According to WIRED, Pornhub’s parent company, Aylo, has sent a letter to major tech platforms urging them to enable device-level age verification.
Anthony Penhale, chief legal officer of Aiello (which also owns RedTube and Youporn), sent a letter to Apple, Google and Microsoft saying “we find the site-based age assurance approach to be fundamentally flawed and counterproductive.”
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The letters reportedly state that site-based age verification methods “fail to achieve their primary purpose: to protect minors from accessing age-inappropriate content online.”
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This comes on the heels of the latest study, which suggests that US age verification laws have actually failed in their purpose, as well as hindering adults’ right to free speech.
“Site-based age verification” has been implemented in half of the United States and other countries including the UK, Italy and France. These age verification laws typically require inputting personal data on sites with explicit content beyond a “yes or no” checkbox, such as a government-issued ID or facial scan, to ensure that the visitor is over 18 years of age. (Although even non-obvious websites like YouTube have started implementing age verification.)
For years, Pornhub and free speech experts have instead advocated for device-level age verification, meaning blocks and filters on individual phones, tablets or computers.
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Mike Stabile, director of public affairs at the Free Speech Coalition, previously told Mashable that he recommended device-level filters that block all websites that are registered. RTA, or “Restricted to Adults.” “This signals the filter, whether it’s your Apple filter or Net Nanny or something like that, that this site should be blocked,” he explained.
In press releases regarding the age verification law, Aiello also advocated for device-level filters as a solution to keeping minors off his own and other adult websites. Now, they’re pleading with tech giants to do the same.
“We strongly advocate device-based age assurance where users’ age is determined once on the device, and the age range can be used to create age signals sent over APIs. [application programming interface] for websites,” each letter said. Aiello requested that Apple, Google, and Microsoft extend this device-based approach to web platforms.
Microsoft declined to comment to Mashable.
An Apple spokesperson linked to a June 2025 newsroom update, which said that children ages 13 to 17 will now get the same age-appropriate protections on Apple devices as children under 13 already get under child accounts, regardless of whether the teen’s account is set up as a child account or a standard Apple account. Security includes web content filters.
An Apple spokesperson also linked to a child online safety white paper from February 2025, stating that, “The right place to address the dangers of age-restricted content online is the limited set of websites and apps that host that kind of content.”
Google told Mashable that it is “committed to protecting children online, including developing and deploying new-age assurance tools like our Credential Manager API that can be used by websites. We do not allow adult entertainment apps on Google Play, and some high-risk services like Aylo will always need to invest in specific tools to meet their own legal and responsibility obligations.”