(LifeSiteNews) — Pornhub will no longer operate in Florida to protest the state asking it to ensure minors are not accessing its graphic content.
“Unfortunately, the way many jurisdictions worldwide, including Florida, have chosen to implement age verification is ineffective, haphazard and dangerous,” the company stated in an email, as reported by Florida Politics.
“Any regulations that require hundreds of thousands of adult sites to collect significant amounts of highly sensitive personal information is putting user safety in jeopardy,” the parent company, Aylo, stated. “Moreover, as experience has demonstrated, unless properly enforced, users will simply access non-compliant sites or find other methods of evading these laws.”
The law goes into effect on January 1. However, there is a federal lawsuit that seeks to stop House Bill 3 on free speech grounds. The commercial entity must offer anonymous age verification and standard age verification, and a person attempting to access the material may select which method will be used to verify his or her age.
The law requires companies to verify the age of users if they host “material harmful to minors.”
The website, which traffics in degrading, exploitative, addicting, and obscene content, argued that it was actually the one standing up for kids and decency.
“In Louisiana last year, Pornhub was one of the few sites to comply with the new law,” the company stated.
It continued:
Since then, our traffic in Louisiana dropped approximately 80%. These people did not stop looking for porn. They just migrated to darker corners of the internet that don’t ask users to verify age, that don’t follow the law, that don’t take user safety seriously, and that often don’t even moderate content. In practice, the laws have just made the internet more dangerous for adults and children.
Conservatives were quick to mock Pornhub for its decision while declaring it as a victory.
“Very based,” Townhall columnist Dustin Grage wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
“Florida is taking a stand for morality and the protection of children with its new age verification law for adult content,” Patrick Coffin wrote in response. “Pornhub’s decision to suspend services is a win for decency.”
“Let’s hope more states follow, putting values and safety above profits,” Coffin wrote.
Daily Wire commentator Matt Walsh also celebrated the decision.
“Congratulations to Florida,” he said.
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22:27 – 35:00 PornHub Is Leaving Florida Thanks To New Age Verification Law
35:01 – 47:03 Fat Positivity Consultant… pic.twitter.com/D00Hq5sGBI— The Matt Walsh Show (@MattWalshShow) December 19, 2024
Porn sites regularly opt out of states instead of working to follow the law when it comes to age verification.
In addition to Texas, Utah, Arkansas, Virginia, Montana, North Carolina, Mississippi, and Kentucky, where the website has already ceased operations, the company announced this year it would shut down in Indiana, Idaho, Kansas, and Nebraska, as previously reported by LifeSiteNews.
“The world’s biggest porn site would rather stop doing business than prevent kids from watching,” conservative commentator and author Michael Knowles wrote in June, responding to that announcement. “Quite telling!”
“Pornhub has decided that age verification laws damage their business model to such an extent that it is better for them to simply block entire states rather than comply with the law,” LifeSiteNews commentator Jonathon Van Maren wrote earlier this year.