Recently, the state of Utah passed a bill that requires age verification to access online porn. It went into effect a couple of days ago. But before that happened, PornHub who are from what I understand are the kings of online porn basically cut the state off from accessing their site and cited this bill as the reason for doing so. That’s lead to a massive spike in searches for “VPN” using online search engines. You can see this in Google Trends where Utah is the number one place in America who are searching for “Virtual Private Network”:
Tech Radar explains why VPN use by Utah citizens is skyrocketing:
By downloading a VPN service, pornography fans will be able to keep accessing Pornhub and similar sites with ease. That’s because a virtual private network is security software able to spoof users’ IP address (digital location and device identifier).
Hence a surge of interest in VPNs across Utah as people will simply need to connect to a server located in a US state or foreign country where the restriction isn’t yet enforced.
This whole episode illustrates that these sorts of measures are totally ineffective. And there’s nothing a government can do to stop people or moderate people from watching porn, or anything else that the government in question doesn’t like. I’ll be interested to see if Utah bans VPN’s next. And more importantly will the state of Utah will do to enforce any of this? This will interesting to watch.
Searches For “VPN” Have Skyrocketed In Utah Since The State Introduced An Age Verification Bill For Online Porn
Posted in Commentary with tags Porn, Utah, VPN on May 5, 2023 by itnerdRecently, the state of Utah passed a bill that requires age verification to access online porn. It went into effect a couple of days ago. But before that happened, PornHub who are from what I understand are the kings of online porn basically cut the state off from accessing their site and cited this bill as the reason for doing so. That’s lead to a massive spike in searches for “VPN” using online search engines. You can see this in Google Trends where Utah is the number one place in America who are searching for “Virtual Private Network”:
Tech Radar explains why VPN use by Utah citizens is skyrocketing:
By downloading a VPN service, pornography fans will be able to keep accessing Pornhub and similar sites with ease. That’s because a virtual private network is security software able to spoof users’ IP address (digital location and device identifier).
Hence a surge of interest in VPNs across Utah as people will simply need to connect to a server located in a US state or foreign country where the restriction isn’t yet enforced.
This whole episode illustrates that these sorts of measures are totally ineffective. And there’s nothing a government can do to stop people or moderate people from watching porn, or anything else that the government in question doesn’t like. I’ll be interested to see if Utah bans VPN’s next. And more importantly will the state of Utah will do to enforce any of this? This will interesting to watch.
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