In today’s episode, join offsetkeyz and guest Hot Girl Farmer as we delve into the complexities of Texas’s new Age Verification Law (HB 1181) and PH’s bold response. We explore the implications for privacy, data security, and censorship, bringing to light the challenges and debates sparked by this legislation. Discover insights from key sources, including the official Texas bill, critical analysis from the Washington Post, and research on the claims surrounding adult content and public health.

• Texas Bill HB 1181: https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/88R/billtext/html/HB01181H.htm
• Scrubs Reference: https://youtu.be/c_o8vYUU-jo?si=MEqNmvs32MBeltI5
• Washington Post Article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/03/15/pornhub-texas-age-verification-law/
• Public Health Claims Analysis: https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2019.305498

Texas Age Verification Law, PH, privacy, data security, censorship, Hot Girl Farmer, HB 1181, digital rights, adult content regulation, podcast episode, legal challenges, public health claims

Search Phrases:

• Texas Age Verification Law podcast
• PH response to Texas law
• HB 1181 implications and discussion
• Privacy and censorship in digital age podcast
• Understanding Texas’s adult content regulation
• Legal challenges to age verification laws podcast
• Exploring PH’s stand against Texas law
• Public health claims against adult content podcast episode
• Data security concerns in age verification laws

Transcript:

Pornhub Episode

[00:00:00] offsetkeyz: Alright, welcome back to the Daily Decrypt. Today we’re joined by Hot Girl Farmer, and we’re just covering one topic, the Texas Age Verification Law that passed back in June, and P.0.r.N.HU8’s response. Now, this topic is vast and covers a lot of facets that the Daily Decrypt and its audience are interested in, such as data protection, such as censorship, all of these things.

And so we’re just going to be focusing on this one topic for the whole episode. And though it does revolve around P.0.r.N.HU8 as a company which inherently involves adult content, we won’t be going into any sort of graphic detail or anything like that. There may be mention of certain things that go on on this website, but nothing too crazy.

But if you’re sensitive to The type of content P.0.r.N.HU8 provides, it might be in your best interest to skip this episode.

Though

we don’t encourage it because it’s going to be pretty juicy.

[00:01:00] Okay, so on June 6th of last year, Texas Governor

[00:01:07] offsetkeyz: Greg Abbott signed into law a requirement that any website that displays adult content must verify the consumer’s age before they can see the content. So that was, what, nine, ten months ago?

Which,

[00:01:23] HGF: immediately I thought of when you go to an alcohol website and it asks you for your birthday. So I was like, oh, verification would be good. And nobody wants children to view P.0.r.N.Ography, literally no one wants that. And I would think most people also think it’s best to be consumed over the age of 18.

I was like, okay, I don’t really understand the controversy yet. I feel like people can get on board with verifying your birthday.

[00:01:48] offsetkeyz: Right, and if it was just that enter your birthday verification style, It might not be as big of an issue, but

the

law itself required more stringent data [00:02:00] verification, such as entering in your data on a third party site that then verifies your identity, but you know what data they require.

We’re not entirely sure or

entering in a credit card number or entering in information from your mortgage or like very. poking and prodding for this data. So that was signed into law. Immediately a group of plaintiffs, one of which was P.0.r.N.HU8, sued the state of Texas for censorship. Fine. Just last week, the state of Texas and the Fifth Circuit sided with the law that Governor Greg Abbott put into place requiring age verification.

And so P.0.r.N.HU8 decided to take its service offline in the state of Texas as a protest. P.0.r.N.HU8. is not against age verification. So I’m just going to get that out of the way up front. P.0.r.N.HU8 is very pro age verification, but they’re pro age verification in ways that make sense and don’t [00:03:00] censor users and don’t hurt people.

Don’t put people’s data at risk. They want it to be a streamlined process. They want it to at least be accurate. know, At this point, it’s more of a formality than it is an accurate way of verifying age.

