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Gizmodo
28-07-2025
- Business
- Gizmodo
Former Chaturbate Moderator Sues Site Over ‘Psychological Trauma'
A former content moderator for the porn site Chaturbate has sued the platform and its affiliates, claiming that he was psychologically harmed by his ongoing exposure to the sexual material on the site. Neal Barber, who was hired as a moderator for the porn site in 2020, claims in a class action lawsuit that his employers knowingly and intentionally failed to 'provide their content moderators with industry-standard mental health protections, such as content filters, wellness breaks, trauma-informed counseling, or peer support systems.' 404 Media first reported on the litigation. The suit, which names as defendants Chaturbate, its parent company, Multi Media LLC, and a customer support contractor, Bayside Support Services, was filed earlier this month in California. The lawsuit claims that Barber 'developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other severe emotional injuries' from his work, which required him to view and interact with 'sexually explicit, violent, obscene and psychologically disturbing live-streamed content for extended periods of time.' Barber now claims to suffer from 'vivid nightmares, emotional detachment, panic attacks, and other symptoms consistent with PTSD.' This alleged emotional trauma requires 'ongoing medical treatment and therapy,' the suit says. 'These injuries were not only foreseeable, but preventable,' the litigation continues. 'Had Defendants taken even the minimal precautions adopted by companies in Defendants' industry, Plaintiff would not have suffered these injuries.' The lawsuit also notes the importance of moderators to the porn industry's business model. 'Because platforms like Chaturbate host vast amounts of live, unfiltered, and sexually explicit content, content moderators are essential to maintain compliance with legal standards, enforce platform rules, and prevent the dissemination of illegal or abusive material,' the lawsuit says. 'They serve as the first line of defense against child exploitation, non-consensual content, violent content, obscene content, self-harm, and other violations.' Gizmodo reached out to Chaturbate, as well as to Bayside Support Services and Multi Media LLC, for comment. The plight of the content moderator has become one of the most confounding dilemmas of the modern age. The internet is overflowing with repellant material, and it's almost always somebody's job to try to clean it up (even Elon Musk's 'free speech' platform X has a moderation staff). Usually, the job falls to precarious low-wage workers—many of whom end up claiming that the sites that employ them do next to nothing to ease the psychological pain of having to watch awful stuff all day. As an example, Meta has been sued multiple times over the company's alleged treatment of African contractors who were tasked with moderating the deluge of disturbing and illegal content on the company's websites. Last year, it was reported that 140 moderators who had previously done work for Facebook had been diagnosed with PTSD from having viewed social media material involving murders, suicides, and child sexual abuse material. As legal troubles involving moderators have become more common, some companies are increasingly turning to automated, AI-driven systems to do the work of cleaning up their sites. However, it's often the case that human observers are still necessary to provide oversight for the automated systems. Chaturbate has had a difficult few years, as it and other porn sites continue to adjust to the wave of age-verification regulations that have taken root in mostly conservative states. Last year, the platform was fined over half a million dollars by the state of Texas for failing to institute age-verification mechanisms for the users of its site. A conservative political movement has also increasingly lobbied to make the entire porn industry illegal.
Newsweek
27-05-2025
- Business
- Newsweek
Supreme Court's Free Speech v. Paxton Decision Could Protect Kids Online
Can a state place age restrictions on pornography websites so that children cannot access their material? The U.S. Supreme Court will decide that critical question in its forthcoming opinion in the case Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton. For those who've not been following this case, this is a decision worth paying close attention to. It will be of critical importance for future state and federal efforts to protect kids online, especially from pornography. The case started with a lawsuit, brought by the trade association for the pornography industry, masking itself behind the name "Free Speech Coalition." The association sued the state of Texas over a law, H.B. 1181, that requires pornographic websites doing business in Texas to "use reasonable age verification methods" to verify that a customer "is 18 years of age or older." The law applies to any commercial entity that "knowingly and intentionally publishes or distributes material on an Internet website, including a social media platform, more than one-third of which is sexual material harmful to minors." Companies that do not institute the required age verification will be subject to fines of up to $10,000 per day and up to $250,000 if a child is exposed to pornographic content because of a failure to verify his or her age. The law was initially enjoined from taking effect by a district court in Texas, but then the Fifth Circuit stayed the injunction. So the law, although appealed up to the Supreme Court for review, has been in effect in Texas since November 14, 2023. Texas' law has already been making a significant impact. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued several large pornography websites under the law, including one in February 2024 against Aylo Global Entertainment, which runs several of the largest pornography websites, including Pornhub. Texas found that the company, instead of age verifying and restricting its material, immediately presents minors who access their websites with pornographic content. Rather than comply with the requirements of the law, PornHub opted to stop doing business entirely in Texas. Then in March 2024, Texas sued two more pornography companies, Multi Media LLC and Hammy Media, failing to provide sufficient screening to prevent minors from accessing their material. Texas has now secured a settlement with Multi Media LLC, in which the latter agreed to use an age verification service on its Chaturbate website to ensure compliance. These are the kinds of results we want to see nationwide to protect America's children. Whether we will comes down to the Supreme Court's decision in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton. If the Court upholds the constitutionality of age-verification laws for pornography websites, it would pave the path for other states' laws to go forward as well (there are now 23 states with laws similar to Texas'), and hopefully for a nationwide age-verification law like Senator Mike Lee's (R-Utah) SCREEN Act. But if they don't, future efforts to protect America's kids will be imperiled. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton arrives at Manhattan Criminal Court for former US President Donald Trump's trial for allegedly covering up hush money payments linked to extramarital affairs, in New York City, on April 30,... Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton arrives at Manhattan Criminal Court for former US President Donald Trump's trial for allegedly covering up hush money payments linked to extramarital affairs, in New York City, on April 30, 2024. More JUSTIN LANE / POOL / AFP/Getty Images So what should we expect in the Court's ruling? I expect the Court's decision to grapple heavily with two important questions. First, what standard of review should be applied to age-verification laws for pornography websites? And second, how should the law and precedents apply, given the vast technological changes we've seen over the previous 20 years? Those questions were the main themes of oral argument. When the Justices asked what standard of legal review should be applied, Texas argued for "rational basis," the lowest level of review, whereas, the porn industry argued for "strict scrutiny," the highest standard. The Justices seemed to land somewhere in between the two. The Justices' other main line of questioning focused on what the technological changes over the last 20 years mean for how effective filtering technology is. In Ashcroft v. ACLU (2004), the Court had found that age verification was not constitutional because content filters would be an "effective and less restrictive means" to protect minors. I am cautiously optimistic that the Court will uphold the Texas law, mainly because the majority of the Justices recognized that content filters have been extremely ineffective in the era of smartphones and social media. They've also acknowledged that websites now have the technology to verify users' age in ways that are anonymous and convenient, relieving the potential burden on adult speech. Whether the Court overturns Ashcroft or issues a ruling mainly guided by other precedents, given the Justices' acknowledgement of the vast changes in technology over the last 20 years, the eventual ruling in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton will most likely allow states a way forward for age-restricting minors' access to online pornography. Justice Neil Gorsuch emphasized that we don't want two separate constitutional regimes in our country—one for the online world and one for the real world. The goal should be to have those be as similar as possible. I am hopeful the Paxton ruling will help bring our governance of the virtual world more in line with our governance of the real world, rather than driving the two further apart. Clare Morell is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and author of the forthcoming book, The Tech Exit: A Practical Guide to Freeing Kids and Teens from Smartphones. The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
