Why the UK age verification law has led to backlash
Illustration of adult video website pornhub on June 5, 2025.
Riccardo Milani | AFP | Getty Images
A British law and some other platforms that have well -intentioned but necessarily compulsory to verify age in adult sites have reacted to both internet users in the country, US politicians and technology giants.
Last month, new provisions entered into force in the Online Security Law, which required children to apply age controls to prevent children from accessing pornographic and appropriate materials.
Measures, Pornhub, Redtube and other porn sites to access the UK visitors to access to access to their services and forcing them to verify their age.
What is the online security law?
In general, the online security law is a law that provides maintenance tasks to ensure that they take responsibility for the harmful content that is uploaded and spread to social media firms and other content sites, platforms created by user.
In particular, legislation aims to prevent children from being exposed to pornographic content and materials that encourage suicide, self -harm, eating disorders or abusive and hateful behaviors.
The arrangement has been in construction for years and has faced numerous delays in its development – at least because of concerns that internet users may violate their right to privacy and may result in censorship.
Why did it cause backfire?
The latest measures were applied to ensure that children cannot see harmful and inappropriate content.
However, even as porn sites, they have had to share personal information such as identity, credit card details and selfies for non -qualified platforms.
Spotify, Reddit, X and several other platforms introduced their own age verification systems to stop users under 18 years of age.
Nikolas Kokovlis | Nurphoto | Getty Images
These moves later led to the fact that virtual private networks (VPNs) providers reported that their services that allow users to mask their positions increased in the UK.
Meanwhile, on Monday, Wikipedia received a legal coup in the UK because a Supreme Court judge decided that the platform should be considered as a “category” service that would be subject to certain user verification requirements.
The online security law requires a category platforms to provide users to verify their identities and access tools that reduce exposure to inefficient users.
Wikipedia’s main company Wikimedia said previously limited the number of visitors from the UK to exempt from a category status.
US politicians are heavy
A few US politicians have recently exploded new rules. Last week, JD Vance, who previously criticized the UK’s internet security rules, expressed his concerns about the law, afraid that he could unjustly restrict American technology companies.
Vance, during his trip to the country last week, told reporters, “I do not want other countries to follow what I think is a very dark way under the rule of Biden.” He said.
US Vice President JD Vance, West Pittston, Pennsylvania, USA, the USA, is talking about the law of “a great beautiful Bill” on July 16, 2025.
Eduardo Munoz | Reuters
R-Ohio Parliament Speaker Jordan, who recently visited England, said in a statement after the return, the comprehensive online security laws in Europe “had a serious creepy effect on the free expression and threatened the right to the first change of American citizens and companies,” he said.
There are speculation about whether the US can put pressure on Britain to relax the regulations during trade talks – but the UK officials say the problem is not open to discussion.
Can other countries follow the case?
Other countries already adopt their own internet verification laws.
While Australia and Ireland took similar age verification measures, Denmark, Greece, Spain, France and Italy began to test a common age verification application to protect users online.
In the US, Louisiana enacted a law on websites where at least one third of the content is adult in 2022, while some other states are trying to exceed similar legislation.