[00:03:15] HGF: Yeah, the methods that were available were not potentially secure or divulge too much information. Like a lot of personal private data from a third party site, right?

[00:03:25] offsetkeyz: Right. And you can imagine that if you are someone of the age that should not be consuming adult content, which I believe is anyone under 18 across the country? I’m a little older than 18, uh, so I don’t really know firsthand. Doesn’t affect me, I don’t have kids, but I don’t know. You could get your parent’s credit card and enter it in.

There’s not going to be any charges. It’s just a verification method. You could go into your parent’s filing cabinet and get your parent’s mortgage. You could get the deed to their house and enter in [00:04:00] information off of that. You could go sneak out and grab your parent’s driver’s license, which is another form of verification that they’re allowing, which all you have to do is enter in your driver’s license number.

And you’re verified. Not only is this method unsafe, for reasons we’ll get into shortly, but it’s not accurate.

And that

is what P.0.r.N.HU8 is protesting. Not age verification. I just want to be very clear about that, that regardless of whether or not you, agree with P.0.r.N.HU8 fundamentally for what it does. It is my opinion that they’re not doing anything malicious by protesting age verification laws. They are pro age verification, anti this method.

[00:04:43] HGF: Yeah. And, yeah. this is just not a good barrier to entry. I can totally see minors like in a group chat being like, this is the driver’s license number I use. So I think this would lead to a lot more of your data being stolen and [00:05:00] misused by minors to gain access. It just, I’m not extremely familiar with the verification methods that, Texas is wanting to see, but I think it would lead to, more data theft.

Of adults to minors. Like if I was still teaching in high schools, I would be so, I don’t think I’d bring my ID in the building just because I wouldn’t want them to look at it. And I mean, kids, kids will do anything to do what they want to do

[00:05:26] offsetkeyz: Of course. Yeah, they know you have a driver’s license, you drove to work, they know it’s probably in your purse.

They know

you’re walking around the classroom. So like they have if someone wants

to

find an adult’s driver’s license this law only encourages crime. It’s not put in place to protect the safety of minors, though that’s how it’s masquerading. It’s actually trying to remove P.0.r.N.Ography from the internet, which is a crime. Censorship. Regardless of how you feel about P.0.r.N.Ography, removing [00:06:00] P.0.r.N.Ography from the internet is censorship, and we don’t stand for censorship.

And if the P.0.r.N.Ography is requiring driver’s licenses, the value of driver’s licenses has gone up, encouraging crime.

[00:06:13] HGF: This is just getting so in the weeds. This is just creating so many, this is opening a can of worms of issues that we are not prepared for, and the creativity it’ll take and the different avenues people will get information they need to log in. I don’t even think we can conceptualize it yet. So, good on P.0.r.N.HU8 for taking a stand and pulling their site from Texas.

They’re like,

[00:06:35] offsetkeyz: They’re

[00:06:36] HGF: this is too much. We’re not dealing with this.

[00:06:38] offsetkeyz: 100 percent and yeah, we don’t want an official stance to be that we stand with P.0.r.N.HU8, but we do agree with what they’re doing in this avenue.

[00:06:47] HGF: Anyone that takes user data seriously, we stand with, yeah, in that instance.

[00:06:55] offsetkeyz: If you’re going to enable age verification, make sure that it actually [00:07:00] verifies the age of the consumers. So, what P.0.r.N.HU8 is proposing, and what they’ve been proposing for years and years and years, is what’s called device based age verification.

Most people, at least in first world countries, like, United States and Canada and Europe and I don’t know, have a device that’s tied to their identity, whether that be a phone, whether that be an iPad, whether that be a laptop. And imagine if Your iPhone

when

you turned it on, verified what age you are. You only have to do that once and all that data stayed on your phone.

It didn’t go to the cloud. Yeah, it stayed on your phone, which you own. But using signatures and verification methods, your iPhone could then communicate just your age, which has been verified to you. to the site saying, Hey, yeah, this person is actually such and such age. And that’s all they’re, that’s all they’re going for.

