More than 18 million Americans living in five states are set to join Pornhub’s growing banned list due to lawmakers rolling out age restriction laws.
Kentucky lost access on June 10, while Indiana, Idaho and Kansas will be blocked on June 28th and Nebraska on July 17th.
The laws that led to Pornhub’s decision require visitors of certain websites, which extends to social media platforms, to show proof of age by uploading a government issued ID.
While Pornhub has stated that ‘safety and compliance are at the forefront of their mission,’ the company also believes ‘age verification puts users’ privacy at risk.’
More than 18 million Americans living in five states are set to join Pornhub’s growing banned list due to lawmakers rolling out age restriction laws
‘Since age verification software requires users to hand over extremely sensitive information, it opens the door for the risk of data breaches,’ Pornhub shared in a blog post last week.
‘Whether or not your intentions are good, governments have historically struggled to secure this data. It also creates an opportunity for criminals to exploit and extort people through phishing attempts or fake AV processes, an unfortunate and all too common practice.’
The recent announcement brings the total number of blocked states to 12, with Texas, North Carolina, Montana, Mississippi, Virginia, Arkansas and Utah previously losing accesses.
When users in the banned states attempt to access Pornhub they will be see ‘403 – This state is not whitelisted.’ A 403 code means a website is forbidden.
Some Americans set to be banned have also been met with a count down for when they will lose access.
‘You will lose access to Pornhub in 7 days,’ a website pop-up in Indiana reads
‘Did you know that your government wants you to give your driver’s license before you can access Pornhub,’ it continued. ‘As crazy as that sounds, it’s true.’
Pornhub parent company Aylo has noted that it publicly supports age verification, but said that ‘the way many jurisdictions worldwide have chosen to implement age verification is ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous.’
Aylo’s decision to block these states stems from privacy concerns as people would have to upload a government issued ID to prove they are over the age of 18, The Verge reported.
Texas was blocked in March after an appeals court upheld an age verification law passed in 2023.
Residents of the Lone Star State trying to access Pornhub were also greeted with a message: ‘As you may know, your elected officials in Texas are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website.
‘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.’
Pornhub continued to explain it believes that age verifications are ‘not an effective solution for protecting users online, and in fact, will put minors and your privacy at risk.’
Such laws have been deemed as surveillance systems by civil liberty organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The group warned these requirements could lead to impersonation schemes and other data theft.
‘Once information is shared to verify age, there’s no way for a website visitor to be certain that the data they’re handing over is not going to be retained and used by the website, or further shared or even sold,’ Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote last year.
Pornhub parent company Aylo has noted that it publicly supported age verification for ‘years’ but added, ‘the way many jurisdictions worldwide have chosen to implement age verification is ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous’
‘While some age verification mandates have limits on retention and disclosure of this data, significant risk remains.
‘Users are forced to trust that the website they visit, or its third-party verification service, both of which could be fly-by-night companies with no published privacy standards, are following these rules.’
Arkansas’ law, which would have required parental consent for children to create new social media accounts, was struck down by a federal judge in March and a lawsuit challenging the Louisiana law is pending.
Opponents have argued that age verification laws for adult websites not only infringe upon free speech, but also threaten digital privacy because it’s impossible to ensure that websites don’t retain user identification data.
‘States are attempting to do an end run around the First Amendment by outsourcing censorship to citizens,’ said Alison Boden, the executive director of Free Speech Coalition said in 2023.
‘It’s a new mechanism, but a deeply flawed one. Government attempts to chill speech, no matter the method, are prohibited by the Constitution and decades of legal precedent.’
Louisiana is another state that passed an age verification law in 2022, which Pornhub challenged in court and lost.
‘Consequently, traffic to Pornhub dropped by approximately 80 percent in Louisiana, but we know that people didn’t stop consuming porn overnight because of this new law,’ the adult content company shared.
‘They just very easily moved to pirate, illegal, or other non-compliant sites that don’t ask visitors to verify their age.’
