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Android Authority
18 hours ago
- Politics
- Android Authority
You may soon be scanning your ID just to access websites, and you've the SCOTUS to blame
Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority TL;DR Texas House Bill 1181 requires age verification for users trying to access websites offering adult content. After lower courts ruled it unconstitutional, the Supreme Court has upheld the bill in a 6–3 ruling. States are now free to force websites to demand a copy of your ID, raising substantial privacy concerns. Being asked to prove who you are is just an everyday part of going online: select all the bicycles if you're not a robot; click this box affirming you're 21 before you browse these bongs for sale. But the vast majority of the time, all that info is offered up on the honor system, without any kind of meaningful checks to do hard verification. If you'd prefer that not change, and don't like the idea of sharing a copy of your ID with all these websites, we've got some bad news for you, and you've the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) to blame. The issue at hand concerns Texas House Bill 1181, which required that websites offering a substantial amount of content harmful to minors verify the identity of visitors to establish they're of a suitable age (via TechCrunch). The Free Speech Coalition sued in response, characterizing the law as unconstitutional restriction on free speech — an argument that had been used successfully in the past. And indeed, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. Texas pushed back, leading to SCOTUS taking up the case, and in a 6–3 verdict today, the conservative-stacked court has ruled in support of H.B. 1181. The opinions cited in the court's ruling reflect exactly the kind of pearl-clutching use of protecting the interests of minors to justify restricting speech that earlier courts had rejected. But in 2025's carefully crafted judicial landscape, conservative interests finally managed to shove their agenda through. Beyond Texas, roughly half the states in the US either already have similar age-verification laws of their own, or will soon have them going into effect. With this SCOTUS ruling on the books, we can almost guarantee that more states will feel empowered to follow, and in all likelihood we can expect further 'won't someone think of the children' laws to target additional forms of adult content online. So far, when faced with age verification laws, sites like Pornhub have simply blocked access in areas with these rules rather than comply, shutting out millions upon millions of users. But we could rapidly be reaching a tipping point there, and it feels like a future where more sites give in and demand ID scans to access them could be right around the corner. Between the obvious desire for anonymity when consuming adult content, and concerns over potential data breaches with any age-check providers, that does not sound like a great direction the internet is headed. Got a tip? Talk to us! Email our staff at Email our staff at news@ . You can stay anonymous or get credit for the info, it's your choice.
The Verge
20 hours ago
- Politics
- The Verge
Porn age-gating is the future of the internet, thanks to the Supreme Court
The Supreme Court has upheld a Texas law requiring age verification to access adult websites, saying despite First Amendment claims, the law 'only incidentally burdens the protected speech of adults.' The ruling, in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, opens the door to age-gating in states nationwide. The court ruled in Texas' favor by a margin of six to three — with Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting — and the majority opinion was delivered by Clarence Thomas. 'The First Amendment leaves undisturbed States' traditional power to prevent minors from accessing speech that is obscene from their perspective,' writes Thomas. 'That power includes the power to require proof of age before an individual can access such speech. It follows that no person — adult or child — has a First Amendment right to access such speech without first submitting proof of age.' FSC v. Paxton, argued in January, concerns the Texas law HB 1181, which requires sites with a large proportion of sexually explicit material to use 'reasonable age verification methods' to make sure users are at least 18 years old. It's one of numerous age verification laws enacted across the country for adult content in recent years, and it reached the Supreme Court after being upheld by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. In taking the case, the Supreme Court effectively decided to reconsider a 2004 ruling, Ashcroft v. ACLU, in which it determined a similar rule — the Child Online Protection Act — violated the First Amendment. The court says that conclusion (as well as an earlier one on a similar age verification provision in the Communications Decency Act) is no longer appropriate thanks to the forward march of technology. 'With the rise of the smartphone and instant streaming, many adolescents can now access vast libraries of video content — both benign and obscene — at almost any time and place, with an ease that would have been unimaginable at the time of Reno and Ashcroft II,' it says. Now, 'adults have no First Amendment right to avoid age verification' that's intended to block content deemed obscene for minors, the court ruled. The ruling hinged largely on the court declining to apply the highest level of scrutiny to the law — a measure that's required in many speech-related cases and typically is difficult to overcome. Applying that scrutiny might 'call into question all age-verification requirements, even longstanding in-person requirements' to access content that's outlawed for minors, writes Thomas. At least 21 other states have 'materially similar' age verification rules for adult content, the ruling notes. It also notes that some sites have already implemented age verification rules, though others — primarily Pornhub — have ceased operation in states like Texas instead. There are several possible ways to enact online age verification, but critical evaluations have concluded that few (if any) methods manage to effectively block minors' access without potentially compromising adults' privacy — posing much higher risks than flashing an ID at the door of a brick-and-mortar store. At the time of Ashcroft v. ACLU, the Supreme Court determined that parent-controlled content filters could provide comparable protections without the same risks. But during oral arguments, justices seemed sympathetic to arguments that the internet had become meaningfully more dangerous to children and that these optional methods had failed. The three dissenting justices argued that HB 1181 directly impacted legal speech for adults and should have been subject to the high bar of strict scrutiny, even if it's possible it would have passed it. 'H. B. 1181's requirements interfere with — or, in First Amendment jargon, burden — the access adults have to protected speech: Some individuals will forgo that speech because of the need to identify themselves to a website (and maybe, from there, to the world) as a consumer of sexually explicit expression,' the dissent says. While FSC v. Paxton deals with age verification for pornographic content, a similar fight is brewing over verification measures for social media and other web services. Texas Governor Greg Abbott last month made Texas the second state (after Utah) to require mobile app stores to confirm user ages, despite lobbying against the bill by Apple.
