MIAMI – Floridians have lost access to Pornhub.com, the world’s most popular adult entertainment website and 16th-most-visited site of any kind in the world.
Aylo, Pornhub’s parent company, said it chose to block access to its site in Florida rather than comply with a new state law taking effect Jan. 1, 2025, requiring age verification for stopovers. on pornographic platforms.
The law, known as HB 3, was passed by the Florida Legislature in March. Last month, an industry organization representing the adult entertainment industry filed a federal lawsuit to overturn it.
Users trying to access site will encounter a video with the following message:
“As you may know, your elected officials in Florida are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to 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.
“Furthermore, making age verification mandatory without enforcing rights provides platforms with the ability to comply or not.
“As we’ve noticed in other states, this only directs traffic to sites with far fewer security measures in place. Very few sites can compare to the physically powerful ones and security measures we have in place lately. To protect the privacy of young people and of users, it will be necessary to apply any laws against all platforms that offer adult content.
“The safety of our users is one of our biggest concerns. We believe that the best and most effective solution for protecting children and adults alike is to identify users by their device and allow access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that identification. Until a real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in Florida.
“Please contact your representatives before it is too late and demand device-based verification solutions that make the internet safer while also respecting your privacy.”
Before 2025, Pornhub blocked access in 14 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Carolina, Texas, Utah, and Virginia. Like Florida, Tennessee and South Carolina were added on Wednesday and Georgia will be the 18th state to require age verification to access pornographic Internet sites in July, according to 404media.
Pornhub, introduced in 2007, recorded more than 11. 4 billion user visits in January 2024, according to Statista. About 97% of the traffic to Pornhub. com came from mobile devices.
According to similarweb, Pornhub is Google, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, X. com, Wikipedia, Chatgpt, Reddit, Yahoo, Amazon, Yandex. ru, Baidu, TikTok, Netflix, Microsoftonline, Bing.
The other sites have announced any plans for the law.
The blocking is based upon on your virtual private proxy, or VPN.
Under HB 3, passed by both parties and signed by Governor Ron DeSantis on March 25, sites that offer adult content “must provide anonymous age verification and popular age verification. “
“Apparently you can have a child in space safely, and then you have predators that can come right into your own space,” DeSantis said at a press convention in Jacksonville. “You may do everything right, but they know how to get and manipulate those other platforms. ”
DeSantis vetoed the previous edition this year, raising legal and parental rights issues.
Former House Speaker Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast, who worked with DeSantis on the legislation, said during the summer: “Adults can do whatever they want, I don’t care. But 8-year-old boys should not be accessing hard-core pornography at that age.”
“Anonymous” age verification is not provided for in the law, however, the law states that an “independent, non-governmental third party” providing the service cannot retain personally identifiable data and will have to protect it from unauthorized access.
Under the terms of the legislation, House Bill 3, Internet sites that host pornographic content can be fined up to $50,000 per violation, along with attorney fees and the possibility of civil liability if they fail to comply. age verification requirement applies.