Pornhub partially quits UK over Online Safety Act

LONDON — Pornhub will no longer be fully available in the U.K. from Feb. 2, its parent company Aylo announced Tuesday, citing the consequences of Britain’s Online Safety Act.

Aylo said it made an effort to comply after the act’s Children’s Codes came into force last summer, requiring adult sites to have highly effective age-assurance. But visitors — both adults and under-18s — are flocking to non-compliant sites en masse, Alexzandra Kekesi, vice president of brand and community at Aylo, said.

Despite sharing these findings with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and the U.K.’s communications watchdog Ofcom, “we’re still continuing to see more of the same,” she said. Aylo says users who go through age assurance prior to the Feb. 2 cut-off date will still be able to access the site.

During a press conference, Aylo’s lawyers were keen to argue that the blame for its decision should be put at the government’s feet, rather than Ofcom’s, and argued only device-based age-assurance by the likes of Google, Apple, and Microsoft would solve the problem.

“This law, not our regulator, this law by its very nature is pushing both adults and children alike to the cesspools of the internet, to the most dangerous material possible,” Solomon Friedman, a partner at Ethical Capital Partners and a lawyer representing Aylo said.

“And while there [were] six months by Aylo of good faith effort to be part of this ecosystem, to gather data and share it with the government, the data now really speaks for itself. This law not only is not protecting children, it’s putting children and adults in greater danger online,” he added.