Chaturbate to Pay State of Texas $675K for Age Restriction Violation

April 29, 2024
ALEXANDER

Chaturbate to Pay State of Texas $675K for Age Restriction Violation

Chaturbate, you in trouble gurllll! The company has been a mainstay in the adult industry for offering sex chat and camming services for exhibitionists, amateurs, and porn stars and their fans for years. Launched in 2011, the site has become one of the leaders in the camming business, known for its diversity of models and easy-to-use interface, using a token system for fans to "tip" their models. It is the most followed cam site on X, and boasts hundreds and hundreds of models, with a well-paying income source for those in both amateur and professional realms of the adult biz. Whatever you want, they have a cam for it. This weekend, the site made mainstream news and not in a good way. In a nutshell, they owe the State of Texas a cool $675K for violating the state's age restriction verification laws for adult sites.

Last month, we reported that other adult mega site PornHub was pulling out of Texas because of the newly established law that requires adult sites to implement an age verification system. The law was put into place to protect minors from accessing adult material. Fines for violating such restrictions call for up to $10K on a daily basis. Texas is suing PornHub's parent company for $1.6 million. Montana, North Carolina, Louisiana, Utah, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Virginia are other states that implemented the same restrictions, with more potentially following suit. Opposers of such laws say that these restrictions violate Free Speech and risk users' privacy by making them upload a government-issued ID.

PornHub has now disabled its website in Texas. Sites like PornHub are on the run because Texas has a law that aims to prevent them from showing harmful, obscene material to children. We recently secured a major victory against PornHub and other sites that sought to block this law…
— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) March 14, 2024

After reaching an agreement with Texas, Chaturbate has now implemented an age-restriction process and will pay $675K (down from $1.7 million) within 30 days as ordered by the court. Chaturbate has enlisted the services of Incode, a system used for mainstream banking for fraud and age verification purposes.

Some background on the law and these lawsuits. The lawsuits are being filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. The age verification law, HB 1181, was created by his wife, state Senator Angela Paxton, with involvement from the pastor of their Baptist megachurch. The Free Speech Coalition, in partnership with a number of adult sites and adult workers, has filed a legal challenge but hasn't been successful.

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Incidentally, Texas is also suing XHamster for $1.67 million. Where is all this money going to go? Hopefully towards programs that help youth, in the spirit of the bill, such as food and educational services for underprivileged kids and gun control to stop school shootings. Those issues seem a bit more dangerous.