Pornhub Blocks All Users in Certain States to Protest Age Verification Laws
By Movieguide® Contributor
To protest the introduction of age verification laws across eight different states, Aylo, Pornhub’s parent company, has blocked users from accessing its sites.
Eight states – Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Texas, Utah, Virginia and North Carolina – passed age verification laws on sites that distribute sexually explicit content.
With the last of these laws going into effect on Jan. 1, Aylo has completely disabled access to its sites for anyone living in these states to protest the new laws.
“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 age restricted materials and websites based on that identification,” explained porn star and Pornhub spokesperson Cherie De Ville. “Until a real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website.”
While Pornhub champions itself as fighting for the safety and privacy of its users, investigations over the past year prove that the company only desires to protect its bottom line. A document leaked last May revealed that the company loses up to 50% of its traffic when age verification is required.
Aylo means for the complete ban to prompt users to protest the laws. However, they have failed to receive this desired effect. In Utah, Pornhub has been banned since May, and lawmakers are thrilled that the site has been inaccessible to all of its residents. In 2016, the state labeled porn as a “public health crisis” and has since worked to limit access to adult material.
The adult video company has also faced repeated backlash for its continuous decision to profit off of material that it knows is on the site without consent, including videos of minors, sexual assault and rape. While Aylo has worked to scrub its public image, in large part by changing its name from MindGeek, its marred past has continued to follow it.
Movieguide® previously reported:
PornHub parent company MindGeek has changed its name to Aylo in an attempt to distance itself from exploitation allegations. However, the company still profits from the sexual exploitation of women, children and men.
“Pornhub’s parent company is desperately trying to rehabilitate its image from the litany of sexual abuses it has fostered and the lives it has damaged,” said Haley McNamara, Vice President of Strategy and Communications at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE).
“MindGeek/Aylo, or whatever the pornography purveyors want to call it this week, is still the same company that systematically hosted and profited from child sexual abuse, sex trafficking, rape, image-based sexual abuse, racist, and nonconsensual material,” she added in a press release.
“Pornhub even profits from synthetic sexually explicit material (deepfake pornography), which NCOSE recently revealed,” McNamara added.
Pornhub – and MindGeek – have been under fire for years now as thousands of survivors of sexual abuse have come forward, explaining how their abuse has been shared on Pornhub without their consent.
