Pornhub and other related adult websites have blocked access for users in Texas amid a legal battle with the Lone Star State's attorney general over age verification laws.
Last week, a federal appeals court upheld a Texas law requiring age verification measures to ensure porn sites can only be accessed by adults 18 and older, while part of the law requiring “health” labels on porn sites was also canceled. Please see “Warning” for details. This followed a previous federal judge's ruling that the Texas law violated the First Amendment's prohibition on restricting free speech. The Texas Attorney General's Office immediately appealed this decision.
As first reported by the Houston Chronicle, a new message that appeared on Pornhub (and other sites operated by parent company Aylo) on Thursday to users with Internet addresses in Texas is to comply with the law. He explained that access was disabled.
“As you may know, Texas lawmakers require us to verify your age before allowing you to access our website. Failure to maintain strict oversight in not only infringing, but also employing the least effective and most restrictive measures to achieve Texas' stated purpose of protecting minors. ” the message reads in part.
The Pornhub site's message continues, “Until a real solution is provided, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in the state of Texas. In doing so, we… As always, we abide by the law, but we hope that governments around the world will actually enforce laws that protect the safety and security of our users.”
“While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, providing identification every time you visit an adult platform is not an effective solution to protecting online users,” the message said. In fact, you're putting the minor's and your privacy at risk.'' User safety is one of our biggest concerns. The only effective solution to protect minors and adults alike is to verify the user's age on the device and deny or deny access to age-restricted content or websites based on that verification. We believe in allowing. ”
Pornhub calls Texas' age verification “ineffective, haphazard and dangerous,” and says users are going from “a small number of websites that are compliant to a number that have far fewer safety measures in place and fewer that are not.” “It will be relegated to a thousand websites.” Few sites can match the robust trust and safety measures we currently have in place. Laws must be enforced for all platforms that offer adult content to protect the privacy of minors and users. ”
The Texas law was signed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in June 2023. The bill, Texas HB 11811, was scheduled to go into effect on September 1, but was put on hold after a lawsuit filed by the Free Speech Coalition. (This includes Pornhub's parent company) As a result, enforcement of the preliminary injunction was halted. The law applies to online publishers where more than one-third of their content is “sexual content that is harmful to minors” and uses government-issued IDs or “public or private transaction data” to It is mandatory to verify the age of all visitors.
Representatives for Pornhub and its parent company Aylo did not immediately respond to requests for additional information.
Pornhub and its network of other sites are also blocked or restricted in states with similar laws: Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Virginia, and Utah.
Aylo is owned by Canadian private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners, which acquired Pornhub's predecessor company MindGeek last year for undisclosed financial terms. ECP said it will focus on building “trust and security” in the company and making it “an internet leader in the fight against illegal online content.”