(LifeSiteNews) — On July 25, the United Kingdom’s long-awaited crackdown on minor porn use came into effect — with mixed results.
After several years of debate about implementation and effectiveness, any website operating inside the UK is now required to “robustly” verify age in order to prevent children from accidentally accessing pornographic material. Porn sites that fail to implement age verification could face fines of up to £18 million ($24 million USD), or “10% of worldwide revenue,” according to the BBC.
According to the UK media regulator Ofcom, the Online Safety Act will reduce the number of minor porn users via a series of credit card checks and photo ID matching verification and noted that thousands of porn sites have chosen to comply with the law. Porn sites must ensure that the verification system they choose is “technically accurate, robust, reliable, and fair.”
Ofcom noted that more work will have to be done to address the problem of people merely using VPNs to access porn sites. Indeed, VPNs are currently topping download charts in response to the new law despite the fact that it is now illegal for porn sites to utilize VPNs; the government encouraged parents to be aware of what their children are doing online and to check for the use of VPNs.
Despite skepticism from internet privacy advocates, age verification companies believe that these systems will be at least partially effective. “It is possible that an adult could complete an age check on behalf of a child if they were passed a device,” Andy Lulham of Verifymy told the BBC. “This would be comparable to an adult going into a shop and buying a pornographic magazine on behalf of a child and would be extremely irresponsible.”
According to Ofcom, X (formerly Twitter), Grindr (a homosexual dating app), and Pornhub have all committed to using some form of age verification; platforms such as Telegram and Reddit have been similarly cooperative. Interestingly, Pornhub decided to leave France entirely earlier this year over a similar age verification law and blocked several American states for the same reason. It is strange that they have adopted a different approach in response to the UK’s Online Safety Act.
The BBC’s report on age verification is itself evidence of how desperately anti-porn measures are needed:
Tom, who is in his 20s, says he has been watching porn since he was a teenager and is worried about sharing personal data to access porn sites. “It’s not a question of if something will leak, but when,” he told the BBC. He is concerned about how a leak of personal data could affect users, including those whose viewing habits could reveal their sexuality if they have not come out to friends and family.
Age verification companies told the BBC people should be reassured because firms don’t retain data. Shea, who is in his 20s and watches porn daily, is also concerned.
It is stories like those that highlight how deeply addictive pornography is and the extent to which it is transforming society. These two young men both watch pornography daily and see the consumption of degrading sexual material as fundamentally important to their lifestyles. It appears not to have occurred to either of them that porn sites might be collecting their data — and that, as with the Ashley Madison leak, this information could ultimately be dumped online.
Porn users should remember: Your viewing history is being documented. This is precisely why so many people fall for scam emails that claim to have recorded them during porn sessions and threaten to send their porn histories to their email lists.
“Ethical hackers” have already illustrated how easily some age verification measures can be circumvented; Sky News reported that two hackers accessed porn sites without verifying their age “in a matter of seconds.” Much more will have to be done in order to protect children from pornography, but the Online Safety Act establishes a principle and is a good first step. In my view, the final step is simple, difficult, and essential: At some point, we will have to consider banning pornography.
