The closure of Pornhub in France: the debate on online age verification

For the past few days, anyone trying to access Pornhub, RedTube or YouPorn from France no longer finds explicit videos, but a painting. And not just any painting: Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People, symbol of the French Revolution. A resounding gesture of protest against the new law requiring pornographic sites to strictly verify the age of their users. French legislation requires identification through official documents or similar methods, a measure that platforms consider invasive and ineffective, as well as a threat to users' privacy. The French government, however, defends the law, emphasising the need to protect minors, given that over two million minors are estimated to regularly access pornographic content in the country.

Sheltering minors from pornography is one of the few battles on which public opinion and governments agree. The problem is how to do it. The problem, however, is how. Currently, the only obstacle for a curious teenager is a click on 'I am over 18' - self-certification that has the same legal value as an 'I swear'. More effective age control systems have been discussed for years. But introducing them means entering minefield: on the one hand there is the need to protect minors, on the other the protection of privacy.

Over the past two years, several governments - from the United States to Europe - have adopted laws requiring pornographic sites to verify the age of users more strictly. Pornhub has reacted by shutting down access in all countries where it considers the verification methods unsafe or unsustainable. This happened in US states such as Utah, Texas, Mississippi and Virginia, where new regulations require age verification through official documents, uploaded via external portals or state apps. In Louisiana, for example, the LA Wallet app is used, which contains the digital version of the driver's licence. The site only receives confirmation of age, not personal data, but the obligatory passage from a government app has raised privacy concerns.

Pornhub responded with an information campaign led by performer Cherie DeVille, arguing that these laws only divert traffic to unregulated sites (such as Telegram), where the risks for minors and adults are far worse. The official position of Aylo, the site's parent company, is that the responsibility for age verification should not lie with the platforms, but with the devices: Apple, Google or Microsoft, for instance, could provide an anonymous age confirmation system already built in. 'We need solutions that guarantee security, privacy and ease of use,' Alex Kekesi, vice-president of Aylo, told Le Monde. A model that anticipates what is also envisaged by the Digital Services Act, which introduced the European Digital Wallet.

In Europe, the topic gained momentum with the introduction in 2024 of the Digital Services Act (DSA), the regulation that imposes new responsibilities on large digital platforms. The DSA imposes new obligations on large digital platforms, such as Pornhub, Stripchat and Xvideos, including the removal of illegal content, the protection of minors and the assessment of systemic risks, including deepfake and revenge porn. In particular, the regulation requires these platforms to assess and mitigate systemic risks associated with their services, including the dissemination of child sexual abuse material, non-consensual sharing of intimate content and the use of deepfakes, videos generated with artificial intelligence.