Age verification is aimed at people to shady porn sites

New laws to check online age in the UK have some unwanted consequences. The rules that require users to upload photo identifiers or selfies to access certain websites seem in some cases discounts.

New analysis of The Washington Post He found that porn sites that follow the rules lose traffic, while those who ignore the law are rewarded by the impetus of visitors.

The analysis comes only a month after the United Kingdom has begun to implement the Law on Online Safety, which puts new legal pressure on platforms, including search engines and social media sites to protect users from harmful content. Legislators have presented it as a way to protect children from porn and other « harmful » materials tied to self -harm, suicide and eating disorders.

But the data suggest that the opposite can happen. Porn sites that skipped new ID checks saw that their audience is growing while those who follow the rules lose users. Some of these sites have tripled their audience in August compared to last year, according to PostS

One of the main provisions of the law requires porn platforms and other users content to use technology that checks or evaluates the age of the user. In practice, this usually means forcing people to upload an ID card or selfie to prove that they are adult enough to have access to certain content.

Consumers already find ways around digital checkpoints. Some cunning gamers from the United Kingdom have found that they can lure Reddit and Discord verification systems using the Death Stranding photo mode. Most just shoot a VPN that masks their location and makes it look like they are looking outside the United Kingdom

Or, even more, they flock to sites that never deal with age checking first.

What did the analysis find

To see how the law is played, Post Take a look at the UK traffic ratings in the last year for 90 of the largest porn sites using data from the Analytics Company SIGs. The reporters then fired VPN to imitate a UK user and check which sites actually requested an age check.

They found that 14 of the 90s had completely skipped the age check and each of them saw a large jump in the movement. One site has doubled its visitors to the UK since last August, hitting over 350,000 visits.

Ofcom, the UK media regulator, told the newspaper that he had opened four investigations on porn sites for compliance. However, only one of the 14 sites marked by Post It was on this list.

The porn industry warns that this can happen.

« The legislation on the provision of age in other jurisdictions fails for a number of reasons, including its inconsistent and inefficient implementation on a scale, leaving hundreds of thousands of platforms with age -accessible content, most of which do not have measures to check the content or measures to check the upload. » « We know that when people choose not to check, they do not stop looking for adult content, they migrate to these irresponsible platforms. »