Forbes
a day ago
- Forbes
Pornhub And Other Sites Will Use Tech For Age-Verification Checks Coming Soon
When the Online Safety Act comes into force in the U.K. on July 25, adult websites will have to introduce age verification and age estimation checks to prevent under-18s from watching pornography. These checks will use different kinds of technology to work. Tougher age-verifications measures are coming to adult websites in the U.K. The British regulator, Ofcom, recently published research which says that 8%, that's one in 12, of eight to 14-year-olds in the U.K. visited a pornography site in one month with 19% of boys aged 13 and 14 (almost one in five) visiting the sites. Around 11% of girls the same age visited pornography sites in one month. So, the new mechanisms to check that you're as old as you say you are will include credit card checks, facial age estimation or open banking technology. If all that sounds rather, well, compromising, 'as part of the new rules, platforms must also ensure age verification measures don't exclude adults from accessing legal content or compromise their privacy,' reports Sky News. Recently, Pornhub withdrew from France rather than apply strict laws there, but it, and 12 other adult sites have confirmed to Ofcom that they will introduce the checks in time for the deadline in July. 'Ofcom has already listed seven methods that porn providers could use. Ultimately, which one they opt for is their decision, not Ofcom's, but their chosen method must be 'highly effective' at correctly determining if a user is under 18. Ofcom's seven suggested strategies are photo-ID matching, facial age estimation, mobile-network operator (MNO) age checks, credit card checks, email-based age estimation, digital identity services and open banking,' the Daily Mail has reported. Open banking accesses the data a bank has on record for a customer regarding their age, and photo-ID matching involves uploading a verified photo-ID document, such as a passport or driving licence. Since you need to be at least 18 years old to have a credit card in the U.K., a credit-card check is also considered highly effective. 'Facial age estimate works by analysing the features of a user's face from a photo to work out their age, while MNO age checks involve mobile-network operators applying age-restriction filters themselves,' the Daily Mail adds. The conundrum is how much users will trust an adult site with images of their face or passport, or whether they will want their bank confirm they are over 18.
BBC News
2 days ago
- Business
- BBC News
Pornhub to introduce 'government approved' UK age checks
Aylo, the owner of adult sites Pornhub, YouPorn and RedTube, says it will introduce "government approved age assurance methods" in the company has not yet revealed how it will require users to prove they are over 18, but UK regulator Ofcom says simply clicking a button, which is all the adult site currently requires, is not has resisted age checks elsewhere, including in France - where it recently suspended its site amid a battle over the country's age verification the Online Safety Act pornographic sites must introduce "robust" age checking techniques, such as demanding photo ID or running credit card checks for UK users, by this summer. Aylo said it would introduce the new methods to check user ages on its sites by 25 is the most visited porn site in the world, according to data from Similarweb. It has been under scrutiny by regulators worldwide over its measures to prevent children accessing its European Commission announced an investigation into Pornhub, along with two other adult platforms, at the end of the UK, Ofcom is probing several adult sites it believes may be failing to abide by its child safety a statement, Aylo's vice president of brand and community Alex Kekesi said Ofcom presented a variety of flexible methods of age assurance that were less intrusive than those it had seen in other jurisdictions."Ofcom recognises the scale of the challenge ahead and is approaching it with thorough consideration," he regulator's model is "the most robust in terms of actual and meaningful protection we've seen to date," he added."When governments and regulators engage with industry in good faith, the outcome is not just better compliance, it's smarter, more effective solutions".But the statement does not yet reveal what methods the site will actually employ to check users has been approached for comment.
