“The safety of our users is one of our biggest concerns,” Paparozzi says in the video. “We believe that the best and most effective solution for protecting children and adults alike is to identify users by their device and allow access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that identification.”
Meanwhile, the Free Speech Coalition — a pornography trade association — has filed challenges to the laws in Utah and Louisiana. The website has complied with the law in Louisiana, with Politico reporting that, in that state, “traffic … has dropped 80%.”
The Free Speech Coalition says on its nationwide bill tracker that multiple other states have proposed similar laws; some have failed in state legislatures while several other states, including Minnesota and New Jersey, are actively considering such laws.
Pornhub has been the subject of significant criticism and investigation since its founding in 2007. Owned by the Canadian pornography conglomerate MindGeek, the website is alleged to have hosted footage of child sexual abuse, videos involving sex trafficking victims, gang rapes, and other sexual crimes.
A bombshell 2020 column by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof claimed the site was “infested with rape videos” and that it “monetizes child rapes, revenge pornography, spy cam videos of women showering, racist and misogynist content, and footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags.”
Kristof claimed to have viewed “recordings of assaults on unconscious women and girls,” while one moderator told him that some videos feature depictions of “children only 8 to 12.”