Internet News

Ofcom has published a notional fine of £1.4 million to a company running 4 porn tubes sites

Ofcom notes the following sites which are all still available in the UK without ID/age verification:

• crazyporn.xxx
• hoes.tube
• love4porn.com.
• justpornflix.com,
• 4kporn.xxx

It seems likely that these fines will be simply ignored. A recent question in the House of Lords suggest that only one Ofcom fine has actually been paid so far.

Also the websites have been transferred from 8579 LLC to Reply Buzzer Ltd. Maybe this is somehow connected to the Ofcom censorship efforts.

Ofcom writes:

Ofcom has determined that 8579 LLC failed to comply with section 12 of the Act, and this failure is ongoing in relation to one of the services it operates. Section 12 imposes a duty on providers of Part 3 services that allow pornographic content, and that are likely to be accessed by children, to ensure that children are prevented from encountering pornographic content through the use of highly effective age assurance.

From 25 July 2025 until at least 19 November 2025, 8579 LLC failed to implement highly effective age assurance on its services crazyporn.xxx, hoes.tube, and love4porn.com. For justpornflix.com, this failure is ongoing.

The scope of our investigation originally also included the services 4kporn.xxx and 429.xxx. However, following a possible change in provider prior to Ofcom issuing its Provisional Decision 203 from 8579 LLC to Reply Buzzer Ltd - we have not made findings in relation to either site in our final decision.

We are imposing a penalty on 8579 LLC of £1,350,000 in respect of the contravention of section 12.

In addition, 8579 LLC is now required to comply with section 12 by taking steps to implement highly effective age assurance on justpornflix.com, of which it is still the provider, by 5pm GMT on 23 February 2026.

Should 8579 LLC fail to comply with this requirement, a daily rate penalty of £1,000 per day will be imposed starting from 23 February 2026 until the section 12 duty is complied with, or 3 June 2026, whichever is sooner.

Ofcom has also determined that 8579 LLC has failed to comply with section 102(8) of the Act by failing to respond to a statutory request for information, issued as part of the investigation, within the specified time frame. We are imposing a penalty on 8579 LLC of £50,000 in respect of the contravention of section 102(8).

In addition, 8579 LLC is now required to take immediate steps to provide Ofcom with a complete list of all sites operated by 8579 LLC.

Should 8579 LLC fail to comply with this requirement, a daily rate penalty of £250 per day will be imposed starting from 21 February 2026 until the section 102(8) duty is complied with or 22 April 2026, whichever is sooner.

 

See article from ofcom.org.uk

A little earlier Ofcom also notionally fined Kick Online Entertainment S.A a total of £830,000 for its motherless.com porn tube website. Ofcom writes:

From 25 July until 29 December 2025, Kick Online failed to implement highly effective age assurance on its service, motherless.com. After Ofcom issued a Provisional Decision to Kick Online, it implemented a method of age assurance that is capable of being highly effective.

We are imposing a penalty on Kick Online of £800,000 in respect of its contravention of section 12 (lack of ID/age verification). We are imposing a penalty on Kick Online of £30,000 in respect of the contravention of section 102(8) (failure to provide information demanded by Ofcom).

In addition, Kick Online is now required to take immediate steps to provide Ofcom with a complete list of all pornographic sites that it operates.

Should Kick Online fail to comply with this requirement, a daily rate penalty of £200 will be imposed starting from 12 February 2026 until the section 102(8) duty is complied with or 13 April 2026, whichever is sooner.

The US State Department is developing an online portal that will allow users in Europe and other regions to view content banned by their governments. Three sources familiar with the plan told Reuters that Washington sees the initiative as a way to counter censorship.

The site will operate at freedom.gov, according to the sources. One of the sources said officials have discussed including a VPN (virtual private network) feature that would make user traffic appear to originate in the United States. The same source added that user activity on the site will not be tracked. The project is being led by Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers.

In a statement to Reuters, a State Department spokesman said the US government does not have a specific censorship circumvention program for Europe, but stressed that digital freedom is a priority for the State Department, and this includes the proliferation of privacy and censorship circumvention technologies like VPNs.

The Trump administration has placed freedom of expression at the center of its foreign policy, especially in cases where it assesses that conservative voices are being restricted online, including in Europe and Brazil.

