France extends age verification measures to porn giants

France introduced new regulations Thursday that will require major pornography sites to check the ages of visitors or risk being blocked.

France introduced rules in January that required all French porn websites and those based outside the European Union to introduce a mechanism to check the age of users.

This was extended with a decree published Thursday that widens the measures to companies based in the European Union, meaning Cyprus-based PornHub and YouPorn as well as Hungary-based Jacquie et Michel.

France’s culture ministry said the move will “at last enable us to block minors from accessing the most-visited porngraphic websites in France”, calling it “a major advance in the protection of our children and adolescents.”

Successive governments have battled for years to find ways to stop young people viewing online pornography while balancing the right to privacy of adult users.

Age verification can be done with a credit card or by sending an identity document, but websites are also required to offer at least one “double blind” option for users to prove their age without revealing their identity.

This entails the user uploading an identity document to a service provider, which then sends confirmation they are old enough to visit the site to the porn provider without revealing the user’s identity.

Aylo, the parent company of Pornhub, has said it will comply with the law but has warned that the rules would likely prove “ineffective” and “dangerous” for users’ security and privacy.

It argues that under-age internet users could be sent to other less regulated and more extreme areas of the internet.

A 2023 report by French senators entitled “Hell Behind the Scenes” concluded that there was “massive, ordinary and toxic” viewing of porn by children, as well as routinely violent content.

The report found that two thirds of children aged 15 or less had seen pornographic content.