Aylo continues to argue site-level age verification is ineffective

Aylo, the Canadian company that owns Pornhub and its related network of adult content sites, is not going down without a fight in the scuffle over age assurance regulations. An article in Wired says the company has sent letters to Apple, Google, and Microsoft, urging them to support device-based age verification in their app stores and operating systems.

Pornhub’s traffic has cratered in jurisdictions where age assurance laws have been implemented – or at least in those where it has not shut down operations entirely, as is the case in many southern states of the U.S. Since the UK implemented age assurance requirements for adult sites in July under the Online Safety Act, Pornhub has lost nearly 80 percent of its UK users.

“Based on our real-world experience with existing age assurance laws, we strongly support the initiative to protect minors online,” says the letter sent by Anthony Penhale, chief legal officer for Aylo. “However, we have found site-based age assurance approaches to be fundamentally flawed and counterproductive.”

The argument is by now familiar: age checks at the site level don’t work to protect kids from accessing adult material, because they can use VPNs to disguise their IP address or simply go to other, noncompliant sites. Alex Kekesi, vice president of brand and community at Pornhub, says the company has “seen an exponential surge in searches for alternate adult sites without age restrictions or safety standards at all.”

Searches don’t necessarily equate to access, but it stands to reason that some of the millions of users fleeing Pornbhub are finding their smut somewhere else.

Pornhub’s supporting arguments are flimsier, particularly the assertion that third-party age assurance providers present a privacy risk. This leverages the general unfamiliarity with privacy-preserving age tools and the standards they comply with.

Nonetheless, Aylo says device-based verification is better, because once a user’s age signal is attached to their device it can be shared over its application programming interface (API) with adult sites. It points to California’s Digital Age Assurance Act (AB 1043), which requires app store operators to check a user’s before they download apps, as a law that points in the right direction.

In soliciting comments from the three big companies that received Aylo’s plea, Wired heard that Google doesn’t allow adult apps on Google Play, “and would emphasize that certain high-risk services like Aylo will always need to invest in specific tools to meet their own legal and responsibility obligations.” Microsoft cited a policy recommendation that “age assurance should be applied at the service level.” Apple pointed to its child online safety report.

There has been plenty of noise from parties beyond the porn industry about how age assurance laws don’t work. The Phoenix Center, a nonprofit nonpartisan think tank, recently released a report that used Google Trends data to reach the conclusion that “the availability of VPNs and alternative sites that ignore the law suggests that the effectiveness of state-level age verification laws is questionable.”

And social media companies are eager to jump on any argument that might save them from regulation, litigating with abandon through their legal lobby, NetChoice.

Mike Stabile, director of public policy at the Free Speech Coalition, the trade association for the adult industry, compares the fallout from platform-based age verification to that of alcohol prohibition in the U.S., when rum-runners ran wild and moonshiners shone brightest. “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.”

Moreover, Stabile worries that the wave of age laws in the U.S. could be tied to conservative efforts to find a route to a national ban on porn. He asserts that “the advocates for these bills have largely fallen into two groups: faith-based organizations that don’t believe adult content should be legal, and age verification providers who stand to profit from a restricted internet.”

That’s incorrect; Christian ideology has had no role in the implementation of age assurance laws in the UK or EU, where the sector is most robust. It’s a factor in the U.S. debate, but not the primary motivation for legislators introducing these bills.

Stabile says age laws that aim to rein in the internet miss the bigger picture. “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.”

Giving consumer behavior the last word on policy is a terrible idea for many reasons, and dismissing laws on the grounds of free speech must be done with extreme care, given how the free speech argument has been weaponized to the advantage of Silicon Valley.

For its part, Pornhub says it’s not trying to push porn on kids. A business of the size and scale of Pornhub does not want to invite content or practices that could get it shut down. “Keeping minors off adult sites is a shared responsibility that requires a global solution,” Kekesi says. “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.”

CCIA fights Texas law putting age assurance on app stores

In the category of “probably motivated in part by Christian nationalism” is Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the architect of the lawsuit that saw the Supreme Court declare Texas’ age verification law for porn Constitutionally sound. Paxton, who recently sued pharmaceutical companies over the conspiracy theory that Tylenol causes autism, is now on the receiving end of legal pushback from the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA).

The CCIA is suing over SB2420, also known as the App Store Accountability Act, set to go into effect on January 1, 2026. In a reply brief filed with the U.S. District Court for Western Texas, the organization says that “Texas does not, and cannot, provide any good reason why this court should be the first to uphold an across-the-board age-verification and parental-consent mandate for a restriction on access to fully protected speech.”

In a statement, Deputy Director of the CCIA Litigation Center Burke Kappler says the filing “conclusively shows that the court should prevent this law from taking effect due to its wide-ranging restrictions on the expressive speech of adults and minors, along with app stores and app developers. Texas is unable to demonstrate, legally or factually, why this law passes constitutional muster.”

Paxton has championed the law, saying it “improves the safety of Texas children without the use of personal identifying information such as facial scans or biometric markers.”

Article Topics

age verification  |  app store age verification  |  Aylo  |  biometric age estimation  |  Computer & Communications Industry Association  |  device-based age verification  |  Texas age verification