Porn Regulation in UK News Again
It’s been awhile since it’s been in the main stream news, but for those of us in the industry there’s always the whisperings of someone, somewhere wanting porn regulation.
In 2021 Ofcom was granted the role of porn regulation in the UK. Of course with troubles in parliament and a pandemic going on, this kind of dropped out of the public eye and letters were quietly sent out to different UK adult companies.
So what’s going on now? Well, according to this Guardian article (published on 20 October 2022), out of all the adult companies that Ofcom sent letters to, OnlyFans is the only one that added any sort of age gate keeping.
Lets talk a little about porn regulation and privacy issues.
Nobody Wants Kids to Watch Porn
I think most sane adults can all agree that kids shouldn’t be watching porn. We’re not talking teenagers here who discover Dad’s porn stash or go and wack off to Stiffler’s mom. Although in my opinion, teens shouldn’t be learning about sex and human intimacy from porn either. But that’s a whole different soap box.
Kids just aren’t mature enough to understand what they’re seeing is entertainment and fantasy. So yea, nobody wants little kids to stumble across this. So this leads us into 2 issues from my point of view.
Regulate the Bad Actors
Every single one of us who deal with the internet do something called SEO (search engine optimization). A lot of search engines heavily penalize adult products so there are some unscrupulous people who try to use more popular and common keywords to attract people.
If they relate to kids, like the company with the mouse or other popular cartoons and kid attractions, they shouldn’t be connected to porn keywords. These bad actors like to use common sites, names, and companies…many which kids may be looking up and make a typo for.
Why punish everyone in this case? Why not just go for the adult companies and webmasters who are obviously acting in bad faith?
Why Are We Giving Kids Unfettered Internet Access?
The other issue is parents letting Google or iPad babysit their kids.
Look, I get it. Parents are busy and have things to do. They may want an hour of quiet and letting a kid watch some cartoon or TV show seems like a pretty good deal.
However, WHY are we giving kids smart phones and tablets connected to the internet if you’re not going to be watching them? End of the day, you fucked, you got pregnant and now you have a life to babysit until they’re old enough to handle this type of content. It’s not our job as adult companies to make sure your kid doesn’t find our stuff (that most of the time you have to be specifically looking for). You should know what your kid is looking at and having those conversations with them.
This, honestly, pisses me off to no extent. Nobody is making people age verify with Twitter, where you can DM people. Or Instagram, Facebook, and Discord. Why don’t we go farther into gaming communities that use Mumble and Team Speak servers. Nobody has to hand over their IDs to create a server or join one and I guarantee there’s adults with less than good intentions for kids there. You know exactly what I’m talking about, we’ve all watch ‘To Catch a Predator.”
No, it’s just easy to try to morally regulate Porn because at the end of day that’s what this is. It’s not really “for the children.”
Privacy Issues
One of the things that is brought up over and over is, privacy. If you have to upload your drivers license or passport, who gets that info? What database is it sitting in?
Apparently, part of the age verification law in the UK is the independent companies doing the verification can’t hold on to the images. However, if you work in tech you know if you’re uploading it, it’s out there somewhere.
It’s like all of this KYC (know your customer) BS going around for banking and payments. Every time you have to upload your ID, you’re trusting nobody is going to get hacked and that information is really secure.
If you don’t think this is a good idea, you need to speak up.
Where is Porn Regulation Going?
My predictions for the future is Ofcom is going to finally get its way. Those of us with visitors in the United Kingdom will have to add age verification or give up our UK traffic.
The rest of the world will be watching and if the UK is successful, then the US will jump on board almost immediately. I mean, we’re already regulating the uteruses of women so why not go one step further and regulate how some kids get there. After that we’ll having the rest of the western world jumping on board.
While those companies who invested dearly into age regulation claim that governments don’t care if a 15 year old uses a VPN to access non gate kept porn elsewhere, I do think that governments will use this as an excuse to do something about VPNs as well.
And lets not forget having to upload ID. I predict that in the future I can link to this article and go, “I told you so.”
I also think porn content creators and companies will also start going underground and come up with some unregulated ways to sell their product. But as long as we have this feel good regulation in place, kids are once again “safe” and the world can go to the next crisis or morality.
About This Opinion Piece
Please note that while there may be staff members among the FreeOnes teams who share my opinion of porn regulation, this is in no way a reflection of FreeOnes opinion as a whole. Nor is this a representation of the industry as a whole. This is just an independent opinion of a 15 year industry vet who’s been around the block a few times.
