the company that operates Facebook and Instagram, is facing a temporary ban on its behavioral advertising in Norway, mandated by the country's data protection authority, the Datatilsynet. This injunction lasts for an initial period of three months and requires Meta to procure users' consent for data processing.

Meta can still run other targeted advertising forms like contextual targeting, not dependent on tracking and profiling users, it is warned to either obtain user consent for behavioral advertising or face daily fines of up to one million NOK (approximately $100,000).

Meta has not confirmed whether it would appeal against the order or modify its operations on Facebook and Instagram in Norway.

SpongeBob SquarePants is a 1999 US children's cartoon
Starring Tom Kenny, Rodger Bumpass and Bill Fagerbakke

The misadventures of a talking sea sponge who works at a fast food restaurant, attends a boating school, and lives in an underwater pineapple.

A previously withdrawn episode of SpongeBob SquarePants has just made its way back to streaming. Mid-Life Crustacean , which was first released in January 2003, is available to stream on Paramount+ through Amazon Prime Video after it was taken out of TV rotation in 2018 and subsequently pulled from the Paramount+ library in 2021.

The episode proved to be controversial, with some claiming it to be unsuitable for the young audience the show is geared towards. The episode finds three of the show's male characters -- Mr. Krabs, SpongeBob, and Patrick -- going on a Panty Raid, involving them breaking into a woman's house to steal her underwear.

Several years later, in 2022, the episode was scrubbed from Paramount+. That latter move sparked outrage among SpongeBob Squarepants fans, eventually leading to the launch of a fan-created Change.org petition calling on Nickelodeon to Bring Back Mid-Life Crustacean! The petition argued that Nickelodeon already knows that a large portion of the fanbase is composed of nostalgic adults, and as such could have been bumping up the rating on this episode or include a warning or something else.

While Mid-Life Crustacean has returned to streaming, it seems that another episode, Kwarantined Crab, is still on the banned list. That episode was pulled in 2021 after it aired as part of SpongeBob's 12th season amid the coronavirus pandemic and the rise of anti-Asian violence. The episode finds the Krusty Krab going under emergency quarantine after the Health Inspector finds a Clam Flu case in the restaurant. As anxiety grows among those locked in the Kruty Krab, those who are assumed to have the virus are shunned and isolated, with Mr. Krabs locking SpongeBob, Patrick, and several other characters in the restaurant's freezer. In a statement confirming the episode was pulled, Nickelodeon said, We have decided to not air it due to sensitivities surrounding the global, real-world pandemic.

A US federal appeals court has upheld key portions of a federal internet censorship law Congress passed to supposedly combat sex trafficking, but in reality censors all aspects of consensual adult sex work. However the court did reject some broad readings of the statute that censor even debate about prostitution.

Advocates for legalizing prostitution, the operators of the Internet Archive website, Human Rights Watch and a massage therapist who said he lost business when Craigslist pulled many categories of ads after passage of FOSTA in 2018 sued to block enforcement of the law.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that language in the 2018 Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act -- better known as FOSTA -- is not unconstitutionally vague and doesn't violate free-speech rights.

However, the court did slightly restrict the reach of the censorship, saying:

We therefore hold that [FOSTA's] mental state requirement does not reach the intent to engage in general advocacy about prostitution, or to give advice to sex workers generally to protect them from abuse. Nor would it cover the intent to preserve for historical purposes webpages that discuss prostitution. Instead, it reaches a person's intent to aid or abet the prostitution of another person.

Judge Millett conceded that the language of the law could be seen as encompassing all sorts of conduct that arguably promotes or encourages prostitution. But she said the more limited reading was justified in this instance.She said:

Undoubtedly, the term 'facilitate' could be read more broadly. But nothing in [FOSTA] compels us to read 'facilitate' that way. Doubly so when a more expansive reading could raise grave constitutional concerns.

Ofcom writes:

We have today published our Annual Report and Accounts covering the period from 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023.

