Adult Site Broker Talk Episode 230 with Mike Stabile of the Free Speech Coalition – Part One

This is Bruce Friedman of Adult Site Broker and welcome to Adult Site Broker Talk where each week we interview one of the movers and shakers of the adult industry and we give you a tip on buying and selling websites. This week we’ll be speaking with Mike Stabile of Polari Media and the Free Speech Coalition in part one of a two-part conversation. We’ve added an events page on our website. There you can find out about all the B2B events in our industry and there are discounts on selected shows. Go to adultsitebroker.com to find out more. Speaking of events, I’ll be at the X-Biz LA show January 13th through the 16th. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone there and talking business. Contact me on our website to book a meeting at adultsitebroker.com. To register for the show, go to xbizla.com. And I’m proud to announce I’ve been nominated for Community Figure of the Year at the X-Biz Executive Awards as part of X-Biz Honors January 15th. I’d be honored to get your vote. 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White label owners can instantly double profits by switching to their own platform. Also, investing in recruiting and hiring hosts or onboarding new talent pays off instantly. If a host is added today, it is reflected in revenue immediately. Only $926,000. Now time for this week’s interview. My guest today on Adult Site Broker Talk is Mike Stabil of the Free Speech Coalition and Polari Media. Mike, thanks for being back with us on Adult Site Broker Talk. Third time, you’re a real glutton for punishment. Well, you know, I go where the war is and obviously you are one of the front’s fighting alongside us. Well, thank you so much. It’s nice to hear that coming out of your mouth. Mike is a journalist and documentary filmmaker who’s written about and advocated for sex workers and sexual speech for over a decade. His work has been published in a wide range of places, including The Daily Beast, Salon, BuzzFeed, Playboy and The New York Times. Seed Money is documentary on pornographer and philanthropist. I said that wrong. Chuck Holmes was named one of the best documentaries of 2015 by the advocate. Stabil founded Polari Media to help non-traditional communities and businesses better communicate with a mainstream audience. He’s handled communications for the Free Speech Coalition since 2013. The Free Speech Coalition’s mission is to protect the rights and freedoms of both the workers and businesses in the adult industry. Their organization functions as a resource, a leader and a tool for the communities they serve. They take pride in fighting to alleviate the social stigma, misinformation and discriminatory policies that affect those who work in and adjacent to the adult industry. For more than 30 years, they’ve been fighting and winning in possible battles from the Supreme Court, the ballot box and back again. Our industry is almost constantly facing scrutiny and attacks, no more so than now, but we’ve seen firsthand that when we come together and fight, we win. Mike, it’s so good to have you back and I do appreciate your time because I know how busy you are right now. We were just talking about that before the interview. When we spoke a year or so ago, you were gearing up for what turned out to be a pretty intensive legislative season regarding age verification. Maybe you can bring us up to speed on what the past year has looked like. Yeah, absolutely. I do want to thank you. We have done this a number of times. I think that one of the real values that I get, not just in the joy of having a conversation with you, but is the ability that you have to reach the industry at large and to have those conversations. I think that that’s one of the things that has been a struggle for us. I think that the Free Speech Coalition does, we do a lot of work and sometimes we’re doing so much of that work that we don’t actually stop to let people know what is going on. It tends to be another thing that we have to do. We’re like, "Oh, well, we’ve got to talk to these legislatures and we’ve got to deal with this press thing and we’ve got to fly and testify here." You forget sometimes to say, "Hey, listen, this is what we’re doing because it feels a little bit self-aggrandizing." It ends up being the lowest priority. I really appreciate ... I want to start out and really just tell you how much I appreciate you having us on because it does make us stop. It does make us talk about this and it does reach the people who are most affected by this who may not always have the time to dig into these articles and to follow what is going on. I appreciate that very much. I’m honored and privileged to help in any way that I can. I am glad and I’ll have happy to give you guys a download as to what has happened in the past year to go back to your question. As you mentioned, last time we spoke, there have been a handful of states that had passed these bills and we were looking at what is this going to mean in the second year, right? The first year 2023, it went into effect in Louisiana. We had a handful of other states pass it. Since then, we had, I think in 2023, I’m sorry, in 2024 rather, in the course of maybe a month, a month and a half, we saw maybe 50 different bills get introduced at the state level. Sometimes there were states that had multiple bills. Some states had no bills, but it felt like in those early days of this year that we were seeing a couple of bills pop up a week. It did seem like it, didn’t it? Every time one of those bills pops up, we have to stop. We have to stop and take a look at what that bill is. We have to take a look at what is its chance of passing. We have to take a look at what is our ability to influence that bill, right? Obviously, our ability to influence a bill in California might be different than our ability to influence a bill in South Carolina, both in terms of our resources and our resources in terms of the politics of the state and all that. We saw a bunch of these bills get introduced and immediately started springing into action. A bill would get passed. We would contact the legislators who had