Pornhub blocked in France: France gets blocked from Pornhub on June 4, and within 30 minutes Proton VPN usage explodes by a whopping 1000%

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On June 4, Pornhub and its sister sites Redtube and YouPorn got blocked for users in France. Instead of the normal site, French users were shown a message protesting new French rules about age checks to stop minors from watching porn, as per reports.These rules were supposed to be followed by June 7, and France asked all adult sites to start age verification before that. Just 30 minutes after the block, ProtonVPN said their signups shot up by 1,000%. They said this was an even bigger spike than when the US tried to ban TikTok earlier, according to the report by POLITICO.France was actually Pornhub's second-biggest audience in 2024, after the US. Another VPN company, NordVPN, said their usage went up by 170% in France since the ban. The NordVPN rep added that these jumps usually happen when people feel their online freedom is being blocked, as mentioned in the reports.A site that tracks VPN trends, Top10VPN, said that on June 4, overall VPN demand rose by 334% compared to the average of the last 28 days. The company behind Pornhub, Aylo, said it's not totally against age verification, but they don't support France's way of doing it, according to the reports.Aylo believes France's method won't really stop minors and also puts user privacy at risk. Instead, Aylo wants any age checks to happen on the user's device, not through external methods, as stated by POLITICO.Pornhub blocked itself in protest of France's strict age verification rules for adult sites.People used VPNs like ProtonVPN to bypass the Pornhub block after the site went offline.

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