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Pornhub and other Aylo-owned platforms blocked ordinary access from North Carolina and Montana as the states’ online age-verification requirements took effect. Aylo describes the move as a privacy, safety and compliance decision—not a government order making adult pornography illegal. Adults using in-state connections were affected along with minors.
What happened
North Carolina’s Protecting Adults and Victims from Exploitation (PAVE) Act took effect on January 1, 2024. Aylo, Pornhub’s parent company, blocked users in North Carolina as the law came into force. Contemporary reports also described Aylo blocking Montana users around the same period, at the start of 2024.
The restriction covered more than Pornhub. Aylo’s own age-verification fact sheet lists its platforms—including YouPorn and RedTube—among services blocked in jurisdictions where the company says it will not adopt the required verification approach: Aylo’s age-verification fact sheet.
Visitors generally saw a location-based notice instead of the service. The block was implemented through geographic detection, normally based on the apparent location of an IP address. That means results can differ for travelers, mobile users, people on corporate or campus networks, and anyone whose provider has inaccurate geolocation data. Reports of carrier-specific inconsistencies are anecdotal, not a systematic measure of the block.
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Contemporary coverage of the rollout is available from Ars Technica, FOX Carolina and Axios.
What North Carolina’s law requires
Who is covered
The statute applies to a commercial entity that knowingly and intentionally publishes or distributes material harmful to minors from a website containing a “substantial portion” of that material. North Carolina defines that phrase as more than 33⅓ percent of the website’s total material. The definitions are in North Carolina General Statutes § 66-500.
Permitted verification methods
A covered site must use either a commercially available database regularly used by businesses or government entities for age and identity verification, or another commercially reasonable age-and-identity verification method. The law does not mandate only a driver’s-license upload.
Privacy and liability rules
Under § 66-501, identifying information may not be retained after access is granted. The law also permits civil actions by a parent or guardian whose minor accessed covered material and by a person whose identifying information was unlawfully retained. Available remedies include injunctions, compensatory damages, punitive damages and litigation costs.
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Bona fide news and public-interest organizations are exempt. Internet service providers, search engines and cloud providers are protected when they merely connect users to third-party material they do not control. The law’s enactment and effective date appear in Session Law 2023-132 and the legislature’s plain-language summary.
What Montana required
Montana also adopted a government age-verification requirement for websites serving adult material, and Aylo identified the state as one where it blocked its platforms rather than implement the required system. The available materials establish that central point, but do not establish Montana’s exact statutory threshold, retention rule, penalties or effective-date details. Those specifics should be taken from the current Montana Code or legislative record rather than inferred from North Carolina’s law.
Was Pornhub banned?
Not in the ordinary sense of a state order criminalizing adults’ possession or viewing of pornography. The states imposed duties on covered commercial websites; Aylo chose to restrict access from the affected states rather than verify users under those systems. The practical result was that residents using ordinary in-state connections could not normally reach Aylo’s services.
Other adult websites were not automatically removed from the internet. Their responses could include verification, geoblocking, changing their content mix or declining to comply. A VPN or proxy can alter a site’s apparent location, but it does not settle the underlying legal, contractual, privacy or age-assurance questions and may produce unreliable results.
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Why Aylo says it blocked the states
Aylo says it supports protecting minors but objects to state-by-state systems that it considers inconsistent, difficult to enforce and risky for privacy. Its fact sheet argues that repeatedly submitting identity information to individual adult sites can create breach and misuse risks. It also says selective enforcement may drive users toward less responsible sites while compliant major platforms lose access.
Aylo favors age assurance at the device, operating-system or approved-wallet level, where an age status could be established without each adult website receiving the user’s identity information. These are the company’s policy arguments, not findings that every proposed system would produce those outcomes.
The counterarguments and unresolved trade-offs
- Child protection: Supporters say commercial platforms should take direct responsibility for preventing minors’ access.
- Privacy: A third-party or anonymous token system might reduce disclosure, while a poorly designed verifier could still expose sensitive information.
- Coverage: A rule applying unevenly across large and small, domestic and offshore sites may leave many services available.
- Market effects: Blocking a heavily moderated platform could shift some users toward services with weaker moderation, although that outcome requires evidence in a particular market.
- Constitutional durability: Aylo or other litigants may argue that the laws burden protected speech or privacy; that is a legal claim, not an established ruling.
What “no retention” does—and does not—mean
North Carolina’s deletion requirement addresses storage after access is granted. It does not necessarily mean that no information is collected, transmitted to a verifier, matched against a database or logged during the transaction. It also does not by itself describe how a vendor protects data in transit or what happens if a system is breached. Those are separate questions about collection, transmission, matching, security and linkability to browsing activity.
The practical user experience
- Users connecting from an in-state residential network generally received a block notice.
- Traveling outside the state can produce a different result because the apparent location changes.
- Mobile networks, carrier-grade NAT, VPNs, proxies, hotels, workplaces and campuses can create location errors.
- Adults without supported identification, users of shared devices and visitors with foreign documents may face additional verification problems.
- The restrictions did not necessarily block every adult website or every form of adult material.
What traffic data can—and cannot—show
Reports from other regulated jurisdictions have cited traffic reductions of roughly 80% to 95% in Louisiana, while other accounts described major declines in searches or visits in North Carolina and Utah. Those figures differ in source, period and metric—visits, sessions, searches or total traffic—and should not be treated as measurements of Montana or North Carolina without comparable methodology. See Axios and Time for the reported estimates.
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A wider state-by-state patchwork
Aylo’s fact sheet lists Utah, Virginia, Texas, Montana, Mississippi, Arkansas and North Carolina among jurisdictions where it has blocked platforms. State laws vary in definitions, exemptions, enforcement and remedies. That patchwork creates different duties for the same service, uncertain coverage for smaller or offshore operators and pressure for companies to geoblock rather than build multiple compliance systems.
Possible alternatives include anonymous age tokens, zero-knowledge proofs, digital wallets, operating-system credentials, parental controls, app-store restrictions and a federal standard. Each raises its own questions about who issues the credential, how shared devices work, whether offshore sites can be reached and whether a centralized age system could become a surveillance tool.
Current status as of August 18, 2026
Axios reported in August 2026 that Pornhub was pursuing a legal challenge aimed at returning to North Carolina after users there had been unable to access the site for nearly three years. The report establishes a current legal effort, not a statewide restoration.
There is no established basis here to say that a court has struck down North Carolina’s rules, issued a statewide injunction or that Aylo has removed its geoblock. Those conclusions require the case docket, pleadings, any court order and a confirmed company implementation change.
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Separate scrutiny of Aylo
Aylo’s age-verification position should not be confused with separate investigations and allegations concerning content moderation and representations about efforts to prevent child sexual abuse material and nonconsensual sexual content. The Federal Trade Commission’s related materials are at its 2025 enforcement announcement and case listing.
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