Why are NC residents searching for VPNs after porn sites cut access? Here’s what to know
After several major pornography sites cut access to North Carolina users, there’s evidence that people in this state are looking for ways to reach them anyway.
Several sites closed their virtual doors to users here just before a new law, called the Pornography Age Verification Enforcement Act, takes effect on Monday, Jan. 8. The law requires porn sites to verify users are over the age of 18 before granting them access.
But searches for “vpn”, which stands for virtual private network, spiked in Google searches starting Dec. 28. Here’s what’s going on.
What started this?
In response to the new law, Pornhub, one of the world’s leading free porn sites, is one of the sites cutting access for users in North Carolina.
“The safety of our users is one of our biggest concerns,” the statement posted on Pornhub’s website Thursday says. “We believe that the best and most effective solution for protecting children and adults alike is to identify users by their device and allow access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that identification. Until a real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in North Carolina.”
Other porn sites, such as Redtube and Youporn, have also disabled access in the state.
Texas, Virginia, Louisiana, Arkansas, Utah, Mississippi and Montana have passed similar laws, according to the N.C. Family Policy Council. But in August, a federal judge ruled that Texas’ law implements free speech restrictions that violate the First Amendment, Variety reported. The ruling was appealed by the Texas Attorney General.
When the laws went into effect in Louisiana, Pornhub saw its traffic drop by more than 80% in the state, Bloomberg Law reported. Users in Utah, Mississippi and Virginia were also blocked from accessing the site, Politico reported.
How are people reacting?
A Reddit post on Wednesday announcing Pornhub’s ban in North Carolina generated more than 1,000 comments, with most of them criticizing the site for its ban – and the state for enacting the age restriction law.
“A wise man once said, ‘I’m fairly sure if they took porn off the internet, there’d only be one website left, and it’d be called Bring Back the Porn!’” one user wrote.
Other responses noted that more North Carolinians could use VPNs to get around the porn ban.
“In other news, vpn access is thru the roof in NC,” one user commented.
What is a VPN?
VPN stands for Virtual Private Network.
According to CNET, “a VPN is software that establishes a secure connection between your computer and the internet by running your internet traffic through an encrypted tunnel to a server in a remote location.”
Evidence of increased interest in VPNs
According to data from Google Trends, searches for the term “vpn” began to rise on Thursday at 11 a.m., as news reporting on the North Caroilna user bans reached more people, and peaked the following morning at 2 a.m.
Searches for related terms also spiked in North Carolina within the same time frame, Google Trends data show.
Why the increased interest now?
VPNs keep a computer user’s internet history private by hiding IP addresses, according to CNET. Since an IP address is related to a physical location, websites visited won’t be able to tell where a person actually is.
Is VPN use legal?
Though the law requires porn sites to verify users’ ages, “it doesn’t directly place any constraints on what people seeking to access the site may do,” UNC School of Government professor Jeff Welty told The Charlotte Observer in an email, meaning the law does not explicitly ban the use of VPNs.
However, since the law allows parents to sue porn websites for damages if their children are allowed to access them, companies could be held responsible for allowing minors in.
“There’s a danger that you end up discouraging the use or even outlawing the use of VPNs or encryption or other … methods of maintaining privacy that might make it difficult to enforce these kinds of laws,” Samir Jain, vice president of policy at the Center for Democracy and Technology, told the Washington Post.
This story was originally published January 3, 2024 at 6:05 AM with the headline "Why are NC residents searching for VPNs after porn sites cut access? Here’s what to know."
