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The United Kingdom recently started enforcing the Online Safety Act\u2019s age-check rules<\/a>, and The Washington Post reports that it\u2019s already having a significant effect on web traffic<\/a>.<\/p>\n U.K. law now requires pornography websites to verify their users\u2019 ages through means such as face scans and driver\u2019s licenses; it also requires that online platforms prevent children from being exposed to adult content (which is why sites like Bluesky and Reddit have begun checking some users\u2019 ages).<\/p>\n To study the law\u2019s effect, the Post says it examined the top 90 porn sites based on U.K. visitor data from Similarweb, finding 14 sites that still don\u2019t perform an age check. All 14 of them appear to have experienced a dramatic increase in traffic, with one of them seeