The Scam of Age Verification Date: June 30, 2025 Source: PornBiz.com --- Table of Contents Introduction What is AV and why it doesn't work What will happen? The scam What to do then? Are sex and porn really harmful? The United Kingdom The United States France The European Union Conclusion TLDR --- Introduction The EU Commission recently targeted top porn sites, demanding age verification (AV) to prevent minor access, while ignoring larger mainstream platforms. France’s AV implementation was delayed but will begin in July 2025 in the UK. The US Supreme Court ruled to allow broad state regulation on adult content, enabling AV laws with minimal constitutional restrictions. --- What is AV and why it doesn't work AV requires online platforms to strictly verify users' age by ID uploads, facial scans, credit card checks, or mobile operator verification. Despite appearances, AV fails due to: Lack of evidence proving site-level AV effectiveness. Easy circumvention via millions of other adult content sites, social media, VPNs, and more. Larger mainstream platforms that children frequently use are often exempted. The regulation targets a handful of big porn sites, leaving the problem largely unaddressed. --- What will happen? Porn sites must implement AV where legally required, likely losing approximately 90% of their user base due to verification drop-offs. Example data: July 2025, verification rates hovered around 10%, indicating a 90% user loss. The fallout includes: Financial losses and increased operational costs. Fragmentation of users across unregulated or illegal platforms. An increase in VPN and proxy use, which harms content creators due to ad-blocking. Destruction of the business model for large free adult platforms and content creators. Predictions: Smaller merchants will suffer similarly. User data breaches are highly likely. Future expansions may force AV deeper into devices and app stores, increasing privacy invasions. --- The scam AV enforcement is designed to destroy porn companies by imposing heavy burdens. Instead of leveraging existing merchant data (like banks and credit cards), AV pushes the responsibility onto overburdened platforms. "Protecting children" is a false front; AV is driven by anti-porn activists and ideologues using emotional manipulation to silence critics. AV is ineffective and counterproductive, creating false illusions of protection while censorship and restrictions grow. Parental controls, which exist and work, are ignored in favor of pointless AV regulations. Hypocrisy is rampant as platforms hosting content frequented by minors are exempt. --- What to do then? Site-level AV is ineffective; device-level AV or app store-level controls would be far more effective. Existing parental controls should be promoted with education and support rather than mass surveillance. A proposed solution: mandate parental control apps verified by schools annually to involve parents actively. Current approaches shift the responsibility away from parents onto private companies unfairly. --- Are sex and porn really harmful? Research on porn’s impact on teenagers is limited and inconclusive. The idea that porn is inherently harmful is a moral panic, akin to past fears about music or videogames. Porn represents societal fantasies and natural drives. Society is quicker to restrict sexual content than violent content; this reflects cultural and ideological biases. --- The United Kingdom The UK pioneered AV laws starting in 2015 and instituted default ISP-level porn blocking. Despite ISP filters, site-level AV is imposed, redundantly burdening users. Timeline: 2013: ISP filtering starts. 2015: Digital Economy Act introduces