Pornhub's return to Australia makes Apple the gatekeeper for adult age checks

The arrangement splits compliance between two companies. Apple runs the check and keeps what users submit to pass it ^[6]. The online safety codes, as the Guardian reports them, put the duty to verify on adult websites ^[1]. The report does not say whether the eSafety commissioner accepts Apple's check as meeting that duty. When Aylo blocked Australia in March, the commissioner's office said it was ultimately a business decision for the company ^[10].

Aylo's March objection had two parts. It said the checks would not protect minors, and that users would face privacy risks from giving personal information to the sites doing the verifying ^[2]. Apple's model answers the second part by keeping that information with Apple. On the first part, Aylo's position now depends on where the check sits. "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," said Alex Kekesi, Aylo's vice-president for brand and community ^{[4] [17]}.

Access comes back only for users who have confirmed their age through Apple ^[8]. Kekesi said Apple's approach "set a benchmark by enabling child safety features automatically for users who have not verified that they are adults" ^[16]. That default also applies to adults who choose not to verify ^[7]. The sex worker advocacy group Scarlet Alliance has warned that the requirements risk a "chilling effect" and could lead to over-filtering, including of sexual health information ^[11].

For a site operator, the trade-off is control against data liability. Running its own checks would have left Aylo collecting the information it argued sites should not hold ^[2]. Deferring to Apple removes that burden and ties the site's Australian reach to another company's process. Blocking was the third option, and the workaround it prompted did not last. Three VPN apps climbed the download charts after the March block ^[3]. Those that entered Sensor Tower's Top 25 have since dropped out of the rankings ^[15].

The sharpest doubt on the record comes from the UK. "We are concerned that Aylo may not have conducted sufficient due diligence and testing before implementing its new age assurance process," Ofcom said last month ^[13]. That case concerns Aylo's own system. The Australian check belongs to Apple, which switched it on there last month ^[5], so Aylo's endorsement rests on a few weeks of operation.

This quarter, Aylo has made its choice: Australian access through Apple. What happens next quarter depends on decisions it does not make, at Google and Microsoft and at Ofcom ^{[9] [12]}. A single site's return on a single operating system does not yet show that platform checks are how adult sites will comply with the codes. I think it does show where Aylo wants the checking and the data to sit. Aylo said it would cooperate fully with the Ofcom investigation ^[14].