On July 25th, the UK became one of the first countries to widely implement age verification. Its Online Safety Act requires sites hosting porn and other content deemed “harmful” – including Reddit, Discord, Grindr, X, and Bluesky – to verify that users are over the age of 18. The early results have been chaotic. While many services have complied, some have pulled out of the country rather than face the risk and expense. Users have tricked the verification tools or bypassed them with VPNs. It’s just a taste of the issues that many other countries might face as they launch their own systems, and it’s a situation that privacy and security exper …
