LEXINGTON, Ky. — Pornhub, one of the world’s largest pornography video sites, confirmed it is cutting off access to Kentucky internet user starting July 10. It’s because of a new law, requiring porn sites to verify a user’s age using a valid ID.

What You Need To Know

  • Pornhub and other pornograhpy sites owned by Aylo will be unaccessible to Kentuckians on July 10 

  • In July, Kentucky law will require all porn sites to verfiy their users are 18 by uploading an ID

  • HB 278 passed both chambers as amended unanimously and was signed into law by the governor

Visitors to Pornhub in Kentucky are now greeted with a pop-up; warning ‘you will lose access to Pornhub in 22 days.’ Aylo, the parent company of Pornhub and various other porn sites, will cut off access to Kentuckians once the new law goes into effect.

“Instead of simply putting these protections in place to keep kids safe online, they’re just going to shut down and I think that reveals a lot about who this organization is,” said David Walls, executive director of the Family Foundation.

In March, the Kentucky General Assembly passed a bill requiring any porn site to verify their users are 18 by having them upload an ID. Walls, said the Family Foundation; which advocated for ‘God-honoring’ policy, pushed for the passage of this act.

“Parents are really struggling in the modern technological moment that we’re in with easy access to pornography, continued concern about harms on social media for kids so we believe this is a commonsense step forward,” Walls said.

House Bill 278 pertains to sex crimes against children. The age verification provision was added in the Senate. It received unanimous, bi-partisan support in both chambers. Gov. Andy Beshear, D-Ky., signed it into law in April. 

However, Corey Shapiro, legal director at the ACLU of Kentucky, said the bill has serious personal data concerns.

“In Louisiana after the age verification and requirements of uploading some form of verification, that resulted quickly in a data breech of those servers, which exposed a huge amount of personal identifying information,” Shapiro said.

The bill states any platform that performs the age verification required shall not keep any identifying information once access is granted.

But, Shapiro said this is an unnecessary hurdle for adults to access content protected under the Constitution.

“We’ve seen in other states, the challenges are based on the first amendment in that this law violates the first amendment,” Shapiro said.

Aylo said this will affect all their pornography video sharing websites.

The company emailed Spectrum News 1 a statement which read:

“To be clear, Aylo has publicly supported age verification of users for years, but we believe that any law to this effect must preserve user safety and privacy, and must effectively protect children from accessing content intended for adults.”

The statement continued with, “In Louisiana last year, Pornhub was one of the few sites to comply with the new law. Since then, our traffic in Louisiana dropped approximately 80%. These people did not stop looking for porn. They just migrated to darker corners of the internet that don’t ask users to verify age, that don’t follow the law, that don’t take user safety seriously.”

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