The War on Porn Regular Updates about the Assault on The Adult Industry
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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.