introduced it, introduced ourselves, see if we could get a meeting to talk about the bills, reach out to legislators who might be opposed to those bills or allies in the state that might know a little bit about it. Now, again, when you’re dealing with 50 bills and probably two dozen states, different states, it’s hard to do a full court press on each one. I think that that’s part of the strategy that we’re seeing behind this legislation. It is, as we’ve seen so many other aspects of our government, there’s a flood-the-zone strategy. It doesn’t take a ton to introduce a bill. It takes a lot to fight a bill. You have to start being strategic. So by March, I was in Arizona testifying at various hearings. Their bill had gained momentum and obviously that is a rather large state and a state that also hosts a large part of our industry. Testifying in there, writing, "Alison, when the California bill was introduced, it was lobbying in Sacramento. We hired lobbyists in certain states." So really, it was, I would say, from January through June. And I say June because that’s when most of the legislators close up shop. It was probably 24/7. And as you know, I have other businesses besides FSC. They were in some ways very tolerant of me. My clients were tolerant of me not always being entirely there during the series because they knew there was so much else going on. But we were flying around. We were testifying. We were getting on phone calls. We were talking to allies. A lot of what you have to do in fighting these bills is broaden the bench because you can’t do it all yourself. And certainly, as I think we talked about last time, the porn industry isn’t necessarily the most welcome voice in these hearings. Because if someone’s introducing an anti-porn bill, we’re the enemy. And so we can go in with all of the right words and all of the good intentions and offer to be a collaborator. But often they think, "Well, we don’t think that you should exist at all. So we don’t want to talk to you. We’re not concerned about how this is going to affect your business or whether or not this is constitutional." So we sorted through, I think that it was a real trial by fire. Obviously, we had dealt with a lot of this in the past year. We were much better prepared going into 2024 than we were in 2023, just because we had had the experience of dealing with a number of legislators. The legislators, we had the ability to understand what arguments were working and what weren’t. And I think by the time we came out of it, we had a fairly solid track record. So we can’t claim credit for all of them. States have their different things. But I think that we had about 11 states passed bills, 11 or 12 states passed bills about the same number. The bills failed. They were either defeated or they stalled and didn’t make it. Guys have had a lot to do with the ones that have stalled or been challenged. Yeah. We’ve been very vocal. And I think that in absence of having, say, the staff of the oil and gas industry or the NRA, Allison and I are pretty much the only people working on this in a full-time capacity. And full-time is sort of adubious. It’s never full-time. There’s all these other stuff going on. But in terms of it being our mandate, we’ve got two people that are working on it. In absence of having a staff of lobbyists in every state and unlimited resources, what we do is we’re loud. So I think that we try to talk to the media as much as possible and explain what the issues are. We file lawsuits and we’ll get to that a little bit as well and raise the constitutional problems. And we collect information so that when we do contact a legislator or when we do testify, we are the most knowledgeable people in the room. I think that in some cases, in Arizona, we were able, despite going out there, I think three times and testifying and building an alliance that included everyone from ACLU to Planned Parenthood to some people on the right, these bills tend to have their own sort of momentum, right? They’re hard to vote against. But we were able to secure a veto from the governor. They have a Democratic governor, what’s a Republican-led legislature. In California, we were able to get significant changes made to a bill there that was pushing it and ultimately was able to, ultimately got moved to appropriations, which is sort of the death knell in California, right? It means that it has to go before, has to be compared in terms of budget and the state is dealing with a budget deficit. As usual. As usual, right? There was a brief period where we were in good shape and then it all goes to hell. But that’s Allison. I mean, you think about, just to give you an idea, when we dealt with California, Allison was meeting with the legislator who had introduced the bill almost constantly, talking to their staff, going up, showing them presentations as to what this was. Luckily, in that case, the legislator was like, "I don’t want to harm the old industry. I don’t think that this was a conservative legislator, but a moderate conservative." And said, "Listen, I’m not here to hurt the old industry. I think the old should have the right to look at this, but I want to protect kids." And I think that Allison really made the case over and over again that this wasn’t protecting kids, right? That this was doing very little in terms of protecting kids, that there were better ways to do it. And ultimately, the bill was changed to reflect that. And in the process, the legislator alienated the sort of faith-based groups that were pushing the legislation. They got really angry because it didn’t do what they wanted. That’s a shame. Exactly. Which is kill porn. Which is kill porn. And so that’s sort of it. That’s the stuff that goes on behind the scenes is just, it’s hard to explain how many meetings we have, both in terms of with legislators, with allies, and then strategy meetings ourselves to talk about what’s going on in this state, what’s going on in this state, what do you know about this bill, who do we have here, and just trying to get it all together. Yeah. By the way, what changes briefly were made to that bill? So the bill had originally been, was sort of an odd bill. So it had started off, if