Pornhub owner to suspend site in France in protest at new verification law

The Guardian

2 days ago

French visitors to the adult sites Pornhub, Youporn and RedTube will on Wednesday be greeted with a message denouncing the country's age verification requirements, the company said on Tuesday.
Parent company Aylo, in reaction to a French law requiring adult sites to take extra steps to verify that their users are 18 or older, will stop operating in France, a spokesperson said.
'I can confirm that Aylo has made the difficult decision to suspend access to its user-uploaded platforms (Pornhub, YouPorn, RedTube) in France. We will be using our platforms to directly address the French public tomorrow,' a spokesperson for Pornhub said on Tuesday.
By showing the message rather than Pornhub's vast library of adult content, Aylo 'is communicating directly with the French people to tell them how dangerous, how potentially privacy-infringing, and how ineffective the French law is', Solomon Friedman of Aylo's owner, Ethical Capital Partners, told reporters in a video call on Tuesday.
France has this year gradually introduced requirements for all adult websites to have users confirm their age with details like a credit card or ID document.
In a bid to preserve privacy, operators must offer a third-party 'double-blind' option that would keep the platforms themselves from seeing users' identifying information.
But Aylo says this is an ineffective mechanism that puts people's data at risk from bad actors, hacks or leaks.
They say countries should target developers of operating systems like Microsoft's Windows, Apple's iOS or Google's Android, rather than porn platforms.
'Aylo is extremely pro- the concept of age verification,' executive Alex Kekesi told reporters in a video call.
But requiring individual platforms to confirm visitors' ages 'poses a very serious risk … with respect to your privacy rights', she added.
ECP's Friedman said: 'Google, Apple and Microsoft all have the capability built into their operating system to verify the age of the user at the operating system or device level.'
Their ability 'to supply an age signal to any site or app … can actually provide a solution' for controlling access to adult content without requiring users to share sensitive data with multiple websites, he argued.
'I understand that those three entities are large and they're powerful, but that is not an excuse for France to do what they have done.'
Aylo's message to would-be porn viewers will be topped with the image of Liberty Leading the People from Eugene Delacroix's renowned bare-breasted painting of the allegorical figure.
Culture minister Aurore Berge wrote on X that it was 'so much the better' if Pornhub and other Aylo sites cut off access for French users rather than 'conforming to our legal framework'.
'There will be less violent, degrading and humiliating content accessible to minors in France,' she added.
'If Aylo would rather leave France than apply our laws, they are free to do so,' Clara Chappaz, France's junior minister for artificial intelligence and digital technology, wrote on X.
Arcom has said that 2.3 million minors access porn websites every month even though legally they should be blocked from them.
Adult content platforms have come under fire elsewhere in the European Union. EU regulators said last month that several sites, including Pornhub, would be investigated for failing to comply with rules to protect children.