Major pornography provider shuts off access to new UK users, citing age verification constraints

By Georgiana Ralphs, CNN

London (CNN) — New users in the United Kingdom will be unable to access Aylo’s pornography sites, including Pornhub, YouPorn and RedTube, from Monday, the company has said, citing changes to age verification requirements that it claims have made the internet less safe.

Those with existing accounts and who have already verified their age will retain access, Aylo said in a statement announcing the move last week.

The UK mandated age verification on pornography websites in July 2025, as part of the Online Safety Act, with the aim of preventing children from encountering pornographic content online. In the six months since, the UK’s Office of Communications (Ofcom) says the UK’s top 10 most visited pornography platforms have complied. Pornhub claims traffic to its site has dropped 77%, and while the use of virtual private networks (VPNs) – which allow users to artificially locate themselves in a country without restrictions – to access the site initially soared, they then plateaued, according to Ofcom. Ofcom and advocates for online safety have deemed the laws a preliminary success.

But Aylo, Pornhub’s Canadian parent company, argues that based on its own “data and experience,” age verification has “made the internet more dangerous for minors and adults and jeopardizes the privacy and personal data of UK citizens.”

This, the company said, is because the age verification framework “in practice has diverted traffic to darker, unregulated corners of the internet,” where noncompliant sites offer dangerous or illegal content to users.

Experts give a more skeptical assessment.

Iain Corby, from the Age Verification Providers Association, told CNN it was too early to tell whether the laws have altered children’s access to pornography, since specific data will not be available until Ofcom releases its annual Children’s Media Use and Attitudes survey in the spring. However, Corby pointed toward research from Internet Matters, published in December, that showed children are using VPNs at the same rate as prior to the changes last summer as an example of early success.

The decrease in Pornhub’s traffic over the past six months also suggests the laws are working to stop children from accidentally stumbling across pornographic content, said Ian Henderson, founder and chief executive of the UK charity Naked Truth Project, which seeks to tackle addiction to pornography. Research published last year by the UK Children’s Commissioner indicated that 27% of those surveyed had seen pornography online by age 11 and that 59% had seen it by accident.

Henderson said most of the people his charity helped said they had first encountered pornography by accident.

While the UK’s age verification laws may be achieving their goal of preventing children from accidentally or easily seeing pornographic content, some research suggests the measure may be exposing adults to more harmful content.

Online polling by the Lucy Faithful Foundation – a UK nonprofit which runs a hotline for those worried about their pornography use – suggests that 45% of those surveyed had visited sites that didn’t comply with the age verification laws in order to avoid sharing their private information. On these noncompliant sites, 39% said they had watched content that made them uncomfortable.

A spokesperson for the Lucy Faithfull Foundation told CNN it supports the Online Safety Act but wants people to be aware of the content they are consuming.

Corby urged Ofcom “to ensure there is a level playing field requiring age verification for all pornographic websites accessed from the UK, through comprehensive and rapid enforcement at scale,” and noted that wider availability of age verification technology made compliance easier and cheaper than before for adult sites.

“Where foreign operators refuse to comply,” Corby said, “Ofcom now needs to use its business disruption powers to tackle them where it hurts – their ability to profit from UK users.”

Clare McGlynn, a law professor at Durham University, said the industry’s profit-driven nature made her skeptical of Aylo’s stated reasons for its decision. She told CNN she believed the move was “part of a calculated public relations campaign to challenge current legislation,” intended to “galvanize the public into rejecting restrictions on porn content and age verification.”

Henderson also questioned Aylo’s motivation. “There’s a difference between compliance and care,” he said.

“They’re a profit-making company,” Henderson continued. “Any platform would prefer to have registered users that they have control over the data of than just anonymous users.”

An Ofcom spokesperson told CNN the UK had seen widespread adoption of age verification since the laws were introduced. “We’ve taken strong and swift action against non-compliance, launching investigations into more than 80 porn sites and fining a porn provider £1 million, with more to come.”

Ofcom “will continue our dialogue with Aylo to understand this change to its position,” the spokesperson added.

Aylo’s decision may be a reversal on its previous cooperation with UK regulators, but experts say it remains consistent with its actions internationally. McGlynn pointed out that Aylo has also restricted access in many US states with similar age verification laws. The moves are all made with “the same aim of sparking debate and hoping to reverse the trend in legislation on age assurance,” she said.

And age verification as a trend is growing. The European Commission has developed an Age Verification Blueprint to help online platforms in member states implement “a user-friendly and privacy-preserving age verification method.” Canada is looking again at passing legislation to restrict young people’s online access to pornographic material after a first attempt in 2023 stalled.

In Australia, strict age verification on pornography will come into force from March 9, the second phase of an effort to protect young people online, which began with the social media ban for under 16s in December. A spokesperson from the country’s Office of the eSafety Commission told CNN that Aylo had “actively participated” in the drafting of its age verification laws. “eSafety will be carefully monitoring and, where necessary, investigating industry participants’ compliance with the codes after they commence,” the spokesperson said.

Aylo said it would “remain committed to working with the UK, European Commission and other international partners to ensure the lessons learned in the UK inform future policymaking.”

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