After Pornhub’s Exit, Texas Sues 2 Adult Sites for Not Adding Age Verification

After celebrating Pornhub’s exit from the state, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is going after two more adult sites for allegedly violating a new age-verification law.

Paxton on Thursday filed two lawsuits against xHamster and Chaturbate for failing to follow HB 1181, which requires porn sites to verify users’ ages via government-issued IDs before they can browse the sites.

Paxton has championed the law as a way to prevent minors from accessing porn. But according to his lawsuits, both xHamster and Chaturbate are asking users to merely click through a warning page about the sexual material on their sites, without asking for any age verification. 

The pop-up on xHamster (Credit: Paxton’s lawsuit)

Paxton is now demanding the court force both porn sites to comply with HB 1181. In addition, he’s demanding both pay more than a $1 million in penalties, along with an extra $10,000 per day if the alleged violations persist.

“I will continue to aggressively enforce HB 1181,” he wrote in a tweet. “All pornography companies lacking proper age verification safeguards on their sites should consider themselves on notice, because they’re violating Texas law.” 

The legal threat may be working. Chaturbate’s site is now displaying an age-verification process if you visit the site through a Texas-based IP address. The same notice also mentions that Chaturbate disagrees with HB 1181 and what it covers.

(Credit: Chaturbate)

Meanwhile, xHamster continues to display a pop-up that merely asks users to confirm that they’re 18 or older, rather than go through an ID check. The parent companies for both porn sites didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. 

HB 1181 is why Pornhub began blocking user access in Texas. The porn site argues that the law can violate a user’s privacy by forcing them to hand over sensitive personal information to a third party to check their age. Instead, Pornhub is advocating for age-verification tech that would work on the user’s device, without uploading any sensitive data to the internet. 

“While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, providing identification every time you want to visit an adult platform is not an effective solution for protecting users online, and in fact, will put minors and your privacy at risk,” Pornhub says in a message to Texas users if they try to visit the porn site. 

Pornhub is also blocked in Arkansas, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Virginia, and Utah for the same reason. In all states, there’s one big loophole for tech-savvy internet users: using a VPN. This can let a user change their IP address to another state or country free from the age-verification law.

How a VPN Works