As of Jan. 1, 2025, any websites offering adult content visible in Florida must use an age verification system or face hefty fines.
That may also be the day that adult megasite PornHub slams the door shut on Florida.
Pornhub, one of the largest and most-visited adult websites, has made a habit of blocking states that have passed new adult-site ID requirements. Texas was blocked earlier this year, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky and Nebraska were blocked in July, and Oklahoma was shut out last month, joining millions of disappointed residents.
Will Florida be next?
The Florida Legislature passed an age verification rule this year as part of HB 3, a social media bill that restricts children from social media. Legal challenges to the new social media rules are delaying enforcement of that part, but the age verification requirement will begin Jan. 1.
The law requires adult sites to offer anonymous and standard age verification for visitors to choose from. Sites that violate this may be fined up to $50,000 per violation by the State Department of Legal Affairs, plus attorney fees and court costs. Individual claimants may also be awarded up to $10,000 in damages.
“To be clear, Aylo has publicly supported age verification of users for years, but we believe that any law to this effect must preserve user safety and privacy, and must effectively protect children from accessing content intended for adults,” a spokesperson from Pornhub’s parent company, Aylo, said Thursday in an email.
“Unfortunately, the way many jurisdictions worldwide, including Florida, have chosen to implement age verification is ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous,” the spokesperson said.
What is Pornhub?
Pornhub is a website offering free access to a vast library of explicit adult movies and clips broken down into categories to its 20 million registered users. It was the 19th most-visited website and the most-visited adult website in the world as of Dec. 1. According to Pornhub’s published stats, the site averages over 100 million daily visits worldwide and over 100 billion video views a year.
The site allows professional companies, porn stars and amateurs alike to upload their material, create fan clubs, and charge for premium content. Pornhub is owned by Aylo, recently renamed from Mindgeek, along with several other popular adult sites.
Aside from attacks from anti-porn groups, the company was previously under fire for allowing anyone to upload anything, which drove many smaller adult movie companies out of business and also brought complaints about a surge of uploads showing revenge porn, child sexual abuse material, and copyrighted movies.
In December 2020, after a New York Times expose of non-consensual pornography and sex trafficking on the site, Pornhub deleted over 6 million videos and began allowing uploads only from verified users.
Which states have Pornhub blocked?
Pornhub is currently restricting access to people from Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and Virginia.
Is Pornhub blocked in Florida?
No, but Pornhub might be blocked in Florida in 2025.
Why are states passing age-verification laws for adult websites?
Child safety advocates and state legislators argue that more needs to be done to keep children safe online and away from adult material. Age verification laws force adult sites to require some form of official ID verifying users are 18 or over before they’re allowed to access the site’s wares.
Free speech advocates and adult entertainment lobbyists say the laws are hurting adults who have the right to access such content and warn that the definition of “adult material” can be weaponized.
“Unfortunately, we’ve already seen how this designation has been weaponized to censor and ban LGBTQ+ literature, reproductive rights resources, sex education, art, and healthcare,” said a statement from the Free Speech Coalition, which sued Texas over the new law. “Sexual expression, online and off, has been and continues to be the canary in the coal mine of free speech.”
Why does Pornhub block states instead of complying with age verification rules?
While the site states it is firmly behind age verification, Pornhub resists laws that require uploading personal information.
The spokesperson largely mirrored a post on Pornhub’s model community blog in July, which pointed out that the site was one of the few to comply when Louisiana passed a similar law in 2023. Their traffic from the state dropped by 80% but, according to Pornhub, the law caused users to move to “pirate, illegal, or other non-compliant sites that don’t ask visitors to verify their age.”
“The Louisiana law and other copycat state level laws have no regulator, only civil liability, which results in a flawed enforcement regime, effectively making it an option for platform operators to comply,” the post said.
“In practice, the laws have just made the internet more dangerous for adults and children,” the Aylo spokesperson said.
The company said the “best and most effective solution” to protect minors and adults alike is with parental controls, already available on many devices, set to block adult content on the child’s device or their account on other devices.
Can you see Pornhub videos if they block the state?
Pornhub blocks the IP addresses of computers in each state they block, only allowing visitors to see a simple message about why they’ve been blocked and urging them to contact their lawmakers to protest.
However, anyone with a VPN — a service that allows you to hide your computer’s address and route your connection through other locations you choose, including other states or countries, a useful security measure when using your computer on public WiFi networks — can easily bypass the ban from a blocked state.
Google searches for “vpn” surged dramatically in each state after they were blocked.
Can content creators in Florida keep uploading if Pornhub blocks the state?
According to the post to the site’s model community, Pornhub’s IP blocks redirect content creators from those states to a different login where they can continue maintaining their presence on the site.
Will Pornhub block Florida residents?
Pornhub said earlier this year through a spokesperson that they declined to “discuss the hypothetical scenario.” In an email Thursday, a spokesperson also declined to comment.
But Pornhub has done so in every other state with similar new age verification laws to date.
When will Florida’s adult site age verification requirement begin?
The age verification requirement begins Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025.
Can you say “VPN”? I knew you could.