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Adult media giant Pornhub said au revoir to France Wednesday after fighting with its government over new age verification rules — sending the country of love into a frenzy.
The law now requires users to upload a photo ID to access adult websites, instead of just clicking on a button that says they’re 18.
Critics argued there are less invasive ways to keep children out of porn.
So in place of videos of porn, French users who visit Pornhub are now greeted by a topless Marianne — the symbolic representation of the republic’s ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity — and the phrase “freedom doesn’t have an off button.”
And Frenchies are losing it.
“Another attack on freedom. What’s next?” raged Loire Valley resident Enguerran Richy on social media.
“And then we give lessons in democracy to other countries,” snarked Paris resident Maxime Fontanier.
The famously libertine French were the second biggest Pornhub consumers last year – trailing only the US.
French President Emmanual Macron — who notoriously had an affair with his wife Brigitte when he was a 15-year-old schoolboy and she was his much older, married drama teacher — had been pushing hard for the law, arguing French boys get into porn at a young age.
More than half of France’s 12-year-old boys visit porn sites, according to an investigation released Tuesday by the country’s regulatory authority for audiovisual and digital communications.
Eva Hicks, who goes by the screen name Little Angel and was the top porn star on the site in France in 2024, says the move will just push adult content creators to post X-rated videos on social media instead.
“These are platforms accessible to minors, which is precisely the problem our government was trying to solve,” Hicks told The Post. “There’s a clear contradiction here.”
“Removing access to specialized platforms actually encourages the trivialization of pornography on mainstream social media.”
Others found a fairly easy workaround.
“A VPN app and it’ll be like they peed in the wind,” said Toulouse’s Julien Carlot-Meunier.
And he was right — it took a mere 30 minutes after Pornhub blocked access for one of the leading VPN providers to see sign-ups jump an astronomical 1,000%.
“This is more than when TikTok blocked Americans,” Proton VPN posted on X.
The Canadian-owned porn conglomerate blasted the new government regulations as “unreasonable, disproportionate and ineffective.”
“We built Proton VPN to help people in authoritarian countries with online censorship, an access gateway for porn was obviously not what we had in mind, but VPN can be used in this way,” a Proton spokesperson admitted to The Post.
Meanwhile, French authorities — who engaged in a fiery exchange with Pornhub all week — were thrilled.
“Good riddance!” fumed French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot.
“Less violent, degrading, and humiliating content accessible to minors in France. Goodbye!” ranted Equality Minister Aurore Bergé.
The most searched term on the platform had been “française” — the feminine version of the word French — meaning users were mostly interested in watching their own countrywomen in action. “MILF,” “mature woman” and “woman with glasses” were also popular searches.
English (US)