Not about the UK, but upcoming plans in EU countries:
Anyone who watches porn should be constantly verified
Although the EU guidelines name the central concerns, they do not draw any conclusive conclusions from them.
Elsewhere, the guidelines even recommend a particularly intensive use of age checks.
In a newly added paragraph, it says: Online platforms for adults should not allow account sharing and therefore carry out age verification every time they are accessed.
Operators of sites in particular are likely to read this with horror.
For years, the world's largest sites have been resisting stricter age controls, including in court.
They could wish for nothing less than a duty to check the age of their visitors over and over again.
On every visit.
At the same time, the champagne corks are likely to pop at commercial providers of age checks.
As a rule, they pocket cents per inspection carried out. And sites are among the most visited websites in the world. So sales in the billions beckon.
Examination in 12 months
However, nothing has been conclusively clarified, because the guidelines also provide platforms with arguments against age controls.
For example, because existing methods of age control can be easily circumvented – and would therefore no longer pass as "appropriate and proportionate".
Providers could refer to this passage if they wanted to justify why they did not introduce stricter methods.
The EU Commission is apparently aware that the final guidelines now presented cannot be the last word.
A review is already planned. The draft still said that this examination would take place as soon as it was necessary.
In the meantime, this reads less vaguely: In 12 months at the latest, the Commission wants to take another look at the guidelines.
By then, there should be at least some experience with the age control app planned by the EU.
Adult EU users are supposed to use this app to generate proof to overcome age barriers.
After the Commission first presented the specifications of the app, the code for the prototype is now also online.
According to the EU Commission, five EU states are already testing the app: France, Spain, Italy, Greece and Denmark.
The guidelines do not directly refer to services with more than 45 million monthly EU users, as the DSA provides for even more obligations for these so-called "very large platforms" (VLOPs).
According to this, they must, for example, assess and mitigate systemic risks – not only for minors – and grant supervisory authorities access to internal data.
https://netzpolitik.org/2025/jugends...terskontrollen