A state with 10 million residents is set to ban NSFW materials in the most recent porn crackdown in the US.
This is just the latest attempt to limit access to adult content in the US as many states moved to ban PornHub following the introduction of age verification.
This means that users will now need to prove their age in order to access certain sites including PornHub, Reddit and X, formerly Twitter.
Now, several Republican representatives in Michigan have introduced a new bill that aims to ban a whole host of content from the internet.
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Known as the Anticorruption of Public Morals Act, the law would prohibit porn in various forms including video, erotica, stories and magazines, along with other content such as ASMR.
But it doesn’t stop there because in the act, it also describes a banning of depictions and descriptions of ‘a disconnection between biology and gender by an individual of 1 biological sex imitating, depicting, or representing himself or herself to be of the other biological sex’.
This would effectively ban any content about trans people in the entire state of Michigan.
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Mike Stabile, who is the director of public policy at adult industry trade organization, the Free Speech Coalition, took to Bluesky to say: “The bill would completely erase trans people online, equating them with porn.”
It would also mean that content in peer-reviewed academic content for scientific or medical research would also be banned.
And if brought into law, the rule would come with a harsh penalty for non-compliance, with fines up to $100,000 and even the possibility of 20 years behind bars.
If over 100 pieces of banned content are found then the punishment increases to $125,000 and a whopping 25 years in prison.
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What is the age verification process for adult sites?
Certain websites that are deemed to be harmful to children will now need to verify the age of its users before allowing them access, with a new rule also coming in for UK users.
This includes things like requiring a copy of ID or requesting a selfie or video of their face in order to estimate their age.
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However, this has led to some people voicing their concerns over risks to privacy.
Daniel Card, who is a cyber-security expert with the Chartered Institute for IT (BCS), said: “Many of these free VPNs are riddled with issues. Some act as traffic brokers for data harvesting firms, others are so poorly built they expose users to attacks.”
Katie Freeman-Tayler, from the children’s safety group Internet Matters, added: “This makes it easy for them to circumvent important protections introduced under the Online Safety Act, such as age checks designed to shield them from adult content.”