Pornhub to block five more states over age verification laws

Pornhub plans to block access to its website in Indiana, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, and Nebraska in response to age verification laws designed to prevent children from accessing adult websites. The website has now cut off access in more than half a dozen states in protest of similar age verification laws that have quickly spread across conservative-leaning US states.

Indiana, Idaho, and Kansas will lose access on June 28th, Kentucky will lose access on June 10th, and Nebraska will lose access on July 17th, according to a spokesperson for Aylo, Pornhub’s parent company, who asked to only be identified as Ian due to safety concerns. Ian said the blackout will apply to all of Aylo’s adult websites, which includes more than a dozen other brands.

Aylo says it’s blocking access to its websites over privacy concerns around the new laws. The laws generally require adults to upload some form of government ID to prove they’re 18 or older. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has criticized the laws as “surveillance systems” that could lead to misuse or theft of sensitive data. “This scheme would lead us further towards an internet where our private data is collected and sold by default,” the organization wrote last year.

Aylo told the Indiana Capital Chronicle that it supports age verification but views the current laws as “ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous.” The company implemented ID-based age verification in Louisiana last year and says traffic dropped by 80 percent as a result. Aylo argues that the policy will drive consumers to websites that don’t follow the law and may otherwise fail to moderate their content.

Update, June 19th: This story originally covered Pornhub’s plan to block access in Indiana and Kentucky; it has been expanded to cover the ban in Idaho, Kansas, and Nebraska and include comments from an Aylo spokesperson. The spokesperson also said the shutdown in three states is happening on June 28th, not June 27th, as originally stated based on notices on Pornhub’s website.