It's another day, another ban for Pornhub, as the popular pornography purveyor finds itself losing out on millions in terms of traffic. Over the past 18 years, Pornhub has grown to be one of the internet's biggest sites, and in 2024, it was the 19th most-visited site and the most-visited adult site in the world. However, as controversy surrounding the NSFW video-sharing site grows, another country has slapped it with a ban.
Pornhub has recently been in the news after it was banned in Florida, bringing its bans in the USA to 16 states. Owner Aylo has stood defiant against laws dictating that it must provide age verification for its users. This can either be done with a credit card or government-issued ID, but as it must be verified by a third party, Aylo claims it's protecting the privacy of its users and preventing potential data breaches.
Instead of complying, Pornhub has been banned in numerous US states, and now, other countries are taking note. A similar story unfolded in France, but standing defiant, Aylo refused to bow to the country's laws.
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YouPorn, RedTube, and Pornhub were due to go dark on June 7, but choosing to jump before it was pushed, the latter closed down and left up an image of a bare-breasted woman from Eugene Delacroix's "Liberty Leading the People". This was accompanied by a message saying how Aylo "is communicating directly with the French people to tell them how dangerous, how potentially privacy-infringing, and how ineffective the French law is." The Pornhub statement reads: "Your government suggests checking your age every time you visit our site – that’s crazy, right?"
Saying that "requiring you to repeatedly provide sensitive personal information creates an unacceptable security risk that we refuse to impose on our users," Aylo maintains that the French law "diverts users to thousands of sites that deliberately circumvent regulations.” It highlights those that might fail to moderate videos for the likes of age and consent of those involved.
Instead of demanding age verification at the point of accessing a site, Aylo wants Apple, Microsoft, and Google to verify the age of users at a device level.
Responding to the ban on Reddit, there were plenty of comments about privacy and data collection.
One concerned user said: "They'll eventually get your kinks all laid out in plain text and your county sheriff will have it thanks to the marriage of govt/private enterprise data orgies and just in time for deepfakes that will be able to craft a visual narrative about you based on your actual fetishes so that it can be released with evidence to ruin your life or credibility if need be. Good times ahead."
Another added: "This is always a bad idea, mainstream porn sources go away and it will inherently result in people ending up on highly shady sites with far less moderation instead, as they will never follow laws and rules."
A third said: "Of course the reasoning is 'IT IS FOR THE CHILDREN' with these laws when it is nothing but. It is about control and hell even getting more eyes on people. Who would risk their credit card or Government ID on this, knowing how EASY for those to get stolen?
These idiot politicians have no f'ing clue."