177
submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

By 25 July, all sites and apps that allow pornography – whether they are dedicated adult sites or social media, search or gaming services – must use highly effective age checks to ensure children are not normally able to encounter it. Online firms who publish their own pornography are already required to protect children from it, and thousands of sites have already introduced robust age checks in response. 

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. They include PornHub, the most-visited pornographic service in the UK. 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.

Monitoring compliance with these new duties is a priority for Ofcom. If any company fails to comply with its new duties, Ofcom can impose fines and – in very serious cases – apply for a court order to prevent the site or app from being available in the UK. As part of our work enforcing the Online Safety Act, we have already launched investigations into four porn providers and won’t hesitate to take further action from July.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top new old
[-] [email protected] 25 points 2 days ago

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?

[-] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago

You just have to scan the qr code they tattoo on your balls

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

I mean some people might be into that.

[-] [email protected] 11 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

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".

[-] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago

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.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

Not to mention that zillions of underage kids have their own legit cards nowadays.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago

Plus loads of adults don't have a card. It's not like when you turn 18 somebody from the government turns up and goes here's a bank account.

This is why they keep going on about government ID cards. So they can track everyone reliably. Which is precisely why we shouldn't do it.

[-] [email protected] 21 points 2 days ago

So all of the mainstream porn will be blocked, leaving all of the niche and special-interest stuff available? Excellent, excellent...

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

Children will only have access to the illegal porn sites that don't "protect children".

[-] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago

Interestingly there are noticeable absences from that list.

Perhaps that's by design, there's no reason the politicians would make their own lives more difficult.

[-] [email protected] 42 points 2 days ago

If UK really wanted to protect the kids, they would've jailed Transphobe JK Rowings for hate crime

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] [email protected] 39 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Oh no. Some hackers hacked out database and released all the ID information on high profile people. Oh such whoopsie, we made.

  • Adult Websites
[-] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago

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.

[-] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

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.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago

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.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

The problem there is that requires the government to do some of the work, and they don't want to. They want to sell this to the public as them being tough, but they definitely don't want it to cost any money.

This will be implemented in the most sketchy short-sighted way possible, I guarantee it

[-] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

I would never touch any of these telemetry websites anymore because this is definitely going to be used to fingerprint you.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

So your bank now knows you accessed certain websites. And likely one or more middleware services. And you are okay with that?

[-] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

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.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 112 points 3 days ago

This feel strangely like it has little to do with actually protecting kids...

[-] [email protected] 97 points 3 days ago

It's more about penetrating your privacy but think of the children is the go-to argument to sugar-coat that.

[-] [email protected] 34 points 3 days ago

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.

load more comments (4 replies)
[-] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

Well they should at least give me a reach around if they are going to penetrate my privacy.

[-] [email protected] 19 points 3 days ago

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.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 64 points 3 days ago

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.

[-] [email protected] 13 points 2 days ago

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.

[-] [email protected] 58 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

“PrOtEcT ThE ChiLdReN! 👆🏻🥴”

I can not hear that anymore!

Children need awareness not shielding, concealment and tabooing.

[-] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago

silver lining, the kinks of the future are gonna be sooo fucked up.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago

"I showed you my elbow, pls respond 🥺"

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 62 points 3 days ago

I'm disappointed that Pornhub is apparently capitulating instead of blocking access entirely in protest, like they've done in other jurisdictions.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 51 points 3 days ago

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.

[-] [email protected] 21 points 2 days ago

Garbage. This info will be weaponized by anyone who is willing to buy it.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 36 points 3 days ago

VPN subs will be up and UK viewership will be nonexistent

[-] [email protected] 39 points 3 days ago

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

[-] [email protected] 24 points 3 days ago

don't the uk have a history of straight up putting porn in print magazines and on free television every day?

load more comments (5 replies)
[-] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

I wonder what a fake beard or mustache does as far as fooling the machine goes?

[-] [email protected] 22 points 3 days ago

Say it with me folks! VPN!

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 18 points 3 days ago

Are they going to add a box to enter your age like on Steam that you immediately roll back to 1st January 1901?

[-] [email protected] 13 points 3 days ago

They did this in Florida. They want you to submit a picture of yourself and your photo ID to a porn website

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2025
177 points (98.4% liked)

Technology

71995 readers
2732 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS