Latest news with #onlinecontent
Al Bawaba
5 days ago
- Al Bawaba
Why TikToker Modahm was arrested in Egypt—The last reason will shock you
ALBAWABA - Egypt arrests Mohamed Khaled aka Modahm over shocking charges tied to online content. As part of a new effort to clean up inappropriate online content, Egyptian police arrested a well-known content creator called "modahm" Mohamed Khaled after receiving multiple reports that he posted offensive content that went against public morals and social values. 'Modahm was taken into custody from his home in the Qanater Khayriyah area in Qalyubia Governorate,' the Ministry of Interior said in a statement made on July 29, 2025. The ministry said that findings showed that Modahm had used social media to post offensive and inappropriate videos in order to get more followers and make money from online interactions. Modahm 777 Instagram profile His home was searched by security forces, who took a lot of money in Egyptian and foreign currencies, as well as gold jewelry that they thought he had earned on social media. The police also found large amounts of hashish and cocaine, which Modahm later admitted were for his own use. The person who made the material is said to have admitted under questioning that his main goal was to make money. He admitted that he made and shared inappropriate videos on purpose to get more views and comments, which would help him make more money from social media ads. After the official report was turned in, the accused person is now being sent to the right prosecutor. This case is part of Egypt's larger effort to catch people "misusing social media" and spreading material that is morally wrong or offensive to the public. This arrest is the latest in a string of similar cases where social media influencers and online personalities have been charged with spreading harmful or inappropriate material. People are still arguing about how far people can go with their online speech in Egypt and where the lines are between free speech and protecting social norms. The government has stated that they will persist in monitoring digital content to ensure adherence to moral standards.
Daily Mail
12-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
OnlyFans creator DISGUSTS fans after he reveals which member of his family helps him film his 'content'
An Only Fans creator left fans shocked after he revealed that his mum helped him film his online content. Social media star Kurts Adams Rozentals revealed in a video posted to Instagram back in May that 'my mum films all my content', joking that it was a 'family business'. 'The content in controversial. 99 percent of parents wouldn't film their child', he went on. He added that he was 'super grateful for my [mum] not questioning my idea'. But he quickly clarified that he was 'kidding' and that his mum would tell him if his ideas for content were 'too much'. 'But we still film them regardless and they still make it on the internet. 'So shout out to the best [mum] in the galaxy', he added. The revelation outraged followers, with several taking to the comments to express their shock and disgust. 'What the f**k?!?!?!', one Instagram commented. Another said: 'Its just sick'. While a third wrote: 'So trashy'. But what fuming fans did not realise was that the influencer had clarified in the post's caption that his mum was not involved in filming his explicit content, and rather helped him out with filming content for his social media accounts. 'SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT ONLY (We'd like to clarify)', he wrote in his caption. Responding to his horrified followers he said: 'People clearly don't read captions these days???'. The influencer and athlete has 96,000 followers on Instagram, but also posts content on OnlyFans - a subscription-based social media platform most commonly known for hosting adult content. Rozentals, who competes in the individual canoe slalom, made headlines after he claimed that he was banned from competing because of his OnlyFans account. He was suspended in April by governing body Paddle UK following 'allegations' about his posts on social media, according to the BBC. Paddle UK removed Rozentals from their World Class Programme - a UK Sport's lottery-funded initiative to put athletes on the course for the Olympics - pending an investigation. The body did not clarify the nature of the allegations, but Rozentals told BBC Sports at the time that he suspected it was because of his OnlyFans content. 'I have been posting videos (on Instagram) that are consciously made to be edgy in order to drive conversions to my 'spicy content page' (on OnlyFans), to fund this ultimate dream of going to the Olympics', he said. Rozentals created his own OnlyFans account in January 2025 in order to help fund his training programme and he posts videos and pictures on his Instagram account to drive viewers towards the content.
The Verge
28-06-2025
- Politics
- The Verge
The Supreme Court just upended internet law, and I have questions
Age verification is perhaps the hottest battleground for online speech, and the Supreme Court just settled a pivotal question: does using it to gate adult content violate the First Amendment in the US? For roughly the past 20 years the answer has been 'yes' — now, as of Friday, it's an unambiguous 'no.' Justice Clarence Thomas' opinion in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton is relatively straightforward as Supreme Court rulings go. To summarize, its conclusion is that: Around this string of logic, you'll find a huge number of objections and unknowns. Many of these were laid out before the decision: the Electronic Frontier Foundation has an overview of the issues, and 404 Media goes deeper on the potential consequences. With the actual ruling in hand, while people are working out the serious implications for future legal cases and the scale of the potential damage, I've got a few immediate, prosaic questions. Even the best age verification usually requires collecting information that links people (directly or indirectly) to some of their most sensitive web history, creating an almost inherent risk of leaks. The only silver lining is that current systems seem to at least largely make good-faith attempts to avoid intentional snooping, and legislation includes attempts to discourage unnecessary data retention. The problem is, proponents of these systems had the strongest incentives to make privacy-preserving efforts while age verification was still a contested legal issue. Any breaches could have undercut the claim that age-gating is harmless. Unfortunately, the incentives are now almost perfectly flipped. Companies benefit from collecting and exploiting as much data as they can. (Remember when Twitter secretly used two-factor authentication addresses for ad targeting?) Most state and federal privacy frameworks were weak even before federal regulatory agencies started getting gutted, and services may not expect any serious punishment for siphoning data or cutting security corners. Meanwhile, law enforcement agencies could quietly demand security backdoors for any number of reasons, including catching people viewing illegal material. Once you create those gaps, they leave everyone vulnerable. Will we see deliberate privacy invasions? Not necessarily! And many people will probably evade age verification altogether by using VPNs or finding