Legal Attacks

NICOSIA, Cyprus — Pornhub parent company Aylo will restrict access to its free video-sharing platforms in Australia in response to new age verification regulations, the company confirmed Thursday.

Australia’s Designated Internet Services Code comes into force March 9. Finalized last year by Australia’s online safety regulator, eSafety, the rules require sites and platforms with “the sole or predominant purpose” of providing online adult content to implement age-assurance measures before allowing users to access such material.

Failure to comply could result in civil penalties of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars (more than $35 million) per breach.

An Aylo spokesperson said that users in Australia will be presented with a “safe for work” version of the platform when they visit the sites and provided the following statement:

“In response to Australia’s new age verification law, Aylo’s video-sharing platforms will be restricting access to adult material before the deadline on March 9th. Australia is following a similar approach to the U.K., which all our evidence shows does not effectively protect minors, and instead creates harms relating to data privacy and exposure to illegal content on noncompliant platforms.”

Earlier this year, Aylo began blocking access to its free sites in the United Kingdom as of Feb. 2 unless users had already set up accounts prior to that date.

Australian news site Crikey reported that users attempting to access Aylo sites Redtube, YouPorn and Tube8 are encountering a message stating that the platforms are “not currently accepting new account registrations” in the region.

The Aylo statement also cited a recent survey by child abuse prevention charity the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, which found that 45% of U.K. pornography users have visited sites that are not compliant with age verification rules under the Online Safety Act. The organization expressed concern that such sites may be more likely to host harmful or illegal content.

The statement also reiterated that Aylo supports device-based solutions as “the most realistic and effective way to protect minors online.”

“We encourage regulators to require operating systems to play their part in the protection of minors and the reduction of data sharing,” the statement reads. “For example, we have seen that Apple will be deploying an age verification requirement for 18+ app downloads. We suggest Apple enable the screen time feature to limit adult websites by default, and make it such that the very same verification be required to disable it. This can ensure that only age-verified Apple devices can access adult websites.”

While drafting the Designated Internet Services Code, eSafety conducted public consultations but did not adopt recommendations submitted by some industry representatives, including the Free Speech Coalition.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Lawmakers on Capitol Hill took another step Thursday toward creating a nationwide rulebook for how adult websites verify the ages of their users.

The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce approved the Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act, a broad online safety package that includes provisions requiring age verification by adult websites at the federal level.

The KIDS Act is an omnibus measure combining several online safety proposals into a single bill. Much of the public discussion around it has centered on the Kids Online Safety Act portion of the legislation, particularly revisions to language that previously would have imposed a “duty of care” standard on social media platforms. But the package also includes an updated version of the Shielding Children’s Retinas from Egregious Exposure on the Net (SCREEN) Act, which would establish nationwide age-verification requirements for adult websites.

Title I of the legislation, titled “Shielding Minors From Obscenity,” requires adult platforms to implement what the bill calls a “technology verification measure.” The bill defines that as technology that “(A) employs a system or process to determine whether it is more likely than not that a user of a covered platform is a minor; and (B) prevents access by minors to any sexual material harmful to minors on a covered platform.”

To comply with the proposal, platforms — or third-party age-verification providers working on their behalf — would need to use such verification technology to assess a user’s age and also take “reasonable measures” to address attempts to bypass those systems. That provision appears aimed at methods commonly used to avoid verification requirements, including virtual private networks, or VPNs.

Failure to comply would be treated as a violation of the Federal Trade Commission Act’s prohibition on unfair or deceptive practices. Under the proposal, civil penalties could reach up to $10,000 for each violation.

Industry Legal Perspectives

About half of U.S. states have already enacted their own age-verification laws. If the KIDS Act ultimately becomes law, its age-verification provisions would override those state-level requirements.

Industry attorney Corey Silverstein said that while he views any form of mandatory age verification as a violation of the First Amendment and a prior restraint on free speech, he believes a single federal standard would be preferable to a patchwork of state laws.

“The various state-level AV laws have created absolute havoc throughout the industry, containing small differences that make compliance a nightmare for service providers,” he said.

Silverstein noted, however, that the bill’s language leaves certain areas of state authority intact. While the KIDS Act would generally preempt state age-verification laws, it specifies that it would not preempt laws related to trespass, contract, tort, product liability, consumer protection, or laws carrying criminal penalties.

“This would still leave the door open to individual states to pursue criminal charges and the filing of private lawsuits,” Silverstein cautioned. “Additionally, an overly aggressive attorney general could still attempt to pursue an adult platform under the guise of ‘general consumer protection,’ although I believe that such an attempt would have considerable obstacles to overcome.”

Industry attorney Lawrence Walters said the age-verification requirement in the KIDS Act appears “more forgiving” than many existing state laws.

“The state laws typically require that the platform verify the user is not a minor,” Walters said. “The KIDS Act requires that the covered platform determine whether it is ‘more likely than not’ that the user is a minor.”

Walters added that the specific verification methods that would qualify under the legislation would likely be clarified later through guidance or rulemaking from the Federal Trade Commission.

He also pointed to a potential timing issue if the bill becomes law.

“These obligations would kick in one year after passage of the KIDS Act,” he said. “Given federal preemption, this could create an environment where the state AV laws are unenforceable for a year until the federal standard becomes effective.”

The legislation will next move to the House Judiciary Committee for consideration. If approved by Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump, the KIDS Act would take effect one year after enactment.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Republican state representatives in the Ohio House of Representatives have advanced a revised age-verification bill intended to close what lawmakers describe as a loophole that allowed some adult websites to avoid implementing required age checks across the state’s digital space.

The age-verification bill, called the Innocence Act, was introduced by a bipartisan group of lawmakers led by Republican state Reps. Steve Demetriou and Josh Williams.

Demetriou previously introduced an earlier version of the Innocence Act that included criminal penalties for noncompliance and a misdemeanor charge for minors who successfully bypassed a content block. The current version of the bill removes those criminal provisions.

The House Technology and Innovation Committee voted unanimously to advance the measure, sending the Innocence Act (House Bill 84) to the House floor for debate and a vote.

House Bill 84 is expected to advance in the Senate without significant opposition and could be signed into law by Gov. Mike DeWine.

Demetriou and Williams said they worked with the office of Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost in drafting the legislation. The attorney general’s office is responsible for enforcing age-verification requirements against adult website owners and platforms that host a substantial amount of adult content.

Lawmakers have described the measure as a “redo” after Aylo, the parent company of Pornhub, interpreted the state’s original age-verification law as exempting “interactive computer services,” as defined by Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act of 1996, from Ohio’s civil enforcement authority related to age-gating.

Section 230 is a federal statute that provides liability protection for online platforms that host third-party content, shielding them from legal responsibility for material posted by users or other publishers.

According to the bill’s sponsors, House Bill 84 addresses that interpretation by clarifying enforcement authority. The updated measure establishes civil penalties instead of criminal sanctions, including fines of up to $100,000 per day for noncompliance.

The bill is currently before the House floor.

LOS ANGELES — In two very different corners of the country, the same question is starting to echo through courtrooms and statehouses: what should the law actually do about consensual sex work?

Right now, that conversation is unfolding in Alaska and Colorado.

The Alaska state courts are considering whether the state’s prostitution laws conflict with the constitution’s protections around privacy — specifically the right to make private decisions about consensual sexual relationships, even when money or some other form of compensation is involved. At the same time, lawmakers in Colorado have introduced legislation aimed at decriminalizing sex work and escorting.

The organization Community United for Safety and Protection (CUSP) has filed a complaint in Alaska Superior Court seeking to end the criminalization of sex work performed for a fee. The group argues that existing prostitution statutes unfairly target both sex workers and survivors of trafficking.

Amber Batts, a member of CUSP, told local news outlets that the lawsuit is intended to remove criminal penalties tied to sex work. According to Batts, such a ruling “would take the criminalization out” of state law.

According to the local NBC affiliate KTUU, the lawsuit argues that Alaska’s constitutional “right to privacy” is being violated because it involves “private decisions regarding bodily autonomy and consensual sexual relationships without a compelling government interest.”

Batts also told KTUU that her focus is on decriminalization rather than legalization, drawing a distinction from regulated systems such as those in parts of Nevada.

Batts explained, “You have to work for someone, you have to be licensed, you know, there’s different aspects to legalization, whereas decriminalization would just take the whole aspect of the prostitution code out.” Litigation in the case remains ongoing.

Meanwhile, in Colorado, lawmakers have introduced legislation that would decriminalize sex work. Senate Bill (SB) 26-097 was introduced by Democratic state Sens. Nick Hinrichsen and Lisa Cutter, along with Democratic state Reps. Lorena Garcia and Rebekah Stewart. The measure is currently under review by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“The bill requires the statewide decriminalization of commercial sexual activity among consenting adults,” reads a summary of the proposed legislation.

“It declares that decriminalizing commercial sexual activity among consenting adults is a matter of statewide concern and expressly preempts statutory or home rule city, town, city, and county, or county ordinances, resolutions, regulations, or codes criminalizing commercial sexual activity,” the summary adds.

Supporters of SB 97 are seeking to repeal criminal offenses tied to prostitution, soliciting prostitution, keeping a place of prostitution, and patronizing a prostitute. The legislation would keep existing criminal penalties related to pandering but would also update the legal language used in the statutes, replacing the term “prostitution” with “commercial sexual activity.”

If adopted, the proposal would move Colorado toward a framework that removes criminal penalties for both sex workers and their clients — a model that differs from systems where only the buyer is criminalized. The measure remains under consideration by state lawmakers.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce is scheduled to meet Thursday to review and potentially amend the Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act, a measure that includes provisions establishing federal age-verification requirements for adult websites.

The KIDS Act is an omnibus bill that combines several online safety proposals. Among the measures included in the legislation is the Shielding Children’s Retinas from Egregious Exposure on the Net (SCREEN) Act, a federal age-verification bill introduced last year by Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Rep. Mary Miller of Illinois.

An updated version of the SCREEN Act, amended by Congressman Craig Goldman of Texas, forms the basis of Title I of the KIDS Act. That section of the bill is titled “Shielding Minors From Obscenity.”

The section requires adult websites to implement what the bill describes as a “technology verification measure.” The legislation defines that as “technology that (A) employs a system or process to determine whether it is more likely than not that a user of a covered platform is a minor; and (B) prevents access by minors to any sexual material harmful to minors on a covered platform.”

To comply with the proposal, websites or their third-party age-verification providers would be required to use such a “technology verification measure” to verify a user’s age and take “reasonable measures” to prevent circumvention of those systems. The provision appears intended to address the use of virtual private networks (VPNs) and other tools that can bypass age-verification requirements.

About half of U.S. states currently have age-verification laws in place. If the KIDS Act becomes law, its age-verification provisions would supersede those state laws. The bill states: “No State, or political subdivision of a State, may prescribe, maintain, enforce, or continue in effect any law, rule, regulation, requirement, standard, or other provision” that requires age verification by adult sites.

If the bill is passed by Congress and signed into law by President Trump, it would take effect one year after enactment.

Failure to comply with the proposed law would be treated as a violation of the Federal Trade Commission Act’s prohibition against unfair or deceptive acts or practices. Violators could face civil penalties of up to $10,000 for each violation.

If the Committee on Energy and Commerce approves the KIDS Act following Thursday’s markup session, the bill could then move to the full House of Representatives for consideration.

LONDON — The House of Lords, the U.K.’s upper chamber of Parliament, on Monday approved a series of amendments to the pending Crime and Policing Bill that would invalidate certain talent contracts and ban several categories of adult content, including so-called “step” pornography and scenes in which adult performers appear to portray minors.

The proposals mark another step in the British government’s ongoing effort to tighten regulation of online adult content — an effort that has gathered momentum over the past year as lawmakers debate how far those restrictions should go.

‘Step’ Content Ban

The House of Lords approved an amendment classifying pornographic images depicting sex between relatives as a priority offense under the Online Safety Act — a category that currently includes material such as child sexual abuse imagery and terrorism content.

In December, the government rejected amendments that would have criminalized depictions of sexual activity between stepparents and stepsiblings. At the time, officials maintained that the proposed language should not extend to step-family scenarios.

That position changed during Monday’s debate.

Baroness Gabrielle Bertin, a Conservative member of the House of Lords who previously led an independent government-commissioned review of pornography regulation, introduced language expanding the prohibition to include “step” content. The chamber approved the change.

Bertin told the House of Lords, “Depictions of incest being banned is great, but it is just token if you do not ban step incest as it will all be driven into the step incest category, which is just as damaging.”

If the Crime and Policing Bill becomes law with the amendment intact, possession of such material could carry a penalty of up to two years in prison, a fine, or both. Publishing it could bring a sentence of up to five years in prison, a fine, or both.

Withdrawal of Consent

Lawmakers also approved an amendment granting individuals appearing in adult content the ability to withdraw consent for publication at any time.

Under the proposal, it would become legally “irrelevant” whether a performer had previously agreed to the publication of a video or image. If consent is later withdrawn, platforms hosting the material would be required to remove it within 24 hours.

Before the vote, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State Baroness Alison Levitt urged caution about the proposal’s practical consequences.

“The part of the amendment relating to the withdrawal of consent and its application to professional entertainment contracts has a number of practical implications,” Levitt cautioned. “Where content is produced legally, as with the wider film industry, the rules and regulations governing its use are usually a commercial matter to be agreed between the performer and the production company, taking into account the intellectual property framework.”

If adopted into law, violations could result in penalties of up to two years’ imprisonment, a fine, or both. Platforms found in breach of the rules could face fines of up to £18 million or 10% of their global revenue.

Adult Performers Portraying Minors

Another amendment approved by the House of Lords would outlaw content that “mimics” child sexual abuse by featuring adult performers who appear to be minors or are implied to be minors.

The provision would allow authorities to interpret factors such as costumes, dialogue or settings as indicators that a performer is portraying a child, even if no explicit statement about the character’s age is made.

The government opposed the amendment during debate.

Levitt warned lawmakers that expanding the scope of the law could complicate enforcement efforts targeting actual child sexual abuse material.

“It is important to remember that the purpose of this suite of legislation is to criminalize indecent images of actual children and to help identify and swiftly safeguard children who are subject to sexual abuse,” Levitt said. “Expanding the scope of the Act to include adults who can and have consented to make pornography risks diverting resources for the police to try to distinguish children from adults who are pretending to be children. It risks delaying necessary safeguarding activity and leaving real children at continued risk of harm.”

If enacted with the amendment intact, content interpreted as featuring adults portraying minors would also become a priority offense under the Online Safety Act.

Pornography Review Head Denounces Industry

Momentum for stricter online content regulation intensified following the release, in February 2025, of a government-commissioned “pornography review” launched under the administration of former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

Among the review’s recommendations was a ban on adult content deemed “degrading, violent and misogynistic.” That recommendation later helped shape provisions in the Crime and Policing Bill addressing depictions of nonfatal strangulation, commonly referred to as “choking.”

Bertin, who led the review, delivered a sharp critique of the adult industry during Monday’s debate.

“It is a sector that has been driven to abusive extremes by powerful, profit-driven algorithms, too often monetizing sexual violence and degradation,” Bertin told the House of Lords. “Exploitation and trafficking are rife. Sexual abuse material remains far too easy to find on these sites, and many survivors tell us that what is filmed as content is in reality recorded abuse. This cannot continue.”

Bertin called for what she described as stronger intervention across the industry’s business structure.

“Porn is ultimately about the money,” she said. “We need far tighter regulation and law that ends the grey area and replaces the passive, light-touch self-regulation with far more proactive scrutiny.”

With the amendments approved by the House of Lords, the Crime and Policing Bill will now return to the House of Commons, where lawmakers will review the newly added provisions before the legislation can move forward.

For those under a certain age, it might be tempting to believe the War on Porn is something new. After all, if you were born in the aughts and are currently in your early to mid-twenties, you came up during a period of minimal regulation of online adult entertainment – and you might not even be aware of the extent to which brick and mortar adult businesses have restricted by the likes of zoning regulations and the threat of being  prosecuted under state-level obscenity laws.

For those of us who were already plying our trade in the adult business when the commercial internet was in its infancy, our memories are filled with historical examples of governments seeking to restrict or eradicate the distribution of sexually explicit materials.

Even attempts to rein in online porn specifically are not new. The “Communications Decency ACT” (CDA) was passed in 1996, 30 years ago. The Child Online Protection Act (COPA) passed two years later. Neither accomplished their goals, as both were at least partially enjoined by the courts.

Now, 30 years on, proponents of the CDA and COPA have prevailed, at least to an extent, with the Supreme Court’s ruling in FSC v. Paxton – and age verification is now a fact of life for the online adult industry.

It would be foolish to believe that with the upholding of age verification laws, anti-porn crusaders will be satisfied and turn their attention elsewhere. The goal for some of these folks, including those who composed the infamous “Project 2025” policy framework, is nothing less than a full ban on porn and strictly enforced criminalization of its mere possession, let alone its distribution.

While the technology employed to restrict access to online porn has ‘improved’ (for lack of a better word), the core questions underlying the effort to restrict access to – or indeed, ban – online porn have not changed.

Back in 2004, UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh framed the issue quite effectively in an article he wrote for the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute. The effort to crack down on porn – at the time something envisioned as an undertaking led by the U.S. Department of Justice under then-Attorney General John Ashcroft – had “three possible outcomes” Volokh wrote.

“(1) The crackdown on porn is doomed to be utterly ineffective at preventing the supposedly harmful effects of porn on its viewers, and on the viewers’ neighbors.

(2) The crackdown on porn will be made effective — by implementing a comprehensive government-mandated filtering system run by some administrative agency that constantly monitors the Net and requires private service providers to block any sites that the agency says are obscene.

(3) The crackdown on porn will turn into a full-fledged War on Smut that will be made effective by prosecuting, imprisoning, and seizing the assets of porn buyers.”

While the primary mode of ‘attack’ has shifted from greatly expanded obscenity prosecutions to mandated age verification, Volokh’s three predicted outcomes still loom as a potential end state. Given the porn prohibitionist maximalism that courses through the veins of Project 2025, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation and other similar groups, they will likely never give up on the ultimate goal of banning and criminalizing porn.

As such, it’s worth asking: What if the governments, think tanks and activists who favor the idea of an outright porn ban get what they want? What if instead of merely mandating age verification, governments go further and begin prosecuting ‘users’ of porn in furtherance of the War on Porn, much as they have done for decades in the War on Drugs?

I’ll tell you what won’t happen; people won’t magically lose their interest in watching porn, making porn, or selling porn. Just as the War on Drugs has made prisoners out of many junkies, while making things lucrative (albeit high risk) for those willing to shoulder the perils of drug running and drug dealing, porn will simply become a black market good, as it was for many decades back before the rise of the modern adult industry.

I hate to break it to the anti-porn crusader crowd, but the simple fact is you can’t legislate desire out of existence, and you can’t prosecute people into purity. If the failed experiment of the Prohibition Era wasn’t enough to teach us that lesson, the decades-long, ongoing failure of the War on Drugs surely ought to have done it. But here we are, in 2026, blithely marching ourselves toward another failed deployment of government resources, in vain pursuit of protecting people from themselves.

So, the truth is, the hypothetical question that headlines this article, what if anti-porn forces win the War on Porn, isn’t the right question. The right question is: How much damage will be done in the quixotic pursuit of the unachievable outcome of a porn-free society?

Unfortunately, if history is any guide, the answer is “too much.”

LOS ANGELES — The Free Speech Coalition (FSC) announced that it is providing its members with exclusive access to a new age-verification service called PrivateAV.

In a press release, FSC said the tool is intended to serve as a compliant and affordable option for adult websites while also supporting the organization’s ongoing advocacy efforts.

Beginning immediately, FSC members can access PrivateAV as part of their membership benefits. The organization described the platform as a privacy-focused and cost-conscious solution developed specifically for the adult industry.

PrivateAV includes two verification options: artificial intelligence-based age estimation and document verification with biometric matching. FSC said the system is designed so that personal information is not retained after the verification process is completed, with all data deleted once a session ends.

Pricing structured for a range of businesses

According to FSC, PrivateAV will be available under tiered pricing. Plans start at $30 per month for up to 1,000 verifications, a level the organization said is aimed at smaller and independent operators. Higher-volume options are also available for larger platforms.

“Age verification is now a fact of life for the adult industry,” said Alison Boden, Executive Director of the Free Speech Coalition. “FSC’s job is to help our members comply without breaking the bank, compromising their users’ privacy, or lining the pockets of the people trying to legislate us out of existence. PrivateAV is our answer to all three.”

Members may test the system in a sandbox environment with up to 100 trial verifications before moving to a paid plan.

Developed with industry input

FSC said PrivateAV was created by professionals with experience in the adult sector, with the goal of addressing compliance demands while accounting for privacy and technical considerations unique to adult platforms.

The press release also stated that some existing age-verification providers have supported legislative campaigns that led to recent mandates. FSC said a portion of each PrivateAV subscription will be directed to the organization to fund its legal defense, policy work and legislative advocacy.

“We built PrivateAV because we knew the industry deserved something better,” said Ákos Hantos of VerityGuard, the technology partner behind the service. “This isn’t a product that was retrofitted for adult platforms. It was designed from the ground up with their needs in mind – fast, private, and built to hold up under real regulatory scrutiny.”

In addition to supporting compliance with U.S. state-level requirements, FSC said the tool is aligned with international standards, including those set by Ofcom, Arcom, KJM and Agcom.

BRASILIA — President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva this week approved new regulations requiring adult websites to verify the ages of users located in Brazil beginning March 17.

Enacted last year, Brazil’s Digital Statute for Children and Adolescents (Digital ECA) is intended to protect minors in digital environments. The law requires adult content providers to implement age verification measures beyond self-declaration and applies regardless of where site operators are based.

The law also extends to marketplaces and delivery applications offering adult or erotic products, requiring them to verify purchasers’ ages and restrict access by minors.

Enforcement will be carried out by the National Data Protection Authority (ANPD), which was recently elevated to the status of a regulatory agency.

Additional implementation details are expected in a forthcoming decree currently being drafted by several government bodies, including Brazil’s Ministry of Justice and Public Security, of which the ANPD is a part.

The statute states that providers of information technology products and services must adopt systems and processes to prevent minors from accessing pornographic content.

Article 9, Section 1 of the Digital ECA provides that “Reliable age verification mechanisms must be adopted each time a user accesses the content, product or service … and self-declaration is prohibited.”

Noncompliance will initially result in a warning and a 30-day deadline to implement corrective measures. Continued violations may lead to fines of up to 10% of a site operator’s revenue generated in Brazil or up to 1,000 Brazilian reais (approximately $195) per registered user, with total penalties capped at 50 million reais (approximately $9.73 million).

In advance of the rules taking effect, the ANPD released an English-language version of its publication “Age Assurance Mechanisms,” which outlines technological approaches including biometric estimation, behavioral analysis and document verification aimed at preventing minors from accessing inappropriate content.

According to an ANPD statement, publication of the English version is intended to “broaden knowledge on the subject, given that many technology platforms operate on a cross-border basis.”

Local Representative Requirement

The Brazilian Association of Adult Entertainment Industry Professionals (ABIPEA), which launched in September to represent adult industry professionals and companies operating in Brazil, has participated in technical discussions related to implementation of the Digital ECA.

ABIPEA President Paula Aguiar said the organization has engaged directly with government bodies during the process.

“We have been providing practical input on how the law impacts adult-industry businesses and have submitted contributions and recommendations to the draft of the forthcoming regulatory decree,” Aguiar said.

Aguiar highlighted Article 40, which requires site operators based outside Brazil to appoint a legal representative in the country authorized to receive legal notifications and assume responsibility in administrative and judicial proceedings.

She said ABIPEA is available to provide technical and institutional guidance to companies seeking to comply with the new legal framework.

ABIPEA will also host a dedicated space during the Intimi Expo trade show, scheduled for March 20–22 in São Paulo, focused on “educating and guiding the adult industry regarding the Digital Statute for Children and Adolescents, its practical implications and compliance strategies.”

LOS ANGELES—The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued a new policy paper recommending that digital platforms operating in the United States implement age-verification measures in line with the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

Released Wednesday, the document is framed as an “enforcement policy statement promoting the adoption of age-verification technology.” It positions age-gating as a practical safeguard aimed at limiting minors’ exposure to potentially harmful or restricted material, including pornography. The statement follows remarks made weeks earlier by FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson, who voiced support for age-verification tools during a public seminar examining the technology.

The workshop drew attention in part because adult-industry stakeholders were not included among panel participants. One of the few critical perspectives came from a representative of the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute, who questioned age verification as a regulatory solution. Beyond that dissent, the policy statement broadly endorses the deployment of age-verification tools across the internet, extending from adult platforms to mainstream social media services that host explicit content, such as Reddit and X.

“Age verification can play a critical role in protecting children online and helping parents as they monitor their children’s online activities,” the document reads.

The paper also states that the Commission “will not exercise its enforcement discretion” under COPPA, which restricts online services from collecting personal information from children under 13 without parental consent. The rationale, according to the statement, is to “encourage the use of robust age-verification mechanisms.”

It adds, “In the coming months, the Commission intends to initiate a review of the COPPA Rule to address age-verification mechanisms.”

Questions remain about how the policy will play out in practice. Critics point to the possibility that prioritizing age-verification adoption could divert regulatory attention from risks tied to the technology itself, including data security failures. Breaches involving age-verification providers have already been reported, affecting systems connected to a vendor used by Discord and the developer behind Louisiana’s digital ID wallet application.

Historically, COPPA enforcement actions have focused on the improper collection, use or disclosure of personal data belonging to children under 13 — particularly in cases involving hacking incidents or data leaks. Under the approach outlined in the new policy statement, the FTC signals that enforcement tied to COPPA violations may be less likely when age-verification tools are actively used to determine a user’s age.

Policy papers rarely feel dramatic in the moment. Still, this one lands with a quiet implication: the internet’s next chapter may hinge not just on what platforms host, but on how they decide who gets through the door.