The Current - Pornhub blocks access over new age verification laws

Episode Date: January 13, 2025

Pornhub has blocked access to its own site in several U.S. states, where new laws require pornography sites to verify the age of their users. We look at whether age verification is an effective way to protect children, and why critics argue those laws infringe on free speech.

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Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. It is not the usual video you would find from porn star Sherri DeVille when you head to the website Pornhub? As you may know, your elected officials have required us to verify your age before granting you access to our website. 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. As part of a video you'll see if you try to access Pornhub

in some parts of the United States right now. The Canadian-owned adult entertainment site, the largest in the world, has blocked access to users in states that have introduced age verification laws. Nearly 20 states have passed laws meant to protect people under the age of 18 from accessing adult content. The laws require anyone trying to access pornography websites

to prove their age, but implementing these laws has been tricky and the debate around balancing free speech and privacy against child safety is intensifying. We will hear from a representative from Pornhub in just a moment and later we'll talk about what's happening here in Canada, but we start in Florida and age verification law came into effect in that state on the first of January. Republican House Representative Toby Overdorf was part of the group that introduced the legislation and joins us now. Good morning.

Good morning. Why do you think this law is the best way to protect minors from accessing pornography online? Well, currently in the United States, when you walk into a store and you try to purchase something that is a pornographic material, you have to prove that you actually are an adult and you are 18. That opportunity did not exist online and therefore we're just making it the same platform and the same legality as if you were walking into a store rather than utilizing your tablet, your phone or your computer.

It's very different from the days when you had to walk into a store. Pornography is everywhere. Now, what are you most concerned about? Well, when I look back, and I know even looking at 2018, where the folks we're gonna be talking to here in a minute, they produced 5.8 billion hours of content and that content consumption.

So, as what I'm really concerned about is that now we're looking at 11-year-olds as the average age and we're seeing more and more under nine years old that are looking at hardcore pornography. And I just believe that that is something that we should, as parents, restrict from our kids. And they don't need to grow up that fast to be exposed to that type of a purient, if you will, material. Just to be clear, 11-year-olds, you say, are the average age of people who are looking at adult material online?

The average age for a young adult under 18 is 11 now, and it's trending further downward. So we're looking at nine-year-olds, eight-year-olds. And what does that do? What does that do to a young boy who the first exposure he ever has for female interactions with a male, and they see a pornographic video, and is that how they are absolutely supposed to behave?

So that is something that we're very concerned about. Is this the way that you conduct an adult relationship? And I don't believe that an 11-year-old, a 12-year-old has the ability to really process what they're seeing, and is this the way that adults conduct themselves rather than a pornographic site that is meant for quote entertainment. So how are users going to have to prove their age in Florida? Well in Florida what we've decided to do is that the state is not

going to tell you how to do it. Instead that that interest that wants to have pornographic material exposed to people that they would go ahead and do an outside verification. Just listening to Ms. DeVille's video, she is saying that you have to do it every single time. Well, that's again, here's a group that put again, 5.8 billion hours of content up, yet they don't have the ability now to develop an outside website that you could verify, create a cookie, and then that person could have access to their site.

But there's a couple of different ways, right? I mean, one of this is with a digital app, the other is you submit a photo of your face, and somehow this would be judged in terms of how old you are, or you can upload your ID? There is a variety of ways. Yes, you are absolutely correct.

And again, Florida is not saying how you have to do it, but that in fact you do have to verify age. And just clicking a box doesn't do it. You can't just say, hey, I'm over 18. It is an actual verification of that age, of that person. And again, Florida does not want to tell them how to do it, just that they have to do it. What do you make of the fact that Pornhub is blocking access to everybody in your state now

because of this law? Well, that's a business decision by Pornhub, certainly. But again, when I go back to looking at the amount of content that they make and the population now within Florida, over the third most populous state, if that's a business decision that they want to make instead of investing in outside age verification, well that that is certainly their choice. But it's not going to stop people trying to access pornography. One of the things we've learned is that since the law

came into effect a couple of weeks ago, VPN, virtual private network access, has surged in Florida. People are posting all sorts of workarounds. There are sites that aren't complying as well. What does that tell you about the effectiveness of the law? Well, as anything, you have to make that first step, and this is a first step in that regulation. Certainly there are ways to get around it, but our main concern is children. Are those children the one that are going around? And I don't see an eight or nine year old, uh, setting up a VPN just so they

could have access to these types of sites. What about a 12 or a 13 or a 14 year old? Kids are pretty technologically savvy these days. Kids are technologically savvy. But again, uh, this is something that, uh, we will again have to readdress as we go along the way, but we have to make that first step. And that first step was critical to the future

of our children here in Florida. One of the fears that, I mean, and this is articulated later on in that video by Sherry DeVille is that kids will actually go to more dangerous, more extreme sites that have fewer safety measures into place. Do you worry about that? Fewer safety measures. I. Do you worry about that?

