Pornhub parent company blocks access in states with age verification laws
Pornhub's parent company Aylo, formerly known as MindGeek, has blocked residents in states with age verification laws from accessing its adult websites in protest of the laws requiring companies that distribute sexually explicit content to verify users' ages.
According to the National Decency Coalition, eight states have passed age verification laws in 2023: Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Texas, Utah, Virginia and North Carolina.
In September, North Carolina passed House Bill 8, which was later signed into law by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, requiring age verification for companies that publish harmful material for minors online. Montana passed a similar law in May, SB 544, which also deals with age verification.
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The laws in both states have gone into effect as of Monday, but prior to this, Aylo blocked North Carolina and Montana residents from accessing its adult websites, such as Pornhub.
Under the North Carolina law, sites like Pornhub must confirm the ages of its users through a "commercially available database" or another "commercially reasonable method of age and identity verification," according to the legislation. Montana's law defines government-issued identification as one of several "reasonable age verification methods" intended to prevent minors from accessing potentially harmful material.
As the Courthouse News Service reported on Dec. 28, in states that passed age verification laws, Pornhub's homepage displays a video of adult entertainer Cherie DeVille explaining that these types of regulations put users' privacy and the safety of children at risk.
"The safety of our users is one of our biggest concerns. We believe that the best and most effective solution for protecting children and adults alike is to identify users by their device and allow access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that identification," DeVille said in the message. "Until a real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in North Carolina."
Virginia's law went into effect in July. Shortly after being passed in June, Pornhub blocked access for users in the commonwealth. The Virginia Mercury reported in August that many porn sites were not complying with the state law and that many residents are using technology to access these websites.
Virginia Sen. L. Louise Lucas, a Democrat, criticized the state after the bill passed for not creating an age verification system, believing there is a security risk leaving the process up to porn websites to manage.
"We will continue our work to keep pornography out of the hands of minors ... but we will also work to ensure that this Governor's error does not put the privacy of Virginians at further risk!" she wrote on social media.
In May, Pornhub disabled its website for Utah residents after SB 287 went into effect. Under the law, distributors of pornography or other materials defined as "harmful to minors" must verify the user's age through legal documentation. Users in Utah who attempted to access Pornhub were also met with the video of DeVille.
These state-level efforts to regulate online pornography follow multiple allegations and lawsuits against Aylo, claiming that the company knowingly hosted and profited from videos that depict sexual abuse.
The Pornhub parent company has also faced scrutiny due to an undercover video released by Sound Investigations in the fall, which purportedly shows a longtime employee saying abusers exploit a "loophole" to profit from sex abuse material on Aylo's platforms.
In the video, Mike Farley, a technical product manager for the company, is heard telling an undercover investigator that users can bypass Pornhub's age and consent verification process for uploading sexually explicit content if the faces are not visible in the videos.
Farley went on to say that rapists and sex traffickers monetize these videos, using the loophole to "make a lot of money." He also alleged that the managers of Pornhub are aware of this loophole but have not tried to close it, saying that doing so would be "counterintuitive to the business."
The undercover footage led to Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost and 25 other state attorneys general signing onto a September letter, calling on Pornhub's parent company to explain what steps it has taken to address this loophole.
Last month, Sound Investigations released another video of one of its undercover journalists discussing children's access to Aylo's pornography websites with two of the company's employees. The Aylo employees who appeared in the undercover video were Production Coordinator Sylvain Fernandez and Dillon Rice, senior scriptwriter.
At one point, Fernandez appeared to agree with the investigator that it's easy for minors to access Aylo websites like Men.com and that the site could help "LGBTQ kids … find themselves."
"I mean, they'll find their kink in there, I'm sure," the Aylo production coordinator said.
Samantha Kamman is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter: @Samantha_Kamman
