Pornhub will restrict access to users in the United Kingdom starting today, as part of a regulatory crackdown aimed at protecting minors from explicit online content.
Aylo, the Cyprus-based company that owns the pornography site, announced that from February 2 it will block new British users who have not previously verified their age.
The decision comes after the Online Safety Act came into effect, which has brought some of the world's most restrictive rules on access to online pornography. Since July last year, visitors to adult websites have had to prove they are over 18, through one of several methods: a credit card, uploading an ID or using a selfie to verify age.
Although these measures are intended to make it more difficult for minors to access explicit material, Aylo claims that they have "diverted traffic to the darker, more unregulated corners of the internet."
As a result, the company says the law "has not achieved its goal of protecting minors."
"We cannot continue to operate within a system that, in our assessment, does not fulfill its promise for child safety and, on the contrary, has had the opposite effect," Aylo's statement said.
“Despite the law’s clear intent to restrict minors’ access to adult content, our experience strongly suggests that OSA has failed to achieve this objective.”
As of July 25, the Online Safety Act requires digital platforms to prevent children from viewing “harmful content.” This includes not only pornography, but also material that encourages self-harm or suicide, promotes dangerous challenges, depicts serious violence, or incites hatred.
Platforms that break the law risk severe penalties, including fines of up to £18 million or 10% of global turnover. In extreme cases, companies could be banned from operating in the UK altogether.
Pornographic content providers have seven permitted ways to verify the age of users: comparison with photo ID, facial age verification, verification by mobile operators, credit card check, age verification via email, digital identity services and open banking.
These laws were drafted in response to concerns about children’s increasing access to harmful content online. A study last year by the charity Internet Matters found that 7 in 10 children aged 9–13 had encountered harmful content online. In this age group, 13% reported seeing hate speech, 15% disinformation, while around one in ten had seen content that was violent or promoted violence.
Also, Ofcom research shows that 8% of British children aged 8–14 visited pornographic websites at least once a month.
In October, Pornhub revealed that it had lost 77% of its users in the UK as a result of the new measures.
Professor Elena Martellozzo, director of Childlight's European center, called this development "a major victory for child protection."
“For too long, children have been just a click away from explicit material,” she said.
"Our latest data shows that one in five children has seen unwanted sexual content in the past year, and there are concerns that repeated exposure could normalise harmful attitudes and problematically shape young people's understanding of relationships."
According to her, age controls "are not about censorship, but about creating healthier and safer online spaces for children."
However, the regulatory crackdown appears to have had unintended consequences. Online searches for VPNs – services that mask a user's location – rose by over 700% in late July, suggesting that many Britons were looking for ways to bypass the restrictions.
VPNs allow users to appear as if they are browsing from another country, avoiding local identity checks.
Speaking at the time, Harry Halpin, CEO of NymVPN, warned: “We are seeing people turning to VPNs in record numbers. The problem is that many are using free or insecure services, which could expose them even more to risk or spying from foreign countries.”
According to him, centralized VPN technologies could give technology companies or foreign intelligence services access to search history, including sexual preferences and other sensitive data.
It remains unclear whether other pornographic sites will follow Pornhub's example and impose similar restrictions on users in the United Kingdom. /Gazetaexpres/
edition
t7 live
