Liberty has an off button, for now

Ongoing legal challenges, decisions, and reversals highlight one thing very clearly: lack of direction, lack of a comprehensive solution and simply put, legislative dysfunction.

While important questions about the implementation of the law in France are still being considered, we maintain that French citizens deserve regulation that will prevent children from accessing adult content and that can be effectively enforced. They also deserve that their privacy and sensitive data be protected. Again, we believe the current approach faces significant challenges in achieving these important goals.

Your government is proposing we verify your age every single time you visit our site. The harsh reality: This does not protect minors — it endangers everyone’s privacy and puts children in danger by driving traffic to thousands of sites that deliberately circumvent regulations, don’t verify the age of performers in content, and actively encourage users to bypass the law. Unlike us, they don’t monitor content or prioritize safety—making everyone more vulnerable, not less…

Data breaches happen daily. Forcing you to enter sensitive personal information repeatedly creates an unacceptable security risk we refuse to impose on our users. We refuse to compromise your privacy with measures that, ironically, fail to effectively protect children.

A path forward requires law makers to understand and address with a clear enforcement plan the fact that adult content exists on hundreds of thousands of platforms, not simply the 17 sites designated in the ministerial order.

To the French government and Arcom we ask, how many minors have been protected in the six weeks since this law came into effect? Provide the data on how this reduced access to age-inappropriate content.