OKLAHOMA CITY — Aylo began geo-blocking Pornhub across Oklahoma on Tuesday, three days in advance of the state’s new age verification law, SB 1959, taking effect.
The company explained through a statement that it has publicly supported age verification of users for years, but believes that any law to this effect must preserve user safety and privacy, and must effectively protect children from accessing content intended for adults.
“Unfortunately, the way many jurisdictions worldwide have chosen to implement age verification is ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous,” the statement noted. “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.”
As XBIZ reported in March, the law seems to have been crafted specifically to prevent anyone from viewing adult content, rather than to protect children.
At the time, the bill’s sponsor, Republican Senator Jerry Alvord, praised similar measures in other states for driving Pornhub to “exit completely” by making it difficult for the company to do business.
Republican Representative Toni Hasenbeck, who sponsored the state House version, added, “I think this is going to put some impetus on those entities that are dealing in pornography to make some difficult choices.”
According to Aylo’s statement, such laws only serve to drive consumers to access porn through potentially more dangerous avenues.
“Unless properly enforced, users will simply access non-compliant sites or find other methods of evading these laws,” the company said. “This is not speculation. We have seen how this scenario plays out in the United States. In Louisiana last year, Pornhub was one of the few sites to comply with the new law. Since then, our traffic in Louisiana dropped approximately 80 percent. 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.”
As in other states where Aylo has blocked access to Pornhub — including Texas, Kentucky, Arkansas, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Virginia, Utah, Nebraska and Alabama — the company has replaced its landing page with an SFW video in which Cherie DeVille explains the reasons for the content restriction.
“As you may know, your elected officials have required us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website,” DeVille says in the video. “While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users, and in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk.”