Here’s a screenshot showing our Moscow IP address and a censored (by us) version of the page we were greeted with upon accessing Pornhub. We did not encounter a Ukrainian flag or a message of support, nor was our access to the website blocked.Īfter being asked to sign into a VK.com account (VK is a Russian social network similar to Facebook), we were able to access the site from an IP address located in Moscow, Russia. We used the same method to replicate the experience a user in Russia would have while accessing Pornhub, and came up with the same results. Samantha Cole, a reporter for Motherboard, posted on Twitter: It’s odd, then, that this account included a generic logo for Pornhub in its tweet and not screenshots showing the alleged image of a Ukrainian flag and message of support.įurthermore, several Twitter users attempted to access Pornhub via a VPN, a Virtual Private Network that allows them to set their location to Russia, to test the claim. While we encountered a few messages posted in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s attack that joked about the potential impact of a Pornhub ban, the above-displayed account appears to be the first to have spread this rumor as if it were a genuine news item.
