{"id":155365,"date":"2025-06-03T17:38:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T17:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/155365\/"},"modified":"2025-06-03T17:38:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T17:38:09","slug":"pornhub-is-pulling-out-of-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/155365\/","title":{"rendered":"Pornhub Is Pulling Out of France"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aylo, the company that owns porn sites like Pornhub, YouPorn, and RedTube, is planning to suspend service in France in protest of a new law that will require porn companies to verify the age of visitors. The deadline for porn sites to implement age verification is June 7 but Pornhub will block users starting Wednesday, June 4, according to France24<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Websites will be required to verify a user\u2019s age using a credit card or a government-issued ID document. France\u2019s law requires porn companies to provide an option for age verification that relies on a third party, hypothetically protecting the user\u2019s privacy. But Aylo has argued that third-party verification puts private information at risk of hacks and leaks.<\/p>\n

Aylo was purchased by private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners in 2023, whose partner Solomon Friedman told reporters in a call Tuesday that the law is \u201cineffective\u201d and \u201cdangerous,\u201d noting concerns over privacy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a matter of putting our values first, and that means communicating directly with the French people to tell them what their government is refusing to tell them,\u201d Friedman said, according to Politico<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Pornhub didn\u2019t immediately respond to Gizmodo\u2019s request for comment but Aylo has previously said the company would like age verification to happen at the device level by companies like Microsoft and Apple. Clara Chappaz, France\u2019s Minister of State for Digital Affairs, accused Aylo of lying about the age verification law and the requirements recently imposed by the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cAdults are free to consume porn, but not at the expense of protecting our children,\u201d Chappaz said in a tweet Tuesday<\/a>, according to an English language translation. \u201cAsking pornographic sites to verify the age of their users is not about stigmatizing adults, but about protecting our children.\u201d<\/p>\n

France is Pornhub\u2019s second-largest market behind the U.S., according to stats released by the company in 2024<\/a>. The Philippines, Mexico, and UK round out the rest of the top five countries visiting Pornhub by traffic volume. The top search result on Pornhub in France is \u201cfrancaise,\u201d the French word for \u201cFrench,\u201d perhaps suggesting that French porn consumers have a strict bias toward homegrown content.<\/p>\n

Age verification laws have become popular in the U.S., with 19 states passing such laws in recent years including<\/a>:<\/p>\n