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A lot has happened in the past month: the EU Commission (the executive branch of the EU) publicly attacked the three largest porn sites — including us — over our supposed obligation to prevent minor access, while completely ignoring far larger mainstream platforms.
AV implementation was also scheduled to begin in France in June 2025, but was later halted — though only temporarily. However, it is set to come into effect next month in the UK — July 2025.
And just yesterday — June 27 — the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) issued a devastating decision that opens the door to broad state regulation of adult content, effectively allowing AV laws with minimal constitutional constraint.
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Some users might even be tempted to turn to the dark web to escape this wave of state overreach — though we certainly don’t recommend it.
If you’re going to the dark web for porn, you’re gonna have a bad time.
what’s likely is that users will scatter across so many sites, apps, proxies, and channels that they’ll become untraceable, guaranteeing the failure of future regulations. And unlike today, many of those new destinations will be dangerous, unmoderated, and openly hostile to enforcement.
That seems to be the argument; that these verification laws specifically target dedicated porn sites while similar content still exists all over and is not similarly punished, which given people’s extreme and natural aversion to doing KYC for porn will cause them to leave for wherever doesn’t demand it, killing off what protections now exist against especially shady material and practices.
I’m not really against age verification, the problem is that I’m very, very against having a government backed database of all porn I visit. Nobodies really assured me that current implementations aren’t doing that.
Plus, at the rate we’re going I’m not really sure how much longer porn will be legal, free speech rights be damned. Both the right and the left and the younger generation seem fully invested in ‘save the kids’ mentality these days.
Age verification doesn’t work
Kids and teens are very good at bypassing restrictions. It only penalizes those who follow the law.
We need somebody to invent a way to prove your age without proving your identity.
Zero-knowledge proofs are literally designed for this exact problem! They let you prove a fact (like being over 18) without revealing any other data about yourself. Some projects are already working on this for age verification but goverments seem more interested in surveillance than actual privacy-preserving solutions.
