Websites are being forced to gate content behind age verification to pander to the “won’t somebody think of the children” lobby.

The legislation makes no distinction between social media giants like Facebook and Instagram and small not-for-profit sites. If a bad actor in your tiny hobby site uses it to direct message porn to a minor, you could face a fine of £18 million for something you could not predict or prevent.

Many small sites have shut down or geo-blocked UK users rather than shoulder this risk. Other casualties have started popping up today. The sexual health subreddits r/STD and r/SafeSex are now gated behind 18+ age verification, because we can’t have teenagers educating themselves about sex and making informed decisions. They’ll just have to grow up ignorant in a prevailing air of puritanism, because that always works to keep kids safe. They’ll catch more STDs and teenage pregnancies through that ignorance, but nobody who pushed for this law cares about that (and that’s not actually what will happen, see below).

The effect of all this is that people’s ability to communicate and socialise online will be centralised into the tech giants like Reddit and Meta who will continue to offer services to UK users because they can afford to pay an £18m fine when they inevitably get it wrong.

The death of privacy

Children’s access to sex education and people’s ability to socialise aren’t the only casualties of this braindead legislation. Any adult who wants to continue accessing services that have been marked as 18+ will need to verify their age, and a raft of services have sprung up around this new requirement.

I’ve seen people claim that it’s no different from having to show your ID at the corner shop to buy a grumble mag, but this take is either misinformed or dishonest. A more accurate analogy would be if you have to let the corner shop photocopy your passport or driving licence, whereupon it will be stuffed unsecured under the counter for anyone to snatch or sold by an unscrupulous shop owner along with a comprehensive list of exactly what purchases you needed to show it for.

Bit too alarmist for you? Ok. Maybe the proprietor of your local corner shop is way too honest for that. Maybe he stores the data in a locked filing cabinet. But it can still be stolen when his shop gets broken into or his employee leaves the key in the lock. It happened to M&S and Co-Op, it can happen to your local shop.

Age gating implementations

Not all implementations are terrible. Discord gives the option to verify by video as an alternative to giving them a scan of your ID (which I obviously wouldn’t trust them with). I make gaming videos on YouTube, my face is already out there.

I’ll add more as I encounter them.

Update: well, that was brief. People have already managed to fool Discord’s verification using photo mode in Death Stranding. Hopefully they just implement a Norman Reedus check rather than junking the idea altogether.

It won’t keep kids away from anything

This block only applies to the UK. At the time of writing this, there’s been a 589% increase in searches for VPNs in Wales. Teenagers are still going to access whatever they like. Savvy adults are going to do the same. Facebook, Instagram and X are still going to be cesspools run by sociopaths. The only real consequences of this utterly ill-advised legislation are that a lot of less tech savvy adults will be more vulnerable to identity theft, and a lot of interesting small communities will have been lost.