...
By Jasmine Laws
Reporter
0
Share
Newsweek is a Trust Project member
See more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.
What's New
PornHub is blocking website visits from Florida on the first day of 2025 in response to the state's new over-18 age verification law for access to adult websites.
On Tuesday, visitors to the pornographic video site in the state received a message saying: "You will lose access to PornHub in 14 days."
Read More on News
The site appeared to be saying in messaging that a requirement to provide driver's license details to gain entry will put everybody's privacy at risk.
When Newsweek reached out to PornHub for comment, Aylo, the site's parent company, said: "Any regulations that require hundreds of thousands of adult sites to collect significant amounts of highly sensitive personal information is putting user safety in jeopardy."
Why It Matters
The decision to ban Florida from access to an adult video site highlights the difficulties of achieving a balance between freedom on the internet and the protection of minors from material considered harmful to them, as well as privacy and security issues around uploading personal documents such as driver's licenses. Both PornHub and the state of Florida say they are acting in the interest of minors in this case.
What To Know
Earlier this year, Florida passed legislation relating to children and their use of social media. The new laws, which will be brought in on January 1, 2025, specifies that age verification will be required for "online access to materials harmful to minors."
The new law also requires adult sites to offer anonymous and standard age verification for visitors to choose from, according to The Daytona Beach News-Journal.
If a site fails to follow the law, they may be fined up to $50,000 per violation, plus additional costs, the outlet added.
Florida is not the only state that has approved legislation to enforce age verification on pornographic websites, as a total of 16 states have done so this year.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis wrote a social media post on X ahead of approval for the new state legislation, commenting on the importance of having such regulations in place.
In March of this year, he said: "Protecting children from harms associated with social media is important, as is supporting parents' rights and maintaining the ability of adults to engage in anonymous speech. I anticipate the new bill will recognize these priorities and will be signed into law soon."
In a statement to Newsweek, PornHub said: "Unless properly enforced, users will simply access noncompliant sites or find other methods of evading these laws."
The Issue
PornHub users were asked in a message announcing the ban in Florida: "Did you know that your government wants you to give your driver's license before you can access PornHub? As crazy as that sounds, it's true."
It continued: "We don't want minors accessing our site and think preventing that from happening is a good thing. But putting everybody's privacy at risk won't achieve that."
In a statement to Newsweek the company said other bans mean they have "seen how this scenario plays out in the United States."
"[In Louisiana last year,] Pornhub was one of the few sites to comply with the new law," but since then, the site's traffic in the state dropped approximately 80 percent. "These people did not stop looking for porn. They just migrated to darker corners of the internet that don't ask users to verify age, that don't follow the law, that don't take user safety seriously, and that often don't even moderate content," the statement continued.
Newsweek has phoned Florida state attorney general Ashley Moody for comment.
...
What People Are Saying
A spokesperson for Aylo, PornHub's parent company, told Newsweek in a statement: "We believe that any law to this effect must preserve user safety and privacy, and must effectively protect children from accessing content intended for adults. Unfortunately, the way many jurisdictions worldwide, including Florida, have chosen to implement age verification is ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous.
"In practice, the laws have just made the internet more dangerous for adults and children. The best solution to make the internet safer, preserve user privacy, and prevent children from accessing adult content is performing age verification at the source: on the device."
When the new law was approved Republican Speaker Paul Renner said at the bill-signing ceremony later in March, "A child in their brain development doesn't have the ability to know that they're being sucked into these addictive technologies and to see the harm and step away from it, and because of that we have to step in for them."
What Happens Next
From January 1, 2025, people in Florida will be unable to view the site, unless they have a VPN. Previously, after other states have been blocked from the site, the number of Google searches for VPNs were found to have dramatically increased, the Austin American Statesman reported.
Update 12/18/24, 11:38 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with comment from Aylo.
Do you have a story Newsweek should be covering? Do you have any questions about this story? Contact LiveNews@newsweek.com.
View 0 Comments
Submit Correction
View Editorial & AI Guidelines