The English are taking comfort in what George Mikes wrote four decades ago: “Continental people have sex lives; the English have hot-water bottles.” Anyone wanting to watch porn online in the UK needs to keep their photo ID ready, as the government is implementing age-verification tools.
The new Online Safety Act in the UK makes it compulsory for service operators to use “effective” age-verification measures to prevent children from accessing adult content, failing which there are heavy fines. In the crosshairs are primarily pornography and content that promotes self-harm, but the scope can include bullying or hateful content.
The new system replaces self-reporting checkboxes. Some of the biggest porn websites operating in the UK — including Pornhub and YouPorn — have agreed to comply with the new rules. Social media sites such as BlueSky, Reddit, Discord, Grindr and X are introducing UK age checks to block children from seeing harmful content.
Several social media platforms are working with third-party software providers to implement the law. Users typically have a choice between uploading bank card information, an image of government-issued ID, or a facial scan that estimates the user’s age.
Many social media companies, such as Meta and TikTok, are relying on alternative techniques that deploy machine-learning technology to “infer” a user’s age through the way they use the site and who they communicate with. Although the AI-based systems are yet to be endorsed by Ofcom (the regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries), the regulator says the list of tools it has proposed is “non-exhaustive”.
The new legislation is among the world’s first to impose strict controls on tech companies, forcing social media sites to either remove all adult content, which can be a difficult task, or use age-verification techniques.
Beyond Britain, new child protection laws are being looked at. Some of the measures will ultimately discourage children from using social media platforms or accessing harmful content. In June,
the US Supreme Court paved the way for states to make it compulsory for porn websites to check that visitors are at least 18 using age-verification technologies.
Last week, France ruled that adult content sites can check users’ ages. Ireland deployed age-checking laws for video websites this week. In December, Australia’s social media ban for children under 16 will come into effect.
The new law in Britain has a challenger in the form of virtual private network (VPN) apps that can disguise users’ locations online, allowing them to use the Internet as though they are in another country. VPN apps have become the most downloaded on Apple’s App Store in the UK.
Other loopholes have also been spotted. The face-scanning systems for Persona and k-ID — the third-party verification software used by Reddit and Discord, respectively — can both be deceived by using Death Stranding’s photo mode. The video game’s photo mode allows players to use a variety of in-game options to tweak the look and style of a screenshot before it’s saved.