By Movieguide® Staff
Pornhub is officially pulling out of the UK — the company announced it will be restricting access to those with previously made accounts on its site following the country’s introduction of strict age-verification checks.
“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,” Alex Kekesi, head of community and brand at Aylo, Pornhub’s parent company, said, via the BBC.
Now, Pornhub will only be available in the UK to users who have already created a profile on the website, starting Feb. 2. Those attempting to access the site after that date will be met with “a wall,” instead of site content.
Related: Age Verification Law Cuts Pornhub Usage in Half
Kekesi called it a “difficult decision,” saying PornHub worked to comply with the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) “because we wanted to believe that a determined and prepared regulator in Ofcom [the regulator] could take poor legislation and manage to enforce compliance in a meaningful way.”
However, she said the website’s experience with the age-check verifications “strongly suggests that the OSA has failed to achieve that objective,” pointing out that Pornhub traffic has dropped by 77%, as users prefer to find a different website rather than turn over their personal information.
A spokesperson for Ofcom replied that the age checks were keeping children from accessing inappropriate content, saying, “Porn services have a choice between using age checks to protect users as required under the Act, or to block access to their sites in the UK. We’ve taken strong and swift action against non-compliance, launching investigations into more than 80 porn sites and fining a porn provider £1 million, with more to come.”
A spokesperson for the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said, “The Online Safety Act is clear: online pornographic services must stop children accessing this material by putting robust age assurance in place. It does not stop adults viewing legal content, and services do not need to leave the UK — they simply need to ensure under 18s cannot access it. There are a range of ways to do this.”
The UK’s Online Safety Act was enacted in 2025, intended to put “a range of new duties on social media companies and search services, making them more responsible for their users’ safety on their platforms,” per a statement on the UK government’s website.
Pornhub’s exit from the UK is a sign that enacting strict regulations on these kinds of websites will protect children in the long run from encountering inappropriate content online.
Read Next: Pornhub Ceases Operations in Arizona After Age Verification Law Passes
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