Australia’s pornography age-verification: a victory for advocates or a gateway to ‘darker corners of the internet’ | Social media ban

When porn sites began blocking access to Australians, it also meant that X began age-checking users before looking at adult content on the social media site.

However, some users were asked to send a video selfie when they wanted to look at a single photo or video.

“Almost every post on my sub-account has a content warning and asks me: [for a] “Selfie for age verification,” Australian porn consumer Joe* told Guardian Australia. “This is maddening.”

Others said they are moving away from verified sites.

“To be honest, I am no longer interested in any of the sites and platforms I used to use because not only is the verification process really invasive, but some of them even give you the option to sign in with Google… and that is the last platform I would trust with sensitive data,” Jethro said.

“The options are: link your perversions to your government ID or send your face to the AI ​​machine,” Chris* said.

It’s still early days. Apart from a few Aylo-owned sites such as RedTube, which blocks access to Australians, and Pornhub, which now only displays work-safe content to Aussies who visit without logging in, most of the top free adult sites Australians visit for porn have no age verification.

According to search engine optimization site Semrush, porn site Thisvid appeared to be the only site in the Top 20 that met these rules. But with the threat of a $49.5 million fine for the breach, more may soon join in, and Australians have taken notice.

Porn searches on Google trends this week have reached their highest point since 2022, when Covid-era lockdowns ended. Searches for virtual private networks, which allow users to bypass restrictions by appearing to be outside Australia, were at the highest level since the former Coalition government introduced laws allowing pirate websites to be blocked in 2015.

Sex workers have been warning for years that these codes, which have been developed over a long period of time between the e-Safety authority and the industry, could alienate them from the internet and direct users to less secure sites.

“We have already warned that these laws will divert traffic away from platforms that have moderation measures and into sites that profit from non-consensual and stolen porn, including the unpaid work of sex workers,” said Mish Pony, CEO of Scarlet Alliance.

“So pushing people away from mainstream services like Pornhub doesn’t stop porn consumption, it just pushes it into darker corners of the internet. It makes it harder to combat real harms.”

Andy Conboi, an OnlyFans content creator based in Sydney, said he has already noticed a drop in interest in his posts.

“People don’t actually want to post a photo of themselves, their license or something like that on these platforms, especially Twitter. [X]he said.

“In my group chats with creators, people are getting frustrated and angry, and their engagement is decreasing [and] It’s much harder to put things out there and be seen most of the time.”

Conboi said some creators are turning to creating safe content to appear on sites like Instagram and TikTok, an odd outcome given the number of underage users on these platforms.

But for opponents of pornography, it is a long-awaited victory after attempts at internet filtering failed under the Rudd-Gillard Labor government and the Coalition stepped in. Internet filtering plans abandoned Shortly before the 2013 elections.

The policy of the children’s eSafety commissioner remained the same at the time, and she has since gained increasing power over the internet in Australia in the decade that role has existed.

Collective Shout, which has long campaigned against pornography, has declared victory.

“This day was hard fought for. Collective Shout and our partners and allies worked hard to make it happen,” said Melinda Tankard Reist, movement director for Collective Shout.

“It is comforting to know that proof of age protections are now in place as a barrier to young people being exposed to rape porn, torture porn, incest porn, and extreme violence and degradation of women.”

The Australian Christian Lobby, one of the biggest advocates of internet filtering in the 18 years since Labor’s initial proposal, also welcomed the news.

“The fact that P*rnhub has ceased operating in Australia is already testament to its effectiveness,” ACL CEO Michelle Pearse said in an email response.

‘Honey traps’ for identities and sexual interests

It is difficult to measure effectiveness in parts of the world that take similar actions. Researchers in the USA Examined Google Trends and other search data After some states introduced age verification for porn sites. As in Australia, Pornhub blocked users and searches went to other sites and VPNs over a three-month period.

“We saw huge substitution effects in search traffic for XVideos, the second largest porn site in the states,” he said. “It’s a big enough change that the No. 2 site is now the No. 1 site in states that have passed these laws,” said the report’s lead author, Stanford University political science researcher David Lang.

It was harder to track VPN usage, as people tended to find a VPN after a quick search and it no longer appeared in that state.

Tom Sulston, head of policy at Digital Rights Watch, said workarounds to continue accessing porn were easy, but the bigger concern was creating hoards of information about people’s sexual preferences.

“It would be absolutely trivial for a criminal to set up porn sites as honeytraps to hijack the identities and sexual interests of Australians and then use that material for blackmail, similar to existing blackmail schemes,” Sulston said.

“Foreign intelligence services seeking to ensnare Australian targets could easily do the same. The age verification regime puts Australians at greater risk of harm, not less.”

*Names have been changed