The adult content website Pornhub has officially been blocked in nearly every southern state following the passage of laws that require age verification to enter adult websites.
With the start of the new year, 17 states have officially blocked Pornhub, including Florida, South Carolina and Tennessee, as reported by 404 Media.
These states join much of the southern United States, as Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Texas have also enacted age restriction laws. Other conservative-leaning states like Idaho, Indiana, Montana, Nebraska and Utah have also enacted similar laws.
The laws in these states now require porn sites to implement an age verification to ensure that their viewers are 18 or older. This could require submitting a document with their age, such as their drivers license or passport. If sites fail to screen their viewers, they could be forced to pay heavy fines or could be subjected to private lawsuits.
As a result, many adult websites — including Pornhub — have decided to bar users from states with these laws altogether.
"Aylo has publicly supported age verification of users for years, but we believe that any law to this effect must preserve user safety and privacy, and must effectively protect children from accessing content intended for adults," a spokesperson for Aylo, the parent company of of Pornhub and other adult sites, told The Independent.
"Unfortunately, the way many jurisdictions worldwide, including Florida, have chosen to implement age verification is ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous. Any regulations that require hundreds of thousands of adult sites to collect significant amounts of highly sensitive personal information is putting user safety in jeopardy," the spokesperson continued.
Following the implementation of these laws on Jan. 1, virtual private network (VPN) use in Florida jumped 1,150%, according to a report by VPNMentor. Similar spikes were also seen following bans in Utah in 2023 and Texas in 2024.
© 2024 Latin Times. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
