 So, if you're someone who lives in the state of Utah and you recently tried to access an adult website for a little bit of personal time, you might have found that you no longer have access to some of your favorite websites. And there's a good reason for that. It's because some adult entertainment websites are actually blocking access to people in Utah in protest of a law that just went into effect on May 2, which requires ID to verify age, and predictably searches for a VPN have skyrocketed in the state as a direct result of people with Utah IP addresses being banned from accessing these websites. But as fun as it may be to laugh at the thought of a bunch of sexually repressed Mormons being denied access to their favorite adult websites, I respect this move by websites because what they did here was actually very meaningful. One hub, for example, in restricting access to people who live in Utah, they are losing a lot of revenue, perhaps thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. But in doing so, they're making a really powerful statement about the importance of digital rights that probably none of us would have actually heard about had they not done this. But without further ado, here's the law that they are protesting. It's called online pornography viewing age requirements, which was signed into law by the governor on March 14th. And as I said, it just went into effect, and it creates legal penalties for distributors of adult content that allow minors to view their content. And furthermore, it requires ID to verify someone's age. Now, the way that it worked before was that if you tried to go to a pornographic website like Pornhub, for example, there'd be a little pop-up that would say this is content intended for people 18 years of age or older, and you would be required to put in your birthday. But I mean, there was never anything really stopping a minor from just lying about their age and then getting access to the website. This is what I did when I was a teenager. This is what I'm sure many of you have done. So in theory, if you force somebody to input information from their ID or driver's license, that's going to guarantee that minors can no longer lie about their ages. And at face value, it's easy to be sympathetic towards that argument, that this is going to stop minors from accessing pornographic content. Now the problem is that, and this may seem a little bit counterintuitive, this could end up harming minors more and leading to them gaining access to even worse content. And furthermore, it's a problem because it establishes a dangerous new precedent of government censorship on websites that didn't previously exist. And once you open Pandora's box to that, you can't really go back. It's hard to put the cat back in the bag if you know what I mean. As Vice explains, experts say that age verification doesn't work to protect children online and only works to drive material that is harmful to minors to less safe spaces on the internet while exposing adults to more risk of identity theft, private data hacks, and extortion. Immediately after SB 287 passed the House and Senate in Utah, residents there started discussing how best to use virtual private networks to keep accessing porn. So in other words, this isn't going to have the intended effect that lawmakers in Utah hope that it does. And now when you try to access Pornhub, if you have a Utah IP address, you'll be met with a message from adult performer Sherry DeVille, who explains precisely why laws like this are absolutely harmful and must be opposed. As you may know, your elected officials have required us to verify your age before granting you access to our website. While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users, and in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk. In addition, mandating age verification without proper enforcement gives platforms the opportunity to choose whether or not to comply. As we've seen in other states, this just drives traffic to sites with far fewer safety measures in place. Very few sites are able to compare to the robust trust and safety measures we currently have in place. In order to protect children and user privacy, any legislation must be enforced against all platforms offering adult content. The safety of our users is one of our biggest concerns. However, the best and most effective solution for protecting children and adults alike is to identify users by their device and allow access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that identification. Until a real solution is offered, we've made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in your region. Please contact your representatives and demand device-based verification solutions that make the internet safer while also respecting your privacy. Very well said. Now, for a moment here, just consider where this could take us to if we allow this to be precedent. I mean, it could start with pornographic material, but it could lead to censorship with regard to reproductive health. It could be expanded to LGBTQ-less content. I mean, imagine for a second, you're a closeted gay or trans teenager and you have this supportive community online that you can console with about issues that are unique to your community. But all of a sudden, you can't access this community because a bunch of bigoted lawmakers in your estate deem all queer content targeted towards minors as inappropriate or pornographic even. I mean, they're already claiming that drag queen story hour is tantamount to the sexualization of children. So I mean, what's to stop them from deeming queer-affirming sites as porn? What's to stop them from saying the Trevor Project, which is a resource dedicated to stopping suicides of queer youth as, oh, they're just grooming children into the gay lifestyle? Furthermore, what happens if you now need an ID to access a particular political or government website, but you don't have an ID? I mean, the implications of this are deeply unsettling. And all of this is possible only if we allow states like Utah to get away with these insoriously restrictions on websites. And they're already trying to expand ID verification to non-pornographic websites in case you weren't already aware. As CNN explains, porn sites aren't the only ones to face calls for age verification. State and federal lawmakers have increasingly pushed to mandate a minimum age for