Aylo, the owner of major adult sites Pornhub, RedTube and YouPorn, said it would suspend access to its French platforms in protest at France’s strict new age verification requirements.
French users attempting to access these sites will instead see a message criticising the law, Aylo announced.
“Your government is proposing to check your age every time you visit our site. How crazy is that? That doesn’t protect minors. On the contrary, it endangers everyone’s privacy and puts children at risk”, the message would read across the platforms from June 4.
According to Solomon Friedman, vice president for compliance at Aylo’s parent company, Ethical Capital Partners, the move was a way to “communicate directly with the French people” about what Aylo saw as a dangerous, invasive and ineffective law.
France has introduced regulations requiring adult websites to verify users’ ages through official information such as ID documents or credit card details.
Now, to protect user privacy, the law mandated the use of a “double-blind” third-party system.
Under French legislation, a trusted third party, paid by the website, verified that an internet user was an adult based on a document the user provided such as ID cards. This third party had no knowledge of which websites the user would later visit.
Checking a box stating that a user was over 18 years old would no longer suffice.
According to France’s online regulator Arcom, the goal was to block access for the 2.3 million minors in France who visited pornographic websites.
Aylo maintained that while it supported the idea of age verification in principle, the current French model was flawed.
Aylo’s VP Brand and Community Alex Kekesi said the company was “extremely pro the concept of age verification” but the new system was “an untested solution” that risked violation of privacy and could lead to data breaches.
There may also be other reasons behind Pornhub owner Aylo’s opposition to extensive age verification.
Speaking to US technology news outlet Wired in May, Kekesi said traffic in Louisiana had dropped 80 per cent after adding age checks as users did not want to share IDs.
French Government officials pushed back against Aylo’s claims. Digital affairs minister Clara Chapaz accused the company of lying.
“The Arcom framework guarantees privacy with double anonymity. Lying when one does not want to comply with the law and holding others hostage is unacceptable,” she said.
“Adults are free to consume pornography, but not at the expense of protecting our children. Requiring pornographic websites to verify the age of their users is not about stigmatising adults, but indeed about protecting our children. Others have done it.
“If Aylo prefers to exit France rather than comply with our law, that’s their choice,” she added.
Culture minister Aurore Berge wrote on X on June 3 that it was “so much the better” if Pornhub and other Aylo properties cut off access for French users rather than “conforming to our legal framework”.
“There will be less violent, degrading and humiliating content accessible to minors in France,” she added.
Aylo was also facing investigation by the European Commission, suspected alongside several others of not taking sufficient measures to prevent minors from accessing their content.
According to Pornhub data from December 2024, France ranked among the top three countries with the highest number of visitors.
