The United Kingdom is enforcing Online Safety Act age-verification rules that require pornography websites to verify users' ages using face scans, driver's licenses, or equivalent methods, and require platforms to prevent child exposure to adult content. Some platforms, including decentralized and forum sites, have begun checking user ages. Analysis of U.K. visitor data across the top 90 porn sites identified 14 sites without age checks; all 14 experienced substantial traffic increases, with one site doubling year‑over‑year. Several sites implemented verification while criticizing the policy, linking to repeal petitions or publishing instructions to circumvent checks. Observers say the policy suppresses compliant-site traffic and redirects users to non‑verified sites.
U.K. law now requires pornography websites to verify their users' ages through means such as face scans and driver's licenses; it also requires that online platforms prevent children from being exposed to adult content (which is why sites like Bluesky and Reddit have begun checking some users' ages). To study the law's effect, the Post says it examined the top 90 porn sites based on U.K. visitor data from Similarweb, finding 14 sites that still don't perform an age check.
All 14 of them appear to have experienced a dramatic increase in traffic, with one of them seeing traffic double year-over-year. Meanwhile, many websites ostensibly complied with the law while criticizing it, linking to a petition urging repeal, or even offered instructions for getting around it. John Scott-Railton, a researcher at the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, told the Post that this is "a textbook illustration of the law of unintended consequences," adding that the law "suppresses traffic to compliant platforms while driving users to sites without age verification."
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