Talk turns dirty as Aylo rep tells Age Assurance Summit online age assurance doesn’t work

A plenary at the Age Assurance Standards Summit that began as a discussion of digital wallet use cases for age verification in the EU quickly turned existential when Dave Cooke, a representative from Aylo – operator of Pornhub and other massive adult content sites – stood up to make his case to a roomful of age assurance professionals.

Put simply, Aylo’s argument is that age assurance measures imposed at the site level don’t work, and that age checks at the OS level would be more effective at keeping kids safe. That’s because, while Aylo has complied with age assurance laws – in Louisiana, by implementing digital age assurance, and elsewhere by simply blocking the site – some of its biggest competitors in the smut space do not.

Ergo, says Cooke, it’s not fair – and kids aren’t being protected. (Furthermore, he notes, Aylo is the only porn provider at the summit; translation, “We’re trying.”)

In keeping with large social media companies’ arguments that app stores should handle age checks, Cooke suggests age assurance is best done at the device level, with default parental controls that must be turned off with a formal age verification process. The logic goes that governments have lists of restricted sites, so it would be easy to create a block list, which operating systems would implement.

Which is to say, let Google, Apple and Microsoft – which Cooke points out are “most of the internet” – take care of the problem.

The argument is understandable, given that Pornhub’s imposition of age assurance measures in Louisiana led to an 80 percent drop in traffic. Then there’s the cost; while the Age Verification Providers Association (AVPA) is fond of pointing out that age checks are relatively cheap and getting cheaper, they are not free. Between a loss of revenue from reduced traffic and the costs of checking millions of individuals, the impact could be hobbling.

What it’s not is convincing. As Cooke speaks – voluntarily – several seasoned age assurance professionals can be heard sharpening their rhetorical claws.

Their replies expose the holes in Aylo’s proposition. The chair of the plenary, John Carr, not-so-subtly notes that porn producers and distributors have created a problem for kids on the internet, and are expecting other entities to solve it. Chelsea Jarvie, a PHD candidate in online age assurance at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, is blunt in her assessment: “blacklists don’t work.” Others note that what ends up on the blacklist could depend on the ideological bent of those making the laws; certain conservative U.S. states, for instance, might decide that LGBTQ+ content is harmful to kids, and ban it.

Many of the responses hinge on a key piece of the age assurance discussion that often gets glossed over: that age assurance is not about just protecting kids, but also provision: enabling access to resources that children have a right to view. Pornhub may find it easier to have operating systems cast a wide net on their behalf, but its proposal offers, in the words of the German delegation “no provision, no participation.”

Article Topics

Age Assurance Standards Summit (2025)  |  age verification  |  app stores  |  AVPA  |  Aylo