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Pornhub has announced that it will no longer be fully available in the UK from February 2 due to the impact of the government's Online Safety Act (OSA). Its parent company Aylo announced the decision on Tuesday, accusing the government's legislation of pushing children to "the most dangerous material possible."

Rules were changed in July last year under the OSA, so that websites that allow access to pornography should have strong age checks in place to stop children accessing harmful material. Aylo said that efforts had been made to comply with the new regulations but claimed that the measures are pushing users to non-compliant sites en masse. Alex Kekesi, Aylo's vice president of brand and community, said: "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."

As of January 27 2026, 68 of the top 100 pornography services in the UK have deployed age checks.

Ms Kekesi added: "Despite the clear intent of the law to restrict minors' access to adult content, and commitment to enforcement, after six 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."

A poll by the Lucy Faithfull Foundation (LFF) found that since the law changed in July, 45% of 1,469 people who use pornography had gone on websites without age checks to avoid putting in their personal information.

Ms Kekesi continued: "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."

Solomon Friedman, a partner at Aylo's parent company Ethical Capital Partners, said: "This law, not our regulator, this law by its very nature is pushing both adults and children alike to the cesspools of the internet, to the most dangerous material possible.

"And while there were six months by Aylo of good faith effort to be part of this ecosystem, to gather data and share it with the government, the data now really speaks for itself. This law not only is not protecting children, it's putting children and adults in greater danger online."

An Ofcom spokesperson said: "Porn services have a choice between using age checks to protect users as required under the Act, or to block access to their sites in the UK.

"There's nothing to stop technology providers from developing solutions which work at the device level, and we would urge the industry to get on with that if they can evidence it is highly effective.

"Our job is to enforce the rules as they stand. We've put in place age assurance rules that are flexible and proportionate, and we have seen widespread adoption.

"We've taken strong and swift action against non-compliance, launching investigations into more than 80 porn sites and fining a porn provider £1 million, with more to come.

"We will continue our dialogue with Aylo to understand this change to its position.

"Any changes to the law around device-based age assurance is a matter for government."