from the why-should-I-bother-anymore dept
Mandatory age verification rules are entering force in Mississippi and Virginia. Mississippi has a population of barely 3 million people. Virginia has a population of over 8.6 million people. Like Utah (population over 3 million) back in May, one of the world’s most popular adult tube websites chose to block IP addresses from both of these states as a protest against age verification laws that may threaten data privacy and security.
That’s roughly 15 million people — many of whom are minors, but the vast majority of whom are legally-aged adults who likely use the internet for a variety of purposes, including watching porn or viewing erotic materials on sites like the one site I refer to. The website you ask? It’s pretty obvious it’s Pornhub — owned by MindGeek.
While not the largest tube site in the world, Pornhub still brings in billions of visits every year, making it one of the most trafficked web properties in the world — on par with sites like Google, Wikipedia, and Facebook.
Pornhub published a scathing rebuke through its official Twitter account to point out why a VPN will now be needed for users who wish to access popular sites in the Pornhub network like Brazzers, Mofos, RedTube, PornMD, and ModelHub. All of these sites are blocked.
These laws, Pornhub explained in the statement, are also not equitably enforced. This means that some sites, like the Pornhub network, will comply with these laws while others will ultimately choose not to. “We already saw how this scenario played out,” reads Pornhub’s press statement, referring to the Louisiana age verification law that entered force in January 2023.
In this case, Pornhub adopted a measure that used the Louisiana state digital driver’s license application as a tool to verify age for people over 18 who want to access the site. But the result ended up being a loss of 80 percent of Pornhub’s Louisiana traffic.
“These people did not stop looking for porn,” says the site. “They just migrated to other corners of the internet that don’t ask users to verify age, that don’t follow the law, that don’t take your safety seriously, and that often don’t moderate content.” These are fighting words from a site that is trying, despite recently being accused of illegally collecting data and violating GDPR regulations.
I’ve personally spoken with individuals of power — leaders in Pornhub’s corporate leadership and ownership group (Ethical Capital Partners) — who are legitimately and openly concerned over the clearly inconsistent implementation of age verification laws in the United States. Laws that have been adopted in several states offer very little in the way of clarifying age verification codes. Pornhub, and other major players in the online adult entertainment industry, have long been supportive of age verification measures to prevent minors from viewing age-restricted materials.
The laws that are dominating the state-by-state legal patchwork that is characteristic of the United States are impotent. For starters, Pornhub expressed early on when blocking entire states from their site that a viable option for age verification is device-based verification, rather than collecting government ID cards and credit card numbers. Porn star Cherie DeVille gave this spiel in a video first published to Utahns before the age verification law there entered force. As I explained previously, the Utah case featured DeVille in a video explaining that local laws no longer incentivize Pornhub to allow site access in particular jurisdictions. This resulted in users raging against the elected officials who adopted the law and spurred a federal lawsuit brought by members of the adult entertainment industry. Now, as I reported for AVN the other day, Cherie is back telling users in Mississippi and Virginia how it is.
Age verification won’t work if there is no form of equal enforcement and the proposed compliance strategies add even more undue burdens, like increased information security costs and a bloat of sensitive personal data that is ripe for the taking by hackers.
These age verification laws have absolutely no point at this moment in time, either. States that have adopted these laws are controlled by elected politicians who are influenced by groups who wish for types of expression that are otherwise protected by the First Amendment to be stifled. And all this in the name of protecting kids, showing a shameful belief among a select few elites that they know what’s best for the nation’s children, consenting adults, and entire digital industries.
Michael McGrady covers the tech side of the online porn business. He is a contributing editor at AVN.com.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, adult content, age verification, geoblock, mississippi, virginia
Companies: mindgeek, pornhub
