Sometimes the quietest rulings carry the loudest echoes. That’s what happened in Düsseldorf, where the Administrative Court stepped in and hit pause on an order that would’ve forced telecom giants to cut off access to Aylo-owned sites Pornhub and YouPorn.

The “network ban,” first floated back in July, was meant to push the platforms into complying with Germany’s strict age-verification demands — the kind that insist on IDs, facial scans, and other methods that feel more sci-fi than practical for most adults just trying to go about their digital lives.

But on Nov. 19, the Administrative Court said not so fast. The judges ruled that the regional media authority can’t pressure ISPs to block the sites while the appeals are still winding their way through the Higher Administrative Court. In other words: everyone needs to sit tight until the bigger legal questions get sorted.

And those questions are heavy. The court pointed to recent decisions from the European Court of Justice suggesting that Germany’s Youth Media Protection Interstate Treaty might clash with overarching EU law. Essentially, the EU’s rules around the free movement of digital services — especially for companies legally based in other member states, like Aylo in Cyprus — can’t be tossed aside unless strict conditions are met. And Germany’s framework may not pass that test anymore.

Jurisdictional Confusion

If you’ve followed the debate around protecting minors online in Europe this past year, you know it’s become a labyrinth of overlapping rules, clashing authorities, and awkward international finger-pointing.

Take Luxembourg, for example. Late in 2024, French officials tried to get their neighbors to help enforce France’s SREN law by going after webcam platform LiveJasmin. Luxembourg didn’t bite. “We cannot circumvent EU rules just because it is maybe a highly sensitive topic,” an Economy Ministry official said — a line that, honestly, deserves to be engraved somewhere in stone.

Around the same time, the European Commission wrapped up its official guidelines on protecting minors under the Digital Services Act. They even rolled out a “white label” age-verification app, something like a template that sites can adopt to meet DSA requirements. The idea sounds tidy on paper; the reality is… well, still unfolding.

France’s media regulator has also been tangled in debates over whether it can enforce its age-verification rules on companies based elsewhere in the EU. Arcom asked Czech regulators for support, but those agencies pushed back, saying they simply don’t have the legal room to apply French law on their home turf.

That particular dispute revolves around WebGroup Czech Republic, the company behind XVideos.com, and NKL Associates, which operates XNXX.com. Both companies appealed to France’s Council of State, arguing that Arcom can’t compel foreign-based sites to comply with French rules without violating the EU’s “country of origin” principle — a core idea in the Directive on Electronic Commerce.

And then there’s the nonbinding opinion dropped in September by an advocate general at the EU’s Court of Justice, suggesting that France can require foreign-based porn sites to apply French age-verification rules. It was the legal equivalent of throwing gasoline on an already lively fire.

XVideos and XNXX aren’t alone. Several platforms have been called out for failing to meet France’s age-verification requirements under the SREN law. If they don’t comply, Arcom has made it clear it’s ready to follow the German playbook and move toward blocking and delisting.

All of this makes the Pornhub/YouPorn litigation in Germany more than just another case file. It’s shaping into a test of which rules will ultimately win out — national laws drafted in response to rising political pressure, or Europe-wide principles baked into the very idea of a digital single market. And whatever the courts decide, it’s going to ripple far beyond one country or a pair of websites.

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.

CHATSWORTH, Calif.—Adult industry trade organization the Free Speech Coalition (FSC) issued the following advisory Monday morning concerning the recently passed record keeping law in North Carolina for adult websites:

North Carolina’s Prevent Exploitation of Women and Minors Act requires operators of adult websites to remove content upon request of a performer, even if the performer signed a valid model release. It also requires producers to collect “explicit written evidence of consent for each act” performed, and claims to apply to content created before the law goes into effect on December 1, 2025.

The law is broad in its application, confusingly written, and appears to contradict existing federal law and long-established legal principles. This post breaks down key provisions of the law, but FSC recommends reviewing the specific language of the law with your legal advisor to evaluate your company’s potential exposure and compliance strategies.

Requirements for content producers
Content producers of “actual or feigned sexual activity” must obtain written consent from each person depicted that includes:

• consent to each sex act depicted in the content.

• a statement giving consent to distribute the content.

• a statement explaining the state’s definition of “coerced consent” and notifying the performer that they may withdraw consent at any time.

While the law doesn’t explicitly mandate the creation of these documents, they are required in order to publish the content online.

Documentation required before upload
Online entities that distribute or publish “pornographic” content are required to obtain the documentation listed above, as well as the age and identity verification records for each performer.

Take Down Provisions
Platforms are required to display a prominent notice giving instructions for how a person can request that content be taken down and:

• Remove any pornographic content on their platform at the request of an individual depicted in it, their authorized representative, or law enforcement within 72 hours of receiving a request.

• If any other individual requests content be taken down, platforms are required to review records related to that content within 72 hours and remove it if it does not meet the requirements of the law regarding documentation and consent.

• Any content that is taken down (including edited or altered versions) must be prevented from being republished.

Enforcement
The state attorney general or an individual depicted in a piece of content can file a lawsuit against parties alleged to have violated the law.

• Penalties accrue on a per-day and per-image basis.

• Private plaintiffs can sue the platform or the uploader for actual damages or $10k per day the image remained on the platform after the 72-hour window, whichever is greater.

• If the attorney general notifies a platform that they are in violation of the requirement to post instructions for taking down content, they have 24 hours to add it before fines of $10k per day begin to accrue.

• If the attorney general notifies a platform that they must take down content, they have 24 hours to remove the it before fines of $5k per day begin to accrue.

Effective Date
The law goes into effect on December 1, 2025 and is effective retroactively (“applies to acts or omissions occurring before, on, or after that date”).

This blog post is a resource provided for informational purposes only. It does not constitute legal advice and should not replace the advice of an experienced legal professional.

FSC members have access to an Industry Professional Directory that includes a list of industry-friendly attorneys.

The question, to me at least, truly is as simple as the headline above frames it.

Growing up as a kid in the 1970s, there were a great many things I wasn’t allowed to do yet, but I was told I would be permitted to do once I was old enough to make my own decisions in life. Things like smoking cigarettes, drinking booze, driving cars and yes – shudder – looking at pornographic images.

In most areas of life, the promise I was given as a kid has held up. I don’t happen to smoke, but I could do so, even knowing it’s terrible for me. I do drink occasionally, although ironically enough, a lot less often now that I’m allowed to do so than I did when I was a teenager doing something forbidden by the law.

And yes, I’m still allowed to look at porn. But as I look around the world and contemplate the circumstances in which many other adults currently find themselves, I can’t help but think they live in countries where the government is functioning like parents who can’t face having their kids move out of the house and become fully formed adults.

Earlier this month, it was reported that in the United Kingdom, “online pornography showing strangulation or suffocation is to be made illegal, as part of government plans to tackle violence against women and girls,” as the BBC put it.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m no fan of choking in porn. In fact, seeing it actively makes me cringe and recoil from the screen. (I’m not too fond of people spitting on each other, either, but that’s a whole other kettle of saliva.)

I also understand that choking someone to the point they almost pass out isn’t good for that person or her/his brain. That’s another reason why people arguably shouldn’t engage in “breath play” during sex (or at any other time, for that matter) – but it’s still not a reason for the government to ban it in porn.

Consider this: It’s illegal to do a lot of what we see inside the cage during an Ultimate Fighting Championship match if it takes place outside such a competition. If you get into a bar fight with someone, put them in armbar and break their freaking arm, you’re likely to be prosecuted for aggravated assault. Do the same thing inside the octagon and you’re the winner!

Is it good for kids to watch people break each other’s arms? Probably not. But do you know what sort of depictions aren’t age-restricted in a way that would lead to a criminal (or civil) penalty for those broadcasting the event, or any adult who allows a kid to watch it? You guessed it – mixed martial arts (MMA) fights.

MMA also doesn’t prevent the adults who participate in it from choking each other unconscious, breaking each other’s limbs, giving each other concussions, or otherwise doing grievous bodily harm to each other.

Why isn’t choking in MMA illegal in the UK, but choking in a porn context is about to become so? My guess is it has a lot to do with paternalism and eons-old double standards regarding men and women.

If a man chokes out another man in a competitive context, or a woman does so to another woman, well, that’s just sport, right? If a man chokes a woman to the edge of consciousness in a pornographic context, well obviously there’s an imbalance of power and he’s abusing her – even if she’s lying there demanding “choke me, choke me!”

(That said, it’s not like the UK choking depiction ban will have an exception for choking in scenes pairing women, so maybe it’s as simple as “sport good, sex bad.”)

You also probably won’t see calls in the UK for depictions of choking in a fictional context to be banned. Game of Thrones fans may recall Stannis Baratheon seizing the Red Woman by the throat and choking her after her perceived failures in helping him seize the Iron Throne; I don’t expect we’ll hear calls for that scene to be deleted from UK-facing platforms, in part because both characters have their clothes on throughout this evidently harmless bit of violence against women.

We also likely won’t hear many people complaining that the NFL games played annually in the UK are too violent, too filled with concussions, or somehow unsuitable for viewing by children. After all, they want to sell out those stadiums and create future generations of fans to come support American football. The NFL’s money talks and the typical, paternalistic logic about “protecting children” walks right out the door.

I could go on and on, because the examples are nearly endless. Everywhere you look, sexually explicit depictions are subjected to restrictions that other forms of expression and entertainment simply are not, but that sure seem as though they should be restricted, if the same reasoning is applied.

Again, don’t get me wrong: I don’t want any of the things I’ve listed above to be banned, or even more strictly regulated. I just want consistency in allowing adults to be adults, permitting us to take informed risks and go about our lives with minimal government intrusion into our lives – and I don’t want consistency to come in the form of comprehensive prohibition on the whole lot.

After all, if we try to restrict people to doing only what’s safe and not “bad for them,” do you know what none of us should be doing? Driving to fucking work.

Attorneys representing a group of New York City adult businesses are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take up their case after a lower court cleared the way for enforcing a 2001 zoning law designed to push adult retailers out of most of the city. It’s the latest chapter in a fight that has stretched long enough to outlive entire eras of the city’s cultural identity.

The story goes back nearly three decades, when New York City’s zoning rules first targeted adult entertainment venues. The law banned these businesses from large swaths of the city — especially midtown Manhattan — in a bid to “clean up” Times Square. Under that original framework, a shop qualified as an adult establishment if 40% or more of its space or stock involved sexual content.

In 2001, the city came back with a sharper blade. They scrapped the 40% rule, calling it too easy to game, and instead went after any business that “primarily” marketed adult entertainment — whether that meant strip clubs, video stores, or a bookstore with one too many risqué shelves.

That shift sparked a legal war lasting more than twenty years. Adult businesses argued the amendment violated constitutional protections, including free speech and equal protection rights. For many, the fight wasn’t just about geography — it was about whether sexual expression could be zoned out of public existence.

In 2024, a district court sided with the city, ruling New York has the authority to enforce the amendment. Under this decision, even businesses that technically met the old 60/40 threshold could be pushed into the small pockets still zoned for adult entertainment — or pushed out of the city entirely.

The businesses appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, but a three-judge panel rejected the challenge in July.

They tried again — this time asking the full 2nd Circuit to rehear the case. That request was denied in August.

By October, the 2nd Circuit wasn’t just saying no — it issued a judgment mandate giving New York City full permission to enforce the law while the legal process played out.

On October 31, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor denied the request for an injunction pending the filing of a petition for certiorari. That means enforcement continues for now, even as higher courts consider whether to intervene.

According to attorney Edward Rudofsky, the plaintiffs filed their petition on November 19, and the Court has given the City until December 22 to respond.

If the Supreme Court declines to hear the case, the legal road ends there.

Even in areas where zoning technically allows adult businesses, another maze of rules kicks in — distance requirements from residential neighborhoods, schools, other adult establishments, and houses of worship. Put together, these restrictions make finding a legal location less like choosing a storefront and more like playing a citywide game of Minesweeper.

Which raises the question: when regulation leaves no place left to exist, is the point compliance — or erasure?

Missouri’s age-verification regulation, 15 CSR 60-18, kicks in on Sunday, November 30. It arrives quietly, almost like a new rule taped to the front door of the internet—one most people won’t notice until they run into it.

Under Missouri’s rule, any site where at least 33⅓% of content is considered harmful to minors must verify a visitor’s age before letting them in. The state signs off on methods like digital IDs, government-issued identification, or other systems that confirm age through transactional data. If a platform thinks it has a better solution, it can pitch its own—so long as it proves it works just as well.

Violating the rule isn’t just a slap on the wrist. The state treats it as “an unfair, deceptive, fraudulent, or otherwise unlawful practice” under the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act. If regulators decide a violation was done “with the intent to defraud,” it escalates into a Class E felony. Each visit to a non-compliant site counts as a separate offense, with penalties capped at $10,000 per day. There’s no option for private lawsuits; this is the state’s show.

For businesses, the message is simple but unsettling: if you might fall under the rule, read the fine print, understand the liability, and protect yourself. The consequences aren’t theoretical—they’re baked in. And as laws like this multiply, compliance is becoming less about checking a box and more about navigating a moving target with stakes that touch real people and their privacy.

Because once the government decides how adults must prove their age online, the question stops being, Can you follow the rules?

It becomes, What do those rules change about the way we experience the internet at all?

Earlier this year, a toolkit dropped from the Free Speech Coalition that was supposed to help adult websites navigate the chaos of U.S. age verification laws. On paper, it was about compliance. In reality, it spoke to something bigger—how to follow the law without sacrificing privacy, free expression, or basic human dignity in the process. The updated version arrives after months of legal whiplash and real-world testing, refined by feedback from the people actually living with these requirements. It’s not just a rulebook; it’s a survival guide for an industry being legislated into a corner.

And honestly, it couldn’t have come at a better time.

Laws regulating sexual content online aren’t slowing down. They’re spreading. States are experimenting with different enforcement mechanisms like they’re swapping cocktail recipes—ID uploads here, age-estimation scans there, endless demands for personal data everywhere. What counts as compliance in one state can trigger fines in another. Platforms are stuck either bending to every new rule or blocking entire populations just to avoid liability.

Some people call that safety. Others see it as the invention of a digital checkpoint system where adulthood must be proven over and over again.

The updated toolkit tries to offer a middle path: protect minors without building a surveillance state. That means emphasizing privacy-preserving verification methods, data minimization, and safeguards against turning porn sites into honeypots for identity theft. When your sexual curiosity can be cross-referenced with a government database, it’s not hard to imagine how badly that could go.

But this isn’t just about porn. It’s about how much of yourself you should have to reveal simply to access legal content. If a state can require ID to watch an adult video, why couldn’t it do the same for BDSM forums, queer education sites, or reproductive health information? The slope may not be slippery—it might already be greased.

There’s also the uncomfortable truth that “protecting kids” has become a political Swiss Army knife. Behind the moral language are groups who openly want to make adult content inaccessible altogether, not just to minors. Age verification becomes the first domino rather than the final safeguard. When lawmakers start treating porn the way others treat fentanyl, it’s worth asking who gets to define harm — and who gets punished in the process.

Meanwhile, the people enforcing these laws rarely understand how the internet works. The burden falls on smaller platforms, independent creators, and marginalized workers who already operate under scrutiny. Sex workers were dealing with censorship long before age-verification laws existed. Now, they’re being folded into legislation written by people who’ve never considered how someone pays rent by selling a video clip.

The irony? The more governments tighten restrictions, the faster users migrate to unregulated foreign sites where consent and safety checks don’t exist at all. The “protection” ends up exposing people to worse content, not preventing it.

If lawmakers truly cared about reducing harm, they would fund education, promote ethical production standards, and support platforms that actually moderate content responsibly. Instead, the system encourages the exact opposite: drive traffic to the shadows, then blame the shadows for being dark.

The toolkit is trying to hold the line—compliance without capitulation. It’s a reminder that safety and privacy don’t have to be adversaries. They can coexist, but only if laws are written by people who understand what’s at stake for users and creators.

Because asking adults to prove who they are before they can access legal sexual content isn’t just a technical requirement. It’s a worldview. One where the state sits in the bedroom doorway holding a clipboard, deciding who gets to come inside.

And once that door closes, it rarely opens back up.

Letters went out this week to Apple, Google, and Microsoft, urging them to build age verification directly into devices rather than forcing adults to scan IDs on every website. The message wasn’t subtle: fix this at the operating-system level, or the internet keeps getting messier.

“Based on our real-world experience with existing age assurance laws, we strongly support the initiative to protect minors online,” wrote Anthony Penhale, chief legal officer for Aylo, the company behind Pornhub, Brazzers, Redtube, and YouPorn. “However, we have found site-based age assurance approaches to be fundamentally flawed and counterproductive.”

The letter argues that traditional, site-by-site checking has “failed to achieve their primary objective: protecting minors from accessing age-inappropriate material online.” Instead, Aylo says the solution should live inside the device itself—confirm a user’s age once on a phone or tablet, then share that “age signal” through an API with adult sites when needed.

The timing isn’t random. Age verification laws are spreading across the US and UK, forcing users to upload government IDs or personal documents—often through third-party systems—just to watch explicit content. Twenty-five US states have passed some version of these laws, each with its own rules.

Pornhub pulled out of most of those states. The result? A massive drop in traffic everywhere compliance was required. In Louisiana, complying meant losing 80 percent of site visits. In the UK, where similar rules came into play under the Online Safety Act, traffic dropped almost 80 percent as well.

Aylo argues that pushing verification onto external services not only endangers privacy—it pushes people to sites that don’t check anything at all.

“We have seen an exponential surge in searches for alternate adult sites without age restrictions or safety standards at all,” said Alex Kekesi, vice president of brand and community at Pornhub.

She hopes tech companies eventually align with Aylo’s approach, especially after California passed the Digital Age Assurance Act (AB 1043), which requires app stores to verify ages before users download apps. “This is a law that’s interesting because it gets it almost exactly right,” she said.

Google responded by saying it’s working on new tools. “Google is committed to protecting kids online, including by developing and deploying new age assurance tools like our Credential Manager API that can be used by websites,” spokesperson Karl Ryan said. The company reminded that its app store already prohibits adult entertainment apps and that platforms like Aylo will still have to build their own compliance systems.

Microsoft didn’t comment directly, but pointed to a policy statement saying that “age assurance should be applied at the service level, target specific design features that pose heightened risks, and enable tailored experiences for children.”

Apple also didn’t comment directly, instead pointing to its existing safety documentation and noting that content filters are automatically enabled for users under 18. A recent update requires children under 13 to have designated accounts with built-in restrictions. Apple currently has no method to force every website to integrate a universal age-check API.

Pornhub says the existing legal framework isn’t working regardless. “The sheer volume of adult content platforms has proven to be too challenging for governments worldwide to regulate at the individual site or platform level,” said Kekesi. Aylo claims that verifying age once per device—rather than at every website—would protect privacy while still keeping minors out.

Research backs up the circumvention problem. Recent studies from New York University and the Phoenix Center say current laws fail because people simply route around them—using VPNs or migrating to sites that ignore the regulations entirely.

“Platform-based verification has been like Prohibition,” said Mike Stabile, director of public policy at the Free Speech Coalition. “We’re seeing consumer behavior reroute away from legal, compliant sites to foreign sites that don’t comply with any regulations or laws. Age verification laws have effectively rerouted a massive river of consumers to sites with pirated content, revenge porn, and child sex abuse material.” In his words, these laws “have been great for criminals, terrible for the legal adult industry.”

With age checks becoming the norm, anonymity online is disappearing fast—and communities already marginalized are likely to feel it first. Sex workers have been dealing with digital surveillance and censorship for years, and political groups have openly discussed using state laws to “back door” a national ban on online pornography. One playbook for a future Trump administration explicitly calls for doing just that.

The current wave of child-protection legislation is reshaping the internet far beyond adult content. Gaming, social platforms, and online communities are being pulled into the same regulatory orbit. In Australia, for example, minors under 16 will soon be kicked off major social platforms under new enforcement rules.

According to Stabile, that’s not an accident. In the US, he says, the major supporters of these bills fall into two camps: religious organizations that believe pornography shouldn’t exist at all, and identity-verification companies that profit from stricter rules. The first group wants to shrink the adult industry out of existence, while the second expands its market any way it can—even if that means aligning with groups that want to censor sexual content altogether.

And the lawmakers writing these bills? “Even well-meaning legislators advancing these bills have little understanding of the internet,” Stabile said. “It’s much easier to go after a political punching bag like Pornhub than it is Apple or Google. But if you’re not addressing the reality of the internet, if your legislation flies in the face of consumer behavior, you’re only going to end up creating systems that fail.”

People inside the adult industry say they’re not against rules—they just want rules that work. “Keeping minors off adult sites is a shared responsibility that requires a global solution,” said Kekesi. “Every phone, tablet, or computer should start as a kid-safe device. Only verified adults should unlock access to things like dating apps, gambling, or adult content.” She noted that in 2022, the platform introduced a chatbot that directs users searching for child abuse material toward counseling resources. Since then, Pornhub has released annual transparency reports and tightened upload verification.

Major tech companies—including Google, Meta, OpenAI, Snap, and Pinterest—supported California’s new age-authentication bill, and Kekesi sees it as a starting point rather than an endpoint.

“We obviously see that there’s kind of a path forward here,” she said.

Yoti’s revenue didn’t just rise this year—it exploded, conveniently right as age verification rules tightened under the Online Safety Act. The company reported a 55 percent jump in turnover, hitting £20.3 million for the year ending in March. Funny how the moment the government demands IDs to access half the internet, the firms selling ID checks start printing money.

“Regulatory issues are central to the business and Yoti is expecting to benefit from significant regulatory changes, in both identity and age, both in domestic and overseas markets,” the company said.

Translation: more laws that treat adults like children mean more profit.

“Anticipated regulatory changes in the United Kingdom, France and Australia, in particular, are expected to support the company’s growth.”

And that growth isn’t just about protecting anyone—it’s about building infrastructure where logging into a website slowly starts to resemble crossing a border. The more regulation expands, the more companies like Yoti become gatekeepers to everyday life online.

“Rapid development in the sophistication of both online fraud, deep fakes and the technology to prevent this, means that the market is constantly developing and growing.”

Sure, deepfakes and fraud are real concerns. But when the solution is “show your papers” to browse adult content—or eventually anything deemed “sensitive”—it’s worth asking who really benefits. Right now, it looks less like safety and more like a booming business model built on surveillance.

