In Soviet Russia, porno was a big no-no. And while the land of Putin has loosened up in recent years, it’s still very much frowned upon. Case in point: Russia has banned PornHub and ten other sexy websites.


Roskomnadzor, Russia’s media overlords, just added the 11 sites hosting “illegal pornography” to the Unified Register of Banned Information. A court in Krasnodar, a city near the Black Sea, ruled that the sites violated Article 242 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation which includes bans on “illegal distribution of pornographic materials” as well as child porn. It’s unclear exactly which content earned PornHub its new blacklist status. (Perhaps it’s Russia’s steamy affair with anal sex content.)

This news might sound familiar, though, since Russia’s been banning stuff left and right this year. Back in February, Russia banned over 100 porn sites on similar grounds, though that list did not include PornHub. The country banned celebrity memes a couple months later. Russia banned the Internet Archive in June over a single page with questionable ties to terrorism. Roskomnadzor even threatened to ban Facebook, Google, and Twitter. They just can’t stop banning stuff!


But again, it’s a little unclear exactly what PornHub and friends did wrong. Suffice it to say that Russia tends to be pro-censorship and anti-pornography, (In Soviet Russia, sex itself was seen as “a wasteful consumer of energies better devoted to the building of Communism.) One Twitter user asked Roskomnadzor for alternatives to PornHub. The state media agency replied, “Dear Lola, alternatively you can meet someone in real life.” How quaint.

We’ve reached out to PornHub for more details on the ban and will update this post if they get back to us.

[The Register]

Contact the author at adam@gizmodo.com .

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