Of course you probably already know how corrupt AG Paxton is (look it up, if you don’t) and that

“The American South has the highest number of sex shops, active porn users (and most searches for Transgender porn), child pregnancy, etc. Conservative states are infamous for having sex shops right under all their “Jesus is watching” billboards…”

From a Texas reader:

“Live in Texas, and checked just now, for once literally for research purposes and this is what is says.”

Dear user,

As you may know, your elected officials in Texas are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website. Not only does this impinge on the rights of adults to access protected speech, it fails strict scrutiny by employing the least effective and yet also most restrictive means of accomplishing Texas’s stated purpose of allegedly protecting minors. While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, providing identification every time you want to visit an adult platform is not an effective solution for protecting users online, and in fact, will put minors and your privacy at risk.

Attempting to mandate age verification without any means to enforce at scale gives platforms the choice to comply or not, leaving thousands of platforms open and accessible. As we’ve seen in other states, such bills have failed to protect minors, by driving users from those few websites which comply, to the thousands of websites, with far fewer safety measures in place, which do not comply. Very few sites are able to compare to the robust Trust and Safety measures we currently have in place. To protect minors and user privacy, any legislation must be enforced against all platforms offering adult content.

Unfortunately, the Texas law for age verification is ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous. Not only will it not actually protect children, but it will also inevitably reduce content creators’ ability to post and distribute legal adult content and directly impact their ability to share the artistic messages they want to convey with it.

The safety of our users is one of our biggest concerns. We believe that the only effective solution for protecting minors and adults alike is to verify users’ age on their device and to either deny or allow access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that verification. We call on all adult sites to comply with the law. Until the real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in Texas. In doing so, we are complying with the law, as we always do, but hope that governments around the world will implement laws that actually protect the safety and security of users.

We encourage you to:

A. Learn more about device-based age verification* solutions that make the internet safer while also respecting your privacy.

B.Contact your representatives and demand device-based verification solutions that make the internet safer while also respecting your privacy.

*Device-Based Age Verification refers to any approach to age verification where the personal information that is used to verify the user’s age is either shared in-person at an authorized retailer, inputted locally into the user’s device, or stored on a network controlled by the device manufacturer or the supplier of the device’s operating system. Whether through pre-installed content blocking and filtering software, the disabling of web-browsing permissions, or other means, the user will then be prevented from accessing age-restricted content over the internet unless they are age-verified. To come to fruition, such an approach requires the cooperation of manufacturers and operating-system providers.

Bonus comment from Reddit:

Reminder that Texas is winnable for Dems.

Abbott’s margins (won by 11 points) SHRANK in 2022, which was an R+3 cycle, from 2018, (won by 13.3 points) which was a D+9 cycle. Every other incumbent Republican governor increased their margins in 2022. Cornyn went from winning by 27.2 points in 2014 to only winning by 9.6 points in 2020. Cruz went from winning by 16.1 points in 2012 to only winning by 2.6 points in 2018.

And Abbott’s margins in the suburbs have shrunk every cycle since 2014. Here are some exit polls:

2014: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/2014/tx/governor/exitpoll/ Suburbs went 62% for Abbott.

2018: https://www.cnn.com/election/2018/exit-polls/texas Suburbs went 59% for Abbott.

2022: https://www.cnn.com/election/2022/exit-polls/texas/governor Suburbs went 56% for Abbott. Also worth noting that Abbott only won the rural areas by 66%, down from 73% in 2018.

Reminder that Texas has more Democrats than many states have people. 5.3 million Texans voted for Biden in 2020, and 3.5 million Texans voted for Beto in 2022.