Pornhub to Block New Users in UK Next Week Over Flawed Age Verification Law
Pornhub will block new UK users starting February 2 to protest ineffective age verification laws aimed at protecting minors.
Pornhub’s traffic from the UK dropped by 77% since those laws started. The company believes that many adult sites ignore these rules, making them useless. Alex Kekesi from Pornhub said, “We can’t be part of the flawed UK system anymore.” He pointed out that many other porn sites still let kids access them easily.
Solomon Friedman from Aylo, Pornhub’s parent company, showed that many popular sites do not follow age verification laws. He said, “We want to stop kids from seeing adult content online.” But he believes regulators lack the tools to make this happen.
Friedman suggested that big tech companies need to create better age verification tools for devices. He explained that these should keep personal data private on a user’s phone instead of sending it to other sites.
In the US, many states have also made age verification laws, and Pornhub has left most of those areas. However, the US still has the most visitors to the site, as some users can hide their locations with VPNs.
Friedman mentioned that age verification laws do not tackle explicit content on social media, calling for better device-based solutions.