Pornhub disabled its website in Utah following a new age verification law for porn sites, instead showing a video asking users to talk to their representatives
People in Utah who visit Pornhub will now be greeted by adult performer Cherie DeVille asking them to tell their representatives to change their age verification law.
VICESamantha Cole
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the opening move of a playbook that defined Pornhub's US politics for the next two years: rather than comply with Utah's new age-verification mandate, it switched off service entirely and replaced the homepage with performer Cherie DeVille asking visitors to lobby their representatives. The related coverage shows why the stakes were real — Pornhub had already told regulators that age gating in Louisiana cut its traffic there by roughly 80%, so verification meant losing most of a state's audience either way.
Utah residents lose direct access to Pornhub immediately, with the outage reframed as advocacy via the Cherie DeVille video directing them to contact legislators.
Second-order effects
Other states copying the law get the same response rather than compliance — Pornhub extends the block-and-video formula to Montana, North Carolina, Texas, and beyond as their statutes take effect.
Traffic doesn't disappear: UK analysis shows non-compliant adult sites gained users while compliant ones declined, meaning verification laws shift audiences toward operators willing to ignore them.
Third-order effects
If compliance reliably costs the bulk of a state's audience while non-compliers absorb it, age-verification mandates structurally favor unregulated operators — pushing platforms toward exit-as-protest and lawmakers toward enforcement mechanisms beyond site-level rules.
The trend: State-by-state age-verification laws are turning Pornhub from a compliant platform into one that blackouts entire states, redistributing adult-site traffic toward operators that refuse to verify.
Today, the Mormon Church and the Republican Party have succeeded in their relentless attempts to censor Pornhub for everyone accessing the internet in the Utah. This is what happens when you effectively have no separation between church, state, law, business and education: https:…
Great to see the work of @FamStudies & @EPPCdc bearing fruit in states across America. New NYT on state efforts to reign in big tech: https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/...
In an apparent deal with @surfshark internet VPN Utah is blocking access to @Pornhub in the state. To enjoy porn in the state you'll need VPN software. https://www.fox13now.com/... https://twitter.com/...
At least 27 U.S. states, including California, New York, Mass and Oregon, have adopted or are considering age-verification laws from online porn sites: #S210 #cdnpoli https://www.nytimes.com/...
People trying to visit Pornhub in Utah are now greeted with a video of a clothed pornstar explaining to them that because of their prudish government they may no longer access the website https://www.vice.com/...
Louisiana requiring ID to get on PornHub, Arkansas and Utah requiring parental permission for Instagram and TikTok. States starting to regulate minors' access to the internet. https://www.nytimes.com/...
For those of you sitting back and thinking oh well it's just p*rn so whatever, know that UT literally just passed the same kind of law for ALL Internet services (SB 152 and HB 311) and it's not unrealistic to assume they too will copy this move. https://www.vice.com/...
Lawmakers worried about the internet's effects on young brains have proposed age requirements for porn and other “harmful” online content. This isn't the first national panic about the internet & kids. …
None of these articles mention the really terrifying part of this which is the timely link between attempting to destroy all anonymity on the internet (the side effect of these laws) and the simultaneous targeted persecution of women, lgbtq+ people, black people, etc etc https://…
In which we revisit the time that the @ACLU posted a quiz to its website inviting people to guess the seven dirtiest words in the English language as provided in a George Carlin riff that launched a Supreme Court case (twice, depending on how you count). https://twitter.com/...