Pornhub blocks access in two more states, Montana and North Carolina, in protest of the states' age verification laws that went into effect on January 1
The funny thing is, while the NC law is clumsily implemented and of course puts a ridiculous barrier of entry up, the immediate impacts of it might be . . . good? — Compliance will be hardest for sites like PornHub that thrive off of providing free, ad-driven revenue, much of it making millions while giving little back to the sex workers themselves. … X: Rob Leathern / @robleathern : Internet 2000: “all your base are belong to us” Internet 2024: “all your face are belong to us”. 2024 will be the year to debate online age verification it seems. Samantha Cole / @samleecole : they join a list of states where VPNs are suddenly very popular, including Virginia, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Utah. you may also recall that Texas porn sites are now required to tell you that the health dept thinks porn gives you brain damage https://www.404media.co/... Samantha Cole / @samleecole : most telling part of all this: the senator who pushed for the law in NC said it wasn't crafted to go after social media sites, but that “we need some kind of firewall for hard core pornography.” a) what do you think is all over twitter? b) where do you think that logic leads? Forums: r/Montana : Pornhub blocks access in Montana r/NorthCarolina : With the recent law going into affect today..... r/NorthCarolina : PSA: Pornhub is now disabled in North Carolina
Context & Ripple Effects
Pornhub had already used state-level shutdowns as its response to age-verification mandates, including a block in Mississippi and Virginia after reporting a sharp Louisiana traffic decline following age gating. Montana and North Carolina extend that approach rather than representing a one-off protest.
The move lands amid an unsettled policy environment: a temporary injunction against Texas enforcement showed that implementation could face legal challenge, while individual states continued to put their own access rules into effect.
First-order effects
- Users in Montana and North Carolina lose access to Pornhub immediately, while Pornhub avoids implementing the states' required age-verification flows.
- The shutdown turns the site into a visible opponent of the new rules, making the practical consequence of compliance legislation apparent to affected residents and lawmakers.
Second-order effects
- Free, ad-supported adult sites face a sharper choice between absorbing verification costs and privacy friction, restricting service by state, or changing their operating model.
- State-by-state requirements can redirect audiences toward services that make different compliance choices, while raising the value of scalable age-assurance infrastructure for sites that remain available.
Third-order effects
- If more states adopt divergent rules, online adult content is likely to become increasingly fragmented by jurisdiction rather than governed by a single nationwide access model.
- Court challenges and provider withdrawals together may make the durability of these laws depend not only on passage, but on whether states can sustain rules that major platforms will actually implement.
The trend: This is part of a broader shift toward access-control regulation that pushes online services to verify users or withdraw from particular jurisdictions.