Porn age checks - Surely a good thing?

An empty-headed peice by someone who doesnt even understand the basics of what they are writing about.

Quite the opposite. She claims the people opposing the OSA are "perfectly in tune with tech giants whose profits rely on unfiltered traffic", yet hasn't stopped to consider the fact that the majority of the tech giants aren't actually complaining about this.

Compounding that oversight, she then fails to ask why they aren't complaining, when her entire theory is based on it.

For some reason, nobody else seems to be asking that question either. Very few are asking who conceived this law, who wrote the majority of it, or why they suddenly bowed out a few months before it was presented to Parliament either. Answer those questions, and the picture quickly becomes one of large amounts of money...and nothing to do with protecting women and children.

As for the idea that only men are using VPNs so that they can have a good shuffle, that's rubbish. I've had to resort to using VPNs for a number of sites in the last week just to be able to do my job - none of which contain adult or illegal content, but all of which are protecting themselves because this absolute shit-show of a law considers them to be high-risk.

No

The issue is that the law is being dressed up "protecting kids from porn" and using the guise of morality when it's far more insidious than that

Plenty of us women have installed VPNs as well because the laws are poorly planned and effecting so much

That article only talks about porn, and doesn't mention the over reach of the act. With sites dealing with things like self harm now needing age verification etc.

It's a bad piece of legislation as it's censorship of the Internet wrapped up in a veneer of trying to protect kids from porn.

The best way to protect kids is to educate them. Explain what they see isn't real, the difference between porn and real life.

This act will just make some parents assume their children are safe and won't choose to have those difficult conversations

https://unherd.com/newsroom/the-real-moral-panic-isnt-porn-its-losing-access-to-it/

Excellent piece by Jo Bartosch on this overreaction to the OSA.

Most probably is,widely reported that the amount of UK visits to most popular porn sites are down by around 45%, it would be good to think the vpns are being used by adults, but realistically the kids will be using them too

Is that figures from UK IPs?

Because if it is... that's the VPNs

The recent figures showing the significant decrease in people accessing the biggest porn sites show the rules are having some effect, but as many people have said , this is more than just limiting access to porn for those under 18, it’s how you limit access to harmful material and predatory behaviour on sites like Snapchat, instagram, Facebook etc,

https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/11/wikimedia_foundation_loses_online_safety/

This seems related ...

https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/08/humans_outperform_ai_models_brand_safety/

While the headline sounds good there are aspects of the online safety bill that are ominous and ripe for misuse.

I for one am against the requirements they are trying to put on WhatsApp and similar apps - which if it goes in will see whatsapp and signal exit the UK.

There are lots of ways the government is overreaching at the moment imo - inc ability to access people's bank accounts.

But it is all rolled in on the back of something that sounds like it is trying to do good.

Anyone who starts calling anonymous posters men to try and invalidate their opinions is already losing...

There are widely reported instances of sites being blocked which shouldn't be. Including sites related to Jeremy Corbyn's new party....

(Seperate note but making porn and prostitution illegal would only drive it more underground and even less regulated and put people in even more vulnerable positions...)

The instances of children trying to get support and being age-gated are being widely reported. If you were remotely as interested in the details of what's going on instead of doggedly sticking to your "think of the children" one-track, you'd have seen them.

Yes, there are information sites around, but they don't give the visitor the opportunity to directly interact with many individuals at once. I'm talking about the in-scope services - that's user-to-user sites, like forums.

I've run a pretty large forum for the last 12 years, and I've had to familiarise myself in-depth with the Online Safety Act. I'm totally aware of the online risks, and I'm not minimising that at all. What I'm saying is that this law does the exact opposite of its purported goal. The police are completely uninterested in investigating any of it - that's been consistent for the last decade. The OSA does these things:

1 - Shifts responsibility for enforcing laws online to service providers.
2 - Puts service providers at the beginning of the chain of custody for evidence (which, essentially, breaks the chain of evidence due to lack of training, authority and tools).
3 - Gives service providers an £18m+ incentive to remove evidence from public view, meaning that the police will find nothing when they try to investigate a complaint, without a lengthy and expensive legal exercise.
4 - Moves an increasingly large portion of the population to VPNs (including the bad actors), where they're largely untraceable so making it even more difficult for the police to investigate, and moves the majority of illegal content further out of reach of the authorities.
5 - Hands a ton of business to identity-verification companies, the directors of whom form a who's-who of ex-Ofcom employees.

#1 is just stupid. #2 is going to be a field day for defence barristers, so there will be fewer successful prosecutions. #3 means that there will be fewer investigations in the first place. #4 was obvious right from the start, and will be used to try to ban encryption (another thing the government has wanted to do for a couple of decades now, no matter how stupid it is). #5 is just the way we've come to expect government departments to work.

So, where is the positive we've been told is there, in return for the removal of privacy and age-gating of completely legal content?

You might want to look up the history of GOSRN. This has been their plan for a long time - and Ofcom are right at the centre of it.

Incidentally, are you trying to imply that I'm a man, just because I can see the problems inherent in this ridiculous overreach? That's pretty damn offensive to just about everybody.

