VPN demand rises 1150% as Pornhub is blocked in Florida
VPN has seen a demand rise of 1150% after Pornhub was blocked in Florida.
The state saw the huge surge for virtual private networks on New Year’s Day as the ban took effect.
The website has been blocked from public access in Florida as the state’s mandate for age-verification began.
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And it looks like users are scrambling for other ways to visit the NSFW site.
Florida isn’t the first state to ban Porhub - in fact, it’s one of 17 that have taken action to block the pornography website.
The full list of states that have banned the site include Kentucky, Indiana, Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska, Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Montana, Mississippi, Virginia, Arkansas, Utah, Tennessee, Louisiana and Florida.
The ban came about in Florida after the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, signed an order into law that would require sites to implement age verification.
For websites hosting a ‘substantial portion of material harmful to minors’, which includes Pornhub, they would need to block access to anyone under the age of 18.
However, Pornhub has refused to comply.
Any sites found to be in breach of the law will face fines of up to $50,000 so, as a result, Pornhub’s parent company Aylo has pulled the site from users in Florida.
Similar issues have been the reason for Pornhub being removed in the 16 other states.
In a statement, Aylo said: “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. Moreover, as experience has demonstrated, unless properly enforced, users will simply access non-compliant sites or find other methods of evading these laws.”
Aylo claimed that Pornhub had initially complied with age verification laws in Louisiana as the statement went on to say: “Since then, our traffic in Louisiana dropped approximately 80 percent.
“These people did not stop looking for porn. They just migrated to darker corners of the internet that don't ask users to verify age, that don't follow the law, that don't take user safety seriously, and that often don't even moderate content. In practice, the laws have just made the internet more dangerous for adults and children.”
Speaking about Florida’s intentions of banning Pornhub in the state, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said earlier this year when the bill was first signed into law: “You can have a kid in the house safe, seemingly, and then you have predators that can get right in there into your own home.
“You could be doing everything right but they know how to get and manipulate these different platforms.”