16 Mar Age Verification: The Push Behind Adult Content Creators SFW Content
Posted
in Industry Knowledge
Online adult content creators are used to having to pivot their content strategies, especially in the wake of FOSTA-SESTA legislation. FOSTA-SESTA made online platforms civilly and criminally liable for knowingly hosting sex trafficking content, which consequently swept consensual sex work into the wave of knee jerk censorship and restrictions of sexually explicit or suggestive content. To continue to promote content on mainstream platforms that would still allow them to hold accounts, online sex workers had to adjust their strategies, referring to their businesses in coded language and trying to adhere to subjective community guidelines as best as possible.
The new issue for online adult content creators is age verification laws that are sweeping the globe. These laws, whose intended purpose is to restrict access of minors to a wide variety of online platforms, including social media, search engines, and adult sites, are having a huge impact on all internet users. When users are required to verify their age to use a site, they can choose to do one of two things: verify and share personal information about themselves to use the site, or not use the site at all.
I am going to do a few things in this piece: give a quick rundown on the current age verification laws in place in the world’s biggest markets (the US and Europe), discuss how this will affect online access to adult content, and finish by sharing my thoughts on why the push for safe for work content from sex workers is ramping up.
UNITED STATES
Age verification laws have swept through the United States, disturbingly illustrated by the graphic depicting top relative searches on PornHub across the US for Valentine’s Day 2026. The parts of the graphic that are not filled in represent states that the site has blocked in lieu of the age verification laws. In total, 25 US states have introduced age verification laws since 2022, with more states coming under review with their own laws making their way through the legislative pipeline.
Washington state is the latest state to join this cohort, and has introduced an age verification bill (HB 2112) modelled after a Texas law that requires strong age verification measures such as government ID checks. Public testimony was overwhelmingly opposed, citing issues with vague language in the bill and the potential for data breaches. This bill is particularly concerning as the penalties for websites that violate the law include civil penalties of up to $10,000 per day that they operate, or up to $250,000 if minors are found to have accessed content.
Furthermore, in the US, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently hosted a federal panel on age verification, with the aim of shaping national rules to restrict minors’ access to the internet more broadly. This follows the measures taken by the Australian Federal government via their Online Safety Act, which took effect in December 2025 and is an indication of the push for age verification to be accepted globally. Worryingly, no adult creators or industry advocates were invited to take part in the FTC age verification panel. Most panellists signalled support for broad restrictions, suggesting that the policy may move forward without input from those who it will most affect – those in the adult industry.
EUROPE
Countries in Europe have also gone into overdrive with their age verification measures. In the UK, as of July 2025, strong age checks were implemented for sites that allow pornography, as required by the Online Safety Act 2023. Ofcom is the regulator responsible for monitoring minors’ access to prohibited sites and imposing fines on those who violate the law in the United Kingdom. The rules in the UK are considered the tightest of age verification laws, after the regulator released guidance saying that adult sites can be flagged for text, titles, or suggestive material that appears before users go through age verification checks. This demonstrates another level of control on the existence of online sex-workers; it is not simply the material that is being targeted, but the suggestion of the existence of such material being available on the internet. And Ofcom is not playing around; in December of 2025, they fined the AVS group £1 million for failing to implement strong age verification on the 18 adult websites they manage.
France has also introduced strict age verification laws, which were fully enforced in 2025 and are essentially carbon copies of those in the UK. The exception is that the French law says that platforms must offer users multiple ways to prove their identity, with at least one of those methods having to be “double-blind.” This method is supposed to ensure complete anonymity, with neither the site nor the age verification provider being able to identify the user or the site they are accessing. The group that manages PornHub blocked the country’s access to its adult sites following the ruling due to concerns of data breaches and protection of privacy. However, the sites came back online, and access was restored after a court ruling found that the laws do not apply to sites hosted in the EU. The initial application of these laws in PornHub’s second largest traffic source resulted in a huge jump in VPN usage, with a 1000% increase in VPN registrations in the first 30 minutes of the site being blocked.
