Pornhub is blocking itself in the United Kingdom on February 2, arguing that the country’s age verification laws are ineffective, the company announced on Tuesday.
As of February 2, only users who have already registered with Pornhub and completed age verification will be able to access the site. New users will not be able to register.
The move comes after a new set of provisions aimed at keeping minors from viewing porn kicked in last July, requiring adults to submit to age-estimating face scans, ID document uploads, credit card checks, and more, in order to verify that they are not minors.
Pornhub said its traffic from UK users dropped 77 percent after the Online Safety Act kicked in.
But in a presentation Tuesday, the company said many porn sites have not complied with the laws, rendering them useless.
“We believe we can no longer participate in the flawed system that is in the UK as a result of the Online Safety Act,” says Alex Kekesi, Pornhub's vice president of brand and community.
“Our sites, which host legal and regulated porn, will no longer be available in the UK to new users, but thousands of irresponsible porn sites will still be easy to access,” the company noted in a news release.
Solomon Friedman, vice president of compliance of private equity firm Ethical Partners Capital (ECP), which owns Pornhub’s parent company, Aylo, did a demonstration during the presentation showing that the six out of the 10 Google results for “free porn” in the UK are non-compliant with age verification laws.
“ECP does not wish for one single minor to be able to access adult content, not just on Aylos’s platforms, but on any adult platforms,” he said. However, he said, regulators have not been given the legislative tools they need to succeed.
“Even those regulators acting in good faith, like the United Kingdom, simply have no hope of meeting their stated goal and our stated goal of keeping kids safe online.”
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