This feel strangely like it has little to do with actually protecting kids...
this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2025
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It's more about penetrating your privacy but think of the children is the go-to argument to sugar-coat that.
Someone should be asking what the sentence will be for kids who commit identity fraud and use someone else's ID to set up an account. It may flip the narrative to point out they are intentionally creating more criminal acts that will get kids in trouble with the law and possibly ruin lives.
The act in question doesn't create offences for children; it (mainly) creates offences for service providers.
A kid who went on the internet and clicked I'm 18+ and looked at porn doesn't have a victim (outside of the perpetrator if one wants to argue that). I don't know what the laws are in the U.K. but here (U.S.) identity fraud/theft is a federal crime. With a possible sentence up to 15 years.
With how it was, there was no incentive for a kid to take their parents/older friends ID when they weren't looking, or share ID's/information with their friends to access those sites. If a person gets notice that their information is being used on a site they weren't using, the likelyhood of it being reported goes up.
Hopefully nothing would ever go as far as being reported as fraud/theft, but all it takes is one person who doesn't like their kid hanging out with someone else.
So while they didn't create any new offenses for kids, they created roadblocks that put kids in a situation that may make them break the law out of sheer curiosity.
Getting caught drinking a beer, or smoking cigarettes would be a godsend compared to getting charges brought up for something so stupid.
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It's about making LGBTQ content "adult only" and using this same mechanism to enforce ID law on that content. They've been doing it in some USA states for a few years now. No one wants to be the Porn Politician that votes against it.
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mastodon has porn and you don't even need an account to use search. also, this will just drive people to use sketchy sites that won't follow the rules.
You can literally find porn on search engines. Google images is a bit restrictive but Bing, Duckduckgo etc will straight up show porn in the image or video searches.
I'm disappointed that Pornhub is apparently capitulating instead of blocking access entirely in protest, like they've done in other jurisdictions.
I think they realized that they won't get the jurisdiction to bend on this one, and the general response from UK government will be "good riddance to bad rubbish".
They only really block access when there isn't an official way to validate. Iirc, Louisiana did this over a year ago and pornhub is doing age verification there now.
“PrOtEcT ThE ChiLdReN! 👆🏻🥴”
I can not hear that anymore!
Children need awareness, rather than shielding, concealment and tabooing.
silver lining, the kinks of the future are gonna be sooo fucked up.
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If your kid has half a brain he'll do what we did as kids when porn sites were blocked on the home WiFi: He'll just get a VPN.
And when VPN websites were blocked on the home WiFi, we'd just download their apps on mobile data.
Where there's a will, there's a way.
Better to educate your kids on their natural urges and letting them use the more moderated sites than have them go down the more dodgy rabbitholes. No kink shaming but some of the things people do are nasty.
If UK really wanted to protect the kids, they would've jailed Transphobe JK Rowings for hate crime
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So people too young or too privacy conscious to use those major platforms will move to nicher porn sites. Doesn't sound like a bad idea at all... /s
Oh no. Some hackers hacked out database and released all the ID information on high profile people. Oh such whoopsie, we made.
- Adult Websites
Depends entirely on how it's implemented, because the website doesn't need to know who you are, only verify that you are over 18. Which can be done reasonably securely - you generate a random ID on a secure service (e.g here in Finland, we use our online banking stuff for official verification purposes), give that ID to the website, and the only communication between the two of them is "Is id 123 valid and an adult? Yes/No".
Now, if that "secure service", most likely a government contract done as cheaply as possible turns out not to be, and they keep logs linking those IDs to the URLs requesting verification, then the entire thing goes belly up.
So your bank now knows you accessed certain websites. And likely one or more middleware services. And you are okay with that?
Was an example of the security, not who is running the service. But I mean, guess who knows if you pay for OnlyFans or stuff like that?
Your bank.
And like I said, it's only really secure if the service doesn't keep a database of logs connecting the two.
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Zero Knowledge is more secure. Government signs a credential confirming date of birth and gives that to the citizen.
Citizen can then use that to create a proof they were born before date X. Verifier only sees the proof and the Government signature.
No need to trust 3rd party websites.
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I'm sure the most rigorous of data safety standards will be followed. After all they're being forced to do this I'm sure they won't take the cheapest possible route. Oh definitely not.
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VPN subs will be up and UK viewership will be nonexistent
So much for being better than the US. Welcome to the downfall of modern society UK.
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Do we know how the age verification process is gonna work or is this gonna be one of those neoliberal dystopian spystate kinda deals where the means of data collection is left to corporations only to be subsequently tapped by the state when the want to target individuals?
Well it's been monitored by ofcom who we all know are the last word in inefficiency, corruption, and stupidity so I'm going to go ahead and guess that they're just going to say they're doing checks, and Ofcom just not going to check.
They're probably going to add a second pop-up after the "are you 18" pop-up that says "are you lying".
I would imagine they've at least talked about trying get people to enter credit card details. I know that's been pushed before, as early as the 2000s, for age verification on some sites. Obviously it's terrible for privacy, data breaches and flat-out fake sites just harvesting card numbers or taking all your cash at point of verification.
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don't the uk have a history of straight up putting porn in print magazines and on free television every day?
Page 3 of the sun newspaper was the famous one for just having a topless women emblazoned on it
To Americans, tits may be considered porn. To a good chunk of the rest of the world, it’s not as pornographic.
To Brits it is pornographic.
Nudity isn't always pornographic or sexual depending on the context. But in this context it absolutely is. The Sun put tits there to sexually arouse readers, that was the point.
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Say it with me folks! VPN!
V! P! N!
So all of the mainstream porn will be blocked, leaving all of the niche and special-interest stuff available? Excellent, excellent...
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Garbage. This info will be weaponized by anyone who is willing to buy it.
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Are they going to add a box to enter your age like on Steam that you immediately roll back to 1st January 1901?
They did this in Florida. They want you to submit a picture of yourself and your photo ID to a porn website
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And when this measure fails to protect children and, instead, becomes a data security nightmare, another scheme will be proposed to further erode the freedoms the web brings.
I look forward to hearing about the workarounds kids find.
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So this will affect Reddit and Lemmy too, presumably?
It already has. Lemmy.zip if unavailable to users (of the admins own volition as they don’t have the capability to comply) in the Uk because of the law
So what privacy will I have to give up?
Actually I'm in Canada so I'm probably safe anyway.
I mean... I don't watch porn so this doesn't affect my anyway...
It’s tied to your account on the website. So it’s tied to all of your viewing activity. It could be leaked or compromised. It could be subpoenaed. It could be purchased.
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