Pornhub blocks access from Mississippi and Virginia as age verification law goes into effect
Pornhub blocks access from Mississippi and Virginia as age verification law goes into effect
Pornhub blocks access from Mississippi and Virginia as age verification law goes into effect.
Pornhub, the world’s largest porn site, is now blocking people in Mississippi and Virginia from accessing its site because the service is required by law to verify their age.
The company said it blocked users to protest the unfair enforcement of these new laws, claiming that sites enforcing the new rules would lose traffic to “irresponsible platforms” that “do not follow the law, do not take user safety seriously, and even Content is often not moderated.”
Traffic to Pornhub dropped 80 percent after Louisiana began enforcing age verification earlier this year, the company wrote. After that experience, it decided to start taking its website offline instead of enforcing age checks.
In May, Pornhub blocked users’ access in Utah over a similar law, a block that also applies to other sites run by Pornhub’s owners, such as RedTube.
As a way to prevent children from being exposed to pornography, age verification laws are increasingly being introduced and passed across the United States, especially in more conservative parts of the country.
The Free Speech Coalition, a trade group for the adult entertainment industry, noted that Texas, Montana and Arkansas have all passed similar laws, and several other states have proposed legislation that has failed to pass.
These laws typically require adult sites to verify the age of their visitors in a more stringent way than asking them to check a box saying they are over 18, which may include checking government-issued ID information.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation opposes age-verification regulations, criticizing the laws as “surveillance systems” that create privacy concerns for those who use them. “Once information is shared to verify age, site visitors have no way to be sure that the data they hand over will not be retained and used by the site, or further shared or even sold,” the group wrote in March.
Pornhub blocks access from Mississippi and Virginia as age verification law goes into effect
