In recent years, we’ve watched the web, once a messy, wild, gloriously chaotic frontier, be slowly strangled under the guise of “safety.” Of all the regulatory assaults on the open internet, few are more deceptive, misguided, and insidiously destructive than age verification (AV). These mandates, imposed by governments in a growing number of countries, force websites to demand deeply personal user data like ID documents, facial scans, and credit card info just to access legal content. And what do we get in return? A false sense of security, a broken internet, and a chilling step toward mass surveillance.

Let’s be clear from the outset: this isn’t about giving children access to inappropriate content. It’s about opposing a system where governments, not parents, decide who gets to see what, and in doing so, strip adults of privacy, choice, and freedom online. It’s about fighting back against an overreaching regulatory model that punishes law-abiding users and creators while failing to meaningfully address the very problem it claims to solve.

Age Verification Is a Lie

At face value, age verification sounds noble. Protect the kids, right? But it doesn’t work. And worse, it was never really meant to.

AV doesn’t actually block access to adult content. It just blocks access to some of it, mostly large, visible sites that already try to operate responsibly. Anyone with basic digital literacy can bypass AV with trivial effort. Use a VPN, switch to one of the thousands of clone sites, share files, browse forums, or click a link on a social platform. AV is less a wall and more a road sign that says, “Detour here for the same content, no questions asked.”

This is what makes AV such a joke. It’s ineffective by design, selectively enforced, and driven not by logic or research but by fear-mongering and politics. If you wanted to drive people away from legitimate platforms and into darker, riskier corners of the internet, you couldn’t design a better system than AV.

Who’s Really in Control?

The central question is: Who gets to decide what you see on the internet?

If you’re an adult, the answer should be simple. You. Not your ISP. Not some government panel. Not a minister who can’t define “end-to-end encryption.” You.

But under AV laws, the state, not the individual, becomes the gatekeeper of knowledge and expression. Governments now get to dictate not just who can publish, but who can view. That’s an authoritarian impulse, not a democratic one.

We should be outraged by this.

And no, this isn’t about protecting children from the internet. Parents already have the tools: system-level parental controls, content filters, app restrictions. They work. They’ve existed for decades. They’re effective when used correctly, and they respect the rights of adults while empowering families to make decisions in line with their values.

But instead of helping parents help their kids, lawmakers offload responsibility onto websites, forcing them to act as digital babysitters. It’s lazy. It’s cruel. And it’s unconstitutional in any society that values speech and privacy.

A System Built on Punishment, Not Protection

The AV push is built around punishment. Punish the sites, punish the users, punish creators, all in the name of a feel-good lie.

When only a small percentage of users return after an AV wall goes up, we’re not protecting children. We’re destroying communities. We’re collapsing platforms that invested in trust, moderation, and transparency. We’re replacing them with fly-by-night sites and encrypted dumps that answer to no one.

Who wins in this system? Certainly not the users, who are now asked to submit their identity every time they want to view legal content. Certainly not the creators, whose livelihoods are crushed by plummeting traffic and increasing AV costs. And certainly not minors, who are driven to less safe, less regulated corners of the web.

AV doesn’t just fail. It actively makes things worse.

Toward a More Rational Internet

What would a rational solution look like?

It would start with empowering parents, not bureaucrats. Require parental controls at the device level. Teach digital literacy in schools. Make it easier for families to manage what their children access without requiring every adult to scan their face to read an article or watch a video.

And for those still concerned about exposure? Let’s talk honestly about what we fear. The idea that teenagers seeing sex is worse than seeing violence, bloodshed, or hate is a cultural fiction rooted in shame, not fact. There is no conclusive evidence that porn is uniquely harmful to teens, and certainly not in the way violent media is casually distributed and consumed.

We’ve been here before. The same moral panic was directed at comics, Dungeons & Dragons, video games, & music. The internet is just the latest target, and this time, the consequences are systemic.

How Do We Push Back?

Here’s the hard truth: working around AV laws will become a necessity, not a crime.

• Use VPNs to bypass regional restrictions..
• Mirror content to platforms and regions without AV mandates..
• Self-host when possible. A decentralized web is harder to regulate..
• Support platforms that resist AV mandates and the creators who suffer under them..
• Educate others about their rights and the dangers of mass surveillance disguised as child protection..
• Refuse to comply silently speaking up, even when it’s hard..

These aren’t just tips. They’re acts of resistance in a web increasingly weaponized against its own users. We must build and support networks of tools and platforms that prioritize privacy, autonomy, and openness before we lose what remains of the free internet.

The Open Web Is Worth Fighting For

If we let this continue, the internet becomes a walled garden that is sanitized, monetized, and policed. Access becomes a privilege, not a right. You’ll need to ask permission to browse, prove your age to search, and pay to keep your identity safe.

But we don’t have to accept that.

The internet was never meant to be a place of permission. It was meant to be a place of access.

Let the state focus on infrastructure, education, and enforcement where needed, but leave our screens, our browsers, and our choices alone. Adults should not have to suffer for the state’s inability to govern intelligently.

If freedom means anything, it means the right to explore, to question, to learn, without asking anyone for permission.

And that right, now more than ever, is worth defending.