Aylo, the parent company of popular tube sites like Pornhub, announced on Tuesday that it will restrict access to its platforms in the United Kingdom, effective February 2. Since last year, Pornhub and other Aylo sites had complied with the UK’s Online Safety Act, which mandated that websites with pornographic content verify the ages of visitors before showing them material inappropriate for minors.
Instead of complying with the act by verifying the ages of its users, Aylo will block access to platforms like Pornhub in the U.K. altogether. However, U.K. users who have already verified their identity will still be able to use their accounts.
In a statement, Aylo said, “Despite the clear intent of the law to restrict minors’ access to adult content and commitment to enforcement, after 6 months of implementation, our experience strongly suggests that the OSA has failed to achieve that objective. We believe this framework in practice has diverted traffic to darker, unregulated corners of the internet, and has also jeopardized the privacy and personal data of U.K. citizens.”
Ofcom, the UK regulator that enforces the Online Safety Act, disagrees with Aylo’s characterization of the legislation. In a statement, Ofcom said, “Porn services have a choice between using age checks to protect users as required under the Act, or to block access to their sites in the U.K. There’s nothing to stop technology providers from developing solutions which work at the device level, and we would urge the industry to get on with that if they can evidence it is highly effective.”
Age verification technology has proven controversial as it rolls out globally. While children’s online safety is a pressing concern, privacy advocates argue that the cloud-based age verification methods mandated by legislation like the OSA harm adults by collecting large amounts of highly sensitive data.
Aylo further stated, “In other jurisdictions, Aylo has often been one of the only major platforms to comply, only to see traffic diverted to even larger, non-compliant sites.” The company claims that sites not complying with the OSA are supposed to be fined, but so far, only the forum 4chan has been penalized.
Ofcom also disagrees with Aylo’s claim that it is not punishing porn sites for non-compliance. The regulator stated, “We’ve taken strong and swift action against non-compliance, launching investigations into more than 80 porn sites and fining a porn provider £1 million, with more to come.”
The decision to block access in the U.K. is consistent with Aylo’s approach to navigating age verification laws in the United States. Aylo’s websites are blocked in a number of U.S. states where age verification is mandated for adult content, as the company believes that age verification software opens the door to the threat of data breaches.
These fears are not unfounded. Pornhub was vulnerable to a data breach at the web and mobile analytics provider Mixpanel, which exposed data about some Pornhub Premium subscribers. This stolen data reportedly included information like users’ email addresses, location, videos watched, keywords associated with the video, and the dates and times that they used the site.