Pornhub Utah blocked access in protest of state age verification law, FOX13 in Salt Lake City(Opens in a new tab) mentioned.
Age verification laws require visitors to adult websites to show proof that they are over eighteen years of age. The first in the recent wave of US banknotes was Louisiana Statute 440, which went into effect January 1, 2023. Utah soon followed with its version: SB 287.(Opens in a new tab), which requires websites containing “a significant portion of material that may be harmful to minors” to use the Commercial Age Verification System, or AVS. According to a tracker by the Free Speech Coalition(Opens in a new tab)a porn industry lobby group, the enforcement date for SB 287 is May 3.
Prior to that, Pornhub itself blocked Yota from accessing the site. There was initially a 403 error (meaning blocked site), according to FOX13, and then later, Pornhub posted a message:
Dear user,
As you know, the elected officials of the State of Utah require us to verify your age before allowing you to access our website. While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users and, in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk.
Additionally, imposing age verification without proper enforcement gives platforms the opportunity to choose to comply or not. As we’ve seen in other states, this only directs traffic to sites with much lower security measures. There are very few sites that can compare to their strong standards of trust and security(Opens in a new tab) We currently have it in place. To protect children and user privacy, any legislation must be enforced against all platforms that offer adult content.
The safety of our users is one of our biggest concerns. We believe the best and most effective solution to protect children and adults alike is to identify users by their device and allow access to age-restricted material and websites based on this identification. Until a real solution is offered, we’ve made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our Utah website.
Please contact your representatives before it’s too late and demand device-based verification solutions that make the Internet more secure while also respecting your privacy.
Why does age verification billing not work for porn sites
A video at the top of the page shows year-old artist Cherie DeVille reading the letter.
The message that visitors to Pornhub in Utah will see.
Credit: Screenshot: Pornhub
“They comply with L.A. law, which is basically the same thing. So I expect they will eventually comply with Utah law as well,” Sen. Todd Wheeler, the sponsor of SB 287, told FOX13 in a text message.
A Pornhub spokesperson claimed to Mashable that the site is one of the few adult content platforms that have complied with Louisiana’s digital identity wallet requirements. Utah digital identity wallet(Opens in a new tab)Note that it’s not currently allowed to be used online, so Pornhub can’t use it, though it’s tried. The company says that in Louisiana, Pornhub traffic has dropped by 80 percent since the age verification law was introduced. They noted that since it is unlikely that people simply no longer search for pornography, it is likely that they rely on sites that do not comply. Pornhub maintains its position that device-level verification is an effective solution.
to update: This article has been updated to include a paraphrased comment from a Pornhub spokesperson.