Justice Samuel Alito managed to arouse a lot of attention on social media Wednesday thanks to his question about how the adult content platform Pornhub compares to Playboy magazine.
It happened when the Supreme Court was hearing arguments about a Texas law that requires age verification for users to access sexual content online. At one point, Alito asked Derek Shaffer, a lawyer for the adult industry trade group the Free Speech Coalition, what percentage of Pornhub content “is not obscene as to children.”
The justice then inquired, in what the New York Times described as a “mocking tone,” whether Pornhub was “like the old Playboy magazine.” He asked, “You have essays there by the modern-day equivalent of Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr.?”
Shaffer conceded the lack of Vidal and Buckley think pieces, but said Pornhub users could find “sexual wellness posts about women recovering from hysterectomies and how they can enjoy sex.”
The Supreme Court is expected to decide by June whether the age verification process required by Texas law imposes too great a burden on adult access to legal content.
However, people on social media were mostly just amused by the fact that Alito had asked about Playboy vs. Pornhub.