Aylo, the online pornography giant operating Pornhub, RedTube, and YouPorn, will block access to its content in France starting Wednesday, June 4, the company announced at a press conference on Tuesday. This move is the latest in a series of actions taken by the leading porn company, which has strongly opposed laws requiring age verification for visitors to prevent minors from accessing pornographic content.
Instead of the usual homepage, French users of the three sites will encounter a lobbying message accusing France of endangering consumer privacy by imposing intrusive and unreliable age verification mechanisms. Pornhub is consistently ranked among the top five most visited websites in France by specialized audience measurement services.
Since July 2020, French law has mandated that porn site publishers implement measures to ensure that users viewing adult content are of legal age. A simple declaration of good faith is no longer sufficient.
Aylo, along with some other voices in the porn industry, argues that age checks should not be the responsibility of the sites themselves, but rather should occur at the level of the user’s smartphone or computer, effectively shifting the responsibility to Apple, Google, and Microsoft.
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For nearly five years, French authorities and segments of the adult entertainment industry have been at odds over the feasibility of implementing such measures. France’s media regulator, ARCOM, recently published a technical guide for publishers, highlighting methods it considers privacy-respectful.
While age verification presents a significant technical challenge, it also represents a potentially fatal economic blow for Pornhub. Like most major free streaming platforms, Aylo’s success is built on massive, free, one-click access to pornographic content, relying on advertising revenue. Unlike paid platforms, the group could face a potentially severe drop in traffic.
Possibility of being blocked by ARCOM
The timing of this decision is strategic: Starting June 6, ARCOM will be able to issue formal notices to pornography sites that fail to comply with the law, even if they are hosted in another European Union country – as is the case for Aylo’s network. The French law on securing and regulating the digital space, known as SREN, allows ARCOM to subsequently request that internet service providers block non-compliant sites without a court decision.
Over the past two years, Aylo has selectively blocked its sites in several US states that have adopted laws requiring age verification, which the company deemed impossible to implement under acceptable conditions. According to the company’s figures, France is the second-largest country in the world for traffic to its main site, Pornhub, which claims 7 million daily visitors in France.
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