They [00:08:00] want to make sure that when age verification is implemented, it’s implemented to actually verify the user’s age.

[00:08:05] HGF: Yeah, I think this is an issue left up to parental controls and just different

[00:08:11] offsetkeyz: methods

[00:08:12] HGF: methods within the device itself, and it creates a whole host of problems when we have that transferred over to third party identifying platforms.

[00:08:24] offsetkeyz: The other main issue with this is that Texas is allowing for third party sites to step in and verify people’s age. So, sounds great on the surface, but what it actually is, is you’re just giving your data to more sites.

There are very reputable sites out there that keep your data, quote, secure. id. me is one that comes to mind.

That’s to verify your entire identity, and it requires you to enter in a lot of information. your social security number, your driver’s license number, credit cards, former addresses, all [00:09:00] kinds of data that is now with some third party site.

First of all, P.0.r.N.HU8 users probably don’t want their entire identity linked to their P.0.r.N.HU8 account. And nor should it be! It’s just videos. It’s is your whole identity linked to your YouTube account? Maybe, but should it be? Doesn’t matter. I should be able to log onto YouTube and just look at things. That also increases the risk of that data being captured by the wrong people. The more you enter in these sensitive pieces of data across the internet, the risk increases exponentially with every site. And so with giving third parties this power to verify ages, opens up the door for scams. Right? Especially In the nature of the product that P.0.r.N.HU8 offers, there’s somewhat of a sense of urgency when consuming it. And now all of a sudden you have to go to this third party site to [00:10:00] verify your age.

So maybe you go to Google and you say age verification site, and you type that in. And the first thing that comes up is an ad for an age verification site. that looks good. And so you go to that, it says, yes, compatible with P.0.r.N.HU8. You enter in your social security number. And hey, turns out that was a scam site, but you were moving so quickly that you just went right for it.

And

you might not even notice that was a scam site. You might just be like, okay, it’s not working. Let me try another site. And you might just keep going down the line until one works. You don’t want to be haphazardly handling this type of data because it can end very poorly.

[00:10:37] HGF: Yeah, people aren’t in the frame of mind to be just extremely discerning.

[00:10:43] offsetkeyz: Right.

I’m trying to think of an example of something else where this might be the case. Like alcohol.

[00:10:50] HGF: hungry. Ooh,

when you’re really hungry. She

[00:10:53] offsetkeyz: she resonates with the gong of the Taco Bell. Fourth meal is very prevalent

here in our [00:11:00] household.

[00:11:00] HGF: If I’m hungry, it’s just like, DoorDash, order here, 3 off, da da da da da.

I’m just typing in whatever. I’m hungry. Anything your human desire is being driven to act. you’re just not taking precautionary steps.

[00:11:15] offsetkeyz: Great example so I know certain individuals don’t have DoorDash, they’ve never used DoorDash, and they’ve always been able to find their food when they need it.

But

say they run into a situation in a snowstorm, and they have a flat tire, and they go download, or they go to Google and they search for DoorDash and they’re trying to get someone to deliver them food and what they get is an ad that is not actually DoorDash. They sign up for an account on this fake site with their address and with their phone number and with their credit card information and all this stuff only to find out that isn’t actually, you know, it’s that sense of urgency that really dulls

your perception of these fake sites.

[00:11:58] HGF: that’s concerning for [00:12:00] users.

But yeah, our caveman brains, the way they’re wired, anything that’s creating a need and sense of urgency is just, we’re gonna overlook things,

[00:12:13] offsetkeyz: Alright, so we’ve touched on a lot of how we feel about this, but I want to take a step back and read a little bit from the Washington Post’s reporting on the ruling and on P.0.r.N.HU8’s reaction. So this is coming from the Washington Post, likely will be one of the first search results if you even search for any of the search terms.

