Pornhub to ban new UK users in days over Online Safety Act row
The adult website’s owner blames tougher age checks for the move
Online pornography giant Pornhub will ban new UK users from Monday amid a row over the Online Safety Act.
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From February 2, only people who have previously made an account with Pornhub will be able to access the site’s content.
The move comes after updates to the UK's Online Safety Act, requiring age verification to access explicit materials.
Last June, the regulator, Ofcom, said that sites with potentially harmful content will have to perform user age checks.
This change applies to both dedicated adult sites and social media, as well as search or gaming services.
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Aylo, the parent company to Pornhub, has said that updates to the legislation have “diverted traffic to darker, unregulated corners of the internet", criticising the Online Safety Act.
"In line with other stakeholder groups, academics and public policy institutions, Aylo’s assessment is that the Online Safety Act (OSA) has not achieved its intended goal of protecting minors.”
Ofcom has said that tougher age restrictions are fulfilling the purpose of preventing children from accessing explicit material.
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In October, Aylo said that traffic to Pornhub as a result of the updated legislation has fallen by 77 per cent.
On Tuesday, an Ofcom spokesperson said: "Porn services have a choice between using age checks to protect users as required under the Act, or to block access to their sites in the UK".
Head of community and brand at Aylo, Alex Kekesi, said: "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.”
On the Online Safety Act, Kekesi said: “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".