Pornhub to restrict access for UK users from February

Pornhub has announced it will restrict access to its website in the UK, blaming the tougher age checks which have been introduced for explicit sites.

From 2 February, only people who have previously made a Pornhub account will be able to access its content.

The company says it's a result of what it calls the "failure" of Online Safety Act (OSA) requirements for some sites to use age verification to stop children seeing pornography online.

In October, Pornhub's parent company, Aylo, said the law change had caused traffic to the website to fall by 77%.

The regulator, Ofcom, said at the time tougher age checks were fulfilling their purpose of stopping children stumbling across inappropriate material.

The BBC has approached Ofcom for comment on Pornhub's announcement.

Pornhub remains the UK's largest porn platform, according to web tracker Similarweb.

Alex Kekesi, head of community and brand at Aylo, said in a statement that restricting access to Pornhub had been a "difficult decision".

"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."

She said the platform initially complied with OSA obligations "because 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".

But six months after age check requirements were introduced to stop children accessing adult content, Kekesi said the company's experience "strongly suggests that the OSA has failed to achieve that objective".

Those attempting to access Pornhub in the UK after 2 February will effectively be met with "a wall" instead of site content, she told reporters in a press conference on Tuesday.

The same restrictions will apply to other porn sites owned by Aylo, including YouPorn and Redtube.

Solomon Friedman of Ethical Capital Partners (ECP), which owns Aylo, said the company believed Ofcom was "working in good faith" to enforce age check requirements.

"The problem here, however, is not the regulator - it is the law," he said.

"You have a dedicated regulator working in good faith, but unfortunately, the law they are operating under cannot possibly succeed," Friedman added.

He said six months after the requirement for sites allowing sexually explicit content took effect in the UK, people were still able to easily access porn - such as by searching for it online.

The company reiterated its position that device manufacturers such as Apple, Google and Microsoft were best placed to introduce technical measures to stop children accessing porn sites.

"When access is controlled at the device level, it is efficient, it's effective, it's privacy-preserving," Friedman said.

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