Pornhub is pulling out … of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
The wildly popular smut purveyor shut down access to amorous Dominion state residents to protest a new law requiring age verification.
Virginia porn fans looking to sample the website’s offerings are now met with a video message courtesy of longtime porn queen Cherie DeVille.
“As you may know, your elected officials in Virginia are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website,” DeVille said, the Virginia Pilot reported. “While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users, and in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk.”
Pornhub argued the new law is full of loopholes and would not apply equally to all adult content providers, adding their current system “to identify users by their device and allow access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that identification” was superior.
“As we’ve seen in other states, [requiring ID] just drives traffic to sites with far fewer safety measures in place. Very few sites are able to compare to the robust Trust and Safety measures we currently have in place,” the company continued. “To protect children and user privacy, any legislation must be enforced against all platforms offering adult content.”
The law easily passed the Virginia state legislature and was signed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin in May. It follows similar legislation passed in Utah that same month — which also resulted in PornHub leaving the Beehive state.
‘The governor remains committed to protecting Virginia’s children from dangerous material on the internet,’ a rep for Youngkin said.
Is anyone else’s Pornhub not working?
— L. Louise Lucas (@SenLouiseLucas) June 30, 2023
Some Virginia Democrats took to Twitter to express their dismay.
“Is anyone else’s Pornhub not working?,” asked Virginia State Senator L. Louise Lucas in a much discussed Twitter thread Friday. “I told you all I am not your typical grandma!”
“In all seriousness, we passed a bill during this session to protect children from online porn. However the executive branch had an obligation to create a system for age verification. Instead the Governor sat on his ass and relied on these websites with porn to do the verification process. This is a massive security risk to the personal information of (millions?!?!) of Virginians,” she added.
The post Pornhub pulls out of Virginia to protest age verification law appeared first on New York Post.