The Sun
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Sun
Desperate Bonnie Blue is broken & destroying industry… only she can save herself, says ‘world's richest' OnlyFans star
BONNIE Blue is a broken woman who is single handedly destroying the porn industry, OnlyFans mega star Sophie Rain has told The Sun. Influencer Sophie, 20 - who claims to rake in £3.2million a month on OnlyFans - has blasted her rival for "harming the image of the platform" through her controversial sex stunts. 9 9 9 9 It comes after The Sun revealed that Bonnie has been banned from OnlyFans and is set to lose her massive "£600,000 a month" pay. The content creator - who shot to fame by allegedly bedding 1,057 men in 24 hours - had her page pulled due to breach of terms after her "extreme challenges" were said to have "crossed a line". Bonnie - whose real name is Tia Billinger - has faced heavy criticism over her content which often targets who she calls "barely legal teens". One of those who is far from Bonnie's biggest fan is the self-proclaimed world's richest adult content creator Sophie. The pair became embroiled in a public feud on social media with US-based Sophie firing several barbs across the Atlantic. An X post saw her say: "I hope one day she [Bonnie] realises the trauma she's causing herself and so many women." A second remark from Sophie saw her fire a direct shot at Bonnie as she shared a screenshot which appears to her raking in over $76 million (£56 million) through OnlyFans subscriptions. It was shared alongside the caption: "76M without banging 1000 men in a day." Sophie has now opened up on the personal argument and told The Sun exactly why the 25-year-old from Derbyshire needs to be stopped. She said: "What people need to understand is sex workers and OnlyFans models come in many different fonts. "The issue is, the public sees us all the same. "They group us all into one single category, and when someone as big as her is promoting these gross acts, it leads many to believe someone like me is doing similar content to what she does." A passionate Sophie continued: "I am all for someone expressing themselves on OnlyFans how they want, but it gets to a point where it's harming the image of the platform as a whole and the girls who are within it." In a statement to The Blast, Sophie also hit out at Bonnie for the way her stunts harm women in the industry. She told them: "It's no longer women empowerment. It's shock value, and she's making a joke out of all of us." Bonnie has claimed to earn £600,000 a month on OnlyFans in the past - meaning across a year she could make over £7.2million per year. She has hit headlines with a number of sick stunts across the past few years. One saw her ask college boys to sign up to an event to see who could give her the best orgasm - with a pledge to pay for the tuition of the "winner". 9 9 9 Bonnie was also slammed for "promoting rape culture" and labelled "vile" for announcing what she called " Bonnie Blue 's petting zoo". This stunt was seen as the final straw for OnlyFans as they axed Bonnie from using the platform shortly after it was revealed before the event ever took place. Despite taking aim at Bonnie's sick antics, Sophie was quick to say she doesn't want to be the reason why she was banned. She insisted she actually wants to "give her a hug" and believes the controversial creator deserves to have a "chance to redeem her herself". Sophie added: "She seems like a broken person. "I think deep down she realises that this path she's going down is wrong, and I hope she saves herself. "I want to give her a hug. I think she's being misguided to do things she simply is only doing for money." Bonnie has also been shunned by others in the adult entertainment industry. And fellow blonde bombshell Lilly Phillips has also blasted her in the past. The pair used to be friends but the bond was quickly shattered after Bonnie suggested Lily had ''stolen'' her idea to beat the world record and bonk 1,000 in one day. Who is Bonnie Blue? BORN in May 1999, Bonnie grew up in a small Derbyshire village, and attended the Friesland School in the village of Sandiacre. She has two half-siblings - a sister and a brother - who have always remained out of the public eye. She never knew her biological father, and considers stepfather Nicholas Elliott her dad. Bonnie also became something of a dance star in her local area, and competed in the British Street Dance Championships alongside her sister back in 2015. She once even had a part-time job at Poundstretcher as a teenager. After finishing school, she began working in recruitment. In October 2022, Bonnie married Oliver Davidson, who she had started dating when she was just 15. Once they were married, they moved to Australia, where Bonnie continued working in recruitment. However, it was in Australia that she decided to pursue a different line of work, and tried her luck as a 'cam girl' - crediting Oliver for giving her the confidence to enter the adult entertainment world. She quickly made a name for herself in the industry, and was soon making £5,000 a week. But while her work life was going from strength to strength, her relationship was crumbling, and she and Oliver split after almost a decade together. She moved over to OnlyFans following her cam girl success, and once again found fame on there. She quickly became a favourite on the site, especially thanks to her "niche" of sleeping with young male students - such as when she bedded 158 students during Nottingham Trent University's freshers week in September 2024. Bonnie is now estimated to be worth millions, and makes around £600,000 a month on OnlyFans. Her family are also supportive of her work, with mum Sarah Billinger even claiming she's her daughter's PA, and helps clean up after Bonnie's events - as well as handing out condoms to young clients. In January 2025, Bonnie claimed to have broken the world record for the most amount of sex in 12 hours, after apparently sleeping with 1,057 men from 1pm to 1am at a secret London event. 9 9
