Pornhub to suspend porn in France

The owner of Pornhub, Redtube and YouPorn plans to stop serving adult content to French users as soon as Wednesday afternoon, in protest of government measures forcing it to verify the age of its visitors.

Aylo Freesites' platforms will display a message that will explain its decision to its French audience, including that it doesn't want to jeopardize the privacy of its users, company officials told reporters on Tuesday.

Aylo Freesites, like other porn platforms, is under a legal obligation to implement age verification solutions by June 7. The restriction is part of measures by the French government to shield minors from inappropriate content passed in 2023.

The industry giant has fought French officials tooth and nail over the measures. The French audience is Pornhub's second-largest in the world, after the United States and ahead of the Philippines, Mexico and the United Kingdom, its own internal 2024 statistics showed.

Solomon Friedman, a partner at Ethical Capital Partners, which owns Aylo, told reporters in a Tuesday briefing the French law was "dangerous," "potentially privacy infringing" and "ineffective."

"It's a matter of putting our values first, and that means communicating directly with the French people to tell them what their government is refusing to tell them," Friedman said.

The European Commission is also working on another age verification solution and has accused Aylo platforms of breaching its Digital Services Act around minor protection.

Aylo — like social media platform Meta — is calling for device-level age verification. "We are eager to work with operating system manufacturers, app stores, other tech partners, to ensure that only adults are accessing the platform. It's not a matter of not wanting to take responsibility. It's a matter of saying that you need to block access at the source," said Friedman.

France's Digital Minister Clara Chappaz accused Aylo of lying about the French measures, which she said were privacy-preserving, in a Tuesday post on X. "Lying when one does not want to comply with the law and holding others hostage is unacceptable. Adults are free to consume pornography, but not at the expense of protecting our children," she said.

Aylo did not specify how long the suspension would last and added it hoped to find a solution to unblock its adult content in France soon.