Fewer safety measures. I'm not really sure what that is considering that her company chose not to put any safety measures in there. And I would consider that many of the, many of the videos that are on that particular site are certainly harmful to miners. There's an organization called the Free Speech Coalition, which is actually an adult entertainment trade group, and it's suing states, including Florida, saying

that this law among other things violates free speech, that it creates, quote, a substantial burden on adults who want to access legal sites without fear of surveillance. Again, these are legal sites. What do you make of that claim that this is not just a violation of free speech, but it also is an undue burden on adults? Well, two things I would say to that. First of all, again, going back to what we originally talked about, walking into a store, a 12-year-old, a 16-year-old would not be able to walk out of there without showing

their ID and purchasing that material, number one. Number two, when you're looking at overall free speech, this does nothing to stop free speech whatsoever. You can continue to do the material. And number three, finally, when you're looking at this, right now, most sites require that credit cards or some type of payment is required for access to these sites. So you're already giving up information.

You're giving private information. You are giving financial information to these sites. You're telling me now that you don't feel comfortable giving age when you're giving everything about your bank account and all that type of stuff. So I just find it somewhat disingenuous that these sites are saying that you cannot access and we're restricting access when the reality, the burden is on them. However, they're collecting financial data, they're collecting user data. And yet now that when we say you have to have the age on there, all of a sudden there's

this uproar. Need to let you go but just very briefly, I mean, this is now an issue in front of the courts. There's a court in Tennessee that is looking into this. The US Supreme Court is gonna hear a case this week around a Texas age verification law. Do you think this will withstand the scrutiny of the courts? I've had many long conversations with our attorney general

and I have confidence in the Florida law, yes. All right, we'll leave it there. I'm glad to have you as part of the program. Thank you very much for being here. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Toby Overdorf is a Republican House representative in the state of Florida. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell.

over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner and I'm back with season three of On Drugs and this time it's going to get personal. I don't know who sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. Solomon Friedman is a lawyer and vice president of compliance for Ethical Capital Partners. This is a Canadian private equity firm. It owns ALO, which is the owner of Pornhub and other adult entertainment sites. Solomon, good morning to you. Good morning. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for being here. Why did you block access to Pornhub in Florida and other US states that put in age verification laws? Let me be clear. When Ethical Capital Partners acquired ALO

and its platforms, protecting young people was very much at the forefront of our mission. In that way, we support age verification. We support verifying the age of users in a way that is effective, in that it actually protects children, and in a way that it protects the privacy of adults accessing legal

and constitutionally protected material. Laws that do neither of those things are simply ones that we cannot subject our users to. So for that reason, we made a decision, it's the business decision, a difficult decision to withdraw from those states pending challenges of those laws in the court and hoping that legislators will arrive at the correct solution, which is not verifying people's age on every site that they visit, but device-based age verification happens at the source and does not suffer from all of the frailties that Florida

and Texas' laws do. When it gets to that device-based age verification in a moment, but in the meantime, in the absence of that, what does ALO do to make sure that kids can't access Pornhub? So upon acquiring ALO and its platforms, a universal message appears on every single one of platforms, including Pornhub, where an individual

accesses it for the first time, where it displays no explicit content whatsoever, but centers parental controls to give that information. In other words, to show parents how to block the site. We do not want minors on our site, but centers parental controls to give that information. In other words, to show parents how to block the site. We do not want miners on our site, but this is something to do alone. It's something that requires collaboration between the rest of mainstream tech industry and government. But doing it in the way that Florida does it. Just to be clear, this is a message I understand. This is a message that says, are you 18 or not? Right? That's what the message says.

Correct. And so what proof is there if somebody clicks on the button that they're 18? No, obviously that's not proof based, but proof of age cannot be provided on a site by site basis. It doesn't work. As you correctly identified, it's easy to circumvent. In fact, we've seen a surge of over 1700% in searches for VPNs in the affected states. So all this law is doing is driving young people to sites that quite unlike representative Overdorf said, do not have the safety measures that sites like Pornhub do.

