Under new laws, Australians must prove they are over 18 before they can access adult content such as porn, R-rated video games and sexually explicit AI chatbots.
The changes will protect children from harmful content and platforms will face fines for violations, Australia’s online safety regulator said.
“We don’t allow children into bars, bottle shops, adult stores or casinos, but when it comes to online spaces… there are no such guarantees,” Julie Inman Grant said.
Experts say the new laws – which come three months after Australia introduced a ban on social media for under-16s – will face similar problems as users try to fool age-verification technologies and worry about data privacy.
In Australia, as in many countries, users visiting adult sites are usually asked to verify their age by clicking on a box indicating that they are over 18 years old.
But the new changes mean platforms must introduce stricter age controls from Monday.
This may include facial recognition technology, digital identifiers and credit card details.
Under the new rules, search engines, app stores, social media and gaming platforms, porn sites and AI systems – including companion chatbots – must take “meaningful steps” to prevent children from being exposed to adult content.
“If a young person searches the internet for suicidal or self-harming content, the first result they will see will be a helpline – not a harmful online rabbit hole,” Inman Grant, Australia’s e-safety commissioner, said in the run-up to the new rules.
Research by his agency found that one in three children aged 10 to 17 had seen sexual images or videos online.
The study also found that more than 70 percent of children had been exposed to online content containing elements of high-impact violence, self-harm and suicide, as well as information about eating disorders.
Days before the new measures came into effect, Australian news site Crikey reported that RedTube, YouPorn and Tube8 – all owned by Canadian porn giant Aylo – had blocked all Australians from creating accounts and accessing content.
An Aylo spokesperson said that while the company would comply with the new rules, it did not believe the move would protect children and instead “creates harms related to data privacy and exposure to illegal content on non-compliant platforms.”
Dr Rahat Masood, who teaches cybersecurity at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), said the new laws will have limited impact.
“Age verification laws may create barriers, but they are unlikely to completely prevent young people from accessing restricted content,” she said.
Most young people are very digitally savvy, she said, and use VPNs (virtual private networks) or other tools to make sites believe they are connecting from another country. Using a parent’s credit card or ID would also be a fairly easy way to get around the rules.
What’s more concerning is whether young people seek out the darker corners of the web, Masood said, such as foreign adult websites that are unregulated, peer-to-peer file sharing networks or obtaining adult material from platforms like Telegram, Discord or WhatsApp where age controls are limited.
She said the new rules could reduce casual or accidental exposure to harmful content, but adult users will also worry about their data privacy.
“For many people, it’s difficult to tie identity verification to a highly personal browsing activity,” Masood said.
Sabrina Caldwell, who teaches technology ethics at UNSW, agrees the changes will be imperfect, just like the social media ban, but will create an additional barrier.
“For many children – and adults for that matter – this will be effective in helping them avoid surprising or disturbing images and information without warning,” she said.
“And even if they do sneak into such sites, they must be aware of the dangers they may encounter.”
But critics say age verification rules for social media and adult content are measures the company will “absolutely regret” in years to come.
Seth Lazar, professor of philosophy at the Australian National University, said the new measures were “extremely flawed, both from the point of view of technological practice and from the point of view of liberal values.”
“Instead of these crude, workaround policies that create an infrastructure of private companies charged with effective law enforcement, they should simply require that every operating system vendor create truly working parental control applications that meet a set of minimum criteria,” Lazar said.
“Build technology to support parents, not replace their judgment.”
Last July, the United Kingdom introduced new laws for porn sites to “rigorously” verify users’ ages or risk fines of up to £18 million, or 10% of global revenue.