There’s a few things to learn from that announcement?

expected to require adult sites to verify ages by May 2018

So there we have the date when the shit will start hitting the fan.

he first thing that really stands out is that MindGeek is not trying to be a regulator approved service. Given their size I expected them to not depend on a third party.

Second thing is they’re basically just hitting the APIs of the regulator-approved services and then storing the result in the users’ membership record so they don’t have to keep doing the update. That’s hardly rocket science.

I’m not quite sure what they’d be selling if other websites used their service. They’re not a regulator approved service, so getting an “OK” from them may have no legal standing. AND, the bulk of the fee is going to be charged by the regular-approved service. So MindGeek would need to pass that fee plus a markup onto any websites that used AgeID. Unless they charge less because they already paid the regulator approved service for the verification. But again, if you don’t get your verification from the regulator approved service, does it count as age verification?

What the UK government should do is have the user pay the regulator approved service directly, and then websites are charged a fraction of a penny per verification hit on the verification API.

Bottom line, I’m not seeing how any site would want to use MindGeek’s AgeID.