Thailand Porn Fans Battle Country’s Major ISP Over Site Blocking

LOS ANGELES—Thailand has been under lockdown in response to the coronavirus crisis since late March, but one of the most popular forms of entertainment during the stay-at-home period — porn — remains blocked by the country’s major internet service provider. And that has Thai porn fans hopping mad. On Monday, TrueOnline revealed in a statement that it had blocked Pornhub due to its “inappropriate content.”  “Pornhub is inappropriate? Having sexual urges at home is inappropriate?” write one Thai Twitter user to the company, in a response that exemplified the flood of angry reactions received by TrueOnline. “Will the company hire only virgin staff in the future, too?” Porn is generally illegal in Thailand, but the status of online porn remains ambiguous, and porn sites have generally been tolerated by the government and ISPs there. Under Thai law, producing, possessing and distributing porn for commercial purposes is against the law. But whether porn sites such as Pornhub, which is largely free to view, count as commercial “trade” has not been decided by Thailand’s court system. Most government censorship of internet content in recent years has been political in nature, and often centers on stamping out anything perceived as an insult to Thailand’s royal family, with attempts to suppress online porn mostly falling by the wayside. The Southeast Asian country of about 70 million includes a large Pornhub fan base, despite the site ostensibly being blocked there. According to Pornhub’s own statistics, the site’s audience there grew last year, pushing the country one notch ahead of Russia to 17th in the world in total Pornhub traffic.  After hundreds of users reportedly threatened to drop TrueOnline in favor of a competing ISP, the company appeared to relent on the site-blocking issue. “The administrator apologizes for the information. The said website is not restricted in any way,” the company said via its Twitter account. “If you encounter problems, use the service number to check again.” But according to a report by The Thai Enquirer news site, as of Tuesday afternoon, Pornhub remained inaccessible to Thai users. Photo By Sasin Tipchai / Pixabay