Pornhub owner pressures France over age verification law as new regulations mandate stricter age checks for adult content access.
Aylo, the parent company of Pornhub, YouPorn, and RedTube, announced the suspension of access to its platforms in France starting Wednesday, in protest against a new French age verification law. The law mandates users of adult sites to verify they are 18 or older using personal identification like ID documents or credit cards, with a double-blind privacy mechanism to prevent the platforms from seeing users’ personal information. Aylo criticized the law as ineffective and a threat to user privacy, warning it makes data vulnerable to breaches.
As of June 4, visitors to the aforementioned sites will see a communication from Aylo denouncing the new verification requirements. In a statement, Solomon Friedman of Alyo’s parent company, Ethical Capital Partners, told reporters on June 3 that the user note “is communicating directly with the French people to tell them how dangerous, how potentially privacy-infringing, and how ineffective the French law is.”
Ethical Capital Partners, Aylo’s owner, suggested that responsibility for age verification should lie with device operating systems like those from Microsoft, Apple, and Google, rather than individual websites. Despite Aylo’s stance, French authorities welcomed the move, stating it would reduce minors’ access to harmful content, pointing out that 2.3 million minors in France access such sites monthly.
French authorities have vowed to block five major porn sites this week unless measures are taken immediately to ensure users are over the age of 18. France’s Higher Audiovisual Council gave Pornhub, xHamster, XVideos, XNXX, and Tukif a Tuesday deadline for the new restrictions, after which it said it would seek a court order blocking access to the sites.
In a statement, Aylo’s executive Alex Kekesi emphasized, “Aylo is extremely pro the concept of age verification,” but added that requiring individual platforms to confirm visitors’ ages “poses a very serious risk … with respect to your privacy rights.
