Starting today, UK adults will have to prove their age to access porn online. Experts warn that a global wave of age-check laws threatens to chill speech and ultimately harm children and adults alike.
Beginning today, millions of adults trying to access pornography in the United Kingdom will be required to prove that they are over the age of 18. Under sweeping new online child safety laws coming into force, self-reporting checkboxes that allow anyone to claim adulthood on porn websites will be replaced by age-estimating face scans, ID document uploads, credit card checks, and more. Some of the biggest porn websites—including Pornhub and YouPorn—have said that they will comply with the new rules. And social media sites like BlueSky, Reddit, Discord, Grindr, and X are introducing UK age checks to block children from seeing harmful content.
Ultimately, though, it’s not just Brits who will see such changes. Around the world, a new wave of child protection laws are forcing a profound shift that could normalize rigorous age checks broadly across the web. Some of the measures are designed to specifically block minors from accessing adult material, while others are meant to stop children from using social media platforms or accessing harmful content. In the UK, age checks are now required by websites and apps that host porn, self-harm, suicide, and eating disorder content.
Protecting children online is a consequential and urgent issue, but privacy and human rights advocates have long warned that…
If you have the money, start investing it in VPN companies. People will start buying these in droves rather than put themselves into a database for porn viewing.
IDK about this…used to be the girlie mags were top shelf and if you were a minor, you couldn’t buy them anyway. If this a modern version of this method? You used to have to find the old man’s stash just to read the articles.
I guess kids will just have to get their porn the old fashion way. Stealing it at the local news stand.