Pornhub BANS another five states over age verification laws, leaving more than 18 million Americans blocked from the X-rated site

More than 18 million Americans living in five states will join Pornhub’s growing banned list as lawmakers introduce age restriction laws.

Kentucky lost access on June 10, while Indiana, Idaho and Kansas will be blocked on June 28 and Nebraska on July 17.

This move brings the total number of blocked states to 12, inclusive Texas, North Carolina, Montana, Mississippi, Virginia, Arkansas and Utah.

When users in the banned states try to access Pornhub, they will see “403 – This state is not whitelisted.” A 403 code means that a website is prohibited.

Some Americans who will be banned also face a countdown to when they will lose entry.

“In seven days you will lose access to Pornhub,” reads a pop-up on an Indiana website

“Did you know that your government wants you to surrender your driver’s license before you can access Pornhub?” it continued. “As crazy as that sounds, it’s true.”

Pornhub parent company Aylo has noted that it publicly supports age verification, but said that “the way many jurisdictions around the world have chosen to implement age verification is ineffective, haphazard and dangerous.”

Aylo’s decision to block these states stems from privacy concerns, as people would have to upload a government-issued ID to prove they are over 18 years old. The edge reported.

Texas was blocked in March after an appeals court upheld an age verification law passed in 2023.

Lon Star State residents who tried to access Pornhub were also greeted with a message: “As you may know, your elected officials in Texas require us to verify your age before allowing you to access our website.

“Not only does this infringe on adults’ rights to access protected speech, it also fails in strict enforcement by using the least effective and yet most restrictive means to achieve Texas’ stated goal of so-called protecting minors.’

Pornhub further explained that it believes age verification “is not an effective solution to protect users online, and will in fact put minors and your privacy at risk.”

Such laws are considered surveillance systems by civil liberties organizations Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The group warned that these requirements could lead to impersonation and other data theft.

“Once information is shared to verify age, a website visitor can no longer be assured that the data they provide will not be retained and used by the website, or further shared or even sold,” Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote last year.

Pornhub parent company Aylo has noted that it has publicly supported age verification for years, but added that “the way many jurisdictions around the world have chosen to implement age verification is ineffective, haphazard and dangerous.”

“While some age verification mandates place restrictions on the retention and disclosure of this data, significant risk remains.

“Users are forced to trust that the website they visit, or the third-party authentication service, both of which may be fly-by-night companies with no published privacy standards, are following these rules.”

The Arkansas law, which would have required parental consent for children to create new social media accounts, was struck down by a federal judge in March and a lawsuit challenging the Louisiana law is ongoing.

Opponents have argued that age verification laws for adult websites not only infringe on freedom of speech, but also pose a threat to digital privacy because it is impossible to ensure that websites do not retain user identifying information.

“States are trying to end the First Amendment by outsourcing censorship to citizens,” Alison Boden, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition, said in 2023.

‘It is a new mechanism, but a very flawed mechanism. Government efforts to chill speech, regardless of method, are prohibited by the Constitution and by decades of legal precedent.”