So P.0.r.N.HU8, one of the most popular websites in the world, blocked Texas based access. To its site, one week after the conservative U. S. Court of Appeals of the Fifth Circuit upheld the age verification portion of the state law. So P.0.r.N.HU8 has previously opposed such measures in states like Utah, arguing that age gating laws are ineffective, as we discussed, unfair, and punish the very [00:13:00] users the state wants to protect.

For a myriad of reasons, right? And we’ve touched on a few. But it can harm people in so many different ways. Let’s keep reading. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton called the decision a victory over P.0.r.N. Companies and denied the state’s law violates free speech laws, but free expression advocates, including those in the adult content industry, Warned that laws like the one in Texas are being weaponized to censor a variety of content, including reproductive rights, resources, and queer literature.

[00:13:33] HGF: That’s what I was saying.

[00:13:35] offsetkeyz: It is reminding me a little bit of what’s going on with TikTok as well. The fact that we can ban a content streaming platform because it’s owners are from a different country is crazy. And hey, actually turns out we can’t ban a content platform. We literally cannot do that. All we can do is place laws on other areas around it. So the [00:14:00] same tactics are being taken with age verification in Texas as they are with TikTok across the country, as they are with Things like abortion, like, hey, we might be able, might not be able to ban abortion, but we can find the crap out of doctors who perform it.

[00:14:15] HGF: Yeah. Overarching, all of those have themes of some sort of censorship.

In June, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed into law HB1181, a bipartisan bill requiring companies that offer sexual material harmful to minors verify that its users are at least 18 years old.

Companies that need to limit minors access, such as websites for liquor brands, commonly use age gating methods such as requiring a user to list their birthday. Texas’s law required users to prove their age by either entering information from a government issued ID or using a third party system that uses public and private data such as employment, education, or mortgage information to verify age.

[00:14:56] offsetkeyz: [00:15:00] of data that people can use to verify their age. They can use anything, any document laying around their parent’s house to verify their age. Cool, very effective guys.

[00:15:13] HGF: This is also, this might be getting too into the weeds and not as cyber security related, but I’m just curious.

I need to look at this more. How many studies do we have showing that it causes irreparable harm to people’s psyche? Like it says that right here, it says, HB 1181 also required P.0.r.N. Sites to display a controversial health warning, which the law’s opponents called pseudoscientific and included language like Texas Health and Human Services Warning.

P.0.r.N.Ography increases the demand for prostitution, child exploitation, and child P. It says that in the warning. Do we have the data to back that up? That it’s a gateway to other illicit sexual consumption? Jen?

[00:15:55] offsetkeyz: skeptical

[00:15:55] HGF: I’m a little bit skeptical that we have data that P.0.r.N.Ography increases [00:16:00] the demand for child p.

pornography. more you work with data, the more you realize that you can make this type of data look however you want it to look, but when it comes down to it, P.0.r.N.Ography is adjacent to child

[00:16:13] offsetkeyz: p sexual crimes, and sexual crimes are adjacent. You know, Child p is a subset of P.0.r.N.Ography and without P.0.r.N.Ography, there’s no demand for child p. It reminds me of a joke. I’m trying to remember who said it. But the joke is, I think it’s Scrubs. Oh boy,

[00:16:37] HGF: Oh

[00:16:37] offsetkeyz: I’m back on scrubs

Dr. Cox is talking about how They’re trying to ban P.0.r.N.Ography from the web,

and if they do ban P.0.r.N.Ography, there will only be one website left, and it will be called Bring Back the P.0.r.N.Ography. Regardless of whether or not

we ban P.0.r.N.Ography,

there’s gonna be a demand for it.

[00:16:57] HGF: Yeah. I bet you could skew [00:17:00] data to say that without it there’s increased violence toward women.

[00:17:04] offsetkeyz: Mm hmm.

[00:17:06] HGF: hmm. Like, the repression creates more issues. I just think that you can skew data any way you like. I’m very skeptical that there’s a verified study that Consuming content on P.0.r.N.HU8 increases demand for child p.

pornography.

[00:17:23] offsetkeyz: Mm hmm.

