New UK age verification laws coming to 18+ sites

On the 25th of July the UK introduces a law that requires 18+ sites to verify the identity and age of users before accessing them.

Info from BBC site: How will age verification for porn work and what about privacy?

How effective is this going to be in filtering young people out? Will it drive them to non-compliant sites containing blatantly illegal material and ideas... and as a byproduct automatically turn them into criminals? Will they use IP spoofers, vpn's and other masking technologies to get around them?

How savvy are today's teenagers with this technology, and what is the likelihood of it working when IT security staff can't keep 17-19 year olds out of the customer data of major UK shops?

My opinion is that this will have the same long-term social consequences as the substance misuse laws. It will likely drive impressionable minds in the wrong direction and consume material and information they might not have otherwise seen.

When has banning ever worked when there exists so many consumers of a product or activity? I've always felt one cannot effectively enforce a law that does not have the natural consent of the majority of a country's population.

Edited July 16, 2025Jul 16 by StringJunky