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There was a time when the worst thing a lawmaker could do was force you to flash an ID just to look at something mildly sexual online. Turns out that was just the warm-up act. Now, politicians in Wisconsin, Michigan, and a few very enthusiastic copycats have decided the real enemy isn’t porn—it’s privacy itself.
And the new target? VPNs.
Yes, seriously.
Wisconsin’s A.B. 105/S.B. 130 demands that any website hosting content that could possibly be considered “sexual” must implement age verification and block access for anyone using a VPN. The bill also inflates the definition of what counts as material “harmful to minors,” sweeping in everything from discussions of anatomy to basic information about sexuality and reproduction.
It’s part of a trend: conservative lawmakers expanding “harmful to minors” far beyond what courts have historically allowed, pulling in sex education, LGBTQ+ health resources, art, memoirs, medical info—basically anything that makes them clutch their pearls.
Wisconsin’s bill has already passed the State Assembly and is crawling its way through the Senate. If it passes, it could become the first law in the country to effectively criminalize accessing certain content while using a VPN. Michigan tried something similar—requiring ISPs to identify and block VPN connections—but it stalled. Meanwhile, officials in the U.K. are calling VPNs “a loophole that needs closing.”
This isn’t abstract. It’s happening.
And if legislators get their way, it’s going to wreck far more than porn access.
Here’s Why This Is a Terrible Idea
VPNs hide your real location by routing traffic through another server. The site you visit sees the VPN’s IP, not yours. Think of it like using a P.O. box so someone doesn’t know your home address.
So when Wisconsin demands that websites “block VPN users from Wisconsin,” they’re essentially asking websites to perform sorcery. There’s no way to tell whether a VPN server is in Milwaukee or Mumbai. The tech doesn’t work that way.
Faced with legal risk, websites will either pull out of Wisconsin entirely or block all VPN users everywhere. One poorly drafted state law could break private browsing for the entire internet.
The collateral damage outweighs any hypothetical benefit.
Almost Everyone Uses VPNs
And it’s not just people trying to avoid showing their driver’s license before watching porn.
Businesses rely on VPNs. Remote workers need them. People checking email in a hotel lobby need them. Companies use VPNs to protect employee data, internal communications, and client files.
Students rely on VPNs because universities require them to access academic databases, class materials, and research tools. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, WiscVPN “allows UW–Madison faculty, staff and students to access University resources even when they are using a commercial Internet Service Provider (ISP).”
Vulnerable people rely on VPNs, too. Domestic abuse survivors use them to hide their location. Journalists use them to protect sources. Activists use them to organize without surveillance. LGBTQ+ people in hostile regions rely on VPNs to access medical guidance and community support. In censorship-heavy countries, VPNs aren’t optional—they’re lifelines.
And then there are regular people who just don’t want to be tracked, profiled, and monitored by corporations and ISPs. That shouldn’t require a moral justification.
It’s a Privacy Nightmare
Block VPNs and suddenly everyone needs to verify their identity with government IDs, credit cards, or biometric data just to access perfectly legal content.
And we all know how that ends: corporate databases leaking browsing histories tied to real names, real IDs, and real consequences.
This has already happened. It will happen again. It’s not a question of if—just when.
Turning mandatory surveillance into law isn’t moral; it’s just invasive.
“Harmful to Minors” Is Not a Blank Check
Under longstanding legal standards, governments can restrict minor access to sexual content only when it “appeals to prurient interests” and lacks serious value for minors.
Wisconsin’s bill bulldozes that definition. It applies to material that simply describes sex or depicts anatomy. That could encompass literature, film, music, medical content, sex-ed resources, LGBTQ+ health information—basically anything human bodies do.
It gets worse. The bill applies to any website where more than one-third of the “material” meets that definition. Suddenly, most social platforms could be considered age-restricted simply for hosting sexuality-related conversations.
And when governments get to decide what topics are “harmful,” the first groups punished are always marginalized ones.
It Won’t Even Work
Let’s imagine this law passes. Here’s what happens:
People bypass it. Instantly.
They’ll switch to homemade VPNs, private proxies, Cloudflare tunnels, virtual machines, or rented servers for a few dollars. The internet routes around censorship like water finding cracks in concrete.
Even if commercial VPNs disappeared overnight, people could just create their own encrypted tunnels. It takes five minutes and a $5 cloud server.
Meanwhile, students, workers, journalists, abuse survivors, and everyone else gets stuck without privacy or access.
The law solves nothing and breaks everything.
VPNs shouldn’t be required to access legal speech—but they also shouldn’t be criminalized. The real issue is the age verification regime itself: it’s invasive, ineffective, and trivial to circumvent. It harms far more than it protects.
A False Dilemma
People didn’t flock to VPNs because they’re trying to commit crimes. They did it because governments tried to force identity verification onto everyday browsing. Instead of asking why millions of people don’t want to hand over their IDs to random websites, lawmakers decided the problem is the tools protecting them.
The whole premise is backwards.
The question isn’t “How do we keep kids safe online by destroying privacy for adults?”
It’s “Why is surveillance the only solution anyone in power can imagine?”
If the real goal is protecting young people, lawmakers could strengthen digital literacy, offer better parental tools, support education, or address genuine online harms.
Instead, they’re trying to criminalize privacy itself.
VPN bans aren’t about safety. They’re about control. And the irony is almost poetic: the people writing these laws don’t even understand the technology they’re trying to outlaw.
