Pornhub Will Block New UK Users Starting Next Week to Protest ‘Flawed’ ID Law
Pornhub blocks in the United Kingdom on February 2, arguing that the country’s age verification laws are ineffective, the company announced Tuesday.
Starting February 2, only users who are already registered on Pornhub and have verified their age will be able to access the site. New users will not be able to register.
The move follows the coming into force last July of a new set of provisions aimed at preventing minors from watching porn, requiring adults to submit to facial scans to estimate their age, upload of identity documents, credit card checks, etc., to verify that they are not minors.
Pornhub said its traffic from UK users fell 77% after the online safety law came into force.
But in a presentation Tuesday, the company said many porn sites don’t follow the laws, rendering them useless.
“We feel we can no longer participate in the broken system that exists in the UK due to the Online Safety Act,” says Alex Kekesi, Pornhub’s vice president of brand and community.
“Our sites, which host legal and regulated porn, will no longer be available in the UK to new users, but thousands of irresponsible porn sites will remain easily accessible,” the company said in a press release.
Solomon Friedman, vice president of compliance at private equity firm Ethical Partners Capital (ECP), which owns Pornhub’s parent company Aylo, gave a demonstration during the presentation showing that six out of ten Google results for “free porn” in the UK do not comply with age verification laws.
“ECP does not want a single minor to be able to access adult content, not just on Aylos platforms, but on any adult platform,” he said. However, he added, regulators lack the legislative tools they need to succeed.
“Even regulators acting in good faith, like the UK, simply have no hope of achieving their stated goal and our stated goal of keeping children safe online.”
Friedman said that, to succeed, tech giants like Microsoft, Apple and Google must either proactively provide device-based age verification or be forced to do so by lawmakers. WIRED reached out to all three companies but did not immediately receive a response.
In November, Aylo sent letters to Apple, Google and Microsoft, urging them to support device-based age verification in their operating systems, which would mean personal data would be kept on a person’s phone or computer rather than submitted to a third-party site.
In his presentation Tuesday, Friedman said the tech companies had not responded to the letters.
Microsoft previously reported to WIRED a policy proposal that age verification should be enforced at the service level, while Apple sent WIRED its report on children’s online safety, noting that web content filters are enabled by default for every user under 18. Google spokesperson Karl Ryan previously told WIRED that adult entertainment apps are not available in its app store and that companies like Aylo “must invest in specific tools to meet their own legal and accountability obligations.”
In the United States, 25 states have also implemented age verification, and Pornhub has opted out of the majority of these states. Despite this, the United States remains the main traffic generator for the site, and age verification laws are easily circumvented by using a VPN which can block location.
State attorneys general are also beginning to take action against xAI in response to the proliferation of nonconsensual sexual images on X, via people using its Grok chatbot.
Friedman said Tuesday that Google Images has “thumbnail images of every pornographic image cached and available online.” However, he added, current age verification laws do nothing to combat explicit content on social media sites. He argued that the use of device-based age verification could be used to “filter out either explicit tweets or posts about X, or the explicit use of AI chat bots or explicit Reddit subreddits and posts.”
