I think it’s important to understand that, despite claims to the contrary, age verification is, inherently, a right-wing effort. While it’s currently true that age verification laws are being supported globally by those on the political right and left, they started as very much a right wing effort to suppress disliked speech by claiming it was harmful to children. Even if some of the laws now have bipartisan support, we need to understand its origins.

People will point to the bipartisan nature of many of these current laws to push back on the idea that it’s truly a right wing effort. Australia’s monstrosity of age-gating laws was adopted by the collective efforts of center-left and left-wing political parties part of the ruling government. The Online Safety Act in the United Kingdom was the brainchild of Conservative Party MPs under former Prime Minister Theresa May, but the Labour government under Prime Minister Keir Starmer is now carrying out the policies of the sweeping digital regulatory measures in national law.

But age verification laws, today, originate from right-wing and far-right efforts to restrict access to porn and other content that could be classified as “harmful to minors.” As documented extensively by academics, cybersecurity experts, folks here at Techdirt, and in my own investigative journalism, these laws define content as “pornographic” or “harmful to minors” under such broad definitions.

For example, the age verification law in Kansas defines the material on the internet covered by the harmful classification to include “acts of homosexuality.” That terminology is a clear nod to the not-too-long-ago era of unconstitutional state sodomy laws that made it a criminal offense to have same-sex sexual activity. The Texas age verification law intended to compel online adult entertainment platforms to plaster public health warnings about the ostensibly addictive nature of watching pornography. There is no accepted evidence of this.