Aylo, the parent company of Pornhub and other popular porn sites, is withdrawing its services from France in protest of the country’s new age verification requirements for accessing pornographic content online. The company is fiercely opposed to any laws designed to keep kids away from porn, like those passed by individual U.S. states.
TechSpot reports that Aylo, the company behind popular porn sites such as Pornhub, Youporn, and Redtube, has decided to suspend its services in France starting June 7, 2025. This decision comes as a response to France’s new age verification law, which is set to come into effect on the same date. The law, part of a set of measures passed in 2023 to protect minors from inappropriate online content, requires porn platforms to implement age verification systems for French visitors.
Under the new regulations, websites hosting pornographic content will need to verify the age of their French users using a credit card or government-issued ID document. The law also mandates that operators offer a double-blind option from a third-party to protect users’ anonymity from the platforms themselves. However, Aylo argues that this method puts people’s data at risk from bad actors, hacks, or leaks.
Solomon Friedman, a partner at Ethical Capital Partners, the private equity firm that acquired Aylo in 2023, has called the French law “dangerous,” “potentially privacy infringing,” and “ineffective.” Friedman stated, “It’s a matter of putting our values first, and that means communicating directly with the French people to tell them what their government is refusing to tell them.”
Aylo has repeatedly claimed to support age verification but believes that it should take place at the device level. The company argues that tech giants like Google, Apple, and Microsoft already have the capability built into their operating systems to verify ages and that countries should target these companies instead. Furthermore, Aylo claims that such laws are ineffective and drive users to less secure websites that do not implement age verification, potentially exposing them to unregulated content and increased privacy risks.
In response to Aylo’s decision, Clara Chappaz, France’s Minister of State for Digital Affairs, accused the company of lying because it does not want to respect the law. Chappaz stated, “Adults are free to consume porn, but not at the expense of protecting our children. Asking pornographic sites to verify the age of their users is not about stigmatizing adults, but about protecting our children. If Aylo prefers to leave France rather than apply our law, that’s up to them.”
France is Pornhub’s largest market behind the United States, and while accessing blocked sites is usually just a matter of using a VPN, leaving the country will likely have an impact on Aylo’s bottom line. According to the company’s own statistics, the most searched term in France was “francaise” (French) by a wide margin, indicating that users were particularly interested in content related to their own language and people.
Aylo’s decision to withdraw from France is not an isolated incident. The company has already stopped offering access to residents in several US states that have introduced age verification laws, including Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Virginia, Utah, Montana, North Carolina, and others. As more states and countries implement similar rules, Aylo may face further challenges in maintaining its global presence.
Read more at TechSpot here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