Just to be very clear, Pornhub requires identity and consent verification for every single person appearing in content and all content is fully moderated prior to being posted. That's an enormous investment in trust and safety. Obviously the sites that don't comply with the laws that are out of the reach of jurisdictions like Florida and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of

them are operating today. Uh, they don't care about this law. They don't care about many other laws. And all you're doing is driving both adult and young users to those sites, which is an unacceptable state of affairs. Just to be clear, a 14 year old could go to the website and say, I'm 18, click on the box,

and there's no proof that they are over the age of 18. I mean, kids lie, they could lie. Kids lie, kids can use VPNs, kids can say they're coming from another state, agreed. And that's why this doesn't work. What would work, however, is a device-based solution. Apple has cited privacy concerns around device level verification. How realistic is a device-based solution. Apple has cited privacy concerns around device-level verification.

How realistic is a solution like that? Well, we have to remember that a device-based solution isn't only a good solution because it doesn't suffer from the problems in Florida. It's a good solution because it actually gets at the primary location where young people are first seeing explicit content. For example, the Australian e-safety commissioner said

that most young people first see explicit content on sites like Reddit or Twitter, which are exempt from the Florida law because the Florida law only targets sites that have over 33% adult content. Notwithstanding, there's a great deal of pornography on those other sites. But this requires a bit of a sea change in terms of how the tech companies view age verification. Until recently, the rest of mainstream social media would have been very opposed to it. And now we see platforms like Meta saying, we need to verify the age of users so we can access age-inappropriate social media.

We should have a restricted portion of Instagram or Facebook, for example. It has to happen at the device level because age-inappropriate media, whether it's adult content, alcohol, cannabis, gambling, explicit video games, they all need to be protected. You can only do that at the source. What would you say to people who say it sounds like you're shirking your own responsibility? You're putting on somebody else or another tech

company to be the responsible adult in the room? I would say let's turn to the experts in this matter. So I look at leading child protection NGOs and crime prevention NGOs. So for example, ICMEC, the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, Crime Stoppers International, they've both recommended device-based age verification. They both made it clear that site-based age verification doesn't work. In fact, ICMEC, the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children, filed a brief at the Supreme Court of the United States in support of the Free Speech Coalition

and ALO's challenge to the Texas law, saying this law doesn't keep children safe. In fact, it does the opposite. So this has nothing to do with shirking responsibility. If anything, it has to do with working together. I always say it looks like this. The device will be the key to the restricted areas of the internet. We are happy to be the lock. We are happy to work in collaboration with tech companies, with governments to get this right. We have the data on the experience of site-based age verification doesn't work. In Louisiana, when we tested it, 80% of users,

when faced with a prompt to prove their ID, simply went to non-compliant websites. And 95% of users simply went to non-compliant websites. So it's about working together to get this right to protect children. There is a large body of evidence. We've talked about it on this program that talks about the harms caused by kids when they are accessing

porn from distorted views of sexuality, expectations, violent behavior like choking. What responsibility do you have for the impact of the services that you provide? So that responsibility is a serious one, and we agree. This is material that is inappropriate for young people. It is inappropriate for a population that cannot distinguish between fact and fiction,

between fantasy and reality. Is it not incumbent then on you to do everything you can? I mean, other people can do that too, and the tech companies, but is it not incumbent on you to do everything you can. I mean, other people can do that too, and the tech companies, but is it not incumbent on you to do everything you can to ensure that young people don't have access to that material then? And everything we can, that is exactly what we are doing, including advocating strongly at both the government,

the regulatory level, but also with other tech companies to get device-based age verification. Have an internet where your device that you already trust with your personal private information that already knows an enormous amount about you should just be your key to the internet. So we are working hard because we do have a responsibility. This is a shared responsibility online and we want to get this.

Do you think about those, those negative impacts on young people when it comes to how they, what happens when they look at this material? I do. And that's why I am working every day with other negative impacts on young people when it comes to how they, what happens when they look at this material? I do. And that's why I am working every day with other tech companies advocating before government and regulators to make device-based age verification a reality. Because that would be a world in which children were actually prevented from accessing adult content. It would be a safer internet for all and it's one that we are committed to. I'm really glad to have you on the program

this morning. Thank you for being here. It was a pleasure to be here. Thank you. Solomon Friedman is the vice president of compliance for ethical capital partners. This is a private equity firm that owns PornHub and other adult entertainment sites.

Elaine Craig is a professor of law at Dalhousie University and the author of mainstreaming porn, sexual integrity, and the law online. Elaine, good Integrity and the Law Online. Elaine, good morning to you. Good morning. You wrote in the Globe and Mail, these are your words, trying to lock curious and determined teenagers out of parts of the internet is like spitting into the wind.

What did you mean by that? Well, I think it won't work. That I think history has demonstrated that trying to lock down parts of the internet is a cat and mouse game that won't be successful. So I would agree with Mr. Friedman on that point. And while I applaud Representative Overdorf's concern for the well-being of children, I don't think age verification is particularly particularly in this format, the right strategy. Do you think a company like Pornhub is doing enough to protect young people from the content that they produce?

