Pornhub remains accessible in Russia following invasion of Ukraine

On February 25, 2022, shortly after additional international sanctions were announced to punish Russia for its unprovoked attack on Ukraine, a rumour began circulating on social media that the adult website Pornhub had also announced its own “sanctions” on the country by blocking Russian users from accessing its site.

Some of these posts include a screenshot of a tweet from February 25, 2022, that received over 20,000 retweets. It claimed that Russian users who attempted to access the site were instead greeted with “a message informing them that the content had been halted, as well as a Ukrainian flag and a message of Ukrainian support.”

As a result, at least three fact-checking websites—Logically, Butac, and Snopes—used a software tool known as a VPN to simulate a visit to Pornhub from Russia. All three agreed that it appeared to be functioning normally. This has been stated by other Twitter users as well.

Pornhub has previously been blocked in Russia, but we have found no evidence, other than these social media posts, that it was blocked following the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

In 2016, Russia’s Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media enacted new rules that barred Russian citizens from using Pornhub and YouPorn, advising them to “try and meet someone in real life.” A few months later, Pornhub found a way to appease Russia’s media regulator by requiring users to connect through their VK accounts in order to verify that they were 18 or older.