Pornhub to restrict access for UK users from February

"Getty Images Pornhub has announced it will restrict access to its website in the UK from February. Under the changes from 2 February, only people who have previously made a Pornhub account will be able to access its content. It blames what it says is the "failure" of Online Safety Act (OSA) requirements for some sites to use age verification to stop children seeing pornography online."

"In October, Pornhub's parent company, Aylo, said the requirement had caused traffic to the website to fall by 77%. The regulator Ofcom said at the time tougher age checks were fulfilling their purpose of stopping children stumbling across inappropriate material. The BBC has approached Ofcom for comment on Pornhub's announcement. Pornhub remains the UK's largest porn platform, according to web tracker Similarweb."

"Alex Kekesi, head of community and brand at Pornhub's parent company Aylo, said in a statement it was a "difficult decision". "Our sites, which host legal and regulated porn, will no longer be available in the UK to new users, but thousands of irresponsible porn sites will still be easy to access." She said the platform initially complied with OSA obligations "because we wanted to believe that a determined and prepared regulator in Ofcom could take poor legislation and manage to enforce compliance in a meaningful way". But six months after age check requirements were introduced as a way to stop children accessing adult content, Kekesi said the company's experience "strongly suggests that the OSA has failed to achieve that objective"."

Pornhub will restrict access in the UK from 2 February so that only users with existing Pornhub accounts who have completed age verification can view content. Aylo attributes the change to perceived failures in the Online Safety Act's age-verification requirements and reports a 77% drop in site traffic after the rules were introduced. Ofcom states that tougher age checks are preventing children from stumbling across inappropriate material. Pornhub remains the UK's largest adult platform by traffic according to Similarweb. New users attempting access after 2 February will be blocked from viewing site content.

Read at www.bbc.com