EU censors regularly ask US-based platforms to remove content and, as a last resort, can impose bans. Platform X, owned by Trump ally Elon Musk, was fined 120 million euros in December for failing to comply with the rules.

In Germany, during 2024, authorities issued 482 removal orders for material they deemed to support or incite terrorism and forced providers to delete 16,771 pieces of content. Similarly, Metas supervisory board in 2024 ordered the removal of posts by a Polish political party that used racial slurs and portrayed immigrants as rapists, a category that EU law treats as illegal hate speech.

Pornhub explains in a press release:

In line with other stakeholder groups, academics and public policy institutions, Aylo's assessment is that the Online Safety Act (OSA) has not achieved its intended goal of protecting minors. Effective February 2, 2026 Aylo will no longer participate in the failed system that has been created in the United Kingdom as a result of the OSA's introduction. Based on Aylo's data and experience, this law and regulatory framework have made the internet more dangerous for minors and adults and jeopardizes the privacy and personal data of UK citizens.

New users in the UK will no longer be able to access Aylo's content sharing platforms, including Pornhub, YouPorn, and Redtube. UK users who have verified their age will retain access through their existing accounts.

Statement by Alex Kekesi, VP Brand and Community, on behalf of Aylo:

We've made the difficult decision to restrict access to our sites (user-uploaded content platforms, including Pornhub, YouPorn, Redtube) in the United Kingdom.

As of February 2, 2026, our library of thoroughly moderated and consensual adult entertainment, on one of the most trusted adult sites in the world, will be restricted. Our sites, which host legal and regulated porn, will no longer be available in the UK to new users, but thousands of irresponsible porn sites will still be easy to access.

Aylo initially participated in the Online Safety Act (OSA) because we wanted to believe that a determined and prepared regulator in Ofcom could take poor legislation and manage to enforce compliance in a meaningful way, while offering more privacy preserving age assurance methods than we'd seen in other jurisdictions. Despite the clear intent of the law to restrict minors' access to adult content and commitment to enforcement, after 6 months of implementation, our experience strongly suggests that the OSA has failed to achieve that objective. 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.

In October we met with both the government department which authored the OSA, and the UK regulator responsible for enforcing it, to re-iterate our concerns about the law's vulnerabilities. We presented data and continued advocating for a device-based solution and are disappointed that despite the evidence shared, such little progress has been made, especially when an alternative and viable solution exists.

Aylo consulted with the regulator and was committed to giving the OSA every chance to succeed, but we believe Ofcom was given an impossible mandate. In our view, it is clear this is too big a challenge for any regulator to execute within the parameters of the Act. Based on our data and experience, effective enforcement is not possible, circumvention is rampant, privacy is compromised, and new, unregulated sites quickly fill any gaps left by responsible operators. In other jurisdictions, Aylo has often been one of the only major platforms to comply, only to see traffic diverted to even larger, non-compliant sites. Although larger operators are compliant, we believe the OSA has created an ecosystem where the vast majority of sites with age-inappropriate content are left unchecked. Users are turning to sites that do not have uploader verification measures and do not moderate content, leading to an increased risk of exposure to dangerous or illegal content. What is alarming about the top 10 Google and Bing search results for free porn in the UK is not just that more than half of the sites lack any age verification, but that the specific sites keep changing. (January 20, 2026) Search results are constantly replenished with new, non-compliant sites, demonstrating how easily new players can enter the market. This revolving door means the internet remains wide open to unmoderated, unverified and potentially unsafe content, regardless of how many times authorities attempt to crack down. The longer this goes on, these non-compliant sites are accessed by more minors and adults. As outlined by Lucy Faithfull Foundation, we know that when faced with age verification, some adults are choosing riskier, irresponsible sites to avoid age checks. Alternatively, they seek out solutions to circumvent restrictions by using virtual private networks (VPNs) to connect to the same websites via a different country.

We remain committed to working with the UK, European Commission and other international partners to ensure the lessons learned in the UK inform future policymaking. We continue to believe that to make the internet safer for everyone, every phone, tablet or computer should start as a kid-safe device. We've seen progress in this space with Apple's recent iOS 26.1 update, which enables built-in content filters to limit adult websites by default on existing minors' accounts and requires parental consent to disable them. This method blocks access to known adult content websites, cannot be circumvented with VPNs and does not introduce any data privacy risks. This is a big step for online safety that can go even further. We encourage all device manufacturers to make this the default setting on all devices, not just known minor accounts, to better protect everyone. Laws should mandate that only adults be allowed to unlock access to age-inappropriate content. We are determined to be part of this solution and want to collaborate with government, civil society and tech partners to arrive at an effective device-based age verification solution.

