Pornhub blocked Arizona residents on Sept. 26, following through on an announcement to restrict access once the state’s newly passed age verification law took effect.
Website users who tried to log on Friday were instead met a screen that showed a message highlighting the new law.
“We believe that the best and most effective solution for protecting children and adults alike is to identify users by their device and allow access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that identification,” the message reads. “Until a real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in Arizona.”
Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, signed the age verification bill into law earlier this year. It requires websites and social media platforms where more than a third of its content is pornography to verify their users are at least 18 years old. The companies operating the websites must require identification or use an age verification system.
It was sponsored by first-term Republican lawmaker Nick Kupper, who hoped it would reduce the number of children accessing porn.
Pornhub has already stopped operating in 21 states because of similar laws the company says make the internet “more dangerous for adults and children.” Online rankings typically list the site as one of the most visited in the world.
Here’s what to know.
Why Pornhub is down?
Montreal-based Aylo, the parent company of Pornhub, announced it would shut down to Arizona users once the state’s new age-verification law took effect. That date was Sept. 26.
What does Arizona’s age verification law do?
The law requires porn sites, defined as sites with 30% or more of sexual content that’s “harmful to minors,” to obtain a government ID or another “commercially reasonable method” to verify users are 18 or older.
Other methods could include credit card information and an uploaded photo.
How will it be enforced?
The new law will allow parents or guardians of children who got onto a “harmful” site that didn’t use one of the law’s methods to sue the site’s owners. A successful lawsuit would mean fines of $10,000 for every day the site didn’t comply with the law, $10,000 for each time it unlawfully transmitted the identifying day, and up to $250,000 if a child actually accessed porn on the site.
“Bona fide news” and “public interest broadcast” or other reports would not be affected, nor would search engines and internet providers.
Are there workarounds to accessing Pornhub in Ariona?
Despite the law and Pornhub’s restriction in Arizona, accessing mainstream porn sites won’t be impossible.
Website visitors could use a virtual private network, or VPN, to make it appear as if they live in a different state — one without a law like Arizona’s, according to Timothy Libert.
Libert is a former Google engineer who currently operates webXray, LLC, a website that checks how sites of all types leak consumers’ private information to third parties.
What are the arguments for and against?
Against: Aylo claims regulations that collect “significant amounts of highly sensitive personal information” puts user safety in jeopardy and will encourage users to “migrate to darker corners of the internet” where rules aren’t followed. The company claimed that happened in Louisiana, where its business there dropped by 80%.
Critics of the law warn that a site operator could sell the ID information, which could also be obtained by hackers and disseminated.
First Amendment advocates worry Arizonans who use the site will lose something their constitutional rights should protect: access to information, no matter how offensive or objectionable some may find it.
At the Arizona Capitol, many Democrats and groups like the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona opposed it, contending it was merely part of a conservative effort to eradicate pornography entirely.
Twelve Arizona Democrats in the House voted initially in favor of Kupper’s law. After listening to critics who feared the law could unfairly target LGBTQ-oriented sites that weren’t pornographic, only three Democratic lawmakers — one in the Senate and two in the House — voted in favor of it on final passage.
For: Kupper, who sponsored the law, said porn “warps children’s minds” and that if most children stop viewing it, “it builds a better society for us.”
Center for Arizona Policy, a Christian conservative advocacy group that supports the law, called pornography “a social toxin that destroys relationships, steals innocence, erodes compassion, and breeds violence against women.”
Republicans have long held an anti-porn stance, including in the conservative Project 2025 policy guide, which seeks to criminalize pornography. The Republican-dominated Arizona Legislature declared pornography a public health crisis in a 2019 resolution.
Hobbs signed the bill into law without explanation.
Reporter Stacey Barchenger contributed to this article.
Reach the reporter at rstern@arizonarepublic.com or 480-276-3237. Follow him on X @raystern.
Taylor Seely is a First Amendment Reporting Fellow at The Arizona Republic / azcentral.com. Do you have a story about the government infringing on your First Amendment rights? Reach her at tseely@arizonarepublic.com or by phone at 480-476-6116.
Seely’s role is funded through a collaboration between the Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Why is Pornhub blocked in Arizona? Here’s what to know