MIAMI – Floridians have lost out to Pornhub. com, the world’s most popular online adult entertainment site and the 16th most-visited site of its kind in the world.
Pornhub’s parent company, Aylo, said it opted to block access to its site in Florida rather than comply with a new state law that will take effect on Jan. 1, 2025, that requires age verification to make a stopover on platforms.
The law, known as HB 3, was passed by the Florida Legislature in March. Last month, a trade group representing the adult entertainment industry filed a federal lawsuit trying to strike it down.
Users trying to access site will encounter a video with the following message:
“As you are probably aware, we are required by your elected officials in Florida to determine your age before allowing you to access our website. While security and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, providing your identity to your age card whenever you need it to scale on an adult platform is not the most effective solution for our users and will in fact put children and their privacy at risk.
“Furthermore, requiring age verification without enforcing rights gives platforms the opportunity to comply or not.
“As we’ve noticed in other states, this only directs traffic to sites with far fewer security measures in place. Very few sites can compare to the physically powerful ones and security measures we have in place lately. To protect the privacy of young people and of users, it will be necessary to apply any laws against all platforms that offer adult content.
“The safety of our users is one of our biggest concerns. We believe that the best and most effective solution for protecting children and adults alike is to identify users by their device and allow access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that identification. Until a real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in Florida.
“Contact your representatives before it’s too late and ask for device-based verification responses that make you safer and respect your privacy. “
Before 2025, Pornhub blocked access in 14 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Carolina, Texas, Utah and Virginia. Like Florida, Tennessee and South Carolina were added Wednesday and Georgia will become the 18th state to require age verification to access pornographic websites in July, according to 404media.
Pornhub, introduced in 2007, recorded more than 11. 4 billion user visits in January 2024, according to Statista. About 97% of the traffic to Pornhub. com came from mobile devices.
According to similarweb, Pornhub is Google, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, X. com, Wikipedia, Chatgpt, Reddit, Yahoo, Amazon, Yandex. ru, Baidu, TikTok, Netflix, Microsoftonline, Bing.
Other porn sites have not announced plans related to the law.
Blocking is done on your personal virtual proxy or VPN.
According to HB 3, which passed with bipartisan support and was signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis on March 25, sites with adult content “must offer anonymous age verification and standard age verification.”
“Apparently you can have a child in space safely, and then you have predators that can come right into your own home,” DeSantis said at a news conference in Jacksonville. “You can do everything right, but they know how to do it. ” obtain and manipulate those other platforms. ”
DeSantis vetoed the version earlier this year, raising legal and parental rights concerns.
Former House Speaker Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast, who worked with DeSantis on the legislation, said over the summer: “Adults can do whatever they want, I don’t care, but 8-year-olds can’t They should have to go through difficult situations. tumbling porn at that age. ”
“Anonymous” age verification is not provided for in the law, however, the law states that an “independent, non-governmental third party” providing the service cannot retain personally identifiable data and will have to protect it from unauthorized access.
Under the legislation, House Bill 3, websites that host pornographic content can be fined up to $50,000 for each violation, as well as attorney fees and conceivable civil liability. They do not meet the age verification requirement.