Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe signed an age verification bill into law this month, making the state the latest in a growing list that now requires adult sites to check every visitor’s ID before granting access. The law takes effect August 28, 2026. 

The law covers any commercial website or social platform where more than one-third of the content qualifies as sexual material harmful ot minors. Those sites must use a third-party service to verify that users are 18 or older, with verification methods that require government-issued ID, digital identification, or other personal records. The third parties conducting verification are prohibited from retaining identifying information after the check is complete. While that privacy protection may sound reassuring, it depends on enforcement. Overall, penalties are high at $10,000 per day for running a noncompliant site, $10,000 per instance of improperly retained data, and up to $250,000 if a minor is found to have accessed material in violation of these requirements. And Attorney General Catherine Hanaway has promised rigorous enforcement. 

Missouri isn’t doing anything new. It’s what dozens of states have done over recent years, and they’re following the template that has been spreading since Louisiana passed the first version in 2022. The legal foundation was solidified earlier this year when the Supreme Court upheld Texas’ age verification law, removing the primary constitutional obstacle that had kept other states cautious. Since that ruling, the legislative pipeline has accelerated. Iowa’s law took effect July 1. Missouri’s follows on August 28, and it won’t be the last. 

For creators, the pattern is the problem. Each new state law creates a local compliance question that plays out the same way. The major platforms make a choice about whether to implement verification or simply geo-block the state, and the choice directly affects creators’ reach and income in that market. Pornhub’s response to similar laws has been to block access entirely rather than build verification infrastructure, which may be cleaner for the platform but catastrophic for any creator whose audience exists in that state. OnlyFans, which already has age verification requirements in place, is in a different position, but the question of how any given platform responds to state-specific mandates is one creators have limited control over. 

The practical effect on traffic is real and documented. Age verification introduces friction, and friction means lost subscribers. Many users, especially casual browsers who haven’t committed to a creator, will encounter an ID requirement and simply close the tab. The people who stay are motivated, which sounds positive. But the new laws will cause creators to lose the top-of-the-funnel discovery that casual traffic provides. For creators who depend on free preview content to convert new subscribers, verification walls that appear before anyone sees anything are a meaningful structural problem. 

But creators aren’t the only ones who should be concerned. Users should be concerned about their privacy, because every age verification system creates records, however minimal or encrypted, and records are targets. Users who are unwilling to submit government identification to access adult content will either stop accessing that content through legal platforms or find workarounds. And workarounds are easy to come by, because VPNs are widely available and easy to use. Offshore platforms have no reason to comply with Missouri law to be accessible. The version of the internet that age verification is designed to regulat is the legal, compliant version. The unregulated version doesn’t notice. 

This is the criticism the Electronic Frontier Foundation raised when the Missouri law was announced. Aaron Mackey, EFF’s Free Speech and Transparency Litigation Director, called it “an onerous age-verification mandate that blocks adults from accessing lawful speech, curtails their ability to be anonymous online, and jeopardizes their data security and privacy.” The infrastructure being built to keep minors away from legal adult content is also infrastructure for restricting adults’ access to legal speech, and the Supreme Court ruling that greenlit it has opened a door that will not close easily. 

None of that changes what creators need to do practically. They should watch how the platforms they use respond in the days leading up to the change. If a platform geo-blocks the state rather than complying, that traffic will disappear. It if implements verificatino, expect some drop in casual reach as the friction takes effect. Neither outcome is good, and neither is something individual creators can prevent. And if you’re a subscriber or platform user in Missouri, be prepared to show your ID or download a VPN to continue to access your favorite creator’s content. 

The map is filling in, and it’s only a matter of time before the next state makes its announcement.