The Draft Consolidated Industry Codes of Practice for the Online Industry (Class 1C and Class 2 Material), made under the Online Safety Act 2021 (Cth) require online platforms to block or age-gate adult content, including through credit card or ID checks. There is no exemption for health or education content, so sexual health information, harm reduction resources, sex worker advertising and our community resources can all be caught. Moderation systems already wrongly flag sexual health content as porn, and disproportionately target women’s and queer people’s bodies. Both young people and adults who don’t want to hand over ID lose access to accurate health information.

Age gates on sex work advertising impact sex worker safety. After the US passed FOSTA/SESTA in 2018, sex workers lost income and the ability to screen clients and share safety information. Platforms face heavy penalties for leaving content up but none for wrongly taking it down, and there is no proper appeals process, so they over-remove. The codes should be paused until sex workers and other affected communities are properly involved. Health, harm reduction and sex worker content must be explicitly excluded, platforms should be pushed to keep health and safety content up, compliance audits should be public and community organisations should be resourced to provide oversight on regulatory impacts.