The report sets out our performance against our plan of work for the past financial year, capturing the progress we have made in our work across major projects and ongoing regulatory responsibilities.

The UK government is reviewing porn censorship laws for adults, moving beyond the age verification requirements proposed in the current Online Censorship Bill.

No doubt the 'review' will be a one-sided whinge-fest soliciting the views of moralists, censors and law enforcers, whilst totally ignoring the views of film makers and viewers.

The Government writes:

Regulation of online pornography in the UK will undergo a thorough review to make sure it is fit for purpose in tackling exploitation and abuse, the government has announced today (Monday 3 July).

As the way we consume media and access content rapidly changes, the Review will investigate any gaps in UK regulation which allows exploitation and abuse to take place online as well as identifying barriers to enforcing criminal law. While the criminal law has been updated in recent years to tackle the presence of extreme and revenge pornography, there are currently different regimes that address the publication and distribution of commercial pornographic material offline, such as videos, and online. The government wants to ensure any pornography legislation and regulation operates consistently for all pornographic content.

The review will also look at how effective the criminal justice system and law enforcement agencies are in responding to illegal pornographic content, including considering if any changes need to be made to criminal law to address challenges law enforcement might have.

It will also consider what more can be done to provide children with information and resources about the harm caused by pornography. This will make sure that illegal and harmful content, such as that which features child sexual abuse and exploitation, or where adults are being exploited, is robustly dealt with.

The Pornography Review is a prompt response to calls for action from parliamentarians and campaign groups concerned with the prevalence and impact on both children and adults of illegal pornographic content and child sexual exploitation and abuse on pornography sites and social media.

This work is separate to, but builds on, the Online Safety Bill, which will hold social media companies and pornography services accountable for ensuring children cannot view pornography, with a new higher standard on the age verification or age estimation tools they must use.

Technology Minister, Paul Scully, said:

Keeping the public safe is the first priority of any government and with technology moving faster than ever, we cannot take our eye off the ball in exploring what more we can do.

Our Pornography Review will look closely at the laws and regulations relating to offline and online content, informing our next steps in tackling the heinous crimes of exploitation and abuse, wherever it occurs.

'Justice' Minister, Ed Argar, said:

It is vital we keep up with the pace of the online world and this review will help ensure our laws work to protect people online while punishing those who share illegal and harmful content.

The Review will seek expertise across government and significant engagement with the Crown Prosecution Service and police, industry, civil society stakeholders and regulators.

The review will also look at the role of the pornography industry in trafficking and exploiting adult performers, child sexual exploitation and abuse, and how extreme and non-consensual pornographic content online is dealt with.

There are currently several criminal offences, linked to legislation such as the Obscene Publications Act 1959 and the extreme porn offence at s63 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, which can be committed in relation to all pornographic material, whether offline or online. Some pornographic material is covered by communications offences and offences which deal with publicly displayed material in shops and other premises.

Separately, there is a very robust regime of offences tackling the possession, taking and making of indecent images of children, whether they are photographs / films, or non-photographic.

There are also different regulatory regimes, including that established by the Video Recordings Act 1984, which address the publication and distribution of commercial pornographic material offline, and the video-sharing platform regime that addresses some online pornography. Notes to editors

The Review will involve a range of government departments, including the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, Ministry of Justice, the Home Office and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

Further scope of the Review will be set out in due course.

The Review is aiming to be completed within a year.

The Idol is a 2023 US sexy TV drama
Starring The Weeknd, Lily-Rose Depp and Suzanna Son

Jocelyn is desperate to reclaim her rightful title as the greatest and sexiest pop diva in America after a nervous breakdown disrupted her most recent tour after Tedros, a notorious nightclub entrepreneur, reignites her passions.

The US moral campaign group have whinged:

In light of the news that The Idol's first season will only be five episodes (with hype suggesting that the promised 6th episode has been censored), the Parents Television and Media Council (PTC) is calling on HBO not to renew The Idol for a second season, given the program's extreme content, nudity, sexual abuse, torture , that can be harmful to young viewers.

