Age assurance debate in U.S. runs circles around tech providers looking to help

With the incoming Republican government likely to kickstart an orgy of political turmoil in the U.S., the question of age assurance is making politicians on both sides hot and bothered.
Theoretically, the debate over whether or not to require age assurance for access to pornographic websites is over the safety of children. But there are a host of factors at play among those with a stake in the outcomes.
Three main viewpoints all miss key point: age assurance is available
Proponents say they want to limit kids’ access to material that could be detrimental, citing concerns about how porn influences ideas about sex and gender. This group includes concerned parents and educators, but also socially conservative politicians.
Rights groups say age assurance laws impinge on free speech and potentially violate the Constitution. They believe adults should not have to provide proof of age to access material they are legally entitled to view. They also note how the laws could affect sites that cover topics related to sexuality but are not pornographic. Overbearing laws on digital freedoms, they say, amount to “burning the house to roast the pig.”
Porn sites allege that the cost of implementing age assurance tech would be prohibitive – a tough swallow, considering that Aylo, which owns popular XXX streaming sites Pornhub, Brazzers, RedTube and others, posts estimated annual revenue of around $340 million per year.
Cost calculations aside, with political distrust running high, particularly among those who fear a human rights crackdown from the second Trump administration, age assurance sector can’t seem to shake the suspicion that it might be a mere trial for mass government censorship of the internet, a data collection Ponzi scheme, or a nefarious plot to stigmatize porn users with a proverbial Scarlet Member.
Amid all the bad faith arguments that mischaracterize the tech, age assurance providers are struggling to communicate their own key message: privacy-preserving age assurance is possible and affordable – in fact, it has been for years.
Pornhub withdraws from sixteen states; Tennessee judge puts hold on law
A piece published in 404 Media looks at how the push for age assurance is spreading across the southern United States. As of January 1, 2025, Pornhub has cut off access to 17 states that require age verification measures: Virginia, Montana, North Carolina, Arkansas, Utah, Mississippi, Texas, Nebraska, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Indiana, Alabama, Oklahoma – and, as of January 1, South Carolina and Florida. Georgia will soon follow.
Tennessee was also set to join the club – but a federal judge has blocked it for now. The Tennessean reports that the Protect Tennessee Minors Act is temporarily paused after Chief United States District Court Judge Sheryl Lipman granted a motion filed by adult trade association group the Free Speech Coalition in December.
The law requires that “websites with 33 percent or more of their content deemed ‘harmful to minors’ verify the age of each user who attempts to access the site every 60 minutes through uploading a state ID or other means, such as facial recognition, as well as retain seven years of anonymized data on users who access the site.”
Violators face felony penalties – among the strongest punitive measures in the U.S.
Lipman’s ruling says the law “effectively reduces Tennessee’s adult population to viewing only what the legislature deems is ‘fit for children,’ unless websites are willing to pay to verify the ages of their users, and unless those users are willing to give up their privacy to access those websites.”
Greeting from porn star makes dubious claim about data collection
There is an echo of this argument in a message that now greets users logging on to Pornhub in certain states, delivered by adult performer Cherie Deville. “To be clear,” she says, “Aylo has publicly supported age verification of users for years, but we believe that any law to this effect must preserve user safety and privacy, and must effectively protect children from accessing content intended for adults.”
So far so good. But Deville continues:
“Unfortunately, the way many jurisdictions worldwide, including Florida, have chosen to implement age verification is ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous. Any regulations that require hundreds of thousands of adult sites to collect significant amounts of highly sensitive personal information is putting user safety in jeopardy.”
This argument from Aylo is puzzling, particularly in pointing to Florida. It hinges on the idea that the sites themselves are being asked to collect user information for age assurance.
However, underlining the complexity of laws across various states, the text of Florida’s law does not force adult sites to collect personal information. Per the government summary, porn providers and other distributors of material harmful to minors “must verify, using either an anonymous or standard age verification method, that the age of a person attempting to access the material harmful to minors satisfies the bill’s age requirements.”
Furthermore, “if an anonymous age verification method is used, the verification must be conducted by a nongovernmental, independent third party organized under the laws of a state of the U.S. Any information used to verify age must be deleted once the age is verified.”
Which comes back around again to what the Age Verification Providers Association and others have been struggling to get across: there is a whole industry of age assurance providers that know how to do this – indeed, whose fundamental value depends on being able to offer secure, anonymous services that are governed by stringent regulations and standards.
First Amendment, electronic rights groups stand legal challenges
Nonetheless, the concern persists that age assurance across the board carries what the Free Speech Coalition labels a “significant risk to privacy.” A release from the organization says it has joined co-plaintiffs working in the sex education, adult content, sexual wellness and legal fields, to file a legal challenge against the age-verification mandate.
The coalition is challenging similar laws in Louisiana, Texas, Utah, Indiana and Montana. It applauded the Tennessee decision, calling its legislation a “deeply flawed law that put website operators at risk of criminal prosecution for something as trivial as a mention of the human nipple.”
In a recent year-in-review blog, like-minded objectors at the Electronic Frontier Foundation agree, and repeat the faulty argument in kind. “No one should have to hand over their most sensitive personal information or submit to invasive biometric surveillance just to access lawful online speech,” says the post.
It has an idea of what should be done: “Instead of seeking to censor the internet or block young people from it, lawmakers seeking to help young people should focus on advancing legislation that solves the most pressing privacy and competition problems for all users – without restricting their speech.”
The EFF does not, however, include an explanation of exactly how to do so. Instead, it lists its ongoing efforts to quash age assurance legislation with First Amendment arguments in a growing tally of states.
Blocked users will always find pathways to pleasure online
To credit Cheri Deville, she closes her message from Aylo with an argument that may finally offer the strongest stances from either side.
“As experience has demonstrated, unless properly enforced, users will simply access non-compliant sites or find other methods of evading these laws,” she says. This is likewise noted by 404 writer Samantha Cole: done clumsily, age assurance laws can “push people to sites where piracy is rampant and moderation – meaning, protection from actual harmful material – is almost nonexistent.”
The internet is vast, and while Big Tech has made it look more monopolized over time, there is always another path to its underbelly. And Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are common and accessible enough to be easy workarounds.
Data privacy a major concern – unless you’re on TikTok
The age assurance debate is a telling illustration of the complexity of the contemporary U.S. political environment. While it is being fought with legal texts, its concerns are philosophical and ideological, pitting the great American ideal of Freedom against the moral undercurrent of puritan Christianity that has always bubbled under the U.S. project. It is a node at which the fears and concerns of libertarian types, First Amendment warriors, LGBTQ advocates and social conservatives curiously align.
Sadly, they align too well in one respect: no one seems willing to ask the age verification providers exactly what they do and how. And with biometric technologies like facial recognition prompting real concerns about surveillance use cases by law enforcement, a culture of distrust has grown around the formalized collection of personal data.
Ironically, the case of social media – the other great stage in the age assurance debate – could offer an alternate model: simply couch the request for a user’s age in a fun platform promising infinite social connection, and watch how quickly worries about privacy are blown aside with a lusty Hawk-tuah!
Article Topics
age verification | biometrics | data privacy | digital identity | EFF | regulation | United States
Comments