The Supreme Court has upheld a Texas law aimed at blocking children under 18 from seeing online pornography by requiring websites to verify the ages of all visitors. Many states have passed similar age verification laws in an attempt to restrict access to adult material from minors, but digital rights groups have raised questions about such laws’ effects on free speech and whether verifying ages by accessing sensitive data could violate people’s privacy.
What is the Texas law?
The law requires websites hosting pornographic material to verify the ages of users in hopes of stopping those under 18 from visiting. Adults would need to supply websites with a government-issued ID or use third-party age-verification services. The law carries fines of up to $10,000 per violation — fined against the website — that could be raised to up to $250,000 per violation by a minor.
Texas has argued that technology has improved significantly in the last 20 years, allowing online platforms to easily check users’ ages with a quick picture. Those requirements are more like ID checks at brick-and-mortar adult stores that were upheld by the Supreme Court in the 1960s, the state said.
However, internet service providers, search engines and news sites are exempt from the law.
How do sites verify ages?
It’s already illegal to show children pornography under federal law, however it’s rarely enforced. But various measures already exist to verify a person’s age online. Someone could upload a government ID or consent to the use facial recognition software to prove they are the age they say they are.
Websites and social media companies such as Instagram parent company Meta have argued that age verification should be done by the companies that run app stores, such as Apple and Google, and not individual apps or websites. This would mean that app stores need to verify their users’ ages before they allow them to download apps. Unsurprisingly, Apple and Google disagree.
“Billed as ‘simple’ by its backers, including Meta, this proposal fails to cover desktop computers or other devices that are commonly shared within families. It also could be ineffective against pre-installed apps,” Google said in a recent blog post.
Can people get around verification?
Critics, such as Pornhub have argued that age-verification laws can be easily circumvented with well-known tools such as virtual private networks (VPNs) that reroute requests to visit websites across various public networks.
Questions have also been raised about enforcement, with Pornhub claiming those efforts would drive traffic to less-known sites that don’t comply with the law and have fewer safety protocols.
Who opposes such laws?
Though heralded by social conservatives, age verification laws have been condemned by adult websites who argue they’re part of a larger anti-sex political movement.
They’ve also garnered opposition from groups that advocate for digital privacy and free speech, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The group has argued that it is impossible to ensure websites don’t retain user data, regardless of whether age verification laws require they delete it.
Samir Jain, vice president of policy at the nonprofit Center for Democracy & Technology, said the court’s decision on age verification “does far more than uphold an incidental burden on adults’ speech. It overturns decades of precedent and has the potential to upend access to First Amendment-protected speech on the internet for everyone, children and adults alike.”
“Age verification requirements still raise serious privacy and free expression concerns,” Jain added. “If states are to go forward with these burdensome laws, age verification tools must be accurate and limit collection, sharing, and retention of personal information, particularly sensitive information like birthdate and biometric data.”
