Disagreeing with a court ruling on age verification, Pornhub and its other sites blocked access to it in Texas. This is the result of a standoff between the company and several American states.
In Texas, Google searches for a VPN have suddenly exploded. The reason ? Pornography. Pornhub actually decided, on March 15, 2024, to block access to its website for residents of Texas. This concerns all of the group’s platforms — RedPorn, Youporn, Brazzers.
This blocking follows a court decision in this American state, which now requires sites like Pornhub to verify the age of people who connect. The company strongly opposes this policy, to the point of having added a long message to its blocking.
Pornhub is angry with US states over age verification
Pornhub’s claim is: “ Not only does this measure infringe on the rights of adults to access protected speech, it fails strict scrutiny by employing the least effective and yet most restrictive means of achieving Texas’ stated goal of allegedly protecting minors . » Before adding: “ While security and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, providing identification every time you wish to visit an adult platform is not an effective solution to protecting users online and, in fact, will put minors and your privacy in danger. »
This is not the first time that Pornhub has done this. In the United States, the platform blocked its access and posted this greeting in Arkansas, Mississippi and Montana, North Carolina, Utah and Virginia, due to similar verification laws. There is only one state, Louisiana, where Pornhub has complied with the new law and implemented a strong verification system, via a wallet called LA Wallet App.
But if the company no longer followed this rule afterwards, it was because it was not happy with the result in terms of the number of visits: “ Since then, our traffic in Louisiana has dropped approximately 80%. “, said a press release. “ These people haven’t stopped looking for porn. They’ve simply migrated to other corners of the internet that don’t verify age, don’t follow the law, don’t take user safety seriously, and often don’t even moderate content. »
The question was asked in France in slightly different terms. Since 2020, a law requires pornographic sites to implement a strong and valid age verification system. But there is a pitfall: this law does not specify which system. Several platforms simply have nothing in place. These were almost blocked by the courts in 2023, like Pornhub and Xhamster, but the court’s decision ultimately did not result in a blockage (for the moment). But the question of access to these sites, and the protection of minors, is therefore still not resolved, since the platforms remain in status quo at present.
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