Pornhub to stop new user registrations in the UK over Online Safety Act

Starting February 2, 2026, access to content on Pornhub, YouPorn, and Redtube in the UK will be limited to users who registered and verified their age before that date.

The move was announced by Aylo as a protest against the UK’s Online Safety Act, which came into force in 2025. One of the law’s most controversial provisions, according to The Guardian, is the requirement for media regulator Ofcom to enforce age verification on adult websites.

Aylo said it had previously flagged gaps in the legislation and expected regulators to address them, ensure consistent enforcement across the market, and develop mechanisms to minimize privacy risks associated with age checks. However, six months after the law took effect, progress remains limited, and restricting children’s access to unsafe content has yet to be achieved.

According to the company, half of the top 10 websites on Google and Bing for the search term “free porn” do not implement age verification, while the total number of such “irresponsible” platforms runs into the thousands.

“We cannot continue to operate within a system that, in our view, fails to deliver on its promise of child safety, and has had the opposite impact. We believe this framework in practice has diverted traffic to darker, unregulated corners of the internet, and has also jeopardized the privacy and personal data of UK citizens,” Aylo said.

The company added that it is open to working with regulators in different countries but considers site-level restrictions ineffective, arguing instead for age verification to be implemented at the device level.