The War on Porn Regular Updates about the Assault on The Adult Industry
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Something changed overnight — not just on adult sites, but in how people moved through the internet itself.
When major porn platforms began blocking Australians from access, it didn’t stop there. X also started requiring age checks before users could view adult content. And for some, that meant something far more intrusive: being asked to submit a video selfie just to look at a single post.
“Almost every post on my alt account has a content warning and asks me [for a] selfie for age verification,” one Australian porn consumer, Joe*, said. “It’s maddening.”
Others described pulling back entirely, choosing to walk away rather than comply.
“I’m honestly no longer engaging with any of the sites and platforms I used to use because not only is the verification process really invasive, but some of them even give you the option to sign in with Google … and that’s the last platform I’d trust with any sensitive data,” Jethro said.
“The choices are: link your perversions to your government ID, or submit your face into the AI slop machine,” Chris* said.
It’s still early days. Aside from several Aylo-owned sites like RedTube blocking Australians outright, and Pornhub limiting access to safe-for-work content for users who aren’t logged in, most of the top free adult platforms have yet to fully implement age verification.
Data from the SEO firm Semrush suggests only one site in the country’s top 20 — Thisvid — had complied so far. But with potential fines reaching $49.5 million for violations, more platforms are expected to follow. Users have already begun to react.
Search interest in porn-related terms has climbed to its highest level since pandemic lockdowns ended in 2022. At the same time, searches for virtual private networks — tools that allow users to appear as though they’re browsing from outside Australia — have surged to levels not seen since 2015, when website blocking laws targeting piracy were introduced.
Sex workers say none of this is surprising. For years, they warned that regulations developed between the eSafety commissioner and industry stakeholders could drive users away from regulated spaces and into less controlled environments.
“We’ve already warned that these laws will funnel traffic away from platforms that do have moderation safeguards in place and towards sites that profit from non-consensual and stolen porn, including the unpaid work of sex workers,” said Mish Pony, chief executive of Scarlet Alliance.
“So driving people off mainstream services, such as Pornhub, does not stop porn consumption, it just pushes it into darker corners of the internet. It makes it harder to address real harms.”
Andy Conboi, an OnlyFans creator based in Sydney, said he has already seen the effects firsthand. Engagement on his posts has dropped.
“People don’t really want to send a photo of themselves or their licence or whatever to these platforms, particularly Twitter [X],” he said.
“In the group chats I do have with creators, people are just frustrated and annoyed, their engagement is down [and] it’s much more difficult to put stuff out there and be seen a lot of the time.”
Some creators, he added, are pivoting. They’re shifting toward safe-for-work content on platforms like Instagram and TikTok just to maintain visibility — a move he described as ironic, given the presence of underage users on those services.
For longtime opponents of pornography, however, the changes mark a milestone.
After earlier attempts at internet filtering fell short under previous governments, and opt-out filtering proposals were abandoned before the 2013 election, regulators have gradually expanded their authority over online content. The eSafety commissioner’s role has grown significantly over the past decade.
Advocacy groups that have campaigned for tighter controls welcomed the developments.
“This day was hard fought for,” said Melinda Tankard Reist, movement director for Collective Shout. “Collective Shout and our partners and allies worked hard to bring it to fruition.”
“It is a relief to know proof-of-age protections are now in place as one obstacle in the way of young people being exposed to rape porn, torture porn, incest porn and extreme violence and degradation of women.”
The Australian Christian Lobby also supported the outcome.
“The fact that P*rnhub have ceased operating in Australia is already proof of its effectiveness,” said chief executive Michelle Pearse.
Questions remain about whether those outcomes will hold — or simply shift behavior elsewhere.
Researchers studying similar laws in parts of the United States found that when major sites restricted access, users didn’t necessarily stop searching. They redirected.
“We saw very large substitution effects for search traffic for XVideos, which is the second largest porn website in the states,” said David Lang, a Stanford University researcher and lead author of the report.
“It’s a sufficiently large change that the No 2 site is now the No 1 site in states that passed those laws.”
Tracking VPN use proved more difficult, researchers noted, since users often disappear from local data once they connect through external servers.
For digital rights advocates, the concern isn’t just where people go — it’s what they leave behind.
Tom Sulston, head of policy at Digital Rights Watch, warned that age-verification systems could create centralized pools of highly sensitive personal data.
“It would be absolutely trivial for a criminal to set up porn sites as honeytraps to capture Australians’ identities and sexual interests; and then use that material for blackmail, similar to existing sextortion schemes,” Sulston said.
“Foreign intelligence services looking to trap Australian targets could easily do the same. The age-verification regime puts Australians at greater risk of harm, not less.”
And that’s the uneasy part of it all. The behavior doesn’t disappear — it just moves.
