In brief: Aylo said Oct. 6 that Pornhub is open again in Australia for users whose Apple devices have confirmed they are adults through Apple’s Australian age check, eight months after the site went dark over the country’s new age-assurance rules.
Contains adult themes: this story covers the adult-content industry.
Pornhub has returned to Australia, with a condition: Apple has to confirm the user is an adult first.
Parent company Aylo said it was restoring access for “eligible adult users in Australia” who have “confirmed their age through Apple’s Australian age-verification process,” the BBC reported. XBIZ dated the announcement Tuesday, Oct. 6.
How it got here
In March, Australia began requiring sites whose “sole or predominant purpose” is adult content to verify users’ ages, under a new industry code. Aylo restricted its free sites rather than comply, saying the approach would create “harms relating to data privacy and exposure to illegal content on noncompliant platforms.”
What changed is Apple. Its Australian update turns child-safety features on by default for anyone who hasn’t confirmed they’re an adult, and users can verify with a credit card, passport, driver’s license or government ID, per the BBC. Aylo’s Alex Kekesi said Apple had “set a benchmark”:
making every phone or tablet kid-safe as a starting point.
Kekesi added that device-level checks mean adults don’t have to “surrender unnecessary personal information to multiple apps and websites,” and that they also blunt VPN workarounds.
The fine print
This is the same route Aylo took in the UK, where it reopened to age-verified Apple users in May. Ofcom has since opened an investigation into whether that complies with the Online Safety Act, XBIZ reported, noting that it remains the provider’s responsibility to make age checks “highly effective.” Australia’s eSafety regulator told XBIZ that services can use various methods “as long as they can demonstrate that their methods are fair, accurate, robust and effective.” So Australia hasn’t signed off on Apple’s check as automatically sufficient.
Android users are not part of this reopening. Aylo still blocks its sites in France and in several US states over age-verification laws, per XBIZ. Australia’s rules also apply to R-rated games and sexually explicit AI chatbots, the BBC noted.
So in Australia, getting onto Pornhub now depends on owning an iPhone. Android users are still locked out.