 

The BBC makes an interesting comment with reference to an upcoming censorship law that will ban choking and strangulation content on porn websites. How on earth are foreign porn websites expected to implement such a ban on material that is so commonplace, just for the UK. Perhaps the answer is to simply self block in the UK with the knowledge that keen UK users with a VPN can still access it.

The BBC article notes:

Anti porn campaigner Prof Clare McGlynn believes Pornhub would prefer VPN usage to having to regulate or moderate its content more, particularly as the UK looks to restrict more material. The UK government recently announced plans to make online porn showing strangulation or suffocation illegal.

On VPNs being used to get around checks, social media expert Matt Navara says Pornhub's decision to restrict UK access may be more about creating a legal firewall about restrictions than a protest. He said:

I think blocking UK access lets Pornhub dodge some of the regulations, skip the costs and still collect the traffic from users they can no longer see.

Ofcom writes:

Ofcom has set out the next steps in its investigation into X, and the limitations of the UKs Online Safety Act in relation to AI chatbots.

Ofcom was one of the first regulators in the world to act on concerning reports of the Grok AI chatbot account on X being used to create and share demeaning sexual deepfakes of real people, including children, which may amount to criminal offences.

After contacting X on 5 January , giving it a chance to explain how these images had been shared at such scale, we moved quickly to launch a formal investigation on 12 January into whether the company had done enough to assess and mitigate the risk of this imagery spreading on its social media platform, and to take it down quickly where it was identified.

Since then, X has said it has implemented measures to try and address the issue. We have been in close contact with the Information Commissioners Office, which is launching its own investigation. Other jurisdictions have also launched investigations in the weeks since we opened ours, including the European Commission on 26 January.

Our investigation remains ongoing and we continue to work closely with the ICO and others to ensure tech firms keep users safe and protect their privacy.

Not all AI chatbots are regulated

Broadly, the Online Safety Act regulates user-to-user services, search services and services that publish pornographic content.

Chatbots are not subject to regulation at all if they:

• only allow people to interact with the chatbot itself and no other users (i.e. they are not user-to-user services);

• do not search multiple websites or databases when giving responses to users (i.e. are not search services); and

• cannot generate pornographic content.

We are not investigating xAI at this time.

When we opened our investigation into X, we said we were assessing whether we should also investigate xAI, as the provider of the standalone Grok service. We continue to demand answers from xAI about the risks it poses. We are examining whether to launch an investigation into its compliance with the rules requiring services that publish pornographic material to use highly effective age checks to prevent children from accessing that content.

Because of the way the Act relates to chatbots, as explained above, we are currently unable to investigate the creation of illegal images by the standalone Grok service in this case.

Where we are in our X investigation

In our investigation into X, we are currently gathering and analysing evidence to determine whether X has broken the law, including using our formal information-gathering powers. The week after we launched our investigation, we sent legally binding information requests to X, to make sure we have the information we need from the company, and further requests continue to be sent.

Firms are required, by law, to respond to all such requests from Ofcom in an accurate, complete and timely way, and they can expect to face fines if they fail to do so.

We must give any company we investigate a full opportunity to make representations on our case. If, based on the evidence, we consider that the company has failed to comply with its legal duties, we will issue a provisional decision setting out our views and the evidence upon which we are relying. The company will then have an opportunity to respond to our findings in full, as required by the Act, before we make our final decision.

We know there is significant public interest in our investigation into X. We are progressing the investigation as a matter of urgency. We will provide updates and will be as open as possible during this process. It is important to note that enforcement investigations such as these take time -- typically months.

We must follow strict rules about how and when we can share information publicly, as is the case for any enforcement agency, and it would not be appropriate to provide a running commentary about the substantive details of a live investigation. Running a fair process is essential to ensuring that any final decisions are robust, effective, and that they stick.

While in the most serious cases of ongoing non-compliance we can apply for a court order requiring broadband providers to block access to a site in the UK, the law sets a high bar for such applications, and a specific process must be followed before we can do this. It would be a significant regulatory intervention and is not one we are likely to make routinely, given the impact it could have on freedom of expression in the UK.