With age verification law back on in France, Aylo blocks Pornhub again

Aylo, which owns some of the world’s most highly trafficked free pornography websites, has once again pulled the boudoir curtain closed on French users of its flagship site, Pornhub, in response to a legal decision that lifted a suspension on age verification laws in the country. This marks the second time Pornhub has gone dark in France in protest.

As the debate over age assurance requirements for adult content has leveled up in courts, so has the rhetoric. Aylo’s latest statement begins with a pithy j’accuse that also serves as a commitment to further legal unrest: “Liberty has an off button, for now.”

The company, which is a property of Ethical Capital Partners, says that “ongoing legal challenges, decisions, and reversals highlight one thing very clearly: lack of direction, lack of a comprehensive solution and simply put, legislative dysfunction.”

Aylo is itself behind many of the legal challenges, as a member of the Free Speech Coalition, a lobby group for the adult content industry. As to a lack of direction, the prevailing winds have been blowing for some time in the direction of online protections for minors, and legislation has proceeded steadily on that path: French regulator Arcom began testing the current French standard for age verification to access adult sites in 2023, and the specification that self-declaration is insufficient for proof of age goes back to a 2020 change to the French Criminal Code.

Its assertion that there is no comprehensive solution is true in some respects – all 27 EU member states are free to set their own rules for age verification and there are currently no unified EU standards – it’s also unlikely to last, as the European Commission moves to launch its white label age assurance software kit.

Darkwebs, data breaches, CSAM among menagerie of villains

Nonetheless, Aylo persists in arguing its main points: that age verification requirements infringe on the rights of adults, and that they don’t actually protect kids, who can just find porn elsewhere. “We maintain that French citizens deserve regulation that will prevent children from accessing adult content and that can be effectively enforced,” the company says, adding that “they also deserve that their privacy and sensitive data be protected.”

The boogeyman of data breaches is summoned, which neglects facial age estimation (FAE) methods that do not require the storage of biometric data. But the primary villain in the narrative is other sites that are worse than Aylo, which the company says kids will flock to – “thousands of sites that deliberately circumvent regulations, don’t verify the age of performers in content, and actively encourage users to bypass the law.”

“Unlike us, they don’t monitor content or prioritize safety – making everyone more vulnerable, not less.”

The argument is not without merit: it is a natural tendency of curious (not to say aroused) humans to find ways around barriers put up in front of them. Likewise, if an opening exists, someone will fill it; whack one mole, and another pops up.

However, the online adult content market is not a carnival game, per se, and Aylo’s assertion overlooks two apparent truths.

First, there’s a finite limit to the number of porn sites with huge global audiences. While it may be true that adult content can be found on thousands of sites, Pornhub and its ilk are what they are for the same reason any large brand succeeds: they have worked over years to build an audience and a reputation. It is disingenuous to assume there is a list of a million sites that offer the same experience as those Aylo operates.

Second, lists do exist, pointing users to alternative porn sites. They are as easily accessible to regulators as to minors, and there’s nothing stopping Arcom from visiting punitive measures on any and all that do not comply with the law.

Legislation only works if all’s fair in gov and porn

To that end, a sentence buried in the middle of Aylo’s statement may indicate its most realistic – and fair – option. “A path forward requires lawmakers to understand and address with a clear enforcement plan the fact that adult content exists on hundreds of thousands of platforms, not simply the 17 sites designated in the ministerial order,” it says.

Aylo is correct in this, and it will be up to regulators to demonstrate that they are up to the challenge. The company finishes with an explicit challenge: “To the French government and Arcom we ask, how many minors have been protected in the six weeks since this law came into effect? Provide the data on how this reduced access to age-inappropriate content.”

From a legal standpoint, it will be necessary for France to provide data that backs up its legislation and can withstand inevitable challenges.

In the meantime, the online adult content industry finds its biggest names under siege and pointing fingers at smaller operators. Indirectly, it is already arguing on the regulator’s behalf that smaller sites should be held to the same standards as large ones, and face the same penalties if they don’t fall in line.

In a recent interview for the Biometric Update Podcast, Iain Corby of the Age Verification Providers Association (AVPA) notes that, as laws take effect, Aylo will have “a very strong interest in making sure every other site complies, as well.”

“I have a lot of sympathy with the adult industry wanting a level playing field, and not wanting it to be what we’ve seen in France and Germany, where just five or six of the largest well-known platforms get targeted by the regulators, and they then have an absolute existential threat to their business, because they know they will lose all their traffic to the second division competitors.”

Ultimately, Aylo is not against age verification – just against implementing it at the site level. “To make the internet safer for everyone, every phone, tablet or computer should start as a kid-safe device,” it says. “Only verified adults should be allowed to unlock access to age-inappropriate content.”

