Pornhub will block Florida to ring in the new year

Florida Man won't be able to access the internet's biggest adult website soon.

Pornhub will block visitors from Florida starting Jan. 1, 2025, according to the porn site's parent company Aylo.

"You will lose access to Pornhub in 14 days," reads a pop-up message that displays on Pornhub for users accessing the site from the state of Florida.

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"Did you know that your government wants you to give your driver's license before you can access Pornhub?" the pop-up prompt continues. "As crazy as that sounds, it's true. You'll be required to prove you are 18 years or older such as by uploading your government ID for every adult content website you'd like to access."

Why has Pornhub banned Florida?

Pornhub's Florida ban is a response to Florida state law HB3, which Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law earlier this year. The law officially goes into effect at the beginning of 2025.

Florida's HB3 basically prohibits anyone under the age of 14 from having an account on a social media platform. However, the language in the bill can be construed to basically cover any online platform that serves material that can be considered "harmful to minors." 

Under the law, tech companies will be required to verify users' ages and delete any account belonging to users under the age of 14. If a child is 14 or 15 and wants to sign up for a social media platform, they would be required to get their parents consent. 

If a company fails to act based on the law, companies can be sued on behalf of the child and fined tens of thousands of dollars for allowing that child to set up an account.

Civil rights organizations like the ACLU have shared their opposition to the law, blasting it as "censorship."

“Unfortunately, the way many jurisdictions worldwide, including Florida, have chosen to implement age verification is ineffective, haphazard and dangerous,” reads a statement regarding Pornhub from Aylo, as first reported by Florida Politics. “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.”

Aylo says that the company supports age verification and restricting access to minors but believes this law goes about it the wrong way. The company has cited user safety and privacy issues as problems with the law's implementation as well as being an ineffective way to protect children from adult content.

Porn bans across the U.S.

Florida isn't the first state banned by Pornhub. Lawmakers in Republican-led states across the U.S. have passed strict age verification laws specifically targeting adult websites in recent years. 

Louisiana was the first state to require pornography websites to require visitors to upload ID before accessing the site in 2022. States like Arkansas, Alabama, Idaho, Indiana, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, Texas, Utah, and Virginia followed suit.

As a result, Pornhub has banned visitors from those states from accessing their website.