I remember correctly, as a fairly standard, you know, copycat age verification bill. It was then amended, again, take this with a grain of salt because there was so much that went on this year, especially in California. But it was then amended to insert pornography or adult content or material harmful to minders, as they call it, in a special section of material that was restricted to adults, which basically they listed us alongside fireworks and guns and I think spray things. Tobacco. Exactly. The sort of stuff that was like, one of these things is not like the other, right? Yeah. Social media that shows beheadings is okay. Yeah. That was sort of the first change. And then, you know, it sort of proceeded, it became a little bit more normal, a little bit stranger in other ways. And ultimately, what the change that Allison was able to secure was that, you know, it required age verification for adult sites, but it said, if you are using essentially an RTA tag, right? If you’re communicating to parental filters that you’re an adult site, then that counts as compliance, right? You know, acknowledging the fact that like, we don’t want kids on our sites, right? The moral and ethical issues, right? They’re a drain. They’re not consumers, right? They’re not, nobody wants minors on their site, right? It sort of screws up the analytics. It’s not good. And again, I say that in the most cynical way, obviously there are moral and ethical reasons that you don’t want kids looking adult content. But you know, for the first time, it really reflected the efforts that the adult industry does takes to keep minors from accessing adult content, right? That the fact that like, we make ourselves easily blockable. We want parents to turn on these filters. We’re not interested in reaching this audience. Yeah, absolutely. Well, we know who should be responsible. It should be the parents, but that’s a whole other thing. What do you see the next year bringing? You know, I think that it is, it’s interesting, you know, I’m hesitant to predict because it always surprises me. But so the past two years, what we’ve seen is this, the states that have passed age verification legislation by and large have been your red states, right? So you see the the Texas is in the Florida is in the Arkansas is and the Mississippi’s and the Oklahoma’s. That’s who have been passing these laws. If you look at a map of the United States, if you look at age verification and then you look at something like anti LGBTQ laws or you look at anti reproductive rights laws, you know, they they line up pretty closely. There have been a couple of states that have surprised us on either side, right? That either have failed to pass a law, even though they’re very conservative or, you know, states like Virginia where they’re they’re a little more purple and they they did still pass it. So I think that what we’re looking at now is a new front, which is the states that are left by and large tend to be purple and blue states. And that is that takes a different strategy. We have a little bit more leverage in those states, right? I think that if you go into Oklahoma, you know, as we did with the Oklahoma ACLU saying, hey, listen, this is a terrible law. This is violates the First Amendment six ways till Tuesday. And it’s not going to do what you think it is. Others in Oklahoma maybe aren’t all that friendly to the ACLU. So we do have, you know, more of a challenge in the darker red states. It doesn’t mean that we don’t have those challenges in, you know, purple and blue states, as you see in California or in Arizona. But especially, I should note that 2023 was an election year, right? I mean, 2024, sorry. Well, it’s always an election year. The question is where? Yeah. Well, you know, I think that a lot of these legislators are, you know, it’s these even numbered years where like, you know, the vast swath are sort of up for something. And so it makes it harder to vote against these bills. I think it will probably, you know, on, we maybe have a little bit more of an advantage in 2025 than maybe we did. But like I said, you never know. There is so much that’s going on right now in terms of a panic around tech and a panic around sex. And look at what’s happening, you know, it’s not just age verification on adult sites, right? It’s age verification on social media sites, right? It’s age verification in the app store, right? There’s a lot of discussion happening at all levels about how should miners be able to access the internet? What’s the most effective way? What should we restrict them from accessing? And how should we do it? And I think that, you know, a lot of the conversations that we’ll be having in 2025 are hopefully a little bit more educated than they were in 2024. I think that this was the year where we saw a lot of that legislation go forward. We heard a lot of conversations and you hope that a year later and a lot of lawsuits later, not just from Free Speech Coalition, but from, you know, Net Choice and ACLU and others around some of these other restrictions that maybe people can think about this in a little bit more nuanced way. I think that that Alice and I were laughing today. There was a legislator in California when she was testifying one of the hearings who said, do miners have First Amendment rights? You know, of course they do, right? Just because you’re under 18, it doesn’t mean that you have the same rights as an adult. There are things you can be restricted from. But you still do have a right to Free Speech, right? You still are a citizen. And I think that, you know, hopefully we go into it. So looking at 2025, I think we’re looking, like I said, at those blue and purple states a little bit more. But we also have on the table a wild card, which is the Supreme Court, right? We have now, I believe, five states where we have filed legal challenges. You know, there are others that obviously we are constantly looking at and trying to figure out where it makes sense to file and what our resources are because, you know, they are always limited. But you know, figuring out where we can make the biggest difference. And you know, we will be, you know, we just filed our briefs in the Supreme