People across the United Kingdom have been faced with a censored and partially inaccessible online landscape since the country introduced its latest digital safety rules on Friday.
The Online Safety Act mandates that web service operators must use “highly effective” age verification measures to stop kids from accessing a wide range of material, on penalty of heavy fines and criminal action against senior managers. It’s primarily focused on pornography and content that promotes suicide, self-harm, or eating disorders, but the scope of “priority content” also includes materials related to bullying, abusive or hateful content, and dangerous stunts or challenges.
Effectively, web platforms must either set up an age verification system that poses potential privacy risks, default to blocking huge swaths of potentially questionable content, or entirely pull out of the UK. Residents are finding themselves locked out of anything from period-related subreddits to hobbyist forums — it’s little wonder that they’re turning to VPNs.
Over the past several days, several large social media platforms have started requiring age verification in the UK to access certain features and types of content, in partnership with third-party software providers. Users typically have a choice between uploading bank card information, an image of government-issued ID, or a facial scan that estimates the user’s age.
Meta users likely won’t have seen a huge difference over the weekend, as Facebook and Instagram rolled out age verification requirements a few years ago. Bluesky users in the UK, however, now can’t access direct messaging capabilities until they complete the platform’s new age verification process. Reddit has also blocked access to specific subreddits for UK-based users who don’t complete its age verification process, some of which — r/periods, r/stopsmoking, r/stopdrinking, and r/sexualassault, for example — provide valued community support and resources for adults and minors alike.
People are already finding loopholes for these systems. The face scanning systems for Persona and k-ID — the third-party verification software used by Reddit and Discord, respectively — can both be easily tricked using Death Stranding’s photo mode. (Facebook and Instagram use a similar service called Yoti, which so far does not appear to have been fooled the same way.)
X doesn’t yet have a direct verification system, and is instead currently estimating age based on factors like account creation date, social connections, email addresses, and legacy verification. Accounts that don’t have any of these signals in place are locked out of accessing certain content until X rolls out the ID and facial scanner-based checkers it’s planning to release “in the following weeks.” That includes protest footage and video game clips that depict violence — and users who aren’t even based in the UK are reporting content restrictions as well.
Outside the biggest platforms, some sites are entirely inaccessible. Cybersecurity company McAfee reports that more than 6,000 websites that host adult content have already implemented age assurance methods, but others have opted to geoblock their services in the UK. A wide variety of unrelated, innocuous websites have followed suit. That includes forums for owners of EV Renault vehicles, electronic music production, beaded jewelry patterns, and tech-focused blogs. Many smaller forums simply don’t have the resources to support third-party verification systems or risk millions of dollars in fines.
Wikipedia has voiced similar concerns over other Online Safety Act rules that could require it to verify its adult contributors, which the Wikimedia Foundation behind Wikipedia says could leave volunteers vulnerable to “data breaches, stalking, lawsuits, or even imprisonment by authoritarian regimes.” As such, while it’s still available for now, the platform is also considering blocking UK users to avoid compliance entirely.
The UK’s communications regulator, Ofcom, declined to offer an attributed on-the-record comment about the new age checks to The Verge. In unattributed statements to other outlets, it said it was “now assessing compliance to make sure platforms have them in place, and companies that fall short should expect to face enforcement action.”
UK residents have launched a parliamentary petition in response to the sweeping age verification requirements, urging the UK government to repeal the Online Safety Act, and describing it as “far broader and restrictive than is necessary in a free society.” The petition has attracted more than 350,000 signatures at the time of writing, surpassing the 100,000 signatures needed to force the government to consider holding a debate over the demands.
Meanwhile, some users have been finding ways to avoid undergoing verification entirely, expressing distrust over handing their personal information over to private overseas companies. Many restrictions can be evaded by using a VPN, which masks the user’s true location by making it seem like they’re in another country — one without the UK’s rigid online safety rules. VPN apps currently occupy five out of the top 10 most popular free apps on Apple’s iOS store in the UK. The top spot is currently held by Swiss-based VPN provider Proton VPN, which surpassed ChatGPT over the weekend.
Proton VPN’s general manager, David Peterson, told The Verge that it had seen a more than 1,800 percent increase in daily sign-ups from UK-based users since Friday. The UK is now one of the countries generating the highest usage for Proton VPN, according to Peterson, with the vast majority of new users signing up for free accounts.
“This clearly shows that adults are concerned about the impact universal age verification laws will have on their privacy,” said Peterson. “The sign-up spike in the UK follows a similar pattern as when other governments put in place restrictions on communication or social media platforms, and shouldn’t be surprising since services like Wikipedia, Reddit, and X are reportedly being asked to comply with age verification requirements.”