German ISPs are apparently forced to block Pornhub (again)

What happened before?

Back in March 2023, German ISPs were forced by the KJM (Commission for the Protection of Minors in the Media), a subgroup of the state media authorities, to block xHamster¹. Probably around November, they also mandated the blocking of Pornhub for 'not protecting children well enough.'
But unlike with xHamster, no one even really noticed the block. There was almost zero media coverage about Pornhub being blocked. (Or at least I can't find any, that's why it's so hard to date the blocking. There is one article by Netzpolitik talking about the possibility of them being blocked²). The reason why there was almost no media coverage: the block likely didn't even last a day. Shortly after, pornhub.com stopped redirecting German users to de.pornhub.com and instead redirected to de.pornhub.org – which wasn't blocked. And that's kinda how things stayed... until now.

Someone on my website just reported that Telekom has started blocking de.pornhub.org. And again, no one is talking about it.

Is this just going to keep going forever?

Are regulators just gonna keep chasing one domain after the other? Blocking more and more and more? There's no transparency, no "public list" of blocked pages – and journalists can't even check what's on a site because, well, it's blocked.

I actually heard someone say: "Well, journalists should just use a VPN or a different DNS, it's easy to bypass"

But if that's the answer, then shouldn't everyone be able to do that? Just to check why the government is blocking something? And if everyone bypasses it, then what's the point of the block in the first place?

At the end of the day, these blocks aren't about protecting anyone: any kid can just type "porn" into Google's search bar — typing out the full domain is a lot more challenging. In the end, this just limits regular people and opens the door for more and more censorship.

This was my entire issue with the CUII – Germany's internet censorship is very shady. Read more about our secret censorship-organization here.

I apologize for any errors, this was yet another quickly typed post about a new situation.