Court case, which is obviously, you know, an appeal of the decision in Texas. And you know, that will be, you know, heard early next year. So there’s a lot of stuff on the table. And then obviously throw into that the presidential election, too, right? Like I think there are so many, so many things that can change between now and January 1st that, you know, you really have to be prepared and agile, right? Like things are going to change and you’re going to have to shift strategy. Well, when you talk about the presidential race, obviously the clear choice is not Trump. But at the same time, Kamala has an that hasn’t exactly been a friend to the adult industry. Well, you know, I mean, this is, I think about this in terms of like the gay rights movement, right? Is that like, this is sort of old news, right? Is that like, I grew up and there were never politicians that were particularly friendly, you know, but you knew that between Clinton and Reagan, you know, Clinton had his issues as well. I would prefer, or you know, Clinton and Bush, I prefer Clinton, right? These are it. We did a Twitter space on the election a couple of weeks ago. We had over 800 sex workers and allies join the call and talk about, you know, what is the strategy for the 2024 election, right? Using the same thing, right? That especially for sex work and people who are doing in-person sex work, Kamala is, you know, a complicated, maybe the polite way to say it, but she’s not a revered figure. Exactly. Thank you for fostering this to Kamala. Yeah. But what everyone basically acknowledged, you know, when I asked for dissent, I didn’t really get a whole lot, was that sex workers, no harm reduction. And they, there’s a difference between, you know, getting slapped and getting punched. There’s a difference between maybe neither is preferable, but when you’re dealing with a binary choice, you have to figure out, you know, what is going to make the most sense. The lesser of the two evils. Yeah. That’s been my whole lifetime. Yeah. I mean, I think it’s funny listening to, you know, the younger activists and people come up and I, I’m always impressed with their passion and their commitment, but they’re in some ways discovering that this is the case. Is that like, yeah, this has always been it. It’s very rarely someone that you’re thrilled to have. It’s someone that you think you can influence. And I think that that’s where a lot of the conversations around Kamala and the call that we did, you know, came to, which was like, listen, she hasn’t been great on this. I think we can move her. Right? And I think that this is somebody who’s going to, you know, potentially at least her staff and the larger administration would take our concerns seriously. That’s what we’ve been seeing, you know, as we’ve lobbied the Biden administration, as we’ve lobbied Congress, that the Dems are open to sex workers work, right? They’re open to this. It doesn’t mean that we are there yet, right? It means there’s a lot of work to be done, but there’s some ability there to influence not so much on the other side. Hey, Trump’s a great client. Next to Stormy Daniels, right? You’ve been involved in some pretty high profile legal battles. We were just alluding to the Supreme Court. I realize you probably can’t get into too much detail on the strategy, given that there are pending cases. But can you give us an overview of what’s been happening in the courts? Sure. So there are, as I said, I think five active cases, Texas, Louisiana, Utah, Montana and Indiana, where we have filed suit. And they fall into sort of two main buckets based on the laws that we’re dealing with. On one hand, you have laws that are to be enforced by a, you know, a citizen. You know, I’m a parent. I catch my teenager has accessed, you know, Platform X. It’s an adult platform. I think that that has damaged them and I’m now going to sue, right? The other type is enforced by usually the attorney general, right? The attorney general, as we saw in Texas, bringing cases against, you know, adult platforms directly without having to show that there was harm. It’s just you’re in violation of the law. I’m going to find you. And then those cases, that is Texas, the cases that we have filed, that is Texas and that is Indiana, right? They have the attorney general, Louisiana as well. They added it at the last minute. And so we’ve moved forward with those cases. Those are a lot easier to get into a court because there’s a clear First Amendment violation, right? The state in the form of the attorney general is prohibiting, you know, your sites from operating, right? They’re creating regulations that chill your speech and chill the speech of people in your state. Those are easier to get into court, right? There’s a clear path with the ones where a parent or somebody could bring the suit, the civil right of action, that’s Utah and Montana. That’s a little bit trickier. And so because no one has filed a suit, what we’re protesting is the chilling effect, the fact that the threat of a suit means that you have to, sites are going to pull out, consumers are not going to be able to access it. And that’s what we’ve learned is that that’s sort of the plan, right? They want the chilling effect. They want sites to pull out. They want to have this vague threat of action so that adult sites don’t operate. Those are a little bit more difficult because you have to, you know, you’re suing the state and the state will say, well, I’m not involved. It’s between a parent and someone else. We just passed the law. We didn’t have anything to do with enforcement. So we’ve been doing a lot of like, a lot of the cases we’ve been involved in so far have been really almost at those lower procedural levels, right? We haven’t, for the most part, argued any case on the merits. We’re arguing whether or not, you know, most of the big stuff that we’ve heard, probably like Indiana and Texas, have been about preliminary injunctions, right? Can this law go into effect while we’re challenging the constitutionality? And so, you know, in Texas, we challenge the constitutionality. The district court said, absolutely, that is, it’s a clear violation of Supreme Court precedent. I’m