Texas AG Ken Paxton Sues xHamster and Chaturbate

AUSTIN, Texas—Ken Paxton, the far-right attorney general of Texas, has sued the parent companies of adult websites xHamster.com and Chaturbate.com, reports Austin NBC affiliate KXAN.  Paxton filed the complaints in Travis County against Hammy Media and Multi Media for violations of Texas House Bill (HB) 1181, the controversial age verification law that is currently being litigated between porn stakeholders and Paxton's office in a federal district court. The news about these suits comes weeks after Paxton's office sued Aylo, the parent company of Pornhub. "Sites like PornHub are on the run because Texas has a law that aims to prevent them from showing harmful, obscene material to children," Paxton said in a post on X.  "We recently secured a major victory against PornHub and other sites that sought to block this law from taking effect," he added. "In Texas, companies cannot get away with showing porn to children. If they don’t want to comply, good riddance." Paxton argues that Aylo and its affiliated properties violated HB 1181, a "copycat" age-gating law that specifically targets porn websites with requirements to verify that every user from Texas IP addresses is 18 or older. According to Paxton's office, the Aylo suit is asking the court to impose fines of up to $1.6 million, plus $10,000 per day since September 19, 2023, the day HB 1181 entered force. That sum could surpass $3.2 million for Aylo. Less than one week ago, on March 14, Aylo geo-blocked the state of Texas due to the ongoing battle over its age verification legislation—thus marking the largest state to date where the company has chosen to block visitors to Pornhub and its other portfolio of sites. This is a developing story.