In this, it cuts through the steam, so to speak, and positions itself with social media platforms in supporting age checks while wanting nothing to do with them.

Danish minister challenges adult content sites with EU options 

Aylo is in agreement with legislators on one thing: “the technology to accomplish this exists today.” A report from Euronews quotes Caroline Stage Olsen, digital minister for Denmark, who says it shouldn’t be a problem for industry players to implement effective age verification solutions.

“They are the biggest companies in the world, with a bigger economy than most of our countries could ever dream of. I think they will manage to find a solution,” says Stage Olsen, who intends for Denmark to “set a clear, political ambition that can shape EU policy in the years to come.”

Conveniently, the EU has some available. Denmark is among five countries piloting a customized national age verification application built on the European Commission’s blueprint, to bridge the gap until next year’s rollout of the European Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet. France, Greece, Italy and Spain are also participating.

Another option is the token-based AgeAware ecosystem, operated by the non-profit organization euCONSENT ASBL. A recent blog explains the structure: “participating age assurance providers who have been independently audited and certified to deliver reliable age checks offer their users the option to accept a token that is stored on their device, and can be read by other participating providers, negating the need to do a fresh age check when accessing another digital service.”

AgeAware’s tokenization enables double-blind age verification, wherein the relying party receives only yes-or-no age assurance, and the verification provider doesn’t know how or where the token is used, making transactions anonymous.

Yoti walks UK regulator through tokenization for age assurance

UK provider Yoti has been issuing age tokens to some websites for years. Company CEO Robin Tombs has thoughts on age tokens in a post on his LinkedIn profile, sharing a story about an encounter with UK regulator Ofcom.

“Back in Sep 2024, at an adult content conference in Prague I mentioned to Ofcom, the UK Online Safety Act regulator, that I thought that within a few months of 25 July 2025, the most popular, privacy preserving age ‘checks’ individuals would use in the UK to access online porn and potentially other sectors would be age tokens, issued by AV providers such as Yoti. Ofcom admitted they did not know much about age tokens but would be keen to learn more.”

Tombs says tokens can be “very low cost compared to ID doc checks or mobile phone number checks,” and “very useful to both individuals and adult content (porn) operators who often allow viewers to browse their content without registering to preserve privacy.”

Age estimation oddities, now is your time

In a separate post, he identifies how the European Commission’s release of the Annex to the draft Communication regarding age assurance to protect minors online has opened a critical window for providers of “alternative age estimation methods.”

“Whilst the EU Commission still considers age verification, anchored with ID document or ID wallet credential date of birth, to be the required approach – in 6.1.3.1 (38) the EU will temporarily allow online porn operators to use alternative age estimation methods if they can prove that such methods are comparable to the effectiveness of age verification methods. Such an age estimation method must be robust and not easily circumventible by minors.”

Tombs says the “transitory period” is likely to last about a year, “after which age verification methods should be widely available to EU adults.”

“Yoti will promptly engage with the EU Commission to ensure any online porn operator, using a combination of Yoti facial age estimation (FAE) and ID document or reusable ID wallet based age verification, sets the Challenge age at the appropriate level,” in order to “balance the need to minimise EU based under 18s accessing online porn and the inclusion need to enable a high percentage of adults without ID documents or ID wallets to choose to use privacy preserving FAE to access online porn.”

Testing must keep pace with tech, laws: Dunstone

Ted Dunstone, CEO of BixeLab and Biometix, also chimes in on LinkedIn, in this case to address the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton. Dunstone says it marks “a major shift in the legal treatment of age verification on the internet.”

“For two decades, courts largely agreed that requiring users to prove their age before accessing adult content violated the First Amendment. That consensus has now changed.”

The seismic shift puts extra pressure on testing labs to ensure that age assurance technologies can, literally and figuratively, stand up to the test.

“We must ask: how reliably can a system distinguish between a 17-year-old and an 18-year-old?

Are there demographic or socioeconomic disparities in performance? How is data handled, stored, and protected? Can the system be bypassed or spoofed?”

“The stakes are high. Poorly implemented systems risk infringing on rights, excluding legitimate users, or offering a false sense of regulatory compliance. Rigorous, standards-based testing – including for biometric systems and algorithmic decision-making – is the only way to ensure that these tools are safe, fair, and effective.”

“As in many areas of AI, policy is moving fast. Testing must move faster.”

Article Topics

age verification  |  AgeAware app  |  Arcom  |  Aylo  |  euCONSENT  |  facial age estimation (FAE)  |  France  |  Ofcom  |  Online Safety Act  |  UK  |  Yoti