Why did the UK era verification law led to a violent reaction

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Explanation of the Pornhub Video website on June 5, 2025.

Ricardo Melanie AFP | Gety pictures

It was good, but the UK law imposes age verification on adult sites and a number of other platforms raised a violent reaction from both Internet users in the country, as well as American politicians and technological giants.

Last month, the new provisions in the online safety law that require large online platforms to implement age tests to prevent children from accessing pornography and appropriate materials in effect.

Pornhub and RedTube measures and other porn sites led to forcing UK visitors to participate and verify their age to reach their services.

What is the online safety law?

On a large scale, the online safety law is a law that imposes an obligation to care for social media companies and content sites created by other users to ensure the responsibility for the harmful content that has been held and published on its platforms.

In particular, legislation aims to prevent children from exposure to porn content and materials that enhance suicide, self -harm, eating disorders or abusive and abhorrent behavior.

The list was years in making a lot of delay in its development – not the least of which is due to fears that it may violate the right of Internet users to privacy and lead to censorship.

Why did this lead to a violent reaction?

The latest measures were imposed in order to ensure that children are unable to see harmful and inappropriate content.

However, they led to complaints from Internet users due to the requirements of having to share personal information such as their identification, credit card details and personal photos – in some cases for platforms that do not even qualify as porn sites.

Spotify, Reddit, X and a number of other platforms have provided their age verification systems to prevent users under the age of 18 years from consuming frank content.

Nicholas Kokovles Norfuto Gety pictures

These moves later led to virtual private network service providers (VPNS) to report that their services, which allow users to hide their location, rise in the United Kingdom

Meanwhile, on Monday, Wikipedia was dealt with a legal kick in the UK, where the Supreme Court judge has spent that the platform must be treated as a “first -category” service, which is subject to some of the user verification requirements.

The online safety law requires the first -category platforms to provide users with the ability to verify their identity tools and access their tools that reduce their exposure to the content of unconfirmed users.

Wikimedia, the parent company, Lukeipidia, has previously said it could limit the numbers of visitors from the UK in order to exempt it from the first category case.

We politicians are weighed

A number of American politicians have criticized the new rules in recent days. Last week, Vice President JD Vance – who was criticized by the rules of Internet safety in the United Kingdom – once again concerned his fears about the law, for fear that he could unable to restrict American technology companies unresolved.

“I don’t want us to follow other countries what I think is a very dark path under the administration of Biden,” Vans told reporters during a trip to the country last week.

US Vice President JD Vance talks about the “One Big Beauty Bill” law in West Bitston, Pennsylvania, United States, July 16, 2025.

Eduardo Monoz Reuters

“A serious impact on freedom of expression and the threat of the rights of the first amendment of American citizens and companies.”

There was speculation about whether the United States had pressured Britain to relax on regulations during commercial talks – however, UK officials say the issue is not open to discussion.

Can other countries follow their example?

Other countries already adopt their internet age verification laws.

Australia and Ireland have passed a similar age verification measures, while Denmark, Greece, Spain, France and Italy began testing the joint age verification application to protect users online.

In the United States, Louisiana passed a law in 2022, which requires age verification on web sites where at least a third of the content of the adult nature, while many other countries seek to pass similar legislation.



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