In case you haven’t noticed, free expression online is currently under attack. From the proposed TikTok ban to hearings on Section 230 (which protects social platforms from being liable for what users post), some U.S. lawmakers are targeting access to free and open internet.
Recent age-verification bills are another iteration of this. These laws require people to show proof of age to view adult content — or, in some versions, to peruse social media at all. Experts warn that these bills threaten digital privacy and free speech.
What are age-verification bills?
Last year, Louisiana passed Act 440, which requires visitors to sites with over 33.33 percent of adult content to use a commercial age-verification system (AVS) to prove they’re over 18, such as with a government-issued ID. The law went into effect on Jan. 1, 2023.
An influx of similar bills cropped up across the country afterwards. Utah’s SB 287, which requires a commercial AVS for sites that have “a substantial portion of material that may be harmful to minors” has been signed into law and will go into effect on May 2. (Utah has also passed two other bills, SB 152 and HB 311, which requires age verification for all users on social media sites; parental permission to access social media for those under 18; and social media curfews for under-18s. These are supposed to go into effect in March 2024, but social media platforms are expected to challenge these laws beforehand).
Copycats of the Louisiana law have also passed in Virginia, Mississippi, and Arkansas as well, but have yet to be signed. Such bills have been brought forward in other states too, like Texas and Arizona. The Free Speech Coalition, a porn industry lobby group, has compiled a tracker of age-verification bills.
In the UK, similar legislation that called for age-verification on porn sites, known as the “porn block,” failed in 2019. Last year, the UK government revisited the idea, with critics saying it would cause a “slippery slope” for censorship.
The downsides to “porn passport” laws
While these bills may initially seem sound — no one wants children to access adult content — the experts say that they won’t work, and will cause a host of problems.
In terms of the former, these statutes are difficult to enforce and easy to get around. For one, there are going to be websites based in other countries that won’t comply with these regulations, said Mike Stabile, director of public affairs at the Free Speech Coalition. “My greatest fear when I looked at [these bills] was that this is…going to push kids to more and more dangerous sites,” he said.
For another, software like VPNs (virtual privacy networks) are built to make it seem like the user is somewhere they’re not. Days after the Louisiana law went into effect, a Redditor asked if they can use a VPN to get around it. “Yep,” the top comment read. “So easy a five year old can do it.”
Beyond enforceability, experts say they cause a tremendous privacy risk.
“The immediate concerns are that there is no foolproof age-verification system that is not intrusive, comprehensive, effective, and can be introduced quickly,” said Jason Kelley, associate director of digital strategy at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit focused on defending digital rights. Since there aren’t systems in place to implement these regulations, tech companies will scramble to respond to these laws. They may do the right thing, or the wrong thing unintentionally, like set up an AVS that’s insecure because they don’t know how AVS’s work, or they may do the wrong thing intentionally to gather up people’s data.
“You create this whole ecosystem, where people’s individual behaviors — the websites that they visit — can be tracked and connected to their identity,” Kelley continued. “We’re essentially creating this immediate requirement for people to share their private information alongside their pornography preference with companies that don’t necessarily have a system in place to protect that data.”
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A longer-term concern is that there will be a domino effect, which is already happening with the copycat bills. If they were all to pass, Kelley said we’d have an extremely complicated system where different states accept different forms of verification, which could lead to these websites requiring verification from everyone regardless of state to assure they comply.
Further, bills like Utah’s SB 152 and HB 311 target social media on the whole, and would fundamentally change the internet. Other states are following suit: A proposal in Ohio, for instance, would require parental permission for children to sign up not just for Facebook and YouTube, but “any online website, online service, online product, or online feature that requires consumer consent to register, sign up, or otherwise create a unique username.”
“The end result is that we won’t have access that’s anonymous to much of the web,” Kelley said of these flurry of age-verification bills, “which is important for free speech” and other things, like privacy protection. If all these bills went into effect, many people wouldn’t be able to access the internet at all without an ID. As it is, there’s a “digital divide” where millions of Americans don’t have an adequate internet connection at home; verification would only exacerbate this issue of access. While those who do have IDs could get through these barriers, they would need to give up anonymity to do so.
If all these bills went into effect, many people wouldn’t be able to access the internet at all without an ID, and those who could access would need to provide documentation.
That’s not the only potential issue. As senior security analyst Max Eddy at PCMag (which is owned by Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company) warned, identity theft could increase in the wake of these laws. It’s already happening: “We’ve already heard reports of phishing going on in Louisiana, where people are impersonating adult sites, and getting people to upload their ID and then selling those IDs…for Bitcoin,” Stabile said. “We expect that…identity theft is going to skyrocket.”
Users aren’t the only people impacted by these laws, either; adult creators are, too.
Online sex workers are already pushed offline due to bills FOSTA-SESTA, an amendment to Section 230 meant to stop sex-trafficking, but has resulted in the removal (or shadowbanning) of sex workers and remotely sexy content from major social platforms like Facebook and Instagram. (Only a single trafficker has been prosecuted under FOSTA-SESTA in its first five years.) Should age-verification bills progress, the problem will inevitably worsen.
“It’s just going to censor us,” said adult performer and advocate Alana Evans. “How is it going to affect a platform like Twitter?” Currently, Twitter does allow adult content, and Evans sees it as the only platform that has a safe space for performers — but that status hangs in the balance. “If Twitter decides that we can’t advertise my cam links anymore” or similar links, she said, “it would kill my business. It would kill my income.”
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How to protect children from adult content
“I worked my butt off to keep my kids away from that material,” said Evans, who’s a parent. “The most important thing is actually being aware of what your kids are doing in the first place.” This includes checking their devices and having open conversations about sex and porn. She’s had talks with her son, who’s now an adult, where she explained that porn isn’t real but rather a “theatrical version” of sex.
“I don’t think parents should be afraid of having that conversation,” Evans said. One reason teens look at porn is simply because they’re curious. “If you’re having a conversation with them,” she continued, “the curiosity is taken away.”
Like Evans, Stabile also calls on parents to be involved with their kids’ internet browsing and to have those conversations. There’s lots of content beyond porn that’s not appropriate for kids — portrayals of violence, for example — and it may be impossible to protect kids from seeing any of it, but you can talk to them about it.
Beyond conversations, Stabile recommends device-level filters that block all websites that are registered RTA, or “Restricted to Adults.” “It signals to filters, whether it’s your Apple filter or Net Nanny or something like that, that this site should be blocked,” he explained. It doesn’t matter if a child tries a VPN or some other workaround — the site will be blocked on that device.
The idea behind these bills “is not wrong,” said Evans — no one, especially those in the adult industry, wants children watching their content. These bills, however, create risks, and can cascade into an online privacy and censorship nightmare that hurts sex workers and other internet users.
“If even a few of them [age-verification bills] pass in different contexts, it will be dangerous for everyone in the United States who goes online,” Kelley warned, “because we will not be able to access things privately.”