DARVO. Tapping out

The legislation is imperfect, I have asked what dissenters would do instead. I believe your lack of concern and even mocking blithe disregard is even somewhat suspicious.

You can believe what you want. I'm old enough to remember red triangles on my screen.

Rather than ask dissenters what they would do instead, here's an exercise for you. Why don't you go and find the various solutions that were proposed and evaluated and discussed and voted on and explain how what we now have came into existence. Should be easy enough as all that work has been done.

If you can't then I will assume that the push for imperfect legislation (by your admission) has impure motives. And that people who support it uncritically are seeking to place restrictions on the dissemination of information under a cloak of faux virtue of concern for children. A concern that falls short of making sure children are free from hunger homelessness as well as abuse.

So let me get this straight. You are quite happy with the increase in exploitation and abuse of women and children so that you have all the online privacy you want? I don't trust any company led by Mark Zuckerberg and loathe Google, I detest the stranglehold they have on the tech industry.

The legislation is imperfect, I have asked what dissenters would do instead. I believe your lack of concern and even mocking blithe disregard is even somewhat suspicious.

I am a porn and prostitution abolitionist after coming from a very liberal, pro sex upbringing. Naturally, if laws aren't working then they need to be reworked, changed and possibly strengthened if needed, that is the nature of Parliament.

You do realise that CSAM isn’t just the awful stuff on peoples hard drives. It’s the children getting approached while playing games online with their friends, it’s 13 year old girls getting groomed on Snapchat and eventually asked for nudes. The government, police and judiciary are so swamped with all of that that they cannot cope.

Not quite sure you have heard yourself. Unless I am mistaken, you appear to be saying we need more laws, because the laws we have can't be enforced ?

Am I missing anything ?

“That over-correction, for example, is why young girls can no longer access information about menstrual health in the places they'd normally look for it - it's age-gated to 18+ only in most places, because the companies running these sites are absolutely terrified of the massive fine that Ofcom have threatened them with.”

—please name the sites,

‘Same goes for mental health support sites etc.’

— again, name them, because Mind is freely available and the several that I frequent are freely available without identification requirements.

I don’t truly believe anything in life can ever be properly private. Even if you were online alcohol support, which I do, there is always some way of finding out who you are for the very dedicated. Naturally, we want to reduce that risk. That’s human.

However, I get rather suspicious of many highly technically able people saying that

1. parents need to supervise their children 💯

2. CSAM is already illegal, the government just needs to #do better

You do realise that CSAM isn’t just the awful stuff on peoples hard drives. It’s the children getting approached while playing games online with their friends, it’s 13 year old girls getting groomed on Snapchat and eventually asked for nudes. The government, police and judiciary are so swamped with all of that that they cannot cope.

It’s almost by victim blaming the parents, you’re diverting the attention away from your own activities. So why are men coming on here, mumsnet, a website setup for women to talk about issues effecting them, coming on here and down talking and minimising?

If the Legislation isn’t good enough, ok, it’s not good enough. I know people who were involved in drafting it and I know they were very frustrated with all the carveouts. What is the solution.

There will plenty of "legal but harmful" content popping up in the future.

Remember how we bnow have "non crime" crimes ? You know, where your name goes on a list for doing something legal, but with bad intent. Just ask Harry the Owl.

As a result of a discussion on Mumsnet recently, I discovered scores of YoutTube channles devoted - in forensic detail - to growing cannabis. Which is legal in many US states and countries. I can't see them lasting.

Then there are sites that explain how VPNs work (plenty of YouTube tutorials about that too). I've already read that OFCOM is sniffing around the idea that instructional VPN content is harmful.

Ordinarily I am relaxed about technical ignorance in government. Probably because I have never known anything else. And the OSA doesn't have the feel of the usual Hanlonian fuck up. It feels far more contrived. Which many people have also noticed and asked "what are they really up to ?"

I had similar feelings about the ID card fiasco.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2025/07/uk-government-warns-promoting-the-use-of-vpns-could-attract-fines.html

Are you happy to sacrifice all rights to privacy and openness on the Internet, catastrophically compromise everyone's online security, prevent children being able to access the support they need (and adults, given that many of those groups are just shutting down because of the OSA), and give the government a blank cheque for surveillance in order to achieve that goal?

Because those are the trade-offs in the Online Safety Act.

We don’t give unfettered access to the internet. We block at the router, with the ISP and the mobile phone provider. We have no devices in their rooms.

You know what, because there are constantly changing updates, apps, work around, the children are on to them faster than we are. It’s like wack-a-mole. It’s not just up to the parents, it’s up to the government and the tech companies to help, too.

Love how most posters just want to gloss over the ban on addiction support groups

"But won't someone think of the CHILDREN"

lucky for the kids who will end up addicted to drugs and drink it's as easy as clicking a button to launch the VPN

I’m at the point where I want to just ban all pornography and prostitution. It’s not just about children but the effects on women. Nobody has any self control, most people need more and more extreme versions to get the dopamine hit. Throttling your partner this week, eye gouging next?