going to give injunction. It went to the, you know, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Fifth Circuit reversed it, said we think that the Supreme Court made a mistake. We’re going to choose a different, we’re going to rule differently. And then we appeal that to the Supreme Court. So a lot of the stuff that we’re arguing really is procedural, right? It really is what can happen while we argue. We haven’t gotten to that case of, is this even constitutional? It’s more of, is it likely constitutional, right? Can it be stopped while we do this? So even when we go to the Supreme Court, that is likely going to be a ruling that says, here’s the standard that needs to be used and send it back to the court. We don’t know. We don’t know how it’s going to go. But I think that that’s the type of stuff that we’re arguing about. And we were on a call this morning, you know, talking with a member and sort of briefing them on what has gone on. And you know, I think that it could be a little bit dismaying to understand that like, even with the Supreme Court ruling, even in our favor, there are still challenges, right? We’re still going to be going at this. And I think that that’s why it’s really important that the other work that we do at FSC is to be part of the solution, right? To say, listen, we don’t want miners on these sites. Here are solutions that would work better. Here are solutions that don’t involve any privacy. We’re not opposed to keeping to methods that would keep miners off the site. We want to do it in a way that doesn’t disenfranchise, you know, the vast majority of adult consumers as well, right? It doesn’t scare them away. We want to do it in a way that doesn’t bankrupt adult sites, having to pay millions of dollars a month in age verification costs where they don’t make that much, right? We need to figure out the balance. And I think that, you know, I look at like, you know, the MPAA, right, on the mainstream of entertainment industry, right? The rating system, I think a lot of people don’t realize, is self-regulation, right? There’s no law that says you have to rate a movie R or PG or whatever else. They did it to forestall that. Yeah. Well, let’s face it, my friend. And I said this about a decade ago, probably more like 12 years ago now, age verification is coming. I said this, you know, we were starting to see hints of it. And I said, it’s high time the industry get together and, you know, come up with a solution that keeps us from being force-fed things. I didn’t realize it was going to be this bad. So I’m not exactly a soothsayer, but I said we should do something about age verification over a decade ago. And unfortunately at that time, the FCC wasn’t as strong. Okay. Allison wasn’t in her position. And you know where things were at at that point. It’s been way different as you know, because you were there before and after with and without Allison. And of course that never happened. With all that said, and now it’s 2024 as we speak, what do you think about some of the suggestions that there be device-based age verification that becomes a standard in the adult industry? You know, I think that it has obviously there are different forms of device-based age verification. We have voice support for a lot of them, right? I think that there are different ways to do it. And the value of device-based age verification is that you don’t have to share personal information with a thousand and one different sites, right? You’re not uploading your ID. It’s not cumbersome. Your phone already knows who you are. Well, yeah. And then the other part of it is, okay, even if somebody goes to a VPN, which is what the kids do, they’re watching Pornhub and all these states where it’s being blocked. We know that. Pornhub knows that. Everyone knows that. But you know, I mean, this is the sort of insanity of a lot of these laws is that in the Indiana judge, the district court judge was really sort of clear on this and sort of funny. And he was like, listen, there is no proof that these laws are effective, right? That they do anything. And that’s been one of our, you know, conversations points with legislatures is that like, yeah, you could block on site, even if somebody doesn’t have a VPN. We know that, you know, something like 41% of miners use VPNs regularly anyhow. And you know, that this is, this is sort of ineffective. They’re still able to access it on Twitter. They’re still able to access it on Reddit. They’re still able to go to a pirate site. They still can go to Discord or 4chan, right? There’s no shortage of adult content online. And so by going after a few high profile sites, right, sites that comply with takedown requests, sites that verify age of performers and stuff like that, you’re fueling the growth of this sort of underground industry. And I think that you mentioned, right, if 10 years ago talking about this and, you know, I had to laugh because this industry, you know, reluctant to do anything that they, until it is absolutely, you know, the world is on fire. Right. It’s like buying insurance after you’ve been robbed. Yeah. Well, it’s, it’s, it’s their resource issues always and there’s competition issues. And, you know, one of the things that, you know, I heard back then and I’ve heard since in the past few years and said, well, you know, I would do this, but it has to apply to everybody. If you, if you’re one site and you suddenly start doing age verification, well, what about the other site, right? Suddenly that you’re at a disadvantage. And so one of the, the principles that we’ve tried to talk about with legislators is that like, you know, it has to be evenly applied, right? It cannot just be, you know, big adult sites. It has to also be, again, the content on social media. It has to, it has to apply. And the way to do that is device level, right? The way to do that is again, your device knows more about you than you probably do, right? Including your age. And so being able to say, hey, listen, this person is, you know, under 18 or likely under 18 and send a signal to a site that says, hey, listen, you better block them, you know, or blocks it by default, right? We know that the parental filters are always