The PTC has called on HBO's streaming platform MAX to stop marketing The Idol to youth through social media, and to shore up wide gaps in its parental controls that enable youth to watch The Idol and other explicit TV-MA content like Euphoria.

The Idol has been rightfully panned by TV critics because each episode delves deeper into 'torture porn' and sexual abuse. Far from enlightening, the show has sunk into such depravity that even its niche audience has clearly turned against it, otherwise, why would HBO only air five of the expected six episodes? HBO should run far from this Sam Levinson-produced program that glamorizes and egregiously markets extreme sexual abuse to teens by refusing to renew it for a second season, said Melissa Henson, vice president of the Parents Television and Media Council.

Videos tagged with #theidol on TikTok have racked-up more than 1.2 BILLION views. There are more than 120 variations on that hashtag, adding up to millions more views.

TV critics have slammed The Idol, citing it as pornographic, a sordid male fantasy, a darker, crazier, and more risque version of HBO's Euphoria .

Mozilla, the foundation that produces the Firefox browser explains:

In a well-intentioned yet dangerous move to fight online fraud, France is on the verge of forcing browsers to create a dystopian technical capability. Article 6 (para II and III) of the SREN Bill would force browser providers to create the means to mandatorily block websites present on a government provided list. Such a move will overturn decades of established content moderation norms and provide a playbook for authoritarian governments that will easily negate the existence of censorship circumvention tools.

While motivated by a legitimate concern, this move to block websites directly within the browser would be disastrous for the open internet and disproportionate to the goals of the legal proposal -- fighting fraud. It will also set a worrying precedent and create technical capabilities that other regimes will leverage for far more nefarious purposes. Leveraging existing malware and phishing protection offerings rather than replacing them with government provided, device level block-lists is a far better route to achieve the goals of the legislation.

The rest of the post will provide a brief overview of the current state of phishing protection systems in browsers, the distinction between industry practices and what the draft law proposes, and proposes alternatives to achieve the goals of the legislation in a less extreme manner.

It might seem that current malware and phishing protection industry practices are not so different from the French proposal. This is far from the truth, where the key differentiating factor is that they do not block websites but merely warn users about the risks and allow them to access the websites if they choose to accept it. No such language is present in the current proposal, which is focused on blocking. Neither are there any references to privacy preserving implementations or mechanisms to prevent this feature from being utilized for other purposes. In fact, a government being able to mandate that a certain website not open at all on a browser/system is uncharted territory and even the most repressive regimes in the world prefer to block websites further up the network (ISPs, etc.) so far.

Forcing browsers to create capabilities that enable website blocking at the browser level is a slippery slope. While it might be leveraged only for malware and phishing in France today, it will set a precedent and create the technical capability within browsers for whatever a government might want to restrict or criminalize in a given jurisdiction forever. A world in which browsers can be forced to incorporate a list of banned websites at the software-level that simply do not open, either in a region or globally, is a worrying prospect that raises serious concerns around freedom of expression. If it successfully passes into law, the precedent this would set would make it much harder for browsers to reject such requests from other governments.

We remain engaged in conversations with relevant stakeholders and hope that the final law leads to a more palatable outcome for the open internet.

One of the most visited sites in the world, Pornhub, has blocked users in Virginia over the state's new age verification law.

The new law taking effect July 1 now requires websites with pornographic content being viewed in Virginia to verify that users are at least 18 years old before they can view the site. The law, proposed by Republican state Sen. William M. Stanley Jr. (Franklin), sailed through the Virginia General Assembly.

Pornhub decided that it would be blocking all Virginia users rather than try to implement unsafe and privacy endangering age verification.

Pornhub wrote in a message to those attempting to log in:

The safety of our users is one of our biggest concerns. We believe that the best and most effective solution for protecting children and adults alike is to identify users by their device and allow access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that identification.

Until a real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in Virginia.'