Pornhub says adios! to Texas

Pornhub has decided to pack up and host its popular pornographic offerings away from the Lone Star State.

The move comes from the sex-work site after being forced to restrict users residing in Texas unless they can prove their age via a range of documents. Pornhub decided not to enforce this and rather block access entirely to accounts in the confines of the state.

“Since age verification software requires users to hand over extremely sensitive information, it opens the door for the risk of data breaches,” Pornhub wrote on its blog.

Pornhub blocks Texans

The porn site owned by parent company Aylo, formerly MindGeek, decided after it felt the move to force users to produce age identification could also bring with it a Pandora’s box of data security issues.

The world-renowned adult material producer would say via a blog post that they “had to make the difficult decision to block user access in numerous American states due to newly passed Age Verification laws (Texas, Utah, Arkansas, Virginia, Montana, North Carolina). While these new laws claim to protect children from accessing harmful material online — something we fully support — they not only fail to do this but also jeopardize user safety and privacy.”

US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled that Texan lawmakers would now be able to enforce age verification on adult websites. This was opposed by Pornhub and a number of other websites in the state as the Free Speech Coalition, who would robustly disagree with the ruling stating that the decision by a 2-1 majority and the “dissenting opinion by Judge [Patrick] Higginbotham makes clear, this ruling violates decades of precedent from the Supreme Court.”

As we reported in January, Montana and North Carolina have also restricted Pornhub due to similar age-verification laws. To which the sites controlled by Aylo would reply, saying, “As you may know, your elected officials in your state are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website. 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.”

With Texans unable to access the popular adult sites, there has comically been an upsurge in the search terms coming out of the state tracked by Google. With “VPN” at the top of the pile, followed by related searches like “how to change VPN location” and “Texas porn law.” This shows that the oldest industry in the world still has fans in Lone Star State who are looking for ways around the block.

“We know that normalizing sex work and sexual expression is an uphill battle, but it can be done. We must be vocal about it. Change begins with raising our voices, educating others, and engaging in important social conversations to spread the message.

For more information, visit the Free Speech Coalition,” the blog post would conclude.

It seems that the collection of adult sites Aylo has in its menagerie will never grace Texan screens again unless, of course, a viable VPN can be found to assist those who reside in the state.

Image: Pornhub Blog.