[00:17:23] HGF: That’s wild. That, the

[00:17:25] offsetkeyz: they surveying?

[00:17:26] HGF: the state is just publishing that. It’s not citing, in the warning, it’s not citing any specific clinical trials or studies. I just feel like we’re, the age of the internet, we have access to a lot. We have access to a lot of information and articles. And it’s hard to be discerning what’s true or what’s not, and that’s why we really need to rely on peer reviewed, verified, studied information.

[00:17:55] offsetkeyz: We do. Our little lizard brains are likely to believe whatever we [00:18:00] hear. And so we’re going to do our part on this podcast and drop a lot of links in the show notes below, and we really encourage you to go in and read them for yourselves, not just believe what we’re saying on this podcast. If you keep reading Hot Girl Farmer, you will see that the court, the Fifth Circuit, uh, of appeals denied the health

label. So, So they sided with requiring age verification, but they did deny forcing adult websites to have this health label on them. Thank goodness, probably for the reasons that you mentioned, but we will verify that in the show notes as well.

[00:18:39] HGF: Okay. Well, that’s good.

[00:18:40] offsetkeyz: I wonder, I You can spin anything, any way you want. There was another comedian that I watched the other day because of daylight savings time.

[00:18:52] HGF: Yikes! Yeah, it’s been kicking my ass.

[00:18:54] offsetkeyz: Where,

It’s all about how you spin it, right? If the government came on and they’re like, Hey, you’re going to actually have to be at work an [00:19:00] hour earlier tomorrow, and you’re going to have to wake up an hour earlier.

It’s going to be dark, and it’s going to be light when you try to go to bed, like all these things. Everyone would be like, no, but instead the government’s just like, Hey, you know what? Just once a year, we think it’d be cute if we just set our clocks back an hour. Everyone’s like, I guess. Yeah, sounds great.

So the attorney general is saying. This is a victory, but imagine if P.0.r.N.HU8 had an office in San Antonio, the capital of Texas, that employed

100, 000

people. Imagine that!

Now all those people are out of a job! Is that a victory? You’re,

yeah. You’re actually

shutting down jobs for one of the top websites on the internet.

Like Facebook is up there, Google’s up there, and P.0.r.N.HU8 is up there, and you are shutting down jobs. Doesn’t sound like a victory to me, governor.

[00:19:55] HGF: Yeah, it just is from what angle is this a victory?

With the ease of use of VPNs, [00:20:00] I, most people know how to use them and get around this age verification anyway. So I would say people that, that want to go on the site can still go on the site. You have to be like 2 percent tech savvy to use the VPN. And then I still think it’s going to encourage minors to commit data theft.

And so I wouldn’t really call this a victory, , if you’re against. this site.

[00:20:24] offsetkeyz: Yeah, instead maybe work with them. They have really good ideas and they have a lot of resources to implement those ideas. They have a lot of money, and so if P.0.r.N.HU8 is willing to work with the state of Texas to develop state of the art proprietary age verification methods, why not do that? You’re like actually saying no to innovation. Where you could have maybe a patent tied to your name that helps keep P.0.r.N. Out, like actually helps keep P.0.r.N. Out of the eyes of minors, but instead you’re just encouraging lying, cheating, and stealing new dark [00:21:00] markets to pop up

so maybe think about that.

[00:21:02] HGF: This is a weird haphazard band aid that just creates more problems. This is not the solution that they’re looking for. And again, no one wants miners to consume this. And I just, we really think that age verification on the device itself is secure and a good way to go.

[00:21:21] offsetkeyz: Absolutely, and P.0.r.N.HU8 does not disagree either.

[00:21:36] offsetkeyz: So we’ve covered a lot. Of our thoughts and our feelings, as well as what’s actually happening in the state of Texas and with the state of P.0.r.N.HU8 and censorship and data laws. And just to recap, I want to go over what

happened again

timeline wise, but there was one more point that the Washington Post article makes, [00:22:00] and that is that P.0.r.N.HU8 is potentially the most reputable of sites to consume adult content.

