The movement toward restored Biblical morality and stronger families has scored an important victory.
In the states of Montana and North Carolina, the popular pornographic website PornHub has blocked internet users from accessing its website to avoid compliance with new state laws that require websites to implement age-verification procedures.
The news is significant given that Pornhub has consistently ranked among the most highly visited pornographic websites in the world. The legislation out of the two states, part of a growing trend among conservative-leaning states, forces adult websites to require a government-issued ID of users in order to prevent minors from accessing pornographic content.
As Breitbart News reports, Louisiana led the charge in the wave of age-verification laws early in 2023 with its groundbreaking legislation, and was soon followed by states such as Texas, Utah, Arkansas, Virginia, and Mississippi.
The blockage by Pornhub extends to its sister sites (all of which are owned by the pornographic conglomerate Aylo, based in Montreal, Canada), including Brazzers, Redtube, and YouPorn. Other platforms not owned by Aylo, however, are looking at age-verification methods to avoid regionally restricting access wholesale as Pornhub has done. In some cases, these pornographic companies are tapping into third-party providers to set up systems that will allow their websites to grant access only to verified adults.
The laws passed with conservative support in these states have sparked debate. Opponents argue that requiring ID to screen out minors could have the unintended consequence of exposing users to privacy risks. But those who support such laws maintain it is a necessary step to ensure compliance with laws already on the books banning exposure of children to pornography — laws which, until now, have been difficult to enforce in an age in which the internet makes access to pornography by minors as easy as the click of a mouse.
The problem is exacerbated by the era of smartphones. Many young people, from teenagers to preteen children, have their own smartphones nowadays, and it is all too easy for them to log onto adult websites without their parents ever knowing. This has resulted in widespread addictive behavior, with immediate, constant overexposure to pornography having a destructive effect on the psyche of young people throughout America and the western world.
The tech news site Engadget explains what happens when internet users in North Carolina and Montana attempt to visit Pornhub and notes that the website avoided shuttering its website in Louisiana thanks to a state ID app that works with the adult site’s system:
If anybody in Montana and North Carolina tries to access an Aylo website, they’ll see a video message from performer Cherie DeVille, explaining that giving a copy of their ID to adult platforms puts their children and their privacy at risk. “We believe that the best and most effective solution for protecting children and adults alike is to identify users by their device and allow access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that identification,” DeVille added.
Pornhub uses Louisiana’s digital driver’s license wallet app to verify local users’ identities, but not all states have ID apps that work with its system. The website told us that its traffic in Louisiana dropped by 80 percent when the state started enforcing its age verification law. That makes this new development another potential blow to Aylo after it was slapped with a $1.8 million fine in December for hosting and profiting from pornographic content that featured sex trafficking victims.
When Arkansas’ law went into effect back in August of 2023, Aylo (which at the time went by the name MindGeek) lashed out, arguing that “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.”
Porhub has disabled access to its website in all the above-mentioned states that have passed age-verification legislation.
While Aylo complains that its user base is down due to the laws, the company has no one to blame but itself. The state governments have not forced it to block its service; it could continue to make them available if it merely complied with the legislation — legislation that ultimately is not aimed at “consenting adults,” but at protecting children.
And at the end of the day, the fewer people who are logging into Pornhub, the better. Widespread use of pornography has had a disastrous effect upon men’s and women’s perceptions of sex, contributing to deviancy, promiscuity, infidelity, divorce, sexual violence, and broken homes.
And the problem has only been worsened by the fact that it isn’t only adults who are becoming sexually desensitized by pornography; rather, the use begins young, with children being exposed to it and then developing a drug-like dependency that continues with them for a lifetime. And because they begin with pornography use so young, when their brains are in the developmental stage, it dramatically shapes their minds.
In conclusion, the recent age-verification laws are some of the most consequential pieces of legislation to be passed in this modern era.
