Pornhub returns for Australians, but only if Apple says you’re over 18

Pornhub is switching explicit content back on for Australian iPhone and iPad users who have confirmed their age with Apple, seven months after its owner gutted the site in protest of the new age verification laws.

Aylo, the Montreal-based company behind Pornhub, said on Wednesday that age-verified iOS users in Australia would now be served “a standard adult user experience”. The statement made no change for Android or desktop users.

Since March 9, when the eSafety Commissioner’s Age-Restricted Material Codes took effect, Aylo has served Australian visitors a stripped-back version of Pornhub. Explicit videos were replaced with podcasts, lifestyle segments and branded merchandise, as this masthead reported at the time.

The codes require high-risk services such as Pornhub to check users are over 18 before showing them pornography. Breaches carry penalties of up to $49.5 million each.

Aylo’s reversal is largely on the back of updates to Apple’s settings. Since September, Australians have had to confirm they are adults, by scanning an identity document or using a credit card, before downloading 18+ apps or switching off certain safety settings.

Apple’s web content filter and communication safety tools are switched on automatically for anyone who has not confirmed they are over 18.

“In our view, Apple’s Australian device-level age-verification update offers one of the strongest and hardest to circumvent protections currently available for helping prevent minors from accessing age-inappropriate content,” Aylo said in a statement from Alex Kekesi, its vice-president of brand and community.

Aylo has argued for years that age checks belong on the device rather than on individual websites. It said this approach protected children “without requiring adults to surrender unnecessary personal information to multiple apps and websites”, and avoided systems that could be dodged with a VPN.

Aylo did not say how Pornhub identifies which visitors have passed Apple’s check, or whether eSafety had approved the approach.

Sex workers had warned the restrictions would cost them money. Scarlet Alliance, the national peak body for sex workers, told this masthead in March that blocking compliant sites would push viewers to offshore platforms that are less likely to check who appears in their videos or to take down content uploaded without consent.

“That leaves sex workers not earning income from their content,” Mish Pony, the group’s chief executive, said at time, “with obvious flow-on effects – lower earnings and being pushed into working in ways that are less safe.”

Wednesday’s change restores full access only for iPhone and iPad users who have confirmed their age with Apple.

The regulator stopped short of endorsing the move. An eSafety spokesperson said services could use a range of age-assurance methods as long as they could show those methods were “fair, accurate, robust and effective” and complied with Australian privacy law.

“It remains the responsibility of individual services, including Aylo, the provider of Pornhub, to ensure the measures they use meet their obligations under the Online Safety Act,” the spokesperson said. eSafety encouraged a “layered approach” to age assurance.

Aylo has fought age verification laws across several markets. It claimed Pornhub’s traffic fell 77 per cent in Britain after similar rules came in there, before it blocked UK visitors entirely. In March, two VPN apps jumped more than 100 places in Australian App Store rankings within hours of the codes taking effect.

eSafety designed its codes to work across several layers of the internet. If a non-compliant site keeps serving children, the regulator can lean on Apple and Google through the App Store code to block it.

Aylo is now urging Google and Microsoft to copy Apple’s approach and called on Apple to roll it out globally.“The technology exists. A precedent exists,” the company said.

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