Pornhub blocks access in Montana and North Carolina

Accessing Pornhub in the US is becoming trickier by the day.

Aylo (formerly Mindgeek), the parent company of Pornhub, YouPorn and RedTube, has now blocked access to users in North Carolina and Montana, following the introduction of age verification laws in both states. People attempting to access Pornhub from these states are now greeted by a talking-head style video of performer Cherie Deville, along with a message from the company pushing for device-based verification and urging users to contact their representatives.

“Until a real solution is offered we’ve made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in your region,” says DeVille in the video.

The new age verification laws came into affect on January 1st. Montana’s law requires users to provide “a digitized identification card” go through “a commercial age verification system”, while North Carolina’s law requires a “commercially reasonable method of age and identity verification”. One of Aylo’s main issue, alongside the method of verification, seems to be with officials “mandating age verification without proper enforcement”, and the potential for users to be driven away from Pornhub to sites that don’t bother complying with the new laws. The decision to block assess entirely is essentially a form of protest.

Montana and North Carolina aren’t the first states to introduce age verification laws. This time last year Louisiana passed a similar law, and subsequently Utah, Mississippi, Virginia, and Arkansas have introduced their own versions of the law.

As well as protesting spreading age verification laws in the US, Pornhub is also facing issues across the pond, where activists have accused the site of abusing user data.