Image by Sarah Kilian on Unsplash
When the United Kingdom started enforcing its new age verification laws under the Online Safety Act, the idea was clear: keep adult content away from kids. But what’s actually happening? It’s turning into the digital version of “you’re punishing the wrong people.”
Websites that follow the law are losing traffic. Sites that ignore the rules? They’re booming.
Let’s break it down.
What the UK’s Online Safety Act Actually Requires
Back in July 2025, the UK rolled out strict age check rules for websites — especially adult content platforms. These sites now have to verify a user’s age using tools like face scans or driver’s license uploads. The law also applies to social platforms, which need to make sure underage users aren’t exposed to adult material.
So websites started asking you to prove your age. Not a big deal in theory. But in practice? That’s another story.
Image by Miguel Ángel Padriñán Alba on Unsplash
Who’s Playing by the Rules (and Paying the Price)
The Washington Post looked at the top 90 porn sites based on U.K. visitor data from Similarweb. Of those, 14 sites aren’t performing any age checks at all. And guess what? All 14 have seen skyrocketing traffic.
One site? Its traffic literally doubled year-over-year.
Meanwhile, sites that do comply — the ones following the rules — are seeing drops in their user numbers. Some are so fed up, they’re linking to petitions protesting the law or even giving users tips on how to bypass age checks entirely.
It’s a strange twist: doing the right thing is tanking their traffic.
A Classic Case of Unintended Consequences
John Scott-Railton, a researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, said it best. He told the Post: this is “a textbook illustration of the law of unintended consequences.”
If your law drives users away from safe platforms toward sketchier, unregulated ones — what’s it really achieving?
It’s like putting guards at the main door but leaving every side window wide open. People will just go around.
Image by Jen Theodore on Unsplash
So What Now?
Here’s the big problem: the law seems to be doing the opposite of what it was meant to do. Kids are still at risk if people just flock to platforms that don’t care about rules or age gates. And responsible websites are paying the price.
This raises real questions about how we enforce online safety. Do stricter ID checks actually help, or just push people to places that don’t care at all?
For now, UK lawmakers may need to rethink not just what they’re asking sites to do — but how those rules are playing out in practice. Because as it stands, the incentives are all mixed up.
And that’s not just bad policy. It’s potentially dangerous.
Keywords: UK Online Safety Act, age verification, unintended consequences, adult content websites, online safety regulations