going, you know, they’re able to block not just, you know, a site that, you know, platform X that we all know, but also can block a pirate site where they can also block, you know, a site that’s outside the country that’s not compliant. Like it doesn’t depend on compliance at the site level. And so I think that that’s it. And one of the things that we’ve seen in legislation, you know, and one of the things that we’ve talked about more is more of a signal, right? I think that this is rather than defending just on filters, but having adult sites send, you know, or have a device when, you know, say I’m a 17 year old, I attempt to access for and have my device sends a bit of information says, hey, listen, this person’s under 17. Born have then knows, okay, block this person, right? They can’t access it. And that doesn’t require giving them information. It doesn’t require a face scan. It requires at most one time sort of confirming your identity or confirming your age and then moving on. And I think that that’s simpler. It’s more elegant and it’s more effective. You know, absolutely. And yes, social media should also be doing it because like I said earlier, the headings are probably even worse or are worse than watching people have sex. Well, they have there’s so much stuff that is available, right? If you think about the, the, the inanity of some of this, right, you have blocking, you know, in some cases, art content, right? You’re blocking sex ed and Michelangelo under some of these age verification legislation but you’re allowing, you know, crush videos, right? You’re allowing snuff films. You’re allowing, like you said, beheadings. And you know, there is a larger debate about what type of content should be restricted and at what age, but I think that that does sort of raise like, well, this seems relatively arbitrary that this type of content is terrible. And also for that matter, for minors, right? When we talk about material harmful to minors, a 17 year old is different than a nine year old. And under these laws, they don’t make a distinction. So you’re saying basically a minor, well, that minor could be nine years old. So I need to make sure that everything on the internet is suitable for a nine year old or else I’m going to get sued. And that is, you know, that’s going to, that’s going to be Game of Thrones, right? That’s going to be a lot of sex education material. That’s going to be a lot of conversations that are maybe not appropriate for a nine year old. And so it’s a slippery slope. We need to be nuanced about how we do it. Agreed. So you guys haven’t limited your work to DC. As we talked about earlier, you’re doing a lot in state houses, right? Yes. The state houses have been the sort of the main front of this. And that has been, you know, in some cases, like I said, getting more involved and hiring lobbyists who can set up meetings, who sort of know how the power flows. It’s really hard. And it knows the ins and outs of the legislator, right? You know, they all have a generally similar model, right? Similar to the House of Representatives and the Senate, right? They generally have like a bicameral structure and a governor. But within that, like, there are so many arcane rules as to what happens with bills and what types of committees. And those are really hard for someone outside the country, you know, outside the state to understand. They’re hard for people inside the state, but it’s almost like being an expat, right? You show up and you’re like, I don’t understand how any of this works. It makes no sense to me because I’m used to this other system. And you know, when you’re trying to figure that out, you know, some of these state legislatures, their session time is six weeks. These are part-time legislators, right? These are people who own car dealerships, you know, maybe they’re lawyers, maybe they’re vets, you know, maybe they’re school teachers, right? They’re not working full-time. They’re just basically coming in on an almost volunteer basis in some of these things. Kind of like Congress. Yeah. Well, Congress at least gets paid, right? They at least get, you know, not that they’re making millions, although, you know, depending on the stats. Wow. But theoretically, they’re at least getting paid close to $200,000 a year. These state legislatures in these smaller states, they don’t, and they’re not full-time legislators. So they come in and you’d be surprised you talk to a judiciary committee member in a state, and they have very little information about the First Amendment. They don’t know anything about it, right? Maybe they’re a lawyer, maybe they’re not. Best case scenario, they are. But it is, it really is frustrating. So those are, yeah. So that is it. You know, we are, in some cases, you can testify remotely. So you can get on a Zoom call. Allison Earlyon was on in Delaware, testified. But you find out immediately, okay, well, your time limit is two minutes. You know, that was also, I flew to Arizona, to Phoenix. You know, you sit there, you’ve got your speech, you go in, and two minutes. You know, they can give you more if they want. And you’re like, okay, well, suddenly I’m staying up there. I’ve got to think on my feet. I’ve got to come up with a way to some, before they cut off my mic. And so, again, lobbyists sort of help you understand that a little bit ahead of time. But most of the time we don’t have the resources for lobbyists. Most of the time we are doing what we can to make educated decisions, to call on our allies. And that’s sort of what we’re doing now, right? We’re looking at those states that are ahead. We’re figuring out what’s coming in. Who can we get in touch with? Did they introduce it the last time? What happened to it? Who was involved? Who should we get in contact with? And then, you know, essentially do a dog and pony show and talk to as many people as you can, so that when the bill does get introduced again, at least people are educated about what the issues are. Because I think that a lot of the things that we see is people say, well, there’s no problem with this. We do this in a liquor store. We do this at an adult bookshop. This is the same exact thing as buying a Playboy at, you