PARIS — The French government has given another ultimatum to five adult websites to implement age verification measures by today, or face being completely blocked in the entire country.
The ultimatum delivered to Pornhub, xHamster, XVideos, XNXX and Tukif was prompted by recent pressure from several groups that claim to advocate on behalf of “children’s rights.”
The groups have crusaded to speed-up implementation of age verification, which was mandated by a controversial amendment tacked onto a French domestic violence law passed in the summer of 2020; implementation has been delayed by court challenges and the need for E.U. ratification.
In the U.K., the anti-porn establishment press is using the French example — and a parallel German campaign by an obscure local bureaucrat described as a man “whose fetish is order” — to advocate for similar measures there.
“The French government will block five widely watched pornography websites unless they introduce measures to verify that users are aged over 18,” The Times reported today. “The move brings France into line with Germany in taking action against sites that fail to prevent children from accessing adult content.”
The Times then shifts into a more editorial tone within a supposedly journalistic report by contrasting the alleged strictness of French and German laws with the U.K. government's vacillation around age verification.
France and Germany, the report declares, "have some of the strictest rules in the developed world for tackling the issue. By contrast, child safety groups in Britain have denounced what they say is the government’s failure to impose effective age-verification measures for adult sites.”
Neither the French, German nor U.K. proposals to segregate adult content behind a “soft paywall” — where credit card numbers must be compulsorily provided to targeted websites to “verify age," even when no charge is being processed — have explained who defines “pornographic website” or “pornography,” or why some companies are currently being targeted and not others. Nor have they addressed the impact on freedom of expression and access to legal content for people over 18 who don’t have credit cards, or don’t feel comfortable sharing credit card information while navigating the internet.
Even more concerning for content creators, the next step in the European move towards age verification could likely target non-pornographic but relatively open-minded and non-restrictive platforms such as Twitter and Reddit, forcing them to ban whatever content someone in the French, German or U.K. governments considers sexually objectionable, unless they implement a similar “age verification” scheme.
Implementing a “chokehold” over free sexual expression on Twitter and Reddit, as XBIZ has reported, has been a longtime goal of religiously motivated, well-funded anti-porn lobbies such as as NCOSE and Exodus Cry.