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 who visit the site will find a video with the following message:
“As you are probably aware, we are required by your elected officials in Florida to determine your age before allowing you to access our website. While security and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, providing your identity to your age card whenever you need it to scale on an adult platform is not the most effective solution for our users and will in fact put children and their privacy at risk.
“In addition, requiring age verification without enforcing rights gives platforms the flexibility 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 protection of our users is one of our biggest concerns. For us, the most productive and effective solution to protect young people and adults is to identify users through their device and allow them access to age-restricted websites and Internet sites based on this identity. Until a genuine solution is provided, we have made the difficult decision to absolutely disable access to our online page at Florida. Array
“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. As well as Florida, Tennessee and Carolina of the South 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.
Other porn sites haven’t announced plans about the law.
Blocking is done on your personal virtual proxy or VPN.
According to HB 3, which passed with bipartisan support and was signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis on March 25, sites with adult content “must offer anonymous age verification and standard age verification.”
“You can have a kid in the house safe, seemingly, and then you have predators that can get right in there into your own home,” DeSantis said at a news conference in Jacksonville. “You could be doing everything right but they know how to get and manipulate these different platforms.”
DeSantis vetoed the original version earlier in the year, citing legal and parents’ rights concerns.
Former House Speaker Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast, who worked with DeSantis on the legislation, said over the summer: “Adults can do whatever they want, I don’t care. But 8-year-olds can’t “They should have to do the complicated thing. ” activities. -basic pornography at this age. ”
“Anonymous” age verification is not spelled out in the law, but the law states that a “nongovernmental, independent third party” offering the service can’t retain personal identifying information and must protect it from unauthorized access.
Under the legislation, House Bill 3, Internet sites that host pornographic content can be fined up to $50,000 for each violation, as well as attorneys’ fees and civil liability imaginable. They do not meet the age verification requirement.