On May 17, 2026, the UK-based Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) announced the publication of the world's first voluntary good-practice standard for adult-content providers — a six-principle framework that adult sites must comply with to be approved for IWF membership. The standard was produced by an expert advisory board chaired by Sir Richard Tilt (former IWF Chair) over 18 months, following the commencement of a strategic partnership between IWF and Aylo Holdings (parent company of Pornhub) initiated in late 2024.

Why It Matters

The IWF standard is the first attempt at a voluntary global adult-content compliance framework that exists independently of any single national regulatory regime. Unlike Brazil's Digital ECA (effective March 17), Australia's Online Safety Act (effective March 9), the UK Online Safety Act, or the EU Digital Services Act, the IWF standard is membership-based rather than statutory — sites opt in to demonstrate compliance with a defensible third-party-audited bar, which then becomes a procurement and payment-processor-defensibility marker. For Aylo specifically, the standard provides a documented pathway to demonstrate that the company has shifted from being the primary trigger for the post-2020 "Pornhub problem" wave of regulation to being a co-architect of the industry's voluntary remediation framework. That repositioning is operationally significant in two adjacent regulatory contexts: the EU Commission's preliminary findings under DSA against Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX, and XVideos for failing to protect minors (issued March 26), and the U.S. UN-experts statement of May 16 demanding "full prosecution" of Aylo. For smaller adult-content platforms without the resources to build comparable infrastructure independently, the IWF standard creates an effective new tier of compliance signaling — comply via IWF membership, or risk being categorized with the non-compliant cohort in regulatory enforcement, payment-processor risk reviews, and adjacent industry compliance frameworks.

The Expert Advisory Board includes representatives from the British Board of Film Classification, SWGfL, Aylo, the Marie Collins Foundation, the UK Home Office, PA Consulting, the UK National Crime Agency, and academic representation from Middlesex University and Exeter University. The six principles the board adopted are: (1) zero-tolerance approach to child sexual abuse imagery; (2) transparency with enforceable terms of service; (3) accountability via clear reporting mechanisms; (4) embrace of technological tools and solutions; (5) collaboration with specialists; and (6) embrace of regulatory and safety initiatives, including voluntary principles.

Operationally, adult sites complying with the standard are required to deploy AI to scan uploaded videos, implement mandatory uploader verification, verify users are over 18, ban downloads, expand moderation workforce and processes, and use IWF services (URL List, Hash List, Non-photographic Imagery List, Keywords List) to scan content against previously-identified hashed child sexual abuse imagery. External auditors will assess compliance before IWF membership is approved. IWF CEO Susie Hargreaves OBE framed the standard with the statement "It is clear fighting child sexual abuse imagery online is not a fight we can win alone."

Sources

Update — 2026-05-24

Initial entry — story first created.