The Hottest Topic at This Year’s Pornhub Awards? Censorship
NEWS | 18 May 2025
Lauren Goode: So you spent the day and the evening with some of the top Pornhub performers at this awards gala. Can you set the scene of the event for listeners and tell us a little bit about the folks you spoke to? Manisha Krishnan: So, I mean, first of all, it was honestly very interesting to just be behind the scenes with them as they were doing all of their glam. We were at the Sunset Marquis Hotel after they got ready in their cowboy outfits, which were just so over the top. I mean, one of them was literally wearing a belt as her bottom. Lauren Goode: As one does. Manisha Krishnan: Yeah, they were beautiful designs. They were designed by this designer, Chris Habana, who has worked with Beyoncé before. But anyway, so they all got dressed, and then they let loose on the hotel and just were taking very sort of family-photo style, but maybe the creepiest family photos you've ever seen, just sort of all over the hotel grounds. And then they piled into this party bus, and we rolled up to the Saddle Ranch Chop House, which is where the event was at, and they took a bunch more photos. There was a red carpet featuring all of the porn stars on wanted posters. And then we went inside for the awards. And the awards themselves were very informal. It was 90 percent just partying vibes and then very, very quickly doing award stuff. Lauren Goode: All right. So you mentioned that the theme of the event was country. Was that weird at all given the kind of pushback that porn sites and performers are getting from a lot of Southern states in the US? Was this theme intentional? Manisha Krishnan: Yeah, so most of these age verification laws have passed in the South, which means that Pornhub is not available in most of the South. So it did feel a little bit tongue in cheek that they were playing up this country theme, these sort of wanted posters. I asked them if they were trying to troll conservatives by doing that, and they would neither confirm nor deny that. But certainly there was a huge sort of political backdrop to all of this, to this big celebration of porn when you have kind of a war on porn that's happening right now. Lauren Goode: Tell us about this war on porn. What exactly is happening? What measures have been taken? Manisha Krishnan: In 2022, Louisiana passed the first sort of age verification law, which means that it's now the porn website's responsibility to ID people and make sure that they're at least 18 if they're going on their website. And so since then there's been around 20 states that have followed suit. And as a result, Pornhub has pulled out, excuse that pun, but Pornhub has pulled out of most of those states, so it's currently not available in around 17 states. It did actually try to sort of play along with the Louisiana age verification law, and I was told that they lost 80 percent of traffic and that people just didn't want to sort of give their IDs and their ID information when they were logging onto a porn site. They actually also raised this point that they actually have very buttoned up verification for their performers and the people uploading to their site. And what they're saying is that when they remove their content from a state, they think that people might actually go and use even sketchier websites essentially that aren't as rigid and don't have as many standards in place.
Author: Jennifer M. Wood. Lauren Goode. Manisha Krishnan. Zoë Schiffer. Michael Calore. Anna Lagos. Ryan Broderick. Angela Watercutter. Nena Farrell. Brenda Stolyar.
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