When porn sites began blocking Australians from access, it also meant X began age-checking users before they could look at adult content on the social media site.

But it asked some users to send a video selfie every time they wanted to look at a single picture or video.

“Almost every post on my alt account has a content warning and asks me [for a] selfie for age verification,” one Australian porn consumer, Joe*, told Guardian Australia. “It’s maddening.”

Others said they were moving away from sites that have verification.

“I’m honestly no longer engaging with any of the sites and platforms I used to use because not only is the verification process really invasive, but some of them even give you the option to sign in with Google … and that’s the last platform I’d trust with any sensitive data,” Jethro said.

“The choices are: link your perversions to your government ID, or submit your face into the AI slop machine,” Chris* said.

It’s still early days. Aside from several Aylo-owned sites like RedTube that have blocked Australians from access, and Pornhub – which now just displays safe-for-work content for Australians who visit without logging in – most of the top free adult sites Australians visit for porn have not implemented age verification.

According to search engine optimisation website Semrush, the porn site Thisvid appeared to be the only one in the Top 20 that had complied. But with the threat of a $49.5m fine for a breach, more may soon join, and Australians have noticed.

Searches for porn on Google trends this week were at their highest point since Covid-era lockdowns ended in 2022. Searches for virtual private networks – which allow users to bypass restrictions by appearing to be outside Australia – were at the highest level since the former Coalition government brought in laws to allow piracy websites to be blocked in 2015.

Sex workers had been warning for years that these codes – which were a longtime development between the eSafety commissioner and industry – may force them off the internet, and users on to less secure sites.

“We’ve already warned that these laws will funnel traffic away from platforms that do have moderation safeguards in place and towards sites that profit from non-consensual and stolen porn, including the unpaid work of sex workers,” Scarlet Alliance chief executive, Mish Pony, said.

“So driving people off mainstream services, such as Pornhub, does not stop porn consumption, it just pushes it into darker corners of the internet. It makes it harder to address real harms.”

Andy Conboi, an OnlyFans content creator based in Sydney, said he had already noticed a drop in engagement on his posts.

“People don’t really want to send a photo of themselves or their licence or whatever to these platforms, particularly Twitter [X],” he said.

“In the group chats I do have with creators, people are just frustrated and annoyed, their engagement is down [and] it’s much more difficult to put stuff out there and be seen a lot of the time.”

Conboi said some creators were moving to create safe-for-work content on sites like Instagram and TikTok in order to be seen instead, noting it was an odd outcome given the number of underage users on those platforms.

But for opponents of pornography, it is a long-awaited victory, after attempts at internet filtering failed under the Rudd-Gillard Labor government, and when the Coalition abandoned opt-out internet filtering plans shortly before the 2013 election.

The children’s eSafety commissioner policy at the time remained, and has since amassed increasing power over the internet in Australia in the decade the role has existed.

Collective Shout, a longtime campaigner against pornography, declared victory.

“This day was hard fought for. Collective Shout and our partners and allies worked hard to bring it to fruition,” Melinda Tankard Reist, movement director for Collective Shout, said.

“It is a relief to know proof-of-age protections are now in place as one obstacle in the way of young people being exposed to rape porn, torture porn, incest porn and extreme violence and degradation of women.”

The Australian Christian Lobby – one of the biggest proponents of internet filtering in the 18 years since Labor’s original proposal – also welcomed the news.

“The fact that P*rnhub have ceased operating in Australia is already proof of its effectiveness,” ACL chief executive, Michelle Pearse, said in an email response.

‘Honeytraps’ for identities and sexual interests

The effectiveness is hard to measure in parts of the world that have taken similar action. Researchers in the US examined Google Trends and other search data after certain states brought in age verification for porn sites. As with Australia, Pornhub blocked users and the searches went to other sites and VPNs over a three-month period.

“We saw very large substitution effects for search traffic for XVideos, which is the second largest porn website in the states,” he said. “It’s a sufficiently large change that the No 2 site is now the No 1 site in states that passed those laws,” report lead author, David Lang, a researcher at Stanford University in the political science department said.

VPN use was harder to track as people tend to find a VPN after a short search and then no longer appear in that state.

Digital Rights Watch head of policy Tom Sulston said workarounds to continue accessing porn were easy, but the bigger concern is about creating honeypots of information about people’s sexual preferences.

“It would be absolutely trivial for a criminal to set up porn sites as honeytraps to capture Australians’ identities and sexual interests; and then use that material for blackmail, similar to existing sextortion schemes,” Sulston said.

“Foreign intelligence services looking to trap Australian targets could easily do the same. The age-verification regime puts Australians at greater risk of harm, not less.”

*Names have been changed