Italy was the most recent European country to introduce age verification checks, and as opposed to the laws in France, which were challenged, these mandatory checks cover distribution. This is even stricter legislation, as it will affect companies that do not even have offices in the country.
THE PUSH FOR SAFE FOR WORK CONTENT
As of this writing, more countries and jurisdictions worldwide are rushing to enact age verification measures on adult sites. This is occurring without input from adult content creators and others adjacent to the industry, and this is probably no accident. When PornHub removed access to French viewers, officials in the country celebrated this shutdown, saying that the laws were working as intended; that is, making access to pornography so difficult that it has significant effects on the industry’s ability to function.
When reviewing this context, it can then come as no surprise when some adult sites are pushing for their creators to create safe for work content. To preserve themselves, sites have several routes they can take; reduce the amount of sexually explicit material on their sites to avoid the age verification laws (a “significant portion” of sexually explicit material for commercial sites is defined as over one-third), or like PornHub has done so, block those countries, states and jurisdictions which have age verification laws, thereby avoiding the penalties.
Considering these measures, which (once you read between the lines) are designed to increase the hostility that already exists online towards sex workers, we are being pushed between a rock and a hard place, and sites that host our content also have a lot to lose. It then becomes a balance between maintaining visibility by making and promoting safe for work content, and not contributing to stigma and discrimination of online sex workers by buying into the narrative that we cannot be seen as our mere existence is harmful. The problem we have is that when legislation is enacted that imposes significant penalties on those hosting our content if they do not comply with the law, in an environment where people are calling for the destruction of our industry, how effective is our pushback against strategies aimed at helping maintain our visibility?
Rem Sequence is an Australian adult content creator, blogger, and internationally published alt model. She has a background in psychology, philosophy and political science and worked in health and sex education, youth work and trauma counselling for almost two decades. Now, she works full time in the adult industry, as well as indulging her passion for arts, writing and music in numerous side projects.
Online adult content creators are used to having to pivot their content strategies, especially in the wake of FOSTA-SESTA legislation. FOSTA-SESTA made online platforms civilly and criminally liable for knowingly hosting sex trafficking content, which consequently swept consensual sex work into the wave of knee jerk censorship and restrictions of sexually explicit or suggestive content. To continue to promote content on mainstream platforms that would still allow them to hold accounts, online sex workers had to adjust their strategies, referring to their businesses in coded language and trying to adhere to subjective community guidelines as best as possible.
The new issue for online adult content creators is age verification laws that are sweeping the globe. These laws, whose intended purpose is to restrict access of minors to a wide variety of online platforms, including social media, search engines, and adult sites, are having a huge impact on all internet users. When users are required to verify their age to use a site, they can choose to do one of two things: verify and share personal information about themselves to use the site, or not use the site at all.
I am going to do a few things in this piece: give a quick rundown on the current age verification laws in place in the world’s biggest markets (the US and Europe), discuss how this will affect online access to adult content, and finish by sharing my thoughts on why the push for safe for work content from sex workers is ramping up.
UNITED STATES
Age verification laws have swept through the United States, disturbingly illustrated by the graphic depicting top relative searches on PornHub across the US for Valentine’s Day 2026. The parts of the graphic that are not filled in represent states that the site has blocked in lieu of the age verification laws. In total, 25 US states have introduced age verification laws since 2022, with more states coming under review with their own laws making their way through the legislative pipeline.
Washington state is the latest state to join this cohort, and has introduced an age verification bill (HB 2112) modelled after a Texas law that requires strong age verification measures such as government ID checks. Public testimony was overwhelmingly opposed, citing issues with vague language in the bill and the potential for data breaches. This bill is particularly concerning as the penalties for websites that violate the law include civil penalties of up to $10,000 per day that they operate, or up to $250,000 if minors are found to have accessed content.
