Smut Industry Terrified Of Bill To Keep Kids From Their Products
The SCREEN Act, championed by Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee, aims to require online porn companies to verify users are adults before granting access, building on the support of 81% of Americans and similar laws in 27 states. This legislation addresses the rising issue of childhood exposure to pornography, which typically begins at age 12, with 80% of kids aged 12-17 having encountered explicit content. Experts highlight numerous harms from early porn exposure, prompting lawmakers to take preventive measures.
Pornhub and other major adult sites oppose the bill,raising concerns about data privacy and regulation,but proponents counter that the law woudl actually enhance privacy by preventing data retention and exposing industry data collection practices.Critics argue that Pornhub blames parents or device makers for underage access, but the core issue remains the industry’s failure to prevent minors from viewing explicit material. The bill advocates for stronger penalties against illegal distribution, with examples from Texas demonstrating that strict enforcement can effectively diminish black market pornography. the legislation aims to protect children from the profound harms of early exposure to pornography, which the industry seeks to preserve for profit, viewing children’s innocence as collateral.
Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee’s SCREEN Act would strip Big Porn of a critical revenue stream: kids.
The Shielding Children’s Retinas from Egregious Exposure on the Net (SCREEN) Act just passed the House of Representatives and is sitting in the Senate right now. Lee’s bill would require every online porn company to verify users are adults before they can access any adult website. This is exactly what voters want. A recent poll found that 81 percent of Americans support a federal age verification law to protect minors from accessing pornographic content online. Additionally, 27 states have passed similar age verification legislation.
The reason for the recent momentum is simple: childhood exposure to pornography has become a nationwide crisis. Today, the average child first encounters porn at age 12, and 80 percent of kids aged 12-17 have been exposed to some level of sexually explicit content. Given the numerous documented harms of porn use — addiction, mental disorders, normalization of sexual violence, etc. — it makes sense that lawmakers are taking steps to shield our most vulnerable from it.
Pornhub, a major online porn distributor, is in full panic mode. The legislative stakes could not be higher. It knows the noose is tightening and that is what prompted its desperate plea to politicians across the country.
In its letter, Pornhub raised three main concerns, each of which has an obvious rebuttal.
First, Pornhub begged lawmakers to shift age verification from the organizations that actually profit when children are addicted to porn to device manufacturers. Essentially, Pornhub poisoned the digital reservoir and is now blaming the hose when children drink water. Your cell phone or internet service provider should not be on the hook because Pornhub is a predatory child-targeting organization. Pornhub is on the hook. It created the path from your child’s phone straight to the darkest pits of sexual obscenity. The burden is theirs.
The second rhetorical trick Big Porn uses is to blame parents. Studies have shown what common sense has always told us: filters and blockers are easily bypassed by tech savvy teens. Pornhub poisons the reservoir and then has the audacity to say that parents must pay in treasure and time and vigilance. If your child drinks the water, they say, it is your fault alone.
Finally, the voyeurs who exploit the most intimate of acts for profit, who then sell that data to the highest bidder, are now acting as stewards of the First Amendment and privacy. In its letter, Pornhub went into a fearmongering tirade over the possibility of data leaks. This is pure political theater. The SCREEN Act mandates that all data gathered to verify the age of users cannot be retained beyond the verification process itself.
Moreover, seeing as porn sites already have some of the most sophisticated data collection programs in the web industry — programs which right now are almost completely unregulated — the SCREEN Act actually increases privacy. A 2020 study found 93 percent of pornography websites already leak user data to third-party companies like Google, even if users surf in an incognito browser. Porn users should already be aware that their personal data is unsafe.
Pornhub raised concerns that this legislation might create an increased demand for black market porn. This is not an argument against age verification. This is an argument for stronger age verification laws and steeper penalties for those who would flout the law to peddle smut to kids. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has proven that strict legal penalties are excellent deterrents to predatory porn companies. Paxton’s unrelenting approach has led him to strip noncompliant sites of their domain names and chase them out of the state. Consequently, domestic “black market” porn has a hard time forming — much less thriving — in the state.
No generation in history has ever been subjected to this level of sustained targeted debauchery. The pornography industry views your kids as future customers and their innocence as necessary collateral. This letter is a last gasp from a sick organization that knows if it loses access to children, it loses everything. If they signed off “Your affectionate Uncle Screwtape,” it would be no less fitting.
Terry Schilling is the president of American Principles Project PAC. Follow him on Twitter @Schilling1776
" Conservative News Daily does not always share or support the views and opinions expressed here; they are just those of the writer."
*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases
