Political Attacks

BRUSSELS — Four of the world’s largest adult platforms are now under closer scrutiny in Europe, as regulators take a harder look at how — or whether — minors are being kept out.

The European Commission has concluded  that PornHub, Stripchat, XNXX and XVideos may be violating provisions of the Digital Services Act aimed at protecting minors from adult content.

In May 2025, the Commission began gathering evidence to determine whether the platforms were putting in place age verification tools to safeguard minors from adult content.

According to a statement dated Wednesday, that investigation by the Commission has now indicated that the four sites failed to sufficiently identify and assess the risks their platforms pose to minors accessing their services, and also failed to implement effective measures to prevent minors from accessing their services.

The statement reads, “Despite stating in their Terms of Services that their services are for adults only, all four platforms allow minors to access their platforms by a simple click confirming they are over 18. The Commission finds that ‘self-declaration’ is not an effective measure, and it also considers that additional mitigation measures, such as page blurring, content warnings and ‘Restricted to adults’ labels, deployed by all of these platforms, do not effectively prevent minors from accessing harmful content.”

It is unclear whether these findings refer only to measures in place at the time the investigation began, or whether they reflect the Commission’s assessment of the platforms’ current age assurance measures.

“At this stage, the Commission considers that Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX and XVideos need to implement privacy preserving age verification measures to protect children from harmful content,” the statement notes. ”These findings do not prejudge the final outcome of the investigation.”

XVideos, XNXX, PornHub and Stripchat will now have the opportunity to review the Commission’s investigation files, reply to the preliminary findings and/or “take measures to remedy the breaches.” If the Commission’s views are confirmed, it may issue fines of up to 6% of the total worldwide annual turnover of each provider, and/or impose penalty payments to compel compliance.

Sometimes, when I read about legal and technological efforts ostensibly designed to protect people (usually minors) from various forms of harmful online content (usually porn), I’m reminded of a meeting I sat in almost 30 years ago.

The purpose of the meeting, as the executive from the company I worked for at the time put it once we’d all gathered in the conference room, was to “figure out how to completely secure the web servers” against potential hacking, denial of service attacks and the like.

A fellow named Randy, who led the company’s IT department, looked right at me after the boss said this. We both began to laugh, uproariously. The boss wasn’t amused, but he knew that if his lead tech and lead marketing guy both thought it was funny, there likely was something out of line about what he’d just said.

“You want a web server to be totally secure?” Randy asked. “The good news is that’s easy. All we have to do is power it down, unplug the network cable from the back and never turn it on again. Of course, that will make the server somewhat less useful than it is now, but it will be entirely hack proof, that much I can promise.”

Lately, Randy’s point has been swimming around in my brain as I read about the state of Utah’s efforts to put the internet porn genie back in the bottle. His point, as I saw it anyway, was that if you want to be online, if you want to be part of that great big global network called the internet, then you’re going to shoulder some risk in the process.

Occasionally, even people who actively lobby the government to restrict and regulate things on the internet, be it porn, social media, misinformation or some other type of content they find problematic, show some recognition of the fact the government can’t truly solve some of their online problems, because some of their problems are endemic to the internet, for lack of a better way to put it.

Take this recent article from the Deseret News, for example.  The article’s primary purpose appears to be to laud the Utah government for its new laws mandating that (some) adult websites must perform age verification checks on their users before displaying anything explicit to those users, as well as putting the onus on adult sites to do something about people use Virtual Private Networks to circumvent the state’s law.

Among other things, the piece introduces readers to a young anti-porn activist named Smith Alley, who talks about his own early exposure to online porn, the problems he says that exposure caused, his evolution into a full-fledged anti-porn activist – and why he thinks Utah’s new law is both great and overdue.

But a funny thing happens along the way. We learn from Alley that, even though he believes parents need the help of the state and of technology companies to solve the problem of minors being exposed to porn, some of the things his own parents did to help him kick his habit involved neither the state nor Big Tech.

“With the help of his parents, Alley decided to jump ‘20 years into the past,’ to a time before unlimited porn was just a click away, replacing his iPod Touch with a flip phone, and screen time with the outdoors,” the article informs us.

So far as I’m aware, there’s no law that incentivizes parents to take smartphones away from their kids and replace them with flip phones, nor is there a company out there encouraging people to do so. And yet, Smith Alley’s parents managed to do it anyway. Imagine that!

Near the end of the article, after learning that Alley is “ecstatic” about the law Utah has passed and is now enforcing and that he’s “proud to live in a state that is family-focused,” he starts to sound less like an anti-porn activist and more like… well, like me.

“(Alley says) these policy shifts must be accompanied by a cohort of parents who are willing to reverse the normalization of ‘iPad kids,’” the article informs us.

“Parents across the country need to really reduce the amount of technology they have in their house,” Alley said. “I just don’t think kids should have that technology in their life. I think we’d be better off without it.”

So, even with age verification laws on the books, even with a means to sue companies who fail to comply with the law and even with a porn tax in place to help offset the alleged harms of internet porn, the bottom line is that parents need to be more involved in the lives of their children – and technology needs to be less central to those same lives.

Just as there’s no way to live a risk-free life (and who would want to, really?), there’s no such thing as a risk-free way to raise your kids. And there’s sure as hell no way to let kids loose on a global computer network and have their journey therein be safe, respectful of their innocence and age appropriate.

When I was a kid, there were TV shows broadcast later than I was allowed to stay up. My parents didn’t want me watching those shows, so they forbade me from doing so. On the occasions when I’d get caught violating their rule, you know what they didn’t do?

They didn’t write to the FCC demanding that those programs be taken off the air. They didn’t get angry at Zenith and RCA and demand that television manufacturers put parental controls on every model they sold. Instead, my parents imposed consequences on me – and let the rest of the damn world live its life.

Yes, the world has changed since I was a kid. But what hasn’t changed – and likely won’t change, even when AI nannies inevitably become all the rage – is the need for parents to be involved in their children’s lives.

And no law, be it one that governs Utah, Texas, or that reaches across the entire country, is going to change that.

BRASILIA, Brazil — Brazil is beginning to map out, step by step, how it plans to enforce one of its newest online safety laws—and the roadmap is already taking shape.

The country’s National Data Protection Authority (ANPD) on Friday released a timeline detailing how it will monitor and enforce age verification requirements under the Digital Statute for Children and Adolescents (Digital ECA), which came into force earlier this week.

Earlier reporting noted that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed a decree on Wednesday establishing guidelines for regulations that will require adult websites to verify the ages of users in Brazil. The rules go beyond simple self-declaration and apply no matter where a site is based. They also extend to marketplaces and delivery apps offering adult or erotic goods and services, which must verify buyers’ ages and prevent minors from accessing those offerings.

Friday’s statement from the ANPD begins to answer the practical question many operators have been quietly asking: how, exactly, will this be enforced?

The agency has broken the process into three stages.

Stage 1 is already underway. Alongside Friday’s release of preliminary guidance for adopting what the agency describes as reliable age verification methods, the ANPD plans to launch an informational webpage about the Digital ECA and begin monitoring how app stores and operating systems are handling age verification tools. In April, the agency will also open a public consultation to collect feedback aimed at refining how the law is interpreted and applied.

Stage 2, scheduled to begin in August, will move into more detailed territory. The ANPD plans to publish more specific guidelines and technical parameters for age verification systems, followed by what it calls an “adaptation and monitoring period” for implementation. Starting in November, updated regulations will outline how inspections will be carried out and how administrative sanctions may be applied. During this phase, oversight will expand to additional regulated entities—including adult websites and platforms—based on insights gathered during the consultation process and assessments of risk across services.

Stage 3, set to begin in January 2027, will shift the focus to active enforcement. The ANPD will carry out inspection actions to ensure compliance and continue refining its procedures for investigations, regulatory oversight, and the application of penalties where violations are identified.

The agency also addressed early benchmarks for how age verification should be implemented, framing them as a way to provide “predictability and legal certainty” for platforms navigating the new requirements.

Those benchmarks echo approaches already seen in the United Kingdom and the European Union, emphasizing factors such as proportionality, accuracy, robustness, reliability, privacy protection and nondiscrimination.

More detailed, technical standards are expected to follow in future guidance, as regulators continue to shape how the law will operate in practice.

SALT LAKE CITY — The conversation around online access just took another turn in Utah, where the rules are getting a little tighter—and, depending on who you ask, a lot more complicated.

Governor Spencer Cox on Thursday signed a bill into law that will tax adult websites and hold them liable if minors bypass geolocation safeguards.

In addition to updating how the state investigates and enforces age-verification requirements, SB 73 introduces a 2% excise tax on adult sites operating in Utah. The tax applies to transactions for “access to digital images, digital audio-visual works, digital audio works, digital books, or gaming services,” including streaming and subscription-based content.

Industry attorneys have pointed to potential legal challenges the tax could face. Still, Utah isn’t entirely alone here—Alabama passed a similar tax at 10% last year, and lawmakers in Virginia and Pennsylvania have begun exploring comparable measures.

Revenue from the new tax will be directed to a state fund supporting “(a) mental health treatment programs for minors affected by material harmful to minors; (b) educational programs for parents, guardians, educators, and minors on the mental health risks associated with material harmful to minors; (c) early prevention and intervention programs for minors at risk of mental health harm from material harmful to minors; and (d) research and public awareness campaigns addressing mental health harm to minors caused by material harmful to minors.”

VPN Requirements

The legislation also includes a provision addressing how location is determined. It states: “An individual is considered to be accessing the website from this state if the individual is actually located in the state, regardless of whether the individual is using a virtual private network, proxy server, or other means to disguise or misrepresent the individual’s geographic location to make it appear that the individual is accessing a website from a location outside this state.”

That language reflects a growing concern among lawmakers about how easily age-verification systems can be bypassed. VPNs, proxies—tools that once felt niche—are now part of everyday digital life, and policymakers are clearly trying to catch up.

In Ohio, a bill known as the “Innocence Act” would require adult websites to “utilize a geofence system maintained and monitored by a licensed location-based technology provider” to track a user’s physical location and determine whether they are in the state and subject to age-verification requirements.

Meanwhile, in Washington, the proposed Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act—aimed at establishing a federal age-verification standard—would require platforms to take “reasonable measures” to prevent users from circumventing those safeguards.

In Indiana, the state has taken a more direct route, filing a lawsuit against Aylo and its affiliates. Officials allege the company failed to prevent access by users using VPNs to bypass geolocation, even though current state law does not explicitly require platforms to account for intentional circumvention.

The VPN provision in Utah’s SB 73 could influence how the state enforces its own age-verification laws, and it may also raise broader legal questions about whether websites can be held responsible for users who actively try to work around location restrictions.

The law is scheduled to take effect on Oct. 1.

Some folks who favor suppression of sexually explicit materials are more forthright about what gives life to their censorious zeal than others. Say what you will about the old “Morality in Media” brand, back when the organization went by that moniker, everybody knew where they were coming from just by reading the sign on their door.

Perhaps because the folks at Morality in Media perceived they were limiting their demographic reach with the judgy-sounding, clunky old name, they opted for a rebrand back in 2015, becoming the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. Suddenly, with the flip of a logo, they sounded less like angry Bible thumpers out to cancel your favorite sitcom and more like a serious nongovernmental agency out to prevent real harm.

You know what didn’t change when MIM became NCOSE? The president of the organization. Patrick A. Trueman ran the joint on both sides of the rebrand, from 2010 to 2023. Before that, Trueman was prosecutor at the U.S. Department of Justice during the administration of George H.W. Bush, which also happens to be the last time federal prosecutors aggressively enforced the nation’s obscenity laws. Trueman remains the President Emeritus of NCOSE to this day.

Just as I doubt Trueman lost his zest for cleaning up American media when his organization rebranded, I don’t buy that a lot of the organizations most strenuously supporting various age verification mandates at the state and federal level are really in it to protect minors from harmful materials online – unless one happens to define “harmful” the same way they do, of course.

Referencing remarks recently made by Rep. Leigh Finke, a transgender member of the Minnesota Legislature who has criticized elements of her state’s proposed age verification law, Rindala Alajaji, Associate Director of State Affairs at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and Molly Buckley, one of the organization’s legislative analysts, call attention not only to the impact of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, but the nature of the organizations supporting Texas in the case.

“The Paxton case, and the coalition behind it, illustrates exactly how these laws can be weaponized,” Alajaji and Buckley write. “They weren’t there just to stand up for young people’s privacy online—they were there to argue that the state has a compelling interest in shielding minors from material that, in practice, often includes LGBTQ content. Ultimately, these groups would like to age-gate not just porn sites, but also any content that might discuss sex, sexuality, gender, reproductive health, abortion, and more.”

Alajaji and Buckley add that the “coalition of organizations that filed amicus briefs in support of Texas’s age verification law tells us everything we need to know about the true intentions behind legislating access to information online: censorship, surveillance, and control.”

“After all, if the race to age-gate the internet was purely about child safety, we would expect its strongest supporters to be child-development experts or privacy advocates,” the authors note. “Instead, the loudest advocates are organizations dedicated to policing sexuality, attacking LGBTQ+ folks and reproductive rights, and censoring anything that doesn’t fit within their worldview.”

The thing about appealing to people’s desire to protect children is that it works – and for a good reason. It’s a good thing to want to protect your kids. God knows they need protection, including from themselves. Parents should do all the reasonable, rational, normal things they can do to protect their kids.

But if you’re denying a gay or trans kid access to information from people who have been through the same things that kid is going through and can offer guidance, support and maybe a little solace for the kid, you’re not protecting that kid; you’re stifling, aggravating and alienating that kid. Shit, you might be killing that kid – even if you earnestly believe you’re helping.

I can also understand why the idea of age-gating the internet might sound good to people, especially frightened people who are raising kids who are online much more than their parents. But fear is a state of mind that can make people suggestible – and that’s when opportunists don their superhero capes and make a dramatic entrance, promising to make the world (wide web) a safer, better place for you and your kids—without really mentioning the part about how they’re actually in this to keep The Gays from enacting their Sinister Agenda, or whatever it is that animates some of these zealots.

I guess what I’m saying is this: You can’t save your kid from drowning by throwing someone else’s kid into the deep end of the pool with lead boots on. And some of the people promising to provide your kid a life jacket are heavily invested in lead.

BRASÍLIA, Brazil — President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Wednesday signed a decree setting out how Brazil will move forward with new rules requiring adult websites to verify the ages of users accessing content from within the country.

The decree follows the Digital Statute for Children and Adolescents (Digital ECA), which took effect Tuesday. The law is aimed at strengthening protections for minors online and requires adult content providers to implement age verification measures that go beyond simple self-declaration, regardless of where those platforms operate.

The scope extends beyond traditional websites. Marketplaces and delivery applications offering adult or erotic products and services must also verify the age of customers and block minors from accessing those products.

Enforcement authority rests with the National Data Protection Authority (ANPD), which was recently elevated to the status of a regulatory agency and contributed to drafting the decree.

The ANPD has also released a question-and-answer document outlining how the law is expected to function in practice. According to that guidance, platforms must verify a user’s age before granting access to adult material. If explicit content is visible prior to verification, it must be hidden or blurred by default. The rules also require platforms to prevent minors from creating or maintaining accounts.

Penalties for noncompliance begin with a warning and a 30-day window to correct violations. After that, regulators may impose fines of up to 10% of a company’s revenue in Brazil or up to 1,000 Brazilian reais (approximately $195) per registered user, capped at a total of 50 million reais (approximately $9.73 million).

The ANPD has not yet issued a formal compliance timeline or detailed technical standards for age verification systems. The agency indicated in its guidance that additional rules and best-practice recommendations will be released at a later stage.

Industry response has already begun to take shape. The Brazilian Association of Adult Entertainment Industry Professionals (ABIPEA), launched in September, has offered to provide technical and institutional guidance to companies operating both inside and outside Brazil as they adapt to the new framework.

ABIPEA is also preparing to host a dedicated space at 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.”

For now, the framework is in place. What comes next will depend on how it’s applied — and how the industry adjusts once the rules move from paper into practice.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation held a hearing Wednesday on potential changes to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects online platforms — including adult websites — from liability for user-generated content.

Three bills proposing a full repeal of Section 230 are currently pending in Congress. However, those measures were not addressed during the hearing. Instead, lawmakers focused on possible reforms to the law in a session titled “Liability or Deniability? Platform Power as Section 230 Turns 30.”

The push to revisit Section 230 stems from two primary concerns.

First, lawmakers from both parties have criticized major technology companies for allegedly profiting from harmful or illegal content while avoiding responsibility. Some argue that increased liability would encourage stronger moderation. During the hearing, Sen. Marsha Blackburn said, “Big Tech has proven they are incapable of regulating or policing themselves. They will not do it.”

Second, some conservative lawmakers argue that platforms use Section 230 protections to justify restricting certain viewpoints, particularly conservative speech. Sen. Eric Schmitt cited efforts by the Biden administration to limit the reach of COVID-19 misinformation and 2020 election claims, describing those actions as violations of the First Amendment.

Sen. Ted Cruz, who chairs the committee, referenced both issues, stating that Congress should act “to prevent social media from harming Americans, especially children, while not incentivizing Big Tech censorship.”

Cruz did not advocate for a full repeal of Section 230.

“I’m concerned that a full repeal or sunset would lead platforms to engage in worse behavior — to engage in more censorship to protect themselves from litigation,” Cruz said. “But we should consider whether reform of Section 230 is needed.”

Sen. Brian Schatz, the committee’s ranking Democrat present, also supported revisiting the law.

“We can work together and fix the law,” Schatz said. “This idea that we can’t touch it, otherwise internet freedom incinerates, is preposterous.”

Possible Impact on Adult

Current proposals to reform Section 230 are not specifically directed at adult platforms, but they could have implications for the industry.

Much of the hearing focused on issues involving minors, including cases where individuals encountered harmful content or online predators. Lawmakers also discussed whether algorithmic systems and AI-generated content should be covered under Section 230 protections.

Industry attorneys and advocates have raised concerns that changes to the law could lead to targeted exemptions, similar to those created under FOSTA/SESTA, which removed liability protections for platforms found to “unlawfully promote and facilitate” prostitution or sex trafficking.

Such exemptions could expose adult platforms to increased civil litigation related to user-generated content.

While many cases could ultimately be dismissed on First Amendment grounds, Section 230 currently allows defendants to avoid prolonged litigation. As Techdirt’s Mike Masnick has written, the law “provides a procedural advantage in getting vexatious, frivolous nuisance lawsuits shut down much faster than they would be otherwise.”

Without those protections, larger companies may still be able to manage legal costs, but smaller platforms could face greater challenges.

Testifying at the hearing, Stanford Law School expert Daphne Keller said eliminating Section 230 would create legal and financial burdens that disproportionately affect smaller companies.

A world without the law, she said, “would impose legal uncertainty and expense that today’s incumbent giants could survive but their smaller rivals could not.”

Keller also noted that under other regulatory systems, platforms often receive high volumes of complaints seeking removal of lawful content.

“We have a lot of data to predict what happens when platforms are held liable for the speech of their users,” Keller said. “Platforms receive huge numbers of false allegations under laws like the DMCA here or the Digital Services Act in Europe, from people demanding the removal of perfectly legal speech. Governments do this, companies do this against their competitors — and platforms have strong incentives to simply comply.”

During the hearing, Sen. Tammy Baldwin warned against indirect government pressure on platforms.

She cautioned against “informal, often coercive efforts by government officials to pressure private companies into moderating or removing content that they cannot legally censor directly.”

Keller, in written testimony, cited actions by Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr, including pressure directed at ABC that temporarily affected comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s program.

Carr also contributed to Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership,” which calls for changes to Section 230 and argues that pornography should not be protected under the First Amendment.

“Pornography should be outlawed,” the document states. “The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned.”

The document has been cited as a policy framework for the current administration. Other officials associated with the administration have also expressed support for restrictions on adult content. Trump advisor Russell Vought has discussed limiting pornography through indirect regulatory approaches, while Vice President Vance has called for a ban.

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.

LONDON — U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer is facing the prospect of dissent within his own Labour Party if the government does not support a proposed ban on certain categories of pornography included in the Crime and Policing Bill.

The pressure follows a narrow vote in the House of Lords earlier this month, where peers approved an amendment by 144 to 143 to prohibit simulated incest pornography, step-relationship content and depictions such as consensual strangulation.

Several Labour backbenchers, many of them women, have raised concerns about the availability of so-called “step-incest” material online and its potential impact on victims of child sexual abuse. Some lawmakers argue that such content could contribute to harm, according to reports from U.K. media outlets.

One unnamed Labour member of Parliament described “step-incest” pornography as a “gateway drug” to illegal material. Lawmakers from Labour have also worked with Conservative MPs on efforts to criminalize depictions of step-family sexual relationships, even when they are fictional.

Data from Pornhub’s 2025 Year in Review shows that “step mom” remains among the most frequently searched terms on the platform.

If enacted, the law would make a range of currently legal pornography depicting step-relationships subject to potential prosecution by the Crown Prosecution Service, as well as enforcement by agencies including the Metropolitan Police Service and regional police forces.

Baroness Gabby Bertin, who led an independent parliamentary review on the harms of pornography, urged peers to support restrictions on what she described as taboo content, including material portraying “intercourse with a step-child.”

Bertin said online pornography often includes scenes “with settings in children’s bedrooms, with actors in children’s clothes, braces, toys, pigtails, and other markers of childhood. Millions of videos and images are then tagged as ‘little,’ ‘tiny,’ ‘age gap,’ ‘mommy,’ ‘daddy,’ or ‘teen.’”

The government has also drafted provisions to ban the possession or publication of pornography depicting sex between relatives.

The inclusion of step-relationship content in the proposed restrictions prompted debate within the government. Justice minister Baroness Alison Levitt said that while such material is controversial, these relationships are “not illegal in real life.”

Levitt also raised concerns about a separate amendment to the bill involving consent withdrawal. The measure would allow individuals appearing in adult content to withdraw consent at any time, with producers facing potential imprisonment and fines if they fail to comply.

Under the proposal, initial consent to publication would no longer be considered sufficient. If consent is withdrawn, platforms and studios would be required to remove the material within 24 hours of notification.

LONDON — A quiet warning landed this week on the desks of some of the biggest technology companies in the world. It didn’t come with fireworks or spectacle. Just a deadline — and a clear message.

The United Kingdom’s digital regulator, Ofcom, told major technology firms Thursday that they should begin putting real age-verification systems in place or face potential penalties under the country’s Online Safety Act.

The move arrives as governments around the world wrestle with the same uneasy question: how do you keep children safe online without reshaping the internet itself? The debate has spread well beyond Britain, with similar age-verification efforts underway across Western Europe, Australia and parts of the United States.

According to the regulator, letters were sent to government relations and compliance teams at the parent companies behind platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Roblox, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube.

Those companies have until April 30 to report back on what progress they’ve made toward deploying stronger age-verification tools.

Regulators say they will review those responses and later publish an assessment outlining how well the companies are complying.

Ofcom Chief Executive Melanie Dawes said the platforms’ public commitments to child safety have not always translated into meaningful protections.

“These online services are household names, but they’re failing to put children’s safety at the heart of their products,” Dawes said. “There is a gap between what tech companies promise in private and what they’re doing publicly to keep children safe on their platforms.”

Dawes added, “Without the right protections, like effective age checks, children have been routinely exposed to risks they didn’t choose, on services they can’t realistically avoid. That must now change quickly, or Ofcom will act.”

Regulators outlined four specific expectations for the companies.

The first calls for “effective minimum-age policies.” The second requires “failsafe grooming protections.” The third focuses on creating “safer feeds for children.” And the fourth calls for “an end to product testing on children.”

Together, the measures are intended to help meet the Online Safety Act’s broader requirement that platforms adopt “age-appropriate design” and prevent minors from accessing services that are not meant for them.

Chris Sherwood, head of the child-protection charity National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, said stronger oversight has been overdue.

“For too long, social media giants have looked the other way while harmful and addictive content floods children’s feeds, undermining their safety and wellbeing,” Sherwood said.

“That’s why Ofcom’s demand for far greater transparency about the risks children face online, and how tech companies plan to protect them, is absolutely essential,” he added. “We’ve long called for minimum age limits to be properly enforced on social media, so it’s encouraging to see Ofcom confront this head-on.”

The regulator’s push also coincides with a separate warning from the U.K.’s data-privacy authority, the Information Commissioner’s Office, which sent a letter to “social media and video sharing platforms operating in the U.K.”

The letter stated, “We understand that most services are relying on self-declaration to identify whether children are 13 or over, with a limited number also utilising some form of profiling to enforce minimum age requirements.”

“As currently deployed, we don’t think that these tools are effective and therefore they should not continue to be relied upon to prevent access to under-13s.”

The letter was signed by Paul Arnold, whose agency oversees information rights, transparency in public bodies and personal data protections across the United Kingdom.

The regulator’s latest demands arrive just days after lawmakers in the U.K. Parliament declined to adopt an Australia-style proposal that would have barred all social media use for anyone under the age of 16.