# Thought Leadership - AVPA

## [New Mexico Court Judgement: Positive or negative for Age Assurance?](https://avpassociation.com/thought-leadership/new-mexico-court-judgement-positive-or-negative-for-age-assurance/)
On 6 August 2026, Judge Biedscheid of the First Judicial District Court in Santa Fe issued his findings of fact, conclusions of law and judgement in State of New Mexico v Meta Platforms, Inc. The case had been brought by New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, alleging that Meta’s platforms constituted a public nuisance by […]

## [Why “Device-Only” age checks are a False Choice for lawmakers](https://avpassociation.com/thought-leadership/why-device-only-creates-a-false-choice-for-lawmakers/)
A prominent adult platform network recently published an open letter to US lawmakers arguing that site-level age verification laws have failed. In its place, the letter proposes that lawmakers mandate Apple, Google and Microsoft to build device-level age checks into operating systems, treating such “upstream” controls as a complete substitute for the existing adult websites’ […]

## [BMJ publishes research confirming age assurance is not being deployed in Australia](https://avpassociation.com/thought-leadership/bmj-publishes-research-confirming-age-assurance-is-not-being-deployed-in-australia/)
A study published in the BMJ on 24 June 2026 looked at what actually happened to Australian teenagers in the three months after the Social Media Minimum Age Act came into force in December 2025. The headline conclusion has been widely reported as proof that age restrictions “don’t work”. A closer read of the data […]

## [Is the EU Age Verification App Ready for a Social Media Minimum Age?](https://avpassociation.com/thought-leadership/is-the-eu-age-verification-app-ready-for-a-social-media-minimum-age/)
The EU Age Verification App was initially designed with a specific purpose: to demonstrate to adult-only services – pornography platforms in particular – that there was a technically feasible, GDPR-compliant mechanism to implement an 18+ minimum age. And it has succeeded in doing so, once the zero-knowledge proof functionality that is planned is in production. […]

## [Rhetorically Conflating Age and Identity Checks Is Putting a Sign Above the Door You Want to Close](https://avpassociation.com/thought-leadership/rhetorically-conflating-age-and-identity-checks-is-putting-a-sign-above-the-door-you-want-to-close/)
Opponents of age verification have long reached for a familiar argument: that checking someone’s age before they access online content is really an identity check in disguise. The claim is that platforms will inevitably end up knowing who you are, that anonymity will be destroyed and that age assurance is just surveillance by another name. […]

## [California’s Digital Age Assurance Act: A novel parental control, but it’s not age verification](https://avpassociation.com/thought-leadership/californias-digital-age-assurance-act-a-novel-parental-control-but-its-not-age-verification/)
Proposed amendments to California’s Digital Age Assurance Act (DAAA) to remove open source operating systems from its scope are welcome. The original drafting inadvertently captured a range of open source projects that have little practical ability to implement the legislation’s obligations. Excluding them is a sensible correction that allows policymakers to focus on the commercial […]