20 Lessons from 20 Years: The Adult Industry won’t be taken seriously until we take it seriously ourselves

For years, people inside the adult industry have understood something the outside world is only beginning to catch up with: adult is not a side hustle, a novelty, or a cultural footnote. It is an industry. It has operators, capital flows, labor markets, distribution channels, intellectual property, and long-term careers. Some people build their entire working lives inside it. Others use it as a launchpad into mainstream media or entrepreneurship. Some exit completely. That arc is not unusual. It is exactly how mature industries behave.

What has changed is not the existence of adult as a business, but its proximity to the mainstream. PornHub buying billboards in Times Square. RedTube sought to wrap New York subway lines. Adult brands appearing in films, advertising alongside consumer tech, and being discussed in publications like Wired without irony or apology. The line between “adult” and “everything else” has not disappeared, but it has thinned. The entire OnlyFans ecosystem is seen as mainstream-ish. The public is more comfortable acknowledging the industry’s presence, even if it remains conflicted about it.

The truth, however, is that adult will not be taken seriously by the outside world until adult takes itself seriously first. It starts with us.

Treating the adult industry as a business does not mean sanitizing it, pretending it is something else, or chasing respectability for its own sake. It means applying the same standards of professionalism, structure, and accountability that exist in any other sector where real money and real people are involved.

At its core, this is about recognizing adult work as economic activity rather than spectacle. This includes acknowledging creators as operators of small businesses, platforms as distributors with asymmetric power, and studios as employers with obligations. It also means understanding that reputation, governance, contracts, and long-term incentives matter just as much here as they do in software, fashion, or entertainment.

For too long, adult has been framed either as taboo or as chaos—an unregulated, anything-goes space where norms do not apply. That framing benefits intermediaries who thrive in opacity and harms individuals who lack leverage. Serious industries develop norms precisely because norms reduce friction and abuse over time.

The mainstreaming of adult is not accidental, and it is not driven by cultural permissiveness alone. It is driven by economics and by regulation.

Over the last several years, lawmakers around the world have responded to concerns about minors’ access to explicit material by enacting age-verification laws and expanding privacy and safety regulations that intersect directly with how adult companies operate. In the United States, more than 25 states have now passed laws requiring websites that publish sexually explicit content to verify that users are over 18 before access is allowed. These laws often hinge on what constitutes “reasonable age verification,” such as checking against commercially available databases or government IDs — a technical and legal burden that many platforms struggle to implement consistently.

Louisiana was among the first states to act, passing age verification requirements back in 2022, and roughly a third of U.S. states have followed suit with their own statutes.  The effects are real: analysis suggests that over 40 percent of Americans live under these age-verification regimes, leading to geo-blocking by major platforms or significant traffic loss in affected regions.

Europe, too, is asserting regulatory pressure. Under the Digital Services Act, very large online platforms must now implement risk-mitigation measures including age verification. Enforcement actions and high-profile investigations target major adult sites for failing to protect minors effectively.  In the U.K., Ofcom has already fined adult companies for inadequate age checks under its Online Safety Act.

Then there is privacy law, which both complicates and constrains these obligations. European and UK regulators emphasize that any age-verification system must be data-minimizing, proportionate, and auditable — a high bar when contrasted with some U.S. state laws that effectively require sharing government IDs or biometric data to gain access to adult sites.  These overlapping regulatory frameworks raise serious operational and legal questions for any platform or creator working at scale.

Banking discrimination (U.S.) has become a quiet but material operating risk for adult businesses, and recent survey-based findings put numbers on what many operators already treat as “normal.” A Free Speech Coalition report on financial discrimination (produced with Sex Work CEO) found that the most common form of discrimination is simply losing access to basic banking, reporting that 63% of respondents who earn money in the adult industry had lost a bank account or financial service, and that 40% had experienced an account closure in the prior year—a pattern that functions like rolling deplatforming, because it can break payroll, creator payouts, ad spend, tax payments, and even routine bill pay overnight. Researchers studying payment rails and adult-content governance describe this as a form of “moral ordering” embedded in payments and compliance policies, where lawful businesses can still be treated as operationally “unbankable” due to perceived reputational, chargeback, or compliance exposure, regardless of actual loss history.

