Hey babe, check out my regulations: porn star, VerifyMy spice up UK Online Safety Act

It’s one thing when Christian moralists lobby for age assurance laws – but another thing entirely when the voices are coming from inside the boudoir. VerifyMy has teamed up with adult content star Ivy Maddox on a video message to porn sites: regulations are stiffening. Time to break out the protection, or risk getting shut down.

A release says “Coming Soon” is a (sexy but clothed) reading of the Online Safety Act that “lays the regulation bare for the porn industry.” UK regulator Ofcom, alongside other European bodies, has begun ramping up its child online safety rules, issuing guidance, launching probes and wielding the lash of steep fines.

Next month, things get even more demanding, with the July 25th deadline for mandatory implementation of “highly effective age assurance technology” for users accessing adult content on porn sites, search engines and user-to-user platforms such as social media or dating platforms. Fines can reach up to £18 million (US$24.3 million) or 10 percent of global revenue, and Ofcom can fine or ban any platform found to be in violation.

Together, Maddox and VerifyMy are urging X-rated sites to understand what the law says, and how to comply. Seated on a generic hotel bed, in fishnets and a Janet Jacksonesque bustier, the UK adult film star saucily whispers about “very big legal obligations” and a safe word (“compliance”) before launching into a 25-minute reading of the Act in full.

The performance is rather wooden, even by porn standards – but the gist is clear: “the industry needs to get down to business.”

“I was first exposed to porn at school when I didn’t want to see it, and I hate the thought of children seeing my content in the same way,” Maddox says. A study by the Children’s Commissioner for England found children first see online pornography by the age of 13 on average, with one in ten encountering it as young as nine. “The Online Safety Act can help prevent this from happening but it’s not exactly an easy read, so this film is my way of bringing it to life and raising awareness of rules that will have a big impact both on my industry and beyond.”

“This is about moving with the times, protecting vulnerable and underage users from adult – as well as other harmful – content across the internet, and ensuring over-18s can enjoy mature content safely. Nobody I know wants to see Ofcom block sites and create a UK porn blackout.”

The threat is real: this month, Pornhub, Youporn and RedTube shut their doors to French users over the country’s age assurance legislation, and at least 17 U.S. states currently have laws that have caused Aylo, Pornhub’s parent company, to withdraw service.

There is a sense that the porn industry is waiting to see just how hard the hammer drops, then act accordingly. But Lina Ghazal, head of regulatory and public affairs at VerifyMy, says this approach can leave both users and platforms exposed. “There is a huge upheaval going on in the adult industry, but everyone needs to be prepared for change because the internet is going to look quite different this summer. The big take-away for consumers of porn is that wherever you go to watch it today, that website, and all others, will be required to check your age to let you in.”

“Age checks are an adjustment for everyone but they are the gateway to safer online spaces for all of us. We should be happy they are finally here.”

Email age estimation among approved methods for age assurance

Verifymy, specifically, is happy about the inclusion of email age estimation among solutions considered to be “technically accurate, robust, reliable and fair,” and therefore highly effective. The method uses an email address to analyze existing public accounts and make an estimation about the user’s age based on the data; an email address registered with a mortgage firm, for instance, is unlikely to belong to a minor.

“Technology available today is designed to protect adults’ privacy, revealing only whether a user is over 18,” says Andy Lulham, chief operating officer at VerifyMy. “Advanced methods, like email-based age estimation, allow these checks to be completed in seconds.”

“Platforms still have time to implement age checks before next month’s deadline. We know many are lining things up, but those that haven’t started yet need to set the wheels in motion now. Fail to comply in time, and adult sites will be carrying big targets on their back and, with Ofcom under pressure to demonstrate robust enforcement, the penalties for inaction are likely to be severe.”

In other words, porn sites should be open minded about considering that sometimes, subjugation can feel good in the end.

EFF fires shots at European Commission’s guidelines under DSA

Arousal, of course, is a back-and-forth affair. In the case of porn, as age assurance laws go forth, digital rights groups push back, arguing, in the words of a recent statement from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), that “online safety for young people must not come at the expense of privacy, free expression, and equitable access to digital spaces.”

The EFF recently published its “Submission to the European Commission’s Targeted Public Consultation on the Protection of Minors Guidelines under the Digital Services Act,” which says the guidelines raise concerns about privacy and access.

EFF believes biometric age assurance technologies are tools that “too often lead to surveillance, discrimination, and censorship.” It simultaneously argues that document-based age verification is invasive and not accessible enough, “shutting out millions of people without formal documentation.” It worries that “vague mandates to protect against ‘unrealistic beauty standards’ or ‘potentially risky content’ threaten to overblock legitimate expression, disproportionately harming vulnerable users, including LGBTQ+ youth.”

And it says that “by placing a disproportionate emphasis on age assurance as a necessary tool to safeguard minors, the guidelines do not address the root causes of risks encountered by all users, including minors, and instead merely focus on treating their symptoms.”

Per the EC recommendation report, “the guidelines are guided by the assumption that age assurance is a necessary, appropriate and proportionate tool, without providing evidence that age assurance is indeed the most effective, and an appropriate and proportionate approach to safeguarding minors.”

Regarding existing systems that are designed to be anonymous (such as those outlined in France’s double-blind requirement) the EFF says that “while the specifications for the Commission’s age verification app note that the app should implement privacy protections such as salted hashes and Zero Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs), the specifications do not require these measures to be implemented. The app’s specifications include ZKPs, while simultaneously acknowledging that no compatible ZKP solution is currently available.”

“It is also assumed that frequently used ZKPs will avoid privacy concerns, and that verifiers won’t combine this data with existing information, such as account data, profiles, or interests, for other purposes, such as advertising.”

The report cites the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)’s Face Analysis Technology Evaluation (FATE) as evidence that, for several major biometric age estimation algorithms, “accuracy is strongly influenced by sex, image quality, region-of-birth and race, and interactions between those factors.” This is a vague and misleading statement, which ignores that the most accurate algorithms show very low differentials in the latest NIST testing.

Trust is a key part of intimacy, age assurance

The issue with the EFF’s argument is that the “root causes” it speaks of are rather engorged: an industry enriched by unending streams of online pornography, and social media firms that have built addiction into their models and failed to mitigate harms as they become clear. One might argue that profit is the true root cause to which the EFF refers.

Yet even tighter legal restrictions on porn and social firms would surely elicit more moaning about free speech and human rights. Age assurance technology is the solution that is available.

The primary problem, then, is trust. Ultimately, the EFF is advocating for more instruments to ensure trust, be they regulatory, technological or standards-based. Vendors of age assurance should take careful note in considering their primary project at this moment. As laws come down and restricted sites scramble for assistance from an excited industry, signing deals may be a relatively small thing compared to earning the trust of internet users, whole-hog.

Article Topics

age verification  |  biometric age estimation  |  biometrics  |  Digital Services Act  |  EFF  |  face biometrics  |  Online Safety Act  |  regulation  |  UK age verification  |  VerifyMy