They take the privacy of not only the creators, but the users very seriously. They take complaints very seriously. They’re not, they’re filtering out their content so that nothing illegal is on there. They’re doing a lot of good things. They’re making sure that when you watch these videos, there’s no way for bad actors to embed malware.

They have firewalls. They have anti malware. Like I said, they have all these protections because they’re the most reputable of sites. So now these measures have caused P.0.r.N.HU8

to

take their services off. Offline in Texas, but what are people who are seeking adult content going to do from there?

They’re going to go look for other websites that maybe aren’t as reputable. Maybe have more sketchy content because it’s not being filtered like child p or

a [00:23:00] list of other kinds of things and might be laden with malware or downloadable whatever. Like if you click on a link in one of these sites maybe it redirects quickly to something and you’re infected.

Making these requirements are only fiscally achievable by companies that have the resources to achieve them. Like the age verification is what I’m talking about here. P.0.r.N.HU8, I don’t know any other reputable sites, but they would all have the means to implement these things. So, people who are blocked by age verification will now start going to sites that don’t have the means to implement age verification.

And those sites are much more likely to have malware and lurkers and inappropriate content. So thanks to the Washington Post, they, I mean, they didn’t bring up all that, but they brought up a little bit of it. So thanks for bringing up that point. There’s just, where’s the good?

[00:23:55] HGF: Yeah.

[00:23:56] offsetkeyz: All I see is bad.

[00:23:57] HGF: We get what they’re going for, but [00:24:00] this is just not achieving that at all, unfortunately.

[00:24:02] offsetkeyz: And it’s actually a step in the wrong direction. So any of my Texas people who back this bill, you might think it’s a step in the right direction, even if it’s not solving all the problems, it’s actually a step in the wrong direction due to all the reasons listed in this episode, is a step backwards.

So you’re actually shooting yourself in the foot. So just to recap, in June, Texas passed a law requiring any website that displays adult content to be disabled. Verify the consumer’s age using pretty in depth methods, not just enter in your birthday like they do on liquor sites. A bunch of people, P.0.r.N.HU8 one of them, sues the state of Texas over censorship laws. Just last week, the courts in Texas sided with the state of Texas and P.0.r.N.HU8, in reaction to this ruling, pulled their services from the state of Texas. You can no longer access the website P.0.r.N.HU8 in the state of Texas. P.0.r.N.HU8 is pro age verification. They are very for [00:25:00] it, but they want it to actually verify age and not just attempt to censor content. And we think that the state of Texas, the government of the United States, should work with companies like this to implement effective age verification using any method. This is where creativity comes into play. We need to find a method that will effectively verify users age, not just verify that they have access to documents that verify somebody’s age. And they need to work together to make sure That’s what’s implemented. Not taking these half assed, band aid approaches that actually hurt the people they’re trying to protect.

[00:25:39] HGF: Yeah, thank you guys for tuning in with us to discuss this pretty controversial, really interesting topic. This is really interesting to us. There’s a lot of nuance in here. There’s a lot of gray area, which is something that I enjoy to discuss. And so thanks for sticking with us, keeping an open mind, and just, we’re just trying to focus on the [00:26:00] facts, the law, what’s going on, and keeping you guys up to date with cyber news.

And this one just came up and feels pretty pressing to discuss.

[00:26:08] offsetkeyz: There’s definitely some other things in the news that we’re going to touch on tomorrow, but yeah, thank you for giving us the opportunity to talk about this.

We

threw a lot at you and that is just to get thinking about reasons this bill might be good or this bill might be bad. Whatever, you are entitled to making your own opinion. Again, we encourage you to check out the resources we’re providing in the show notes and to think for yourself. Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Decrypt.

Thanks for Hot Girl Farmer for being here on this, and we will talk to you some more tomorrow.

[00:26:36] HGF: See you guys.

[00:27:00] [00:28:00]