sites that skirt the rules. But in an increasingly surveillance-happy world, it's a reasonable concern. Over the past couple of years Pornhub has prominently blocked access to a number of states, including Texas, in protest of local laws requiring age verification. Denying service has been one of the adult industry's big points of leverage, demonstrating one potential outcome of age verification laws, but even with VPN workarounds this tactic ultimately limits the site's reach and hurts its bottom line. The Supreme Court ruling cites 21 other states with rules similar to the Texas one, and now that this approach has been deemed constitutional, it's plausible more will follow suit. At a certain point Pornhub's parent company Aylo will need to weigh the costs and benefits, particularly if a fight against age verification looks futile — and the Supreme Court decision is a step in that direction. In the UK, Pornhub ceded territory on that very front a couple of days ago, agreeing (according to British regulator Ofcom) to implement 'robust' age verification by July 25th. The company declined comment to The Verge on the impact of FSC v. Paxton, but backing down wouldn't be a surprising move here. I don't ask this question with respect to the law itself — you can read the legal definitions within the text of the Texas law right here. I'm wondering, rather, how far Texas and other states think they can push those limits. If states stick to policing content that most people would classify as intentional porn or erotica, age-gating on Pornhub and its many sister companies is a given, along with other, smaller sites. Non-video but still sex-focused sites like fiction portal Literotica seem probably covered. More hypothetically, there are general-focus sites that happen to allow visual, text, and audio porn and have a lot of it, like 4chan — though a full one-third of the service being adult content is a high bar to clear. Beyond that, we're pretty much left speculating about how malicious state attorneys general might be. It's easy to imagine LGBTQ resources or sex education sites becoming targets despite having the exact kind of social value the law is supposed to exempt. (I'm not even getting into a federal attempt to redefine obscenity in general.) At this point, of course, it's debatable how much justification is required before a government can mount an attack on a website. Remember when Texas investigated Media Matters for fraud because it posted unflattering X screenshots? That was roughly the legal equivalent of Mad Libs, but the attorney general was mad enough to give it a shot. Age verification laws are, rather, tailor-made methods to take aim at any given site. The question 'What is porn?' is going to have a tremendous impact on the internet — not just because of what courts believe is obscene for minors, but because of what website operators believe the courts believe is obscene. This is a subtle distinction, but an important one. We know legislation limiting adult content has chilling effects, even when the laws are rarely used. While age verification rules were in flux, sites could reasonably delay making a call on how to handle them. But that grace period is over — seemingly for good. Many websites are going to start making fairly drastic decisions about what they host, where they operate, and what kind of user information they collect, based not just on hard legal decisions but on preemptive phantom versions of them. In the US, during an escalating push for government censorship, the balance of power has just tipped dramatically. We don't know how far it has left to go.
Yahoo
28-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
US Supreme Court upholds Texas age-check for porn sites
The US Supreme Court on Friday upheld a Texas law requiring pornographic websites to verify visitors' ages, rejecting arguments that this violates free speech and boosting efforts to protect children from online sexual content. The court's decision will impact a raft of similar laws nationwide and could set the direction for internet speech regulation as concerns about the impact of digital life on society grow. Texas is one of about 20 US states to institute checks that porn viewers are over 18, which critics argue violate First Amendment free speech rights. Britain and Germany also enforce age-related access restrictions to adult websites, while a similar policy in France was blocked by the courts a week ago. US companies like Meta, meanwhile, are lobbying Washington lawmakers for age-based verification to be carried out by smartphone giants Apple and Google on their app stores. The Texas law was passed in 2023 by the state's Republican-majority legislature but was initially blocked after a challenge by an adult entertainment industry trade association. A federal district court sided with the trade group, the Free Speech Coalition, saying the law restricted adults' access to constitutionally protected content. But a conservative-dominated appeals court upheld the age verification requirement, prompting the pornography trade group to take its case to the Supreme Court, where conservatives have a 6-3 supermajority. Under the law, companies that fail to properly verify users' ages face fines up to $10,000 per day and up to $250,000 if a child is exposed to pornographic content as a result. To protect privacy, the websites aren't allowed to retain any identifying information obtained from users when verifying ages, and doing so could cost companies $10,000 daily in fines. During arguments in January before the Supreme Court, a lawyer representing the Free Speech Coalition said the law was "overly burdensome" and that its goal could be accomplished using content filtering programs. But Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the mother of seven children, took issue with the efficacy of content filtering, saying that from personal experience as a parent, such programs were difficult to maintain across the many types of devices used by kids. Barrett also asked the lawyer to explain why requesting age verification online is any different than doing so at a movie theater that displays pornographic movies. The lawyer for the Free Speech Coalition -- which includes the popular website Pornhub that has blocked all access in some states with age verification laws -- said online verification was different as it leaves a "permanent record" that could be a target for hackers. During the court's hearing of the case in January, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas, both Republican appointees, seemed to suggest that advances in technology might justify reviewing online free speech cases. In 1997, the Supreme Court struck down, in an overwhelming 7-2 decision, a federal online age-verification law in what became a landmark free speech case that set a major precedent for the internet age. arp/sms/bgs
Wall Street Journal
27-06-2025
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
Supreme Court Upholds Texas Age Verification Law for Online Porn Content
The Supreme Court said a Texas law requiring certain websites hosting sexual content to verify their viewers' ages is constitutional. In a 6-3 decision, the court upheld the Texas law, one of at least 21 that have passed on the state level in recent years requiring age verification for users seeking to access pornographic content online.
