This age verification stuff is really poorly designed by law makers. That said, the article points out the number of free VPN services with ad blockers are a problem. Couldn’t they run their own free VPN services that enables access and keeps the ads?

Seems like porn VPN would be popular.

▲

decimalenough 5 days ago | parent [-]

No, because law-abiding companies can't offer tools to circumvent the law.

As the article says, all this means is that law-abiding porn sites (that, for example, respond to requests to delete CSAM and revenge porn) will go bankrupt and everybody will be driven to sketchypron.xxx instead.

▲

delusional 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

> law-abiding porn sites will go bankrupt

How would that work? Can PornHub not exist without the "lucrative" market of children watching porn?

▲

Meneth 5 days ago | parent [-]

More like, they can't exist without the lucrative market of the 90% of current customers who will refuse age verification and go elsewhere.

▲

delusional 4 days ago | parent [-]

Do you seriously believe that 90% of current porn consumers would rather watch their pornography on websites where it's intermingled with child pornography and revenge porn, than verify their age?

Are you seriously arguing that 90% of porn viewers are against digital age verification, even though about 60% of the population (in my home country) approve of the use for purchasing physical goods?

In your reading of the world, there can only ever exist a deregulated market, and democracy may as well pack its bags and make room for anarchy. I don't think that's a reasonable worldview.

▲

rpdillon 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Do you seriously believe that 90% of current porn consumers would rather watch their pornography on websites where it's intermingled with child pornography and revenge porn, than verify their age?

Of course! We can go back and forth about the 90%, but the immediate data available 24 hours after the UK law passed was very clear.

> Daily visits to Pornhub, the UK’s most used porn site, fell from 3.6m on 24 July, the day before age-gating was introduced, to 1.9m on 8 August, a drop of 47%.

> At the next most popular sites, XVideos and xHamster, visits fell 47% and 39% over the same period, according to the data from Similarweb, a digital market intelligence company.

> A spokesperson for Pornhub said: “As we’ve seen in many jurisdictions around the world, there is often a drop in traffic for compliant sites and an increase in traffic for non-compliant sites.”

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/aug/13/porn-site-tr...

▲

ipaddr 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes. Sending your government issued id to random porn sites is asking for your identity to be stolen. Sites filter out any child porn because those are different serious laws. I can live with revenge porn because it's really amateur porn labelled another way. Like supporting eco friendly porn where you walk to the hotel instead of drive.

Regulating markets where someone unvested group of people decide the rules on what can sell /how it can be sold /who can buy or sell is always worse than not regulating it in the first place.

▲

lp0_on_fire 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

> I can live with revenge porn because it's really amateur porn labelled another way.

"revenge porn", by definition is non-consensual. You might as well have said "I can live with rape because it's just love labeled another way".

▲

ipaddr 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

That's disrespectful to anyone who has been raped. Someone posting a private video of a consensual action is not rape in any way shape or form. That's a warped viewpoint that needs to be changed. I recommend you speak with a rape survivor.

▲

lp0_on_fire 2 days ago | parent [-]

You are a disgusting person and no amount of pseudo intellectualism is going to change that.

	▲	ipaddr a day ago \| parent [-]
		You are fake.

▲

cindyllm 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

▲

delusional 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Yes. Sending your government issued id to random porn sites is asking for your identity to be stolen.

Ah, so you don't understand what's being proposed. Let me clear that up.

The implementation proposed by the EU does not involve your government issued id, but rather an openid style handoff to a trusted government entity, where you verify your identity with your government, followed by a handback along with a proof of your age bracket. The website asking for verification only ever gets to know if you're 16+ or 18+ (or whatever other classification we can make up).

> I can live with revenge porn because it's really amateur porn labelled another way

Fuck you. Get out of here with that shit. Disgusting.

▲

scarface_74 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

And then the government knows what sites I visit. There is no such thing as a trusted government entity.

▲

ipaddr 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

A lot of disgusting legal porn exists. Revenge porn is just boring amateur porn that doesn't have consent attached. Both parties may or may not have knowledge of it and someone decides to share after the relationship ends. It's part of their relationship, its a real event that shows a moment of closeness and its an expression of real love. It doesn't interest me but to find you think its so disgusting sounds fake. People have real lives and real relationships that are raw and doesn't always show you in the light you want to present but if its honest and real its life. It's art in a different form.

▲

sky2224 4 days ago | parent [-]

> It doesn't interest me but to find you think its so disgusting sounds fake.

Hello! I think it's incredibly disgusting. Uploading intimate videos of your partner (past or present) is an absolute breach of that individual's privacy and trust. Additionally, it absolutely is NOT legal. I think it's quite alarming if someone doesn't find it disgusting.

▲

ipaddr 3 days ago | parent [-]

I guess you are not a fan of Taylor Swift. All of her albums have been revenue porn.

	▲	cindyllm 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		[dead]

▲

IAmBroom 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

So radar detectors for cars don't exist?

	▲	decimalenough 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		They're not sold by car companies, and they're illegal in many countries.