Overview

U.K. Online Safety Age Verification Law or U.K. Online Safety Act refers to a British law that went into effect on July 25th, 2025, requiring internet users to provide age verification such as facial‑age estimation AI, photo ID, credit card or mobile checks to access both adult sites like Pornhub and Rule 34, as well as parts of social networking websites such as Discord, Reddit, Twitter / X and Bluesky. Various British internet users discussed how the law requires that users provide legal ID to access adult-only sites and expressed their concerns about how their data would be harvested by opportunistic corporations under the new law. An official petition to repeal the Online Safety Act gathered over 100,000 signatures within a day of the law going into effect. In late July 2025, internet users posted jokes and memes about how they used video game avatars from games like Death Stranding to bypass Discord's photo age verification process.

Background

According to the Guardian,^[1] the United Kingdom's Online Safety Act was passed in October 2023 to protect children from harmful online content, especially adult content, cyberbullying and other such material. The law granted the U.K.'s communications regulator the authority to enforce the law from July 24th, 2025 onward.

The law affects major sites like Pornhub, Reddit, X / Twitter, OnlyFans, Bluesky, and Discord, which must now block under-18s from adult content using "highly effective" age checks or face fines up to £18 million or 10 percent of global turnover.

According to the Financial Times,^[2] the sites are set to use age-verification firms like VerifyMyAge Ltd and Yoti to offer facial scans, ID uploads and credit card checks. Discord, for example, began piloting facial scans to limit NSFW access in the U.K. on July 24th, 2025.

On July 25th, Labour MP for Lowestoft Jess Asato^[3] tweeted a screenshot of the message Pornhub users in the U.K. are receiving after the law went into effect, congratulating everyone who campaigned for age verification on adult sites.

In a subsequent post,^[4] Jess Asato showed how Verify My Age Ltd would use information like email history to ascertain an internet user's age.^[5]

Developments

Various internet users criticized the enforcement of the Online Safety Act and launched a petition to have it repealed as it garnered virality in the following days.

For instance, on July 25th, 2025, X^[6] user @joeblillib4090 posted a screenshot of the petition to repeal the U.K.'s new Online Safety Act reaching the 100,000 signees it needs to enter the Parliament for debate. The caption on the tweet read, "Fucking hell that was quick #ICANTGOON."

Online Reactions

On July 25th, 2025, X^[15] user @Menkvi tweeted about various subreddits being censored under the new U.K. Online Safety law, writing, "The UK Online Safety Act means subreddits like /r/cider […] and /r/stopsmoking are now blocked for people under 18. Thank you @Jess4Lowestoft for protecting our CHILDREN from these sick freaks." The post gathered over 13,000 likes in a day.

Also on July 25th, 2025, X^[16] user @G0ADM tweeted, "The biggest story on US twitter being an app leaking all of it’s users ID’s while in the UK it’s the government rolling out ID verification to access the internet and claiming it’s perfectly safe," in reference to the Tea App data leak.

Rule 34 Site Blocked in the U.K.

News about adult sites being age-restricted or outright banned if they failed to comply with the new law began spreading on in late July 2025.

For instance, on July 24th, X^[7] user @encore_elsyee posted a screenshot of the message displayed on a Rule34 site that reads, "Gooner TLDR: Site blocked in the UK to comply with regulations. Ur gov is dumb, we're looking into solutions." The post gathered over 100,000 likes in two days.

The image was reposted to the /r/shitposting^[8] subreddit on July 25th with the same caption, where it gathered over 18,000 upvotes in a day.

That same day, Redditor^[9] /u/Smallbenbot03 posted an Undertaker Standing meme to joke about U.K. citizens waking up to find out that the Rule 34 site is blocked, gathering over 9,000 upvotes in a day.

Also on July 25th, 2025, X^[10] user @TypeRamza tweeted a meme about the U.K. banning R34 and other adult sites, gathering over 80,000 likes in a day.

Discord Face ID Age Verification

On July 24th, 2025, X^[11] user @KnucklesOx2 posted an "Age Restriction" notification displayed on Discord, writing, "The Uk government forcing discord to scan my face or show my id to verify my age is genuinely draconian. 'Oi you got a license for that' jokes are 100% justified." The post gathered over 34,000 likes in two days.

On July 25th, X^[12] user @DanySterkhov quoted the post, sharing a screenshot of a user using the "photo mode" in the video game Death Stranding to subvert the age verification software, gathering over 30,000 likes in a day.

Also on July 25th, 2025, X^[13] user @CanofSpriteMan quoted the post as well, tweeting, "anyways here's me verifying an account using Batista in WWE 2K25." The post gathered over 8,000 likes in a day.

anyways here's me verifying an account using Batista in WWE 2K25 https://t.co/6pDO7x9w2L pic.twitter.com/1t4zoU9Fzp

— SPRITE powered by 小波 (@CanofSpriteMan) July 26, 2025

X^[14] user @amia_dev responded to another X user complaining about being locked out of a Discord channel they created due to the new laws in the U.K., offering a way in which users could supposedly bypass the age restriction filter, gathering over 60,000 likes in a day.

The tweet read, "Wouldn't it be funny if you could bypass it with 1 line of code in ctrl + shift + i > console
Object.values(webpackChunkdiscord_app.push([[Symbol()],{},r=>r.c])).find(x => x?.exports?.default?.proto?.getCurrentUser).exports.default.getCurrentUser().ageVerificationStatus = 3;"

Search Interest

External References