The UK government effectively implemented a new requirement, or layer, if you will, for people who wish to view pornographic content in the country. As of last week, folks there will have two options to view porn: take a selfie for the sites to verify their age, or simply provide their photo ID.
The move is part of the UK government’s Online Safety Act, which requires any website that publishes or shows porn on its platform to implement a system for “highly effective age checks.”
“Major porn providers operating in the UK have confirmed to Ofcom that they will introduce effective checks by next month’s deadline in order to comply with the new rules[1]. They include PornHub, the most-visited pornographic service in the UK [2]. Other services who are happy to be named at this stage include BoyfriendTV, Cam4, FrolicMe, inxxx, Jerkmate, LiveHDCams, MyDirtyHobby, RedTube, Streamate, Stripchat, Tube8, and YouPorn. This represents a broad range of pornography services accessed in the UK.” – Ofcom.
It should come as no surprise that many folks in the UK have already found ways to circumvent the age verification layer; the most obvious method is the use of a VPN. The other workarounds are more modern solutions, with some using ChatGPT to generate photo IDs that look “age appropriate”, and others taking high quality selfies of video game characters.
By the way, the UK’s new law makes it illegal for any website, porn sites included, to promote VPNs to bypass their security layer, but technically speaking, it’s not wrong if people spread the word themselves.
Nevertheless, websites in breach of the UK’s Online Safety Act can be fined up to £18 million (~RM102 million) or 10% of their global revenue.
