More than 18 million Americans living in five states will join Pornhub’s growing ban list as lawmakers implemented age restriction laws.
Kentucky lost access on June 10, while Indiana, Idaho and Kansas will be blocked on June 28 and Nebraska on July 17.
The laws that led to the Pornhub decision require visitors to certain websites, which extends to social media platforms, to show proof of age by carrying a government-issued ID.
While Pornhub has stated that “security and compliance are at the forefront of its mission,” the company also believes that “age verification puts users’ privacy at risk.”
More than 18 million Americans living in five states will join Pornhub’s growing ban list as lawmakers implemented age restriction laws.
“Since age verification software requires users to hand over extremely sensitive information, it opens the door to the risk of data breaches,” Pornhub shared in a blog post last week.
‘Whether their intentions are good or not, 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 antivirus processes, an unfortunate and all-too-common practice.’
The recent announcement brings the total number of states blocked to 12, with Texas, North Carolina, Montana, Mississippi, Virginia, Arkansas and Utah previously losing access.
When users in banned states try to access Pornhub, they will see the message “403: This state is not whitelisted.” A 403 code means that a website is banned.
Some Americans who will be banned have also faced a countdown to when they will lose access.
“You will lose access to Pornhub in 7 days,” says a pop-up on a website in Indiana
‘Did you know that your government wants you to hand over your driver’s license before you can access Pornhub?’ she continued. “As crazy as it sounds, it’s true.”
Pornhub’s parent company Aylo has noted that it publicly supports age verification, but said that “the way many jurisdictions around the world have chosen to implement age verification is ineffective, messy and dangerous.”
Aylo’s decision to block these statuses is due to privacy concerns, as people would have to upload a government-issued ID to prove they are over 18 years old. The edge 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 require 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, but it fails to meet strict scrutiny by employing the least effective, yet most restrictive, means to achieve Texas’ stated purpose of supposedly protecting minors”.
Pornhub went on to explain that it believes age verifications “are not an effective solution to protecting users online and, in fact, will put minors and their privacy at risk.”
These laws have been considered surveillance systems by civil liberty organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The group warned that these requirements could lead to phishing schemes and other data theft.
“Once age verification information is shared, there is no way for a website visitor to be sure that the data they are handing over will not be retained or used by the website, shared, or even sold.” Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote last year.
Pornhub’s parent company Aylo has noted that it has publicly supported age verification for “years” but added that “the way many jurisdictions around the world have chosen to implement age verification is ineffective, messy and dangerous”.
‘While some age verification mandates have limits on the retention and disclosure of this data, a significant risk remains.
“Users are forced to trust that the website they visit, or its third-party verification service, which could be transient companies with no published privacy standards, are following these rules.”
The 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 on freedom of expression, but also threaten digital privacy because it is impossible to ensure that websites do not retain users’ identifying data.
“States are trying to end the First Amendment by outsourcing censorship to citizens,” Alison Boden, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition, said in 2023.
‘It is a new mechanism, but deeply flawed. Government attempts to curb speech, regardless of method, are prohibited by the Constitution and decades of legal precedent.’