*As of January 1, Pornhub will block access to all users in Florida in response to a new state law requiring age verification for accessing adult content.
Aylo, Pornhub’s parent company, confirmed the move as a protest against the legislation, which is set to take effect in 2025.
“Unfortunately, the way many jurisdictions worldwide, including Florida, have chosen to implement age verification is ineffective, haphazard and dangerous,” reads an email from Aylo. “Any regulations that require hundreds of thousands of adult sites to collect significant amounts of highly sensitive personal information is putting user safety in jeopardy. Moreover, as experience has demonstrated, unless properly enforced, users will simply access non-compliant sites or find other methods of evading these laws.”
Earlier this year, Pornhub disabled its services in Texas amid objections regarding a state law mandating age verification to deter minors from accessing the site. In a statement, the popular pornography site noted that it made the “difficult decision” to “disable access” in Texas, Complex reported.
“As you may know, your elected officials in Texas are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website,” reads the message displayed to users in the state. “Not only does this impinge on the rights of adults to access protected speech, it fails strict scrutiny by employing the least effective and yet also most restrictive means of accomplishing Texas’s stated purpose of allegedly protecting minors.”
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Pornhub previously blocked access in North Carolina and Montana over bills regulating access for underage users. According to reports, the site is also unavailable in Mississippi, Utah, and Virginia.
It appears that Pornhub is so determined to maintain access for younger audiences that the platform’s owners are angered by legislation restricting underage access and are responding by blocking the site for adult users.
“The fact that they’ve chosen to shut down instead of complying to ensure that children aren’t accessing their site tells us exactly who their real target audience is,” said Florida state Rep. Chase Tramont, the prime sponsor for the age verification bill passed this year.
“We have seen how this scenario plays out in the United States. In Louisiana last year, Pornhub was one of the few sites to comply with the new law,” Aylo’s email reads. “Since then, our traffic in Louisiana dropped approximately 80%. These people did not stop looking for porn. They just migrated to darker corners of the internet that don’t ask users to verify age, that don’t follow the law, that don’t take user safety seriously, and that often don’t even moderate content. In practice, the laws have just made the internet more dangerous for adults and children.”
Aylo added, “The best solution to make the internet safer, preserve user privacy, and prevent children from accessing adult content is performing age verification at the source: on the device,” the company’s email reads.
“The technology to accomplish this exists today. What is required is the political and social will to make it happen. We are eager to be part of this solution and are happy to collaborate with government, civil society and tech partners to arrive at an effective device-based age verification solution. In addition, many devices already offer free and easy-to-use parental control features that can prevent children from accessing adult content without risking the disclosure of sensitive user data.”
READ MORE FROM EURWEB.COM: Pornhub Needs Your Help to Keep from Going Bye-Bye in Certain States over Age Verification Laws | VIDEOs