social media use, too. Last week, U.S. senators proposed a nationwide ban on social media use for children under 13. Age requirements for social media websites have also been approved in Arkansas. So we are entering dangerous territory here. Now do I think that social media is harmful to young people? Absolutely. I think it's harmful to all of us, to be frank. But the solution isn't for a sensorious nanny state to step in and larp his parents. These solutions could lead to a future of internet censorship that would harm everyone. It's not just lefties and liberals. It's Republicans as well who could be harmed by this. Now Utah, believe it or not, isn't the first state to opt for ID verification. A similar law actually went into effect in Louisiana not that long ago. CNN continues, In Louisiana, one of the country's first age requirements for adult websites went into effect in January. Pornhub, which says it receives 130 million visitors a day, is still available in Louisiana despite the age verification law. Users accessing Pornhub within Louisiana are presented with a different webpage that directs them to verify their age with the state's digital ID system, known as LA Wallet. A spokesperson for the site told CNN that since the Louisiana law went into effect, traffic from the state has fallen by 80%. The spokesperson added that unlike Louisiana, Utah lacks a similar digital ID system. Now I'm not sure what the minor to adult ratio is of people trying to access pornographic websites in Louisiana. Honestly, you don't know if you could even quantify that data. But if traffic fell by 80%, that almost looks like an effect of porn ban. So we could be witnessing the emergence of the next moral panic where kids once again are being used by conservatives to hide their theocratic agenda that ultimately ends in them restricting freedom for adults. Banning porn is something that they can't do because that would violate the First Amendment. But if they impose new restrictions specifically on the internet, well you can basically produce the same outcome virtually. But lawmakers, they do this all the time, they often try to impose new restrictions on the rights for adults under the pretense of protecting kids. And we all need to be aware that this is what they do and this will always be their go-to tactic because these arguments are persuasive, they work. Well intentioned people see that and they think, well I want to protect kids and they fall for it. Lizzo, for example, has been promoting the Kids Online Safety Act as a way to make social media a safer place for minors by restricting access to the types of content that they see. And Lizzo is a good person. I don't know her personally, but just like knowing what she stands for and what she says, she seems like a really good well intentioned person so it makes sense that she would support a bill that would, for instance, restrict social media websites from sharing content that could promote eating disorders, for example, with young girls. Her intentions here are pure, that's undeniable. But legislation that she's promoting would end up hurting more than helping. And a digital rights organization, Fight for the Future, has launched a petition to try to get her attention to explain to her that this bill is a Trojan horse, nothing more, it's going to do more harm than good. They explain COSA would allow state attorneys general, think Ken Paxton from Texas, who was actively investigating the families of trans children, to dictate what content platforms are allowed to recommend to underage users. While the bill's supporters fantasize that this will incentivize platforms to moderate more responsibly, for example, by removing content promoting eating disorders, the reality is that they will simply moderate in a more risk-averse way, for example, by suppressing all content where eating disorders are discussed at all, even if it's important self-help content or content directing young people to resources for support. They add, the bill has been roundly condemned by nearly every major LGBTQ and human rights organization in the United States, including the ACLU, GLAAD, and the National Center for Transgender Equality, because it would actually make kids less safe, not more safe, and could lead to widespread censorship of LGBTQ content, body positive content, content related to reproductive health care, and other important topics for young people. And again, I want to emphasize that I know that Lizzo wouldn't intentionally support legislation if she knew that it harmed queer youth, but these lawmakers, they use Orwellian language in these bills, and they do that to pray on our unnatural instincts to protect vulnerable people. And it's not just Republicans to be clear. There are Democrats who support COSA as well, because they think that social media giants aren't doing enough to police content on their platforms. And we have to be aware of this. We, as informed individuals, need to make others aware of this as well. Even politically savvy people get duped sometimes. For example, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, they voted for FOSTA and CESTA in an effort to combat human trafficking, but the passage of that legislation has been correlated with an increase in violence against sex workers. And this is something that sex workers said would happen at the time when the bill was being discussed. So the takeaway is that we need to listen to vulnerable and marginalized communities, and we also need to take our own digital rights seriously, because it is constantly under attack. So we have to vociferously push back against laws like this, the one in Utah, the one in Louisiana, and other ones being proposed. Because government censorship is one of those instances where it's hard to undo once it's done, right? You'll see a lot of momentum only in one direction, because if the government thinks that they can get away with these censorious laws by naming them misleading things, they're going to keep doing it. And it's like death by a thousand cuts. Little by little, state after state is going to transform the internet into an entirely different place. So I really respect Pornhub here, kudos to them for standing up. We all need to do better about speaking out to support our digital rights, but I guess I'll leave you with this. Support Pornhub for taking a stand, and I guess go jerk off to their porn.