Pornhub has blocked access to users in North Carolina, citing a new state law that requires pornographic websites to verify their users' ages with government IDs and other means.
North Carolinians' who attempted to visit Pornhub this past week got a surprise: a video statement read by adult film star Cherie Deville.
"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," the statement read.
Travis Fain is a freelance writer who reported on this as one of his final assignments for WRAL in Raleigh. He joined WFAE's Nick de la Canal to discuss his reporting.
Nick de la Canal: This law took effect on Jan. 1. What exactly does it require adult sites to do, and what happens if a website doesn't comply?
Travis Fain: So it says that you have to verify the age of users. It doesn't get into details how. It basically says you have to use a commercially available database or some other method, but it kind of leaves the enforcement — or the execution rather — up to the companies themselves.
And it's not something that's going to be enforced by police. There's no office at the state that's going to these websites and checking. It's up to parents. But it creates a new right to sue. So if a parent sees that their child has gotten on one of these websites and they're under 18, they can actually file a lawsuit against one of these companies.
De la Canal: And North Carolina is not the only state to have passed a version of this law and received pushback.
Fain: Yeah, it's advancing in a number of states — eight or nine of them. Louisiana was the first to do it in 2022, and a number of states have followed suit with similar laws. And in Louisiana, Pornhub which you mentioned, which is arguably the biggest website like this, they say they saw something like an 80 to 90% drop when they tried to do the age verification because, big surprise, people do not want to give personal information to a pornographic website.
De la Canal: And in its video statement that we heard a clip from earlier, Pornhub seems to argue that this law will push users to sketchier sites that won't comply with the law and make people submit their information or IDs maybe and that it would be better for sites to identify people by their devices. Is that essence of the industry's argument here?
Fain: That's what they're arguing, yes, and obviously there would be pushback from the device-makers at that point, I'm certain, and how that would all work I don't know.
The way it's being implemented is different. I spent a little time this morning on different websites just seeing how they were handling it. Pornhub is actually owned by a company that owns a number of similar types of websites, and so they're blocking access with that same video that you mentioned.
I came across one that was asking for age verification, and that way that works is you literally — you turn on your laptop camera, you show it your face, and then you hold up an ID so it can compare. Some sort of facial recognition software compares your face to that ID. So that's one way to handle it.
And then others just, nothing. Like it just works like I assume it worked the week before. So that's one of Pornhub's arguments, is that hey — not everyone is going to implement this, and so by definition, the better players in this industry will implement it, so do you really want to push people to these other players?
De la Canal: So what are lawmakers saying in response?
Fain: So Sen. Amy Galey, who is an Alamance County Republican — she was one of the people who pushed this, although it had wide bipartisan support when it passed last year — she says, 'Hey look, I'm willing to work with anybody to make this law better. If they say there's a better way, let's talk.' But at the same time, she says, 'it's a little hard for me to look at this industry and think, oh well, they're going to negotiate in good faith, and we can trust everything they say, and these are good people we can work with.' But she says she's willing to try.
De la Canal: So there have been lawsuits filed in other states, I believe Louisiana, Texas and Utah. How likely is a lawsuit here in North Carolina, and could a lawsuit overturn this law?
Fain: I spoke to a spokesperson for Pornhub last week, or recently let's say, and he said maybe. They're looking at it. I think what they're looking to do is this is obviously a national push, so they're picking their spots where it makes sense to sue, where it doesn't make sense to sue. Whether North Carolina will be on that list ultimately, I don't know, but obviously, they're going to try to push back on this in a national way.