In practice, these laws translate into significant business and technical challenges. Creators and platforms must decide between building or licensing age-verification infrastructure, geoblocking entire jurisdictions, or facing the legal and financial consequences of noncompliance.

The legal risks are not hypothetical. Operators of adult websites have launched federal lawsuits against state attorneys general, challenging age-verification laws on constitutional grounds including First Amendment and privacy claims.  At the same time, courts have upheld some of these laws. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed a Texas statute requiring age checks for online porn, establishing that such measures fall within a state’s interest in protecting minors, even as free speech advocates argue that they impose undue burdens on adults’ access and data privacy.

The compliance calculus is further muddied by potential liability. States may impose daily fines for nonconformance, civil damages if minors access content without proper age checks, and civil suits from private plaintiffs.  Meanwhile, privacy advocates point out that requiring government IDs or detailed personal data across third-party age-verification vendors exposes all users to breach risk and long-term identity threats — a concern heightened by global incidents where sensitive data has been leaked from well-intentioned services.

The industry’s response has varied. Some platforms choose to block access in strict-regime states, forfeiting revenue but avoiding compliance costs and legal uncertainty. Others invest heavily in verification tooling or lobby legislatures for privacy-sensitive alternatives. Smaller creators, in particular, feel squeezed, as expensive systems and legal debates consume time and resources that are already stretched thin.

In other digital media sectors, regulated norms follow a predictable pattern: clear obligations, interoperable standards, and third-party audits. Age verification in alcohol sales, gambling, and financial services all have long-standing compliance ecosystems — often with regulatory supervision that balances access controls against privacy rights.

In adult, that balance is nascent at best. Many state laws impose “reasonable” verification without defining it, leaving interpretation to courts or regulators. Other jurisdictions require frequent re-verification — in Tennessee’s case, every 60 minutes — creating a user experience that borders on punitive while not necessarily being more effective.

These same regimes expose a deeper imbalance: platforms bear most of the cost and risk while governments outsource enforcement without providing clear standards or funding for compliance infrastructure. The result is a patchwork of obligations that empowers regulators and courts but provides limited guidance for consistent industry practice.

One persistent misconception is that professionalism dilutes authenticity or freedom. In reality, professionalism creates predictability, and predictability enables choice. Clear terms allow people to opt in or out with informed consent rather than blind optimism.

Another is that regulation is inherently antagonistic to business. In many sectors, reasonable regulation legitimizes markets and reduces friction over time. The problem in adult is not regulation per se but poorly harmonized rules that create compliance uncertainty and legal exposure with little operational predictability.

Perhaps the most damaging belief is that exploitation is inevitable. That belief becomes self-fulfilling. When people assume harm is unavoidable, they stop designing systems that minimize it.

Like any industry with rapid growth and low barriers to entry, adult attracts extremes. Hyper-leveraged platforms with little oversight. Overly broad statutes that conflate adult content with other speech. Surveillance-like verification systems that collect sensitive biometric data. These edge cases are often justified as necessary for safety or compliance, but they frequently undermine the very goals they purport to serve.

When growth is rewarded without durability, platforms chase volume at the expense of trust. When age verification is designed without privacy safeguards, data collection itself becomes a liability. These outcomes are not moral failures; they are predictable results of systems that reward speed over stability.

None of this argues for rigid uniformity. There are moments when unconventional structures are appropriate — early experimentation, niche content, temporary partnerships. But exceptions only work when safeguards exist: clear exit terms, transparent accounting, and the ability to renegotiate as circumstances change.

Globally, there are emerging models for privacy-friendly age verification — using cryptographic attestations or decentralized identity wallets that confirm age without revealing unnecessary personal data. Such innovations, combined with best-practice security and minimal data retention, create a pathway toward both child safety and adult privacy.

Treating adult as a serious industry does not mean forcing it into someone else’s mold. It means acknowledging that it already functions as an industry and choosing to act accordingly.

Mainstream visibility will continue. Stigma will continue to erode. But legitimacy does not come from billboards or magazine profiles. It comes from internal standards, aligned incentives, and a willingness to think beyond the next payout or viral moment.

Adult is not waiting for permission to be taken seriously. The only remaining question is whether the people inside it are ready to insist on being treated (and treating each other) like professionals in a regulated, evolving global industry.