Internet Porn Censorship

Porn websites in France must verify users' ages or face being blocked within days under new rules which come into force after a years-long battle between operators and state censors.

Among the new requirements is to offer at least one double blind option for users to prove their age without revealing their identity to the porn site. However the verifying company will surely be able to maintain a log of a users porn website history.

Sites already offering verification using a credit card have a grace period until April 11 2025 to put in place their double blind checks. These entail the user uploading an identity document to the verifying company, which then sends confirmation they are old enough to visit the site to the porn provider without revealing the user's identity, at least to the porn site.

This niche is being targeted by small firms selling the service to big platforms, with several start-ups offering the service. However age verification seems to be a natural monopoly where users will only want to verify once with one company for all their porn viewing. No doubt something like 'verified by Google' will become the norm and so US giants will take over.

Internet censor Arcom's regulation has been a real boost to the still-emerging sector, said Jacky Lamraoui, head of French startup IDxLab. The firm's Anonymage service is already being used by around 20 sites, all of them adult platforms. Among them is French porn site Tukif.porn, which turned to IDxLab and other verification providers after a court ordered it blocked in October.

Tukif manager Jerome, who declined to give his last name, commented that Tukif was the only free French porn site currently verifying users' ages. He complained that age verification was costing his site one or two (euro) cents per visitor. He added that age verification was also turning some users away from centralised porn sites to less regulated social media platforms such as X or Reddit, which do not have to verify ages. He said:

Since November, less than five percent of users arriving at the verification system come out verified on the other side. It's killed traffic to our site.

For the coming months, competitors from within the European Union enjoy an advantage, as the age check rules only apply to French and non-EU adult services. Arcom is still putting in place procedures for notifying other governments that sites based in their countries are not fulfilling French law before blocking them altogether. EU adult sites will however be expected to comply with the French law in the future.

Aylo, the parent company of major porn sites Pornhub and Brazzers with an office in Cyprus, told AFP in December:

The French rules would likely prove ineffective and dangerous for users' security and privacy. Beyond diverting users to other platforms, France's rules could add to the growing demand worldwide for virtual private network (VPN) services.

A VPN creates a tunnel between the source and the destination of internet traffic,. Using one can prevent intermediaries such as internet service providers (ISPs) from seeing the content of internet traffic, as well as allowing users to change their IP address, browsing as if they are in another location or country. Worldwide, around 28% of internet users aged 16-64 were using a VPN in 2023, according to specialist analytics site DataReporta.

VPN company reports a massive rise in VPN demand on 1st of January 2025 when a new Florida censorship law requiring age/ID verification for access to porn came into force. VPN-pushing vpnMentor documented a rather incredible 1150% spike in Floridians wanting to use a VPN to hide their location.

The major porn website Pornhub decided to self ban access from any IP address based in Florida. So even those viewers willing to stupidly hand over ID data to a porn site would be blocked, leaving a VPN as the main way of continuing to access Pornhub.

A vpnMentor spokesperson explained to the tech news site The Register:

To measure the impact of VPN demand the research team compiles data from a variety of sources. The team uses internal tools to assess changes in terms of search volume, web traffic, and clicks related to VPN services in general. We work with different metrics which we analyze, and we evaluate the searches or impressions that transform into downloads.

In March, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the Online Protection for Minors act, aka House Bill 3 , into law. The legislation requires websites to verify visitors' ages, and for those hosting a substantial portion of material harmful to minors, such as Pornhub, to block access to anyone under 18 in an effort to prevent kids and teens from peeping on any pornographic videos.  HB3 allows fines of up to $50,000 for websites that don't comply with the regulations.

And so in response, Pornhub's parent company Aylo decided to yank the site from Florida users as it had already done in other states with similar laws, including Kentucky, Indiana, Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska, Texas, North Carolina, Montana, Mississippi, Virginia, Arkansas, and Utah. Pornhub explained:

Unfortunately, the way many jurisdictions worldwide, including Florida, have chosen to implement age verification is ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous.

Any regulations that require hundreds of thousands of adult sites to collect significant amounts of highly sensitive personal information is putting user safety in jeopardy. Moreover, as experience has demonstrated, unless properly enforced, users will simply access non-compliant sites or find other methods of evading these laws.