Britain's age verification law hurts sites that comply and helps those that ignore it

The United Kingdom has begun enforcing the Online Safety Act’s age verification requirements, and it’s already affecting website traffic. Sites that comply with the rules and require users to show a document or scan their faces have lost traffic. Meanwhile, sites that ignore the law have seen a significant increase in traffic, sometimes double or triple what they were last year, The Washington Post reports.

The law requires pornographic sites to verify the age of users by scanning their faces, driving licenses or other documents. Platforms are also required to prevent children from accessing adult content, which is why sites like Bluesky and Reddit have started to verify the age of some users.

The Washington Post analyzed the 90 most popular porn sites among British users, according to data from Similarweb. It turned out that 14 sites that do not verify age have seen significant traffic growth, and one of them has doubled its traffic compared to last year.

At the same time, many sites that formally comply with the law complain about it, post links to petitions to repeal the rules, or provide instructions on how to circumvent them. By the way, some users used the photo mode of the game Death Stranding to pass verification. The game has realistic graphics and a large selection of facial expressions for the main character in the game.

John Scott-Railton, a researcher at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, called the situation "a classic example of the law of unintended consequences": the law reduces traffic to sites that follow the rules, while at the same time directing users to sites without age verification.