Pornhub will no longer be fully accessible in the UK from February 2, its parent company Aylo announced on Tuesday, citing the consequences of the UK's Online Safety Act. This is reported by Politico, writes UNN.
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Aylo stated that they had tried to comply with the law after the so-called "Children's Codes" came into force last summer, which oblige adult websites to implement highly effective age verification. However, according to Aylo's Vice President of Brand and Communities, Alexandra Kekesi, users - both adults and minors - are massively migrating to sites that do not comply with these requirements.
Despite these findings being communicated to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and the UK communications regulator Ofcom, "we continue to see the same thing," she noted. Aylo added that users who pass age verification by the February 2 deadline will still have access to the site.
During a press conference, Aylo's lawyers insisted that responsibility for this decision should be placed on the government, not Ofcom, and stated that only device-level age verification, which could be implemented by companies such as Google, Apple, and Microsoft, could solve the problem.
"This law itself, not our regulator, inherently pushes both adults and children into the worst corners of the internet - to the most dangerous content," said Solomon Friedman, partner at Ethical Capital Partners and a lawyer representing Aylo.
"And while Aylo has in good faith tried to be part of this ecosystem for six months, collecting data and sharing it with the government, now that data speaks for itself. This law not only fails to protect children - it puts both children and adults online at even greater risk," he added.