Sacre bleu!
The world’s most popular pornography website, Pornhub, has blocked the entire population of France from checking out its content.
Earlier this year, it was revealed that stricter laws would soon be implemented in terms of visitor age verification, but the French rebelled against them and as a result, 68 million individuals cannot access their favourite videos right now.
Up until this point, users needed to simply click a box to confirm they were at least 18 years old, with no obligation to legally verify. Credit card details, facial age estimation and Photo-ID matching are said to be the next move to ensure children won’t be exposed to Pornhub’s sexually graphic material.
Pornhub, Youporn and RedTube’s parent company Aylo announced it had officially pulled their various sites from France in a response to the backlash, which saw local authorities ‘refuse’ to comply, instead focussing on ‘futile and entirely symbolic regulatory actions which are unenforceable’.
Aylo’s vice president for Brand and Community, Alex Kekesi, said that they have used their platforms to speak with French residents; “French citizens deserve a government and a regulator who are serious about preventing children from accessing adult content. They also deserve laws which protect their privacy and safeguard their sensitive data.
“All it requires is that the government enforce regulations on three companies – Apple, Google and Microsoft – the three operating system manufacturers requiring age verification at the device level prior to accessing adult content,” she added of the legal update.”
French gender minister Aurore Bergé subsequently used her X profile to address Pornhub’s manoeuvre.
According to her, it may result in less ‘violent, degrading and humiliating content accessible to minors in France’.
The country sits behind only America when it comes to Pornhub audience size, according to 2024 research.
Meanwhile, it was recently announced that the UK will be affected by these changes by the end of July.
Ofcom sent out letters to ‘hundreds’ of services, making it clear that the ‘mandatory age-checks’ are introduced, with chief executive Dame Melanie Dawes commenting: “For too long, many online services which allow porn and other harmful material have ignored the fact that children are accessing their services.
“Either they don’t ask or, when they do, the checks are minimal and easy to avoid. That means companies have effectively been treating all users as if they’re adults, leaving children potentially exposed to porn and other types of harmful content. Today, this starts to change.”
