Redditor accidentally reinvents discarded ’90s tool to escape today’s age gates
Back in the mid-1990s, when The Net was among the top box office draws and Americans were just starting to flock online in droves, kids had to swipe their parents’ credit cards or find a fraudulent number online to access adult content on the web. But today’s kids—even in states with the strictest age verification laws—know they can just use Google.
Last month, a study analyzing the relative popularity of Google search terms found that age verification laws shift users’ search behavior. It’s impossible to tell if the shift represents young users attempting to circumvent the child-focused law or adult users who aren’t the actual target of the laws. But overall, enforcement causes nearly half of users to stop searching for popular adult sites complying with laws and instead search for a noncompliant rival (48 percent) or virtual private network (VPN) services (34 percent), which are used to mask a location and circumvent age checks on preferred sites, the study found.
“Individuals adapt primarily by moving to content providers that do not require age verification,” the study concluded.
