TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Aylo will geoblock Pornhub across Florida starting Jan. 1, when HB 3, the state's age verification law, goes into effect.
The company explained through a statement that while it has publicly supported age verification of users for years, it believes that any AV law must preserve user safety and privacy and effectively protect children from accessing content intended for adults.
“Unfortunately, the way many jurisdictions worldwide, including Florida, have chosen to implement age verification is ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous,” the statement notes. “Any regulations that require hundreds of thousands of adult sites to collect significant amounts of highly sensitive personal information are putting user safety in jeopardy."
As XBIZ reported in March when the Florida legislature passed the bill, HB 3 is a much-expanded version of a bill originally introduced by Rep. Chase Tramont, a politician and ordained clergyman who serves as pastor at Oceanway Church in New Smyrna Beach. Tramont's bill originally only targeted adult websites, but broader regulations about social media were added to it later.
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 Oklahoma, Texas, Kentucky, Arkansas, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Virginia, Utah, Nebraska, and Alabama — the company will replace 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.”
In related news, Free Speech Coalition filed a lawsuit Monday to block HB 3.