WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — On Jan. 1, Florida residents will lose access to one of the world's most popular pornography websites.
This comes after a new age verification law, House Bill 3, was passed by legislators this year and signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis.
WPTV reporter Michael Hoffman spoke to parents who said more protections are needed to keep children safe online.
"Good. Less of that, the better," father David Babineau said.
State
Here are the new laws starting Jan. 1 in Florida
Representatives of Pornhub said it has no issue keeping minors from accessing their website. They just have a problem with the state taking your personal information so adults can access their content.
When House Bill 3 takes effect, Florida will join 12 other states that have passed similar legislation. It requires users of adult websites to verify their ages with a driver's license before they can view explicit material.
The "Online Protections for Minors" law requires a non-governmental third party to conduct that age verification process. The law also requires children ages 14 and under to get a parent's permission before setting up social media accounts.
WPTV spoke with three parents to get their thoughts on the new law. They were all supportive of the measure.
State
How will House Bill 3 impact kids, and why is it being challenged?
"She's our child until she's 18," Matthew Daniel said about his daughter. "She can make her decisions when she's an adult, but until then, she's our responsibility."
"Well, anything they can do to keep kids safe is good by me," Babineau said. "I don't agree with the government telling us how we can raise our kids, but something's gotta be done to keep kids off those sites."
"I think it's an appropriate thing to do is to," parent Chris Worster said. "I think it starts off with social media, and then I think porn is arguably, probably more destructive."
Citing privacy and free speech concerns, the Free Speech Coalition is suing the state of Florida in a federal lawsuit.
"This isn't about pornography, specifically," Free Speech Coalition's public policy director Mike Stabile said. "This is about government restrictions and the ability of government to limit a citizen's ability to go online."
WPTV contacted Pornhub's parent company, Aylo, which sent us the following statement regarding the law:
First, to be clear, Aylo has publicly supported age verification of users for years, but we believe that any law to this effect must preserve user safety and privacy, and must effectively protect children from accessing content intended for adults.
Unfortunately, the way many jurisdictions worldwide, including Florida, have chosen to implement age verification is ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous. Any regulations that require hundreds of thousands of adult sites to collect significant amounts of highly sensitive personal information is putting user safety in jeopardy. Moreover, as experience has demonstrated, unless properly enforced, users will simply access non-compliant sites or find other methods of evading these laws.
This is not speculation. We have seen how this scenario plays out in the United States. In Louisiana last year, Pornhub was one of the few sites to comply with the new law. Since then, our traffic in Louisiana dropped approximately 80 percent. These people did not stop looking for porn. They just migrated to darker corners of the internet that don't ask users to verify age, that don't follow the law, that don't take user safety seriously, and that often don't even moderate content. In practice, the laws have just made the internet more dangerous for adults and children.
The best solution to make the internet safer, preserve user privacy, and prevent children from accessing adult content is performing age verification at the source: on the device. The technology to accomplish this exists today. What is required is the political and social will to make it happen. We are eager to be part of this solution and are happy to collaborate with government, civil society and tech partners to arrive at an effective device-based age verification solution.
In addition, many devices already offer free and easy-to-use parental control features that can prevent children from accessing adult content without risking the disclosure of sensitive user data.
