Major pornographic website blocks NC access days before new law takes effect

One of the world's largest pornography websites blocked access to at least some North Carolina users Thursday ahead of a new state law taking effect that will require adult websites to verify user ages.

Instead of complying or providing its usual content, Pornhub redirected North Carolina users to a message asking them to reach out to lawmakers and oppose the new law.

"Mandating age verification without proper enforcement gives platforms the opportunity to choose whether or not to comply," the site said in its message to North Carolina users. "As we’ve seen in other states, this just drives traffic to sites with far fewer safety measures in place."

“It's a problem," said state Sen. Amy Galey, who pushed for the new law. "And it can’t just be up to the parent. We have to help the parents.”

Beyond Pornhub's decision, it remains to be seen what the law will look like in practice. Some age verification software asks users to hold their drivers license up to a web camera so it can be compared to a live image of their face.

“Everybody sort of makes their own choices," said Mike Stabile, spokesman for the Free Speech Coalition, a pornography industry trade group. "Some sites will block the state entirely. Most will probably ignore the regulations. And there may be some who engage in age verification, but that hasn’t been the case in most states.”

Law enforcement isn’t expected to police sites. Instead the bill set up a process for parents whose minor children are able to access pornography to sue providers.

Louisiana was the first to pass this sort of law, in 2022, and sites saw traffic drop between 80% and 95%, according to the Free Speech Coalition. People tend to simply look for a non-compliant site, visiting darker corners of the internet and sites that are hard to hold accountable because they’re based outside the United States, Stabile said.

North Carolina's law forbids website owners and their vendors from retaining customers' identifying information, but Stabile said users aren't willing to take a risk. Lawsuits have been filed over these laws in at least three other states, though as of Thursday North Carolina had not joined that list.

“We’re looking at, obviously as laws go into effect, what makes sense to challenge,” Stabile said. “The general idea is that all of these laws will be challenged.”

Pornhub said in its statement that it supports laws that require age verification on devices, as opposed at individual websites. Galey, R-Alamance, said she’s “willing to work with anybody to improve the law and to make it better target what we want to do, which is protect children.” She also said it’s “a little challenging to think that this industry is some kind of great player with clean hands.”

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North Carolina’s law was was tacked into an unrelated bill that added a computer science course to North Carolina’s graduation requirements. The full measure – House Bill 8 – passed with wide and bipartisan support.

The new law uses long-standing legal definitions of obscenity to identify prohibited material. Galey said the law wasn’t crafted to go after social media sites, where users often post pictures of themselves scantily clad.

“We’re not going after the risqué and the R rated,” Galey said. “But we need some kind of firewall for hard core pornography.”