know, a 7-Eleven. Done. And, you know, it’s a lot more complicated than people don’t understand that. And that’s part of our job. Well, I mean, how much of this is politicians not understanding the internet fully? Yeah. It is, I will say that part of it is the politicians not understanding the internet fully. And that is a large part of it. I would say the other part is there are a significant number of legislators who do not believe in the First Amendment rights of the adult industry and see this as a way to get around First Amendment concerns. And we heard this with the head of Project 2025. He was caught on tape, you know, a month or two ago saying, listen, we introduced these age verification laws because we wanted the states, we wanted the businesses to pull out. We don’t want them. We knew that there’s First Amendment concerns in just banning porn, but we want to ban porn. This is our way of doing it. We’re going to ban it by making it really, really difficult to access. We’re going to make it so scary for people to upload their ID and they’re going to worry about surveillance. You know, giving them some motivation here, but he did sort of clearly say, listen, we this is why we did this age verification laws were sort of a backdoor way to ban porn. And so I think there’s a lot of legislators who are saying, yeah, I don’t care. I don’t care about your rights. I don’t think you have rights. I don’t think anybody should be able to access this. I’m going to pass this regardless. I don’t care if it’s constitutional or not. We have to do something. And then there are people, you know, I think there are also a lot of people who say, geez, so this makes me uncomfortable, but we have to do something or geez, this makes me uncomfortable, but it’s an election year. And can I really be voting against a bill to protect children? Supposedly. Yeah, exactly. There are a few profiles and courage that we’ve seen, you know, and I’ve been heartened by some of the engagement we have had with legislators and legislative staff, but it is these are designed to be difficult bills to vote against. Yeah, of course. What’s a day like in this fight? Now, a lot of this happens behind the scenes and people don’t realize the work that goes into it. Yeah, well, after this, this, this podcast, they were like, Jesus Christ, all he does is it would have martyr. I think that’s a complaint about all this stuff they have to do. They’ve probably got a good picture of it. But you know, I mean, to give you an idea, you know, the first thing obviously that happens is you wake up and you read the news, right? And one of the great pleasures and great stressors of this job is that often as you read the news, you find out that you’re in it, that you get up and you’re like, oh, what the fuck did that court do? Or who passed what? You know, or you check your email and there are, you know, 18 press requests from something you didn’t even know had happened yet, right? So that’s it. Like you get up and you try to get a state of what has happened. What do I need to respond to immediately? You know, and then you start strategizing. Like I think that very often what you’re doing is responding to emails or inquiries, whether that’s press or legislators or potential allies, you know, and trying to get settled, right? As you’re having your coffee. And then you, you know, Allison and I will check in, we’ll check in, you know, depending on the day with our legal team, or we will check in with our legislative team. You know, we have a group of allies. Sometimes we will be having meetings with a closer knit group of people and that could be people in the industry, you know, we’re working on this with us and, you know, doing a lot of work for free. Or it may be, you know, a larger group. We have regular meetings with allies, right? With people who are interested in such that that might be the American library association. That might be, you know, the ACLU that might be fire that might be this. And then we’re going out and making sure a lot of it is, you know, as I said earlier, we’re amplifying our own voice, finding ways to be louder. We want to be sort of like a thing about Tom and Jerry, the cartoon a lot, you know, and how the light would hit, you know, the mouse in a certain way and we look giant, right? And that’s sort of what we want to do. And that’s sort of what our opponents do as well. But you want to sort of figure out how can we be in more places and how can we be more places? Well, we make sure that more people know about what we’re doing and know the arguments so that we don’t have to always be the one that is making it. And so we have a lot of those meetings. I think that I spend a lot of time in my day, not only talking to press, but also providing resources for them, right? I think that, you know, it’s one thing to, you know, I did an interview with CNN earlier this week and you talk about all of the different issues. You walk them through everything and you hope that they understand and all of that. And then after that, it’s the follow-up. Here’s all the stuff I talked about. I’m not going to try to overwhelm you, but here’s where, if you need the information on this, here’s this. If you need the information on what’s happening to traffic, here’s this. If you want to understand who’s pushing these laws and why they’re pushing them, here’s this, this, and this. And trying to hit people, whether it’s press or legislators with a digestible, basically with the, like showing them your work, right? Here’s where it is. And if you need to dig here, here’s who you can talk to and sort of making it easier because I think that it’s easy when you’re doing activism to get mad at the press for not writing things your way. And sometimes that is, sometimes they come in with a bias just like a legislator and you’re not going to convince them and you can sort of do your best to sort of minimize that or complicate their message. But a lot of times it’s just that this is not their beat, right? There are very, very few people who in the country among journalists who are covering the adult industry, you know, outside of our industry. And so you often get somebody in here who maybe they