Furthermore, in the US, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently hosted a federal panel on age verification, with the aim of shaping national rules to restrict minors’ access to the internet more broadly. This follows the measures taken by the Australian Federal government via their Online Safety Act, which took effect in December 2025 and is an indication of the push for age verification to be accepted globally. Worryingly, no adult creators or industry advocates were invited to take part in the FTC age verification panel. Most panellists signalled support for broad restrictions, suggesting that the policy may move forward without input from those who it will most affect – those in the adult industry.
EUROPE
Countries in Europe have also gone into overdrive with their age verification measures. In the UK, as of July 2025, strong age checks were implemented for sites that allow pornography, as required by the Online Safety Act 2023. Ofcom is the regulator responsible for monitoring minors’ access to prohibited sites and imposing fines on those who violate the law in the United Kingdom. The rules in the UK are considered the tightest of age verification laws, after the regulator released guidance saying that adult sites can be flagged for text, titles, or suggestive material that appears before users go through age verification checks. This demonstrates another level of control on the existence of online sex-workers; it is not simply the material that is being targeted, but the suggestion of the existence of such material being available on the internet. And Ofcom is not playing around; in December of 2025, they fined the AVS group £1 million for failing to implement strong age verification on the 18 adult websites they manage.
France has also introduced strict age verification laws, which were fully enforced in 2025 and are essentially carbon copies of those in the UK. The exception is that the French law says that platforms must offer users multiple ways to prove their identity, with at least one of those methods having to be “double-blind.” This method is supposed to ensure complete anonymity, with neither the site nor the age verification provider being able to identify the user or the site they are accessing. The group that manages PornHub blocked the country’s access to its adult sites following the ruling due to concerns of data breaches and protection of privacy. However, the sites came back online, and access was restored after a court ruling found that the laws do not apply to sites hosted in the EU. The initial application of these laws in PornHub’s second largest traffic source resulted in a huge jump in VPN usage, with a 1000% increase in VPN registrations in the first 30 minutes of the site being blocked.
Italy was the most recent European country to introduce age verification checks, and as opposed to the laws in France, which were challenged, these mandatory checks cover distribution. This is even stricter legislation, as it will affect companies that do not even have offices in the country.
THE PUSH FOR SAFE FOR WORK CONTENT
As of this writing, more countries and jurisdictions worldwide are rushing to enact age verification measures on adult sites. This is occurring without input from adult content creators and others adjacent to the industry, and this is probably no accident. When PornHub removed access to French viewers, officials in the country celebrated this shutdown, saying that the laws were working as intended; that is, making access to pornography so difficult that it has significant effects on the industry’s ability to function.
When reviewing this context, it can then come as no surprise when some adult sites are pushing for their creators to create safe for work content. To preserve themselves, sites have several routes they can take; reduce the amount of sexually explicit material on their sites to avoid the age verification laws (a “significant portion” of sexually explicit material for commercial sites is defined as over one-third), or like PornHub has done so, block those countries, states and jurisdictions which have age verification laws, thereby avoiding the penalties.
Considering these measures, which (once you read between the lines) are designed to increase the hostility that already exists online towards sex workers, we are being pushed between a rock and a hard place, and sites that host our content also have a lot to lose. It then becomes a balance between maintaining visibility by making and promoting safe for work content, and not contributing to stigma and discrimination of online sex workers by buying into the narrative that we cannot be seen as our mere existence is harmful. The problem we have is that when legislation is enacted that imposes significant penalties on those hosting our content if they do not comply with the law, in an environment where people are calling for the destruction of our industry, how effective is our pushback against strategies aimed at helping maintain our visibility?
Rem Sequence is an Australian adult content creator, blogger, and internationally published alt model. She has a background in psychology, philosophy and political science and worked in health and sex education, youth work and trauma counselling for almost two decades. Now, she works full time in the adult industry, as well as indulging her passion for arts, writing and music in numerous side projects.
