The War on Porn Regular Updates about the Assault on The Adult Industry
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Something interesting happens when big tech companies get a polite nudge from a company they usually keep at arm’s length. That’s exactly what Aylo — the parent company of Pornhub — just did. The company asked Google, Apple, and Microsoft to open the door to API signals that would let platforms verify a user’s age at the device or operating-system level. The goal? Keeping minors off porn. It’s a request that feels both obvious and strangely overdue, considering how much of the internet already runs through those devices.
Wired revealed last week that Anthony Penhale, Aylo’s chief legal officer, sent separate letters on Nov. 14 to the relevant executives at each company. Those letters were later confirmed by Aylo, whose spokesperson provided them for review.
Aylo has been steadily pushing the idea that age verification should happen at the device level — not slapped awkwardly onto individual sites through clunky pop-ups and ID uploads. It’s a stance that puts the company at odds with most state and regional age-gating laws in the U.S. and E.U., which still rely on site-level verification. Meanwhile, Google, Apple, and Microsoft have been sending mixed signals about how far they’re willing to go with device-based checks.
Most recently, California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, signed a bill requiring age verification in app stores. Google, Meta, and OpenAI endorsed the measure, while major film studios and streaming platforms pushed back, calling the law a step too far.
“We strongly advocate for device-based age assurance, where users’ age is determined once on the device, and the age range can be used to create an age signal sent over an API to websites,” Penhale wrote in his letter to Apple. “Understanding that your Declared Age Range API is designed to ‘help developers obtain users’ age categories’ for apps, we respectfully request that Apple extend this device-based approach to web platforms.”
“We believe this extension is critical to achieving effective age assurance across the entire digital ecosystem and would enable responsible platforms like ours to provide better protection for minors while preserving user privacy,” he added.
Penhale’s letters to Alphabet and Microsoft echoed the same ask: allow website operators — not just app developers — access to the age-related API tools each company already uses within its own ecosystem.
“As a platform operator committed to user safety and regulatory compliance, Aylo would welcome the opportunity to participate in any technical working groups or discussions regarding extending the current age signal functionality to websites,” Penhale wrote in the letter sent to Microsoft.
A Google spokesperson told Wired that Google Play doesn’t “allow adult entertainment apps” and that “certain high-risk services like Aylo will always need to invest in specific tools to meet their own legal and responsibility obligations.” In other words, Google’s not eager to widen the gates.
Developer documentation shows that Apple now turns on content controls by default for new devices registered to under-18 users. Microsoft, for its part, has leaned heavily toward service-level verification — meaning platforms should handle their own age checks rather than relying on the device.
All of this is unfolding while Aylo continues to argue that site-level age verification doesn’t work. The company has pointed to real-world examples of how these systems push users off regulated sites and into murkier, unmonitored corners of the web.
Internal data shows that traffic from the U.K. to Aylo’s platforms dropped more than 77 percent after Ofcom began enforcing new rules under the Online Safety Act. Related documents reviewed privately indicate that users didn’t disappear — they simply migrated to non-compliant, unregulated sites.
At the same time, a court in Germany just offered Aylo a temporary lifeline. On Nov. 19, the Administrative Court of Düsseldorf put a hold on new regulations requiring ISPs to block Pornhub and YouPorn entirely.
The court’s order would have forced ISPs like Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone, and O2 to bar access to the sites over Germany’s age verification laws. For now, those rules are on pause while the High Administrative Court of North Rhine-Westphalia works through appeals on the original network-ban orders.
Interestingly, the Düsseldorf court pointed out that Germany’s enforcement approach under the Youth Media Protection Interstate Treaty contradicts the European Union’s Digital Services Act, which outlines a different vision for age verification.
Aylo is still fighting over its designation as a “very-large online platform” under the DSA — a label that brings intense regulatory scrutiny and a long list of compliance demands. The company’s push for device-based age checks is part of that bigger battle, and it’s hard not to notice the irony: the company everyone expects to resist regulation is the one asking for the kind that might actually work.
