A new law went into effect in Louisiana at the beginning of the year, requiring online publishers to conduct age verification checks if their site has more than 3% pornography.
In order to comply with the law, PornHub now requires visitors to verify their age with the LA Wallet app. There are other popular adult websites that haven't instituted age checks. According to the new law, porn sites can be sued for damages if a minor has access to the material. Pornhub was reached out to by the tech site.
Minors are exposed to pornography earlier in age due to advances in technology and limited age verification requirements. pornography contributes to the hyper-sexualization of teens and prepubescent children and may lead to low self-esteem, body image disorders, an increase in problematic sexual activity at younger ages, and increased desire among adolescents to engage in risky sexual behavior
Legislation that made it illegal for trans teens to participate in school sports was authored by Representative Laurie Schlegel. He worked as a sex addiction counselor.
Snow is a sex worker, professor, and research fellow at UCLA's Center for Critical Internet Inquiry. Although the legislation states that sites that conduct age verification cannot retain identifying information, Snow believes that porn consumers may still be concerned about data breeches.
PornHub and Only Fans require performers to prove their age and identity in order to crack down on child sexual abuse material. If consumers are required to hand over legal documents in order to watch porn, they may look for other sites that have better content.
The primary effect is that it will marginalize sex workers, according to Snow. There will be an increase in the black market of premium content that is non-consensual.
Louisiana's Act 440 is one of the legislation that is positioned to advocate for children's safety. This legislation makes it more difficult for sex workers to do their job. These laws have made it harder for law enforcement to fight sex traffickers.
Sex workers used to use Backpage.com as a way to vet potential clients. Indiana police said when the site was shut down that it became harder to catch people running sex traffickers.
The Act is likely to have an effect similar to that of Backpage coming down, which is, just sex workers losing another stream of income and having to resort to less protected avenues.
In 2020, Senator Elizabeth Warren proposed a study on the effects of SESTA on sex workers.
Sex workers have reported a reduced ability to screen potential clients for safety, and negotiate for boundaries such as condom use, leading to reports of physical and sexual violence. Street-based sex work has historically involved higher rates of violence than other types of sex work.
The act of requiring people to give up their identification to watch porn is described by Snow. She says that in the most extreme cases, this type of monitoring can harm the LGBTQ population.
She said that she could see the state zeroing in on people consuming gay porn or lesbian porn and either surveilling them further or criminalizing them. The bill warns that pornography can lead to deviant sexual arousal, but doesn't define what deviant means.
Snow said that trans women are morerepresented in sex work. Trans women sex workers, as usual, will be the most affected by that decision.
The U.K. government has been working on an online safety bill for a long time. The bill could require users to verify their age before they access sexually explicit content.
In the past, the U.K. government tried to enforce age checks on porn sites, but dropped the plan due to technical and regulatory challenges. There are age checks in the U.K.
We won't be surprised if a bunch of Louisiana residents suddenly want to learn how to use a virtual private network.
UK confirms removal of Online Safety Bill’s ‘legal but harmful’ clause
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