On 25 July, the UK became one of the first countries to widely implement age verification. Its Online Safety Act requires sites hosting porn and other content deemed “harmful” – including Reddit, Discord, Grindr, X and Bluesky – to verify that users are over the age of 18. The early results have been chaotic. While many services have complied, some have opted out of the country rather than face the risk and expense. Users have circumvented verification tools or bypassed them with VPNs. This is just a taste of the issues that many other countries may face when launching their own systems, and it’s a situation that privacy and security experts have long warned about — it won’t do any good.
After years of political effort to make the Internet safer for children, age verification has begun to spread across online spaces around the world. Lawmakers in the US, Europe, Australia and elsewhere have passed age-limit rules, and platforms have begun to follow suit. The possible methods of verification are similar to those in the UK. Platforms typically ask users to either enter a payment card, upload a government-issued ID, take a selfie, or allow the platform to use their data (such as account creation dates and user connections) to “guess” their age. Most rely on third-party services: Bluesky uses Kids Web Services, owned by Epic Games; Reddit is working with personas; And Discord has partnered with k-ID.
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