UK age check law seems to be hurting sites that comply, helping those that don’t

The enforcement of age verification regulations under the UK's Online Safety Act is having unexpected ramifications on web traffic. According to a report from The Washington Post, the law mandates that adult websites authenticate the ages of their users through methods like facial recognition and the submission of government-issued IDs. This legislation aims to shield minors from adult content, leading platforms such as Bluesky and Reddit to implement age checks for some of their users. In analyzing the impact of this new law, the Post scrutinized the top 90 adult websites based on U.K. visitor statistics sourced from Similarweb. The findings revealed that 14 websites opted out of age verification practices and, intriguingly, these sites experienced a substantial surge in traffic, with one site reporting a traffic increase of 100% year-over-year. Conversely, many sites that adhered to the law while expressing their disapproval saw reduced visitor numbers. Some of these platforms even included links to petitions advocating for the law's repeal or provided guidance on navigating around the requirements. John Scott-Railton, a researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, remarked that this situation exemplifies the “law of unintended consequences,” indicating that the legislation inadvertently curtails traffic to compliant sites while boosting the appeal of those bypassing age checks.