Several aspects of Australia’s new online age verification regime kicked in on March 9, and the first thing it achieved was a VPN boom.
Proton VPN surged from 174th to 9th. NordVPN climbed from 189th to 6th. VPN – Super Unlimited Proxy jumped to number 2. Millions of adults who want to keep accessing legal content are now routing around their government rather than handing a passport scan to a verification company they’ve never heard of. That’s the law working exactly as intended, apparently.
The rules are the second wave of Australia’s Online Safety Act 2021. Five new controversial codes took effect on March 9, covering app stores, social media platforms, gaming and messaging services, and designated internet services. Penalties for non-compliance reach A$49.5 million per breach.
The government calls it child protection. What it actually creates is a national ID requirement to access legal adult content, administered by private third-party companies, with no public debate worth speaking of.
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Pornhub’s parent company, Aylo, didn’t comply and didn’t negotiate. It just blocked Australian IP addresses.
“Aylo has indicated it will only offer ‘safe for work’ content on its free services in the Australian market instead of implementing age-check requirements for age-restricted material on its free services. This is ultimately a business decision for them,” an eSafety spokesman said.
What the spokesman didn’t say: the eSafety Commission had consulted with Aylo during the code development process, but had no idea the company planned to block users entirely rather than build verification into its platform.
Aylo’s position, stated plainly, is that this law doesn’t work and creates more harm than it prevents. Its spokesman pointed to the UK, which introduced similar rules in 2025. “Australia is following a similar approach to the UK, which all our evidence shows does not effectively protect minors, and instead creates harms relating to data privacy and exposure to illegal content on non-compliant platforms,” the spokesman said.
