Pornhub Is Pulling Out of France
Aylo, the company that owns porn sites like Pornhub, YouPorn, and RedTube, is planning to suspend service in France in protest of a new law that will require porn companies to verify the age of visitors. The deadline for porn sites to implement age verification is June 7 but Pornhub will block users starting Wednesday, June 4, according to France24.
Websites will be required to verify a user's age using a credit card or a government-issued ID document. France's law requires porn companies to provide an option for age verification that relies on a third party, hypothetically protecting the user's privacy. But Aylo has argued that third-party verification puts private information at risk of hacks and leaks.
Aylo was purchased by private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners in 2023, whose partner Solomon Friedman told reporters in a call Tuesday that the law is 'ineffective' and 'dangerous,' noting concerns over privacy.
'It's a matter of putting our values first, and that means communicating directly with the French people to tell them what their government is refusing to tell them,' Friedman said, according to Politico.
Pornhub didn't immediately respond to Gizmodo's request for comment but Aylo has previously said the company would like age verification to happen at the device level by companies like Microsoft and Apple. Clara Chappaz, France's Minister of State for Digital Affairs, accused Aylo of lying about the age verification law and the requirements recently imposed by the country.
'Adults are free to consume porn, but not at the expense of protecting our children,' Chappaz said in a tweet Tuesday, according to an English language translation. 'Asking pornographic sites to verify the age of their users is not about stigmatizing adults, but about protecting our children.'
France is Pornhub's second-largest market behind the U.S., according to stats released by the company in 2024. The Philippines, Mexico, and UK round out the rest of the top five countries visiting Pornhub by traffic volume. The top search result on Pornhub in France is 'francaise,' the French word for 'French,' perhaps suggesting that French porn consumers have a strict bias toward homegrown content.
Age verification laws have become popular in the U.S., with 19 states passing such laws in recent years including:
Alabama
Arkansas
Florida
Georgia
Idaho
Indiana
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Mississippi
Montana
Nebraska
North Carolina
Oklahoma
South Carolina
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Virginia
As you can see, the states with age verification laws tend to be the most politically conservative in the country, with every one but Virginia going for Trump in the 2024 election. But France isn't exactly the most socially conservative place in the world. The country also recently banned smoking in many outdoor spaces.
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