Pornhub owner suspends access in France in protest over age verification law

Published connected 04/06/2025 - 12:43 GMT+2•Updated 18:10

The proprietor of Pornhub and RedTube has blocked entree to nan big platforms successful France, successful protestation against a rule requiring porn sites to verify nan property of their users.

Parent institution Aylo said it would extremity operating successful France arsenic of Wednesday, having criticised nan French government's measures to shield children from inappropriate contented by making porn platforms return other steps to guarantee that users are 18 aliases older.

"I tin corroborate that Aylo has made nan difficult determination to suspend entree to its user-uploaded platforms (Pornhub, YouPorn, RedTube) successful France. We will beryllium utilizing our platforms to straight reside nan French public,” a Pornhub spokesperson said connected Tuesday.

Under France's alleged SREN law, which was passed successful 2023, big contented platforms person until Saturday to instrumentality property verification measures. French media regulator Arcom tin petition that porn sites are blocked and rumor fines if it finds their checks are lacking.

Solomon Friedman, a partner astatine Ethical Capital Partners, which owns Aylo, told reporters successful a briefing telephone connected Tuesday that nan rule was "ineffective", "dangerous", and "potentially privacy-infringing".

"It's a matter of putting our values first, and that intends communicating straight pinch nan French group to show them what their authorities is refusing to show them," he said, successful reference to a connection that Aylo's platforms will show to French users connected Wednesday.

Aurore Bergé, French curate for gender equality, wrote "au revoir" successful a station connected X successful consequence to Aylo's statement.

"There will beryllium little violent, degrading and humiliating contented accessible to minors successful France," she wrote.

Clara Chappaz, France's inferior curate for artificial intelligence and integer technology, said connected X: "If Aylo would alternatively time off France than use our laws, they are free to do so."

European Union regulators announced past week that they were investigating 4 awesome porn websites complete suspected breaches of nan bloc’s online contented rules, which see provisions for protecting children from pornographic material. These see risks that property verification measures deployed by nan sites are ineffective.

The European Commission said it has opened general proceedings against Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX and XVideos nether nan 27-nation bloc's Digital Safety Act.

Aylo said past week that it was alert of nan investigation and was "fully committed" to ensuring online information of children. XNXX, Stripchat and XVideos did not comment.