So I would argue that more can be done to protect all people and that we ought not to focus so explicitly just on children. So frankly, I'm more concerned about the types of depictions of sexuality that 16 to 25 year old men are regularly consuming online than I am about what a 10 year old who stumbles upon porn while looking for a Taylor Swift video might see.

Which again, the research I've done suggests isn't gonna be on PornHub, it will be on Reddit or Twitter. And so can they do more? Sure, but I think it's in the field of content moderation rather than efforts to lock down the internet. Why is it that, I mean, age verification sounds tantalizing. You just keep people who are under the age of 18 out, you can't go on the site.

Why doesn't that work, do you think? Well, I mean, I think you've covered a lot of that. I think that whether it's VPNs or Tor browsers, there will always be technological devices aimed at circumventing these types of technologies. And so they won't work because unless we had a kind of global buy-in so that you couldn't do something like disguise the jurisdiction from which you're trying to access these platforms, kids are going to be able to circumvent.

But it's not nine-year-olds, I think, doing that. And so you have parental device controls. You have safe search mechanisms. Potentially, you could move to a device-based age restriction strategy. Going platform by platform, I think, really is. There are some important risks that are created by doing it the way that Florida is suggesting. If they don't work, why are jurisdictions doing it?

It's not just Florida. I mean, Canada had a bill that was making its way through parliament until prorogation. You have age verification in Germany. New law just came into effect in France as well. So if they don't work, why are legislators around the world moving forward with them? Well, I think it's politically appealing that there's lots of appetite. Who wouldn't wanna keep kids, you know,

quote safe from porn? And so it's a non-partisan, rather it's a non-partisan idea and it's a concept that people can readily, you know, get their heads around and allows them, unfortunately, or risks allowing them to avoid pursuing what are more contentious, more difficult and more nuanced strategies to help young people deal appropriately and effectively with the difficult content that they're going to be confronted

with online. What would those strategies be? Well, again, number one would be content moderation. So focus on holding porn platforms and other types of platforms more accountable for enforcing their own content rules. So a platform like Pornhub has very strong content moderation policies. But to date, law and policymakers haven't done a good job of incentivizing, strict enforcement by platforms

with respect to those policies. And second, I think we need better literacy, porn literacy, media literacy for young people. Give them the skills to help them with the harmful content that they will encounter online. So, the ability to ask questions about what they're consuming, knowledge that there are different types of porn, awareness

that some of what they may be consuming may involve non-consensual images, things like that. The tools, um, that they might need and, and trying to lock them down or lock down the internet and, and keep them out at risks, actually leaving them with less capacity to do that. I had read somewhere that, what is it, more than 12% of Canadian adults visit Pornhub

and its associated websites every day? Yeah, I mean, I think when representatives from MindGeek, which was the previous name of ALO, testified before the Ethics Committee, that was their figure. It's a, you know, mainstream form, because of its platformization is ubiquitous. And so I think what we have to do is evolve our law and policy responses to that reality. And so again, I'm not so concerned about the 10 year olds, I'm worried about, you know, the 17-year-olds and the regular sort of consumption patterns

that they're engaged in and how we can make the, you know, the content that they're consuming healthy and less harmful. And again, one of the things you've written is that one of the worst potential outcomes of a law like this is that it risks leaving parents and educators with the belief that now they don't need to have conversations with their kids about pornography. Right, right.

Conversations that parents don't necessarily look forward to having kids, right? Yeah, and I think that they'll be, you know, laboring under a false understanding of what the reality is online if they rely on an assumption that these laws are keeping their kids quote safe from online porn. What should those just you've hinted at this, but just finally and briefly what should how do you start those conversations? I mean what advice would you have for parents to talk to their kids? It's not just talking to their kids about sex,

but it's talking to them about the pornography that is at their fingertips. Absolutely. So, you know, I think, I mean, I'm a law professor, not a youth educator, but it's not a conversation, it's an ongoing conversation that has to be age appropriate. So it evolves as a kid ages, but there are resources out there. There's the, you know, including in Canada specifically, the Sex Information and Education Council of Canada has good material. The Digital Media Literacy Initiative has

some, has some good resources for parents to engage with in efforts to have an informed, non-shaming, open dialogue with kids about consent, about sex, about racism and misogyny and how all of these concepts intersect in ways that produce the aspects of the internet that are, you know, inevitably challenging and potentially harmful for kids. But also everywhere. Right. Elaine, thank you very much for this. My pleasure.

Elaine Craig is a professor of law at Dalhousie University and the author of Mainstreaming Porn, Sexual Integrity and the Law Online.