There’s a strange moment that happens when you quit porn: suddenly sex feels… quieter. That’s what happened to Ray*, who stopped watching in July after age verification rules kicked in. At first, sex felt more vanilla. “I have been a little less creative in bed as I’m not trying anything I’ve recently seen [online] with my girlfriend,” he admitted. But it also felt more grounded. “It does feel healthier […] and it’s made ‘normal’ sex a little more exciting.”

If you somehow missed the memo, the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) began enforcing age checks on 18+ sites starting July 25. Imagine a bouncer suddenly stationed at the entrance of every porn site in the country—minus the velvet rope and questionable cologne. The idea was to keep minors from stumbling into explicit content. But for adults like Ray, who relied on free tube sites, the price of entry became handing over personal identification. “It’s reduced my porn usage by 99%,” said the 36-year-old workplace trainer. Others haven’t quit—they’ve just changed how they watch… and in some cases, doubled down.

This shift among adults isn’t the stated goal. The law was designed to protect children, especially given that 79% of young people in the UK say they’ve encountered violent porn before turning 18. With 80% public support, legislators believed ID checks were the best way to stop minors from accessing explicit material.

But critics worry the law is a gateway to broader online censorship. Sex workers are already feeling the consequences—forced to sanitize profiles and content across platforms, making it harder to market themselves safely or honestly. And while everyone keeps shouting about protecting kids, almost no one is talking about actual sex education or porn literacy, both of which are crucial for teens learning how to navigate desire and boundaries, and for adults struggling with compulsive habits.

Three months in, the OSA isn’t delivering on its most basic promise. “It will almost certainly reduce the most casual, accidental access to porn for under-18s, but if the question is whether it will stop young people altogether, the honest answer is no,” said Professor Clarissa Smith, co-editor of Porn Studies. “Teenagers are extraordinarily adept at routing around whatever adults prohibit, and they often end up in the less safe corners of the internet to do it.”

Over on Discord, teens have already discovered a workaround using screenshots of video game characters to bypass age checks. “It’s essential that we recognize that many young people will find ways to get around age-gating,” said Paula Hall, founder of The Laurel Centre, which focuses on sex and porn addiction. Government officials haven’t exactly been eager to discuss the results.

But like any prohibition, the law is changing behavior—especially among adults who, legally speaking, should be able to watch whatever consenting adults create. The age checks feel invasive to many. Who wants their kinks attached to a verified identity in a database that may or may not leak?

“Verification is wrong to me,” Ray said. “It’s like telling the fire brigade you’re about to burn your house down. It’s an inconvenience to everyone.” He doesn’t trust verification vendors. “I don’t believe the data is deleted, I don’t believe they are secure, and I don’t trust the location of these services either.”

David*, a film-industry craftsman, felt the same way. “There was no chance of me entering my personal details onto a porn site — and equally, getting a VPN for the purposes of watching porn seemed a bit desperate, so it was quite easy for me to disengage entirely.”

For others, it’s less about paranoia and more about effort. “It’s instant gratification, so I wouldn’t put that kind of effort in,” said Luke*, who works in patient enrollment. “I would never scan my face or hand over my ID. I’m not that concerned about personal security, it’s just [that age verification] is an effort and not worth it for the end result.”

PORN AGE VERIFICATION IS LIKE TELLING THE FIRE BRIGADE YOU’RE ABOUT TO BURN YOUR HOUSE DOWN

In that sense, the OSA is functioning like a convenience tax on horny impulses. Think of it like the plain-packaging laws for cigarettes—just instead of dull tobacco branding, it’s dulling access to bukkake. “For many, the additional time and effort it takes helps to reduce impulsive viewing and may encourage developing wider interests,” Hall noted.

“For some men, having to verify their age adds just enough friction [making an undesirable action more difficult to perform] that they delay or skip a viewing session,” added Smith. “It doesn’t mean they had a compulsive relationship with porn, just that spontaneity is sensitive to obstacles. Friction always changes behavior at the margins.”

