Pornhub could soon ban Florida too

Florida is introducing a new age verification requirement for platforms hosting pornographic material. This is extremely similar to the law that prompted Pornhub will pull out of Texas earlier this month.

Signed Monday by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, House Bill 3 (HB 3) requires online platforms that distribute pornographic material to verify that their users are 18 years or older. The new law will come into effect on January 1 next year, with failure to comply punishable by a fine of up to $50,000 per violation.

The legislation will impact online platforms where more than a third of their content is pornographic material. These websites must offer both “anonymous” and “standard” identification methods, with users able to choose whichever they prefer.

Under HB 3, an age verification method is considered anonymous if it is performed by a non-governmental third party. These third-party verifiers are not permitted to retain users’ personally identifiable information once their age has been confirmed and must keep this information anonymous. Still, users are unlikely to feel much better.

Standard methods eliminate this third party, with the porn platform itself directly verifying user identifiers.

Pornhub states that the age verification method in Florida is “[puts] user safety at risk

Although Pornhub has yet to make any announcements, it is highly likely that HB 3 will prompt the popular adult entertainment platform to pull out of Florida. The state’s new age verification law comes just weeks after Pornhub banned in Texasin response to a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling overturning an injunction against a similar Texas law.

Like HB 3, Texas House Bill 1181 (HB 1181) requires websites hosting pornography to verify the age of users, requiring the use of methods such as viewing a government-issued ID or relying on a third party to perform the verification.

Although Pornhub has expressed agreement with the age verification requirement, the company argues that the specific systems imposed infringe on the “rights of adults to access protected speech.” Instead, Pornhub claims that on-device age verification would be a safer and more effective method of preventing underage users from accessing inappropriate material.

Apart from this solution, Pornhub has chosen to completely block Texas IPs rather than collecting identifying information from users.

“Unfortunately, Texas’ age verification law is ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous,” Pornhub wrote in a notice to Texas users. “Not only will this not actually protect children, but it will also inevitably reduce the ability of content creators to publish and distribute legal adult content and will directly impact their ability to share the artistic messages they wish to convey with this content.”

Given this stance, it’s only a matter of time before Florida is banned as well. The Texas ban on Pornhub was just the latest in a list of state bans, including North Carolina, Montana, Utah, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi and Virginia. The website’s parent company, Aylo, also blocked its other adult platforms in these states for the same reasons, including Brazzers, YouPorn and RedTube.

In a statement to Mashable, an Aylo spokesperson said it was “aware of the passage of HB 3 in Florida” but declined to explicitly confirm whether its websites would opt out of the State.

“Any regulation requiring hundreds of thousands of adult sites and all social media to collect significant amounts of highly sensitive personal information violates the privacy rights of law-abiding citizens and jeopardizes user safety” , said the spokesperson. “We hope that before this poorly conceived and poorly written law takes effect, the government will recognize the ineffectiveness of similar laws copied from other states, such as Texas and several others before that.”

If Aylo’s hopes prove in vain, it’s likely that thousands of excited Texans will soon find themselves vigorously searching. VPN.

Checking identities for the presence of porn is not the only mission of HB 3. The legislation will also allow restrict children’s access to social networkspreventing those aged 13 and under from having accounts.