cover legal cases or maybe they cover technology, but they don’t have any familiarity with us. They don’t know the arguments. And as much as people, hey, well, I shouldn’t have to do that. And they should do that work. And you’re like, you know, if wishes were fishes, this is not the case. As we talked about with the presidential election, right? You have to make choices that are self-preservation in some ways. And that means that you have to do a lot of work and help people understand the issue. Even if you think that it’s unfair and they should be doing their own work. No, you they don’t know where to look, right? And you have to be, you know, part of the solution. And that is that’s a lot of work. Right. You got to be a resource. Yeah. So outside of FSC, what’s been the general mood in the industry regarding these laws? And do you wish people were more engaged? I always wish people were more engaged. Yes. But I think that people also have been really engaged. I think that since we last talked, you know, I started a market research for my back. I’ve actually been sort of doing market research work in the background, you know, outside of FSC. For a few years, I launched a project with Melrose Michaels, SWR data. And we have been, you know, sort of measuring the mood of, you know, doing everything from understanding brand awareness on platforms among creators to, you know, understanding the way the creator market is moving and what platforms there are. How they feel about different issues. And one of the things that we saw, we just recently completed the 2024 state of the creator and it sort of covers all those sort of the issues that are relevant to creators is that close to 99, 90 percent, I should say, 88 something percent of creators said that they were concerned about the attacks on the industry. Right. So that they understand that this is an issue that they are politically engaged. I think that our industry as a whole is really politically engaged in this and we have an industry that has a lot of different political leadings. Right. This is not a default industry one way or the other. But I think that people do realize the threat. I think that we have hopefully been loud enough to make people realize that, you know, this is where it’s coming from. This is how we sort of fight it. And people have been engaged. I think that where it gets difficult and where we’ve sort of talked with a lot of people is trying to provide them with the resources to fight back. Because I think that a lot of people understand that, yeah, age verification is damaging my business, whether I’m an independent creator or whether I’m a large platform. But they may not feel comfortable making that argument, right, with a relative or with someone they’re arguing online. And I think that that helping them understand like, hey, here’s the nuance. Here’s where you go to get resources. Here’s how you better understand this issue. If you want to get involved, we can help you do that. We can help you become a better advocate. You may know the broad things, but you may not be comfortable really getting into it on a daily basis. And one of the reasons that I argued with so many people online all the time is that it does strengthen my arguments, right? It does make me more agile to be able to say, hey, listen, no, this is the issue for this. You want to you you’re worried about kids. This is why you should be doing this other thing. And so I think that people have been I think that they are concerned. I think that they’re hopeful. I think that they are more educated than that we give them credit for. And I think that we are building a, you know, an audience, you know, a new generation of activists. I certainly hope so. My broker tip today is part four of how to buy a site. Last week, we discussed making an offer and deciding the best price for the site you’re buying. Once you’ve made your offer, the work begins. If you’re working with a broker like, say, oh, I don’t know, maybe adult site broker, we handle the negotiation for you. Let’s say the seller doesn’t accept your offer. They may make a counter offer. If you decide that you’re willing to pay more, you can either accept their counter offer or counter back to them. A good rule of thumb is to always leave room to negotiate. So don’t make an offer that’s the absolute most you’re willing to pay. If you do that, then you have nowhere to go if the owner counters your offer. Once the owner and you have come to a deal, then it’s time to do some due diligence beyond what it is you’ve already done. During the initial process of looking at the site, you should have asked some questions, like in the case of a pay site, how many joins and rebuilds there are per day and any other pertinent questions. During due diligence, you need to make sure everything is where you need it to be technically to integrate it with what you’re already doing. You may even get your developer involved if you’re not tech savvy. You and or your developer should ask these pertinent questions. Once those are answered to your satisfaction, you should either have the seller or yourself draw up a sales agreement. I always tell my clients to do the agreement. Why? Because that way you can dictate the terms. So whether you’re the buyer or the seller, you can make the rules. But just get ready to have the seller’s attorney change some of those rules. Nothing is final until everything is signed off on. Another thing we do for our clients is a letter of intent prior to the sales agreement being done. This gives your attorney a roadmap for the agreement. The letter of intent and more so the agreement will have all the terms involved, including who pays for everything, who pays for escrow, for instance. This can be paid by the buyer, the seller, or split between both parties. We’ll talk about this subject more next week. And next week we’ll once again be speaking with Mike Stabile in part two of our interview. And that’s it for this week’s Adult Site Broker Talk. And once again, I’d like to thank my guest, Mike Stabile. Talk to you again next week on Adult Site Broker Talk. I’m Bruce Friedman. [Music] [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]