PHOENIX — Aylo will geoblock Pornhub across Arizona starting Sept. 26, when the state’s age verification law, HB 2112, goes into effect.
In a statement, Aylo explained that while it publicly supports age verification of users, it also 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 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. Moreover, as experience has demonstrated, unless properly enforced, users will simply access non-compliant sites or find other methods of evading these laws.”
Arizona’s legislature passed HB 2112 in May. The law was written by Republican State Representative Nick Kupper, who modeled it after similar legislation that was passed in Texas and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.
As XBIZ reported at the time of its passing, HB 2112 is nearly identical to another Arizona bill, HB 2856, that was vetoed by Governor Katie Hobbs out of concerns it was not bipartisan and did not “work within the bounds of the First Amendment.”
While HB 2112 does not appear to have addressed the First Amendment issue, enough Democrats in the state legislature supported the new measure to push the bill toward ratification by Hobbs.
It's possible that the governor and the Democratic representatives were responding to a perceived shift in the political climate in the wake of Donald Trump’s electoral victory.
“We are well aware that the optics of voting against these bills is difficult for policymakers," said Free Speech Coalition's Mike Stabile in May.
Aylo believes such laws only serve to drive consumers to access porn through potentially more dangerous avenues.
“We have seen how this scenario plays out in the United States,” the company’s statement continued. “In Louisiana, 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 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.”