AVPA argues that effective age verification is available and uncomplicated

Would you expect a kid to be able to wander casually into a bawdy house or a gin palace and order a dirty martini? Of course not, says Iain Corby, director of the Age Verification Providers Association (AVPA), in comments addressed to the New Jersey State Assembly.

“What our industry does is allow us to apply the same norms of society in the real world to the online world. We wouldn’t expect to let our kids go downtown here in Trenton and walk into a strip club or casino or bar without being checked for their age. And that’s what we ought to do online – particularly as we spend more and more of our time in the metaverse.”

The message from Corby is one he has communicated before – not to say tried hammering into the brains of policymakers wringing their hands about the harms that can befall children online.

Which is to say, fixing the problem is not rocket science.

“I’m here to tell you as legislators it’s really not hard to solve this. I’m not going to try and pretend that I represent an industry that has the leading edge technology. It’s actually pretty straightforward to prove your age online without disclosing your identity. And frankly if we can put a man on the moon, we can do that.”

Corby points to efforts in the UK, Australia and Texas to legislate age verification for access to online porn, and walks the Assembly through the specifics of age assurance and age estimation. A key point is the privacy preserving nature of the age verification process, which, Corby notes, more or less came about because no one is keen to share their personal information with porn sites.

Age estimation is a win for anyone who is visibly over 25 or so, for whom a differential of a year and a half is no concern. (This is the digital version of not expecting to be asked for ID at the bar because you have gray hair.) Now, says Corby, innovations mean it is not even necessary to submit face biometrics as part of the process.

“If you’re not comfortable using your face, just in the last month or so we’ve got a new member and they allow you to hold up your hand, make three signals with your hand and based on how you move your hand they’ve calculated that they can estimate your age with enormous accuracy.”

Between the advances in technology, both in terms of performance and cost, as well as the development of standards, the tools to mitigate childrens’ exposure to adult content online are at hand. Corby even has an answer for the common objection that kids will just use VPNs to access porn: enact – and enforce – legislation that puts the responsibility on the people publishing it. “The law is the law.”

Critics say age gates for social media won’t fix bigger data problem

And so, we have the technology. Trust is another matter. Among the deaf ears upon which AVPA’s message falls are those arguing that, when it comes to age verification for social media, the point is not to raise age gates but to tackle the core problems with their privacy models.

AAP reports on comments to an Australian parliamentary committee examining the impact of social media on society. Sarah Davies, CEO of the Alannah and Madeline Foundation, which keeps women and kids safe from violence, believes age verification is a red herring that tech companies use to distract from bigger issues. She says age limits are “highly likely to make things worse” by pushing kids into riskier corners of the internet.

“Social media and tech is hugely positive if it is safe to use and age-appropriate to use, because it gives children and young people access to people like them, tribes, community support,” she says. “All apps, all websites, all digital products, all services, should automatically provide the highest level of privacy setting by default for all users under the age of 18. It’s really not hard.”

Creeping age assurance laws have some worried about an outright porn ban

For porn, the matter would seem to be rather more naked. As Corby notes, no one especially wants to hand over sensitive data to smut merchants. And they are not willing to be blase about it: 2021 research from VerifyMyAge shows that more than half of the 21 million people in the UK who watch porn monthly would not use a website where they didn’t trust the age verification process. Porn and and anonymity are natural bedfellows.

But a report in the BBC raises the specter of a “pornography blackout rolling across the U.S.” that is spreading in tandem with a wider movement in conservative culture. Nineteen U.S. states have passed laws requiring pornographic websites to verify their users age since 2022, and the conservative majority U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review the issue of age verification. “Pornhub,” notes the BBC, “the fourth-most-popular website on Earth by some measures, may soon be blocked for one out of three Americans.”

Evan Greer, director of digital rights advocacy group Fight for the Future, calls age verification laws for porn “the canary in the coalmine,” portending a much darker push to impose political will on the internet. “We don’t just oppose it because of some lofty idea about free expression,”  Greer says. “We fundamentally believe it will make kids less safe by cutting them off from information about some of the most important topics in their life.”

The assertion may not be far off, considering that the Republican candidate for vice president, J.D. Vance, has made comments indicating he believes pornography should be outlawed altogether.

The whole package is a slippery, messy, hot and bothered intercourse between technology and morality; the nature of humans to be both perpetually a bit aroused and a bit ashamed about it; our inherent drive to be social as we are increasingly stuck in the silos of our phones; and our ability to generate both content that defies human physiology, and the tools to manage that content for consenting adults who want to explore the margins without giving up their privacy.

Regardless, says Daniel Kahn Gillmor, senior staff technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), we should not underestimate the scale at which these discussions about age verification could change our fundamental experience of the internet. “Let’s be honest,” he says. “Between social media and pornography, that’s probably the bulk of everyone’s online activity.”

Article Topics

ACLU  |  age verification  |  AVPA  |  face biometrics  |  legislation  |  New Jersey  |  regulation  |  VerifyMy