Pornhub blocked all users in Arkansas after the state’s new age verification law went into effect on Tuesday. The law requires porn sites to verify that users are at least 18 years old. Pornhub argued that requiring ID verification actually harms users’ privacy and puts children at risk. MindGeek, Pornhub’s operator, has decided to block access from states with similar age verification laws. After complying with a similar law in Louisiana, Pornhub traffic dropped by 80%, so they decided blocking access entirely was preferable to implementing age verification.
States they have blocked for similar laws: Virginia, Utah, Mississippi.
In Louisiana the first state to do this they tried to comply and their traffic decreased by 80%.
Their personal data will need to be stored somewhere for this to work, and it will leak. Eventually. Security always fails. And with these government age ID systems built by the lowest bidder it will fail sooner rather than later.