The Online Safety Act 2025: How the UK is Changing the Internet
January 19, 2025
If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve probably noticed governments tightening their grip on adult content accessibility. In the US, states like Florida and Texas have already implemented intrusive age-verification measures for accessing adult sites. Now, the UK is following suit with the Online Safety Act.
If you read Jess X’s blog, you’ll know how drastically this will change the way sites operate. For this site? The impact is equally severe. Unlike larger platforms, wiping my content and shifting focus to guides and discussions might be an easier move—but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating.
Millions of British adults are about to face a harsh new reality. Under this law, users will be forced to prove their age using facial recognition, photo ID scans, or credit card verification to access any site hosting adult content.
The Online Safety Act 2025 invasive requirements, developed under Ofcom’s guidance, may seem like they’re simply inconvenient, but it’s more than that—they’re a direct threat to privacy.

What is the Online Safety Act?
The Online Safety Act, introduced by Conservative MP Michelle Donelan and passed during Rishi Sunak’s tenure as Prime Minister, is a law aimed at preventing children from accessing harmful content online.
The law grants Ofcom, the industry watchdog, broad powers to enforce compliance. Platforms failing to implement “robust” age-verification measures by March face penalties, including hefty fines or outright bans.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
Non-compliance risks criminal penalties for platform operators.
Pornhub, OnlyFans, and similar platforms will require users to verify their age through intrusive methods like facial recognition, ID uploads, or credit card checks.
Social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter) that allow adult content are also subject to these rules.
The Hidden Cost of Compliance
These measures are being sold as necessary protections for children, but let’s not mince words: they come at a significant cost to creators, users, and online freedom.
Platforms like OnlyFans, which sees over 20 million UK visitors monthly, face exorbitant costs to comply. Smaller sites? Many will fold under the financial strain.
This law doesn’t just target adult content. It also impacts social media, community-driven platforms like Wikipedia, and even mental health forums. Moderating every piece of content or conducting invasive age checks across the board is unsustainable. Many platforms will either over-censor or restrict access entirely for UK users.

Is This Really About Protecting Kids?
Let me be clear: children shouldn’t have access to adult content. But this law isn’t about protection—it’s about optics.
Parents already have countless tools to keep their kids safe online. Parental controls, monitoring apps, and device settings can easily block adult content. But instead of holding parents accountable, this law makes creators and platforms the scapegoats.
Why are we, the creators and business owners, being punished for shitty parenting?
Privacy is the Real Victim
The erosion of privacy under the guise of “protection” is happening in plain sight. Millions of UK users will lose their ability to access content anonymously, forced instead to hand over personal data to access basic online spaces.
And the vague language of the law doesn’t help, as it expands it will get worse. The government’s list of harmful content includes topics like eating disorders, suicide, and animal fighting—but provides no clear definitions. This ambiguity forces platforms to over-censor content to avoid liability, silencing valuable, lawful information.
Here’s an example:
- A blog about recovering from an eating disorder could be flagged as harmful.
- Health advice or necessary information could be erased under the same rules.
Platforms will err on the side of caution, heavily moderating or outright banning content that could be misconstrued.
The Future of Online Freedom
This law forces platforms into impossible choices:
- Conduct expensive, invasive age checks for all users.
- Heavily censor content to avoid penalties.
- Block UK users entirely to sidestep liability.
None of these options create a freer, safer internet. Instead, they drive adults away from secure, responsible spaces and push them toward riskier alternatives.
The Online Safety Act isn’t about solutions. It’s about control—turning creators, platforms, and responsible adults into the villains while ignoring the real issue: parental oversight.
What’s Next?
With March approaching, the future of this site hangs in the balance. Hosting in the UK and through a UK company means full compliance is unavoidable. But the cost of implementing these measures is completely unsustainable for smaller operations like mine.
For now, I’m aligning with Jess’ “Natural Porn Enemy of the State” movement to raise awareness and push back against this misguided legislation. You can read more about it here.
Protecting kids is important—no one disputes that. But it shouldn’t come at the expense of adults’ privacy, freedom, and access to information. This law is a step in the wrong direction, and if we don’t fight it, the internet as we know it will become a far less open and functional space.