Pornhub will restrict access in the UK to users who created accounts before Feb. 2, following regulator pressure to comply with stricter age-verification requirements under the Online Safety Act.
Pornhub’s parent company, Aylo, says the law has failed to protect minors, arguing it has pushed users toward unregulated and more dangerous sites.
UK regulator Ofcom insists porn platforms must either implement age checks or block access. Aylo is pushing for device-based age verification and blames the government for creating a law that fails to protect minors.
Pornhub will restrict access in the United Kingdom (UK) to only users who created an account before Feb. 2, complying with an online regulator’s directive that says age verification laws have not sufficiently protected children from viewing explicit content.
According to the BBC, Aylo, the porn site’s parent company, said that the UK’s updated Online Safety Act had “not achieved its goal of protecting minors,” and instead “diverted traffic to darker, unregulated corners of the internet” where the age verification requirement is disregarded. The BBC also reported that Aylo said traffic to Pornhub fell by 77% after the law was changed last year, a decline that UK communications regulator Ofcom at the time attributed to the age verification mandate.
However, Ofcom reportedly said Jan. 27 that “porn services have a choice between using age checks to protect users as required under the Act, or block access to their sites in the UK.”
The BBC reported that while Aylo is complying with Ofcom’s directive by cutting off access, the company is pushing for device-based age verification, which would allow manufacturers like Apple, Google, and Microsoft to verify a user’s age with built-in technology. According to the outlet, Solomon Friedman of Ethical Capital Partners, the company that owns Aylo, said that when access to porn sites “is controlled at the device level, it is efficient, it’s effective, it’s privacy-preserving.”
According to POLITICO, Friedman is also questioning the government’s decision to create a law that he says incentivizes both children and adults to seek out explicit content in “the cesspools of the internet,” where they view “the most dangerous material possible.”
“And while there [were] six months by Aylo of good faith effort to be part of this ecosystem, to gather data and share it with the government, the data now really speaks for itself,” he added. “This law not only is not protecting children, it's putting children and adults in greater danger online.”
The BBC reported that UK residents have begun utilizing virtual private networks (VPNs) to get around porn restrictions. According to the outlet, the House of Lords recently voted to pass an amendment that would prohibit children from obtaining VPNs.