More Age Verification Fallout: Artist Blogs Blocked, Porn Data Leaked, Traffic Boosts for Noncompliant Sites
Unintended—but entirely predictable—consequences abound!
As more places around the world—including U.S. states—pass laws requiring age checks around the internet, we're continuing to see a slew of unintended (but entirely predictable) consequences. The latest round includes some U.S. residents being blocked from a blogging platform, French folks in dangers of their porn viewing habits being leaked, and porn websites that violate the law in the U.K. being rewarded with big boosts in web traffic.
Let's start closest to home.
Another website is blocking access to Mississippi residents in response to the state's age verification and online harm prevention law taking effect.
We've already seen some fallout from this law, including the social media platform Bluesky beginning to block Mississippi residents.
Now, Dreamwidth Studios—a blogging platform meant for artists (and one of the parties represented by tech trade group NetChoice in a challenge to the Mississippi law)—is also blocking access for people in Mississippi, as well as preventing minors in Tennessee from opening new accounts.
"People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we'll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential," Dreamwidth says on its website.
The company announced its new Mississippi policy on August 26, saying, "Mississippi residents, we are so, so sorry. We really don't want to do this." But "the Mississippi law is a breathtaking state overreach: it forces us to verify the identity and age of every person who accesses Dreamwidth from the state of Mississippi and determine who's under the age of 18 by collecting identity documents, to save that highly personal and sensitive information, and then to obtain a permission slip from those users' parents to allow them to finish creating an account.""
Dreamwidth goes on:
[The Mississippi law] also forces us to change our moderation policies and stop anyone under 18 from accessing a wide variety of legal and beneficial speech because the state of Mississippi doesn't like it -- which, given the way Dreamwidth works, would mean blocking people from talking about those things at all. (And if you think you know exactly what kind of content the state of Mississippi doesn't like, you're absolutely right.)
Needless to say, we don't want to do that, either. Even if we wanted to, though, we can't: the resources it would take for us to build the systems that would let us do it are well beyond our capacity."
Mississippi users of Dreamwidth aren't the only ones with restricted access. The platform will also "prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk," it said. "The judge in our challenge to Tennessee's social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds," Dreamwidth posted. "The Tennessee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it's still a risk to us."
Dreamwidth's moves further highlight how age verification laws like the ones enacted by Mississippi and Tennessee will come down harder on small and niche platforms than on big tech companies.
Age verification laws will also come down harder on companies that follow the rules, of course. That's what we're seeing in the U.K.
"When the United Kingdom began requiring thousands of websites to verify their users' ages last month, one group saw an enormous burst of traffic: pornography sites ignoring the law," reports Drew Harwell of The Washington Post.
The requirement was part of the U.K.'s Online Safety Act. So far, the act has resulted in a ridiculous array of roadblocks for those who want to access anything from news about the war in Gaza to anti-masturbation forums to eating disorder support groups.
Some porn websites have complied with the Online Safety Act by requiring U.K. visitors to upload an ID or submit to a facial scan. "But some of the biggest porn sites that disregarded the 'scan your face' rule entirely have been rewarded with a flood of traffic," the Post found. "Some have doubled or even tripled their audiences in August compared with the same time last year."
When sites do comply with rules like these, they risk putting people's privacy and cybersecurity at risk. The more times you have to submit a copy of your driver's license or a picture of your face for identification, the more likely you are to find yourself in a data breach.
Depending on the particular rules they're following, both tech platforms that verify ages directly and third-party age verification services may have some duties to minimize the collection or storing of personally identifying data. But these systems aren't always followed or don't always work.
In France, "an age verification provider is potentially leaking information about people visiting pornographic websites," reports Politico.
A report from the nonprofit AI Forensics says that AgeGO—a popular age verification service "used by three of the six porn websites currently complying with France's online pornography regulations," per Politico—isn't using what's known as "double anonymity." A policy of double anonymity means that the age verification provider doesn't get details about which websites users of its services visit; rather, it merely knows that people are trying to verify that they are over age 18.
AI Forensics' report "found age verification service AgeGO receives requests with code disclosing the website being visited, as well as a link to the exact video the person is trying to access," Politico says.
