The popular adult content site Pornhub could be blocked in Canada soon if an upcoming bill is passed.
Bill S-210, which is a bill that would require Canadians to verify their age before accessing porn online, is currently waiting for consideration in the House of Commons after already passing through the Senate.
The bill is intended to protect young Canadians from "the harmful effects" of exposure to sexually explicit material by not allowing them to access pornography unless they can prove they are of legal age.
According to The Canadian Press, the owners of Pornhub say that blocking Canadian access to their site is an option they might enforce to persuade the House to reject the bill, and it could also be enforced if the bill is passed.
“We’ve taken different options in different jurisdictions,” said Solomon Friedman, who works for a company that owns Pornhub's parent company. "I don’t want to speculate on (the bill) in its current state. We’re going to committee to ensure that the wrong legislation doesn’t get passed."
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who aims to beat Justin Trudeau and become prime minister in the next election, has also backed the idea of making Canadians verify their age online before accessing porn, per CBC News.
So does Pornhub have the stones to go through with a block in Canada?
The quickie answer is yes, because they've already done it in the U.S.
In 2023, Pornhub blocked access to all users in Utah over a similar age verification law that required users to verify they were over 18.
Since then, Pornhub has also blocked access to users in North Carolina, Montana, Utah, Arkansas, Virginia and Mississippi over similar laws according to The Verge. Those states have a combined population of over 29 million, compared to the more than 38 million in Canada.
"We will never ever take the private identifying information of our users,” Friedman said in an interview with The Canadian Press. “(We) will always comply with the law. That’s either by imposing the solution, not operating... or in addition to all those, challenging these in law, if we think that they violate some higher legal principal like the Constitution."
The Pornhub age verification page. Sarah Rohoman | Narcity
Currently, Pornhub is not blocked in Canada, and when you try to access it, the site does ask you to confirm that you are 18 or older.
If Pornhub does decide to block access to users in Canada over Bill S-210, one of the workaround methods to access the site would be to use a Virtual Private Network (VPN), which allows you to set your location as somewhere other than Canada.
A VPN is used to mask your internet address using a dummy address that can be based in another location. It also encrypts your info to protect your privacy, according to NordVPN, one of the more popular paid services.
You can use a VPN to pretend you're in another city, another state or another country altogether. In other words, you could pretend to be in the U.S. to get around a block on Canada.
VPNs are legal in the United States and Canada, although some other countries have banned them.
This article's cover image was used for illustrative purposes only.