Of course, whether porn counts as an addiction is another battle entirely. Hall believes “the language of addiction fits the lived experience.” Others argue it’s closer to a compulsive habit fueled by shame, not dopamine. But either way, a lot of people want to cut back: 80% of regular porn-watching men aged 18–29 in the UK say they’re concerned about their consumption.

For some, the OSA became the unexpected catalyst they needed. “I’ve found a renewed focus on having real fun (not just in the bedroom) and my relationships more generally seem to have blossomed,” said David. Friends have noticed a shift in his mood—“calm positivity,” he called it. “It’s pretty much ended my casual consumption; it was too easy to fall down that rabbit hole during moments of boredom or stress.”

But most men aren’t quitting—they’re adapting. “The larger pattern is displacement […] the desire doesn’t disappear; it detours,” said Smith. “The OSA increases the distance between a moment of wanting and a moment of accessing, but people bridge that distance in creative ways. Men are simply reorganizing their porn habits around the new architectures.”

And in true internet fashion, Reddit’s response was to make jokes about “moving to Norway.” Translation: VPNs are doing numbers. Proton VPN saw an 1,800% spike in sign-ups right after verification launched.

This also explains why headlines celebrating a supposed 77% drop in UK Pornhub traffic miss the plot—traffic is just being rerouted through “other countries.” Coincidentally, 77% of Gen Z say they watch porn regularly. The math speaks for itself.

Some men are using the moment to pay creators directly. “I do have a kink, so I found reconnecting to adult performers who lean into that world much more rewarding,” Ray said. “I buy a clip a month now, and I like the fact that I’m now paying the entertainers for their work.”

Most, however, are not pulling out their credit cards. Free sites still dwarf paid platforms by a massive margin—hundreds of millions of UK visits vs. a fraction of that on subscription-based services.

Edward* chose a different path: erotic literature. “I’d say the largest behavioral shift would be that I am now more open to the concept of readable erotica,” he said. He’s using fantasy instead of autoplay algorithms. “I definitely have been trying to curate my inner sex life using my own fantasies rather than taking the easy option of porn.”

I’VE BEEN CURATING MY INNER SEX LIFE USING MY OWN FANTASIES RATHER THAN TAKING THE EASY OPTION OF PORN

Maybe retro porn will return—DVDs tucked on dusty shelves like vinyl revival for genitals. That’s what one shop owner predicted. But nostalgia rarely wins against pixels and convenience.

More realistically, people are heading to sketchier sites with no age checks and much worse moderation. Ofcom helpfully publishes a running list of these platforms, effectively handing adults a menu of unfiltered content. “The OSA is likely driving adults into a more fragmented, less regulated ecosystem, largely because people are uneasy about handing over ID for sexual content,” Smith said. “We’re probably not going to see less engagement with porn, we’ll see different routes to it — many of them far outside the spaces the law was written for.”

Ray tried it. “I ended up on some unfiltered Eastern European sites, but finding what I wanted was difficult and unfulfilling.”

For others, the shift is darker. “I watch more hardcore stuff on unregulated sites now,” said one anonymous user.

The ripple effects aren’t subtle. Young men already drifting toward misogynistic corners of the internet now have more reason to end up there. “I grew up in an era of porn playing cards being traded in school,” Edward said. “It was pretty tame stuff compared to the likes of choking, degradation and the weird step-sibling shite that makes up large portions of porn sites. This trend and attitudes towards women in general I do find seriously concerning.”

That doesn’t mean porn itself is inherently harmful. Like anything pleasurable, it’s about intention, context, and consent. Performed ethically, and consumed by choice—not compulsion—it can enhance sex lives rather than replace them.

For some men, the OSA nudged them toward healthier patterns. A smaller group discovered new, ethical models of consumption. But for the vast majority, those digital bouncers are just a minor obstacle. They’ll keep flashing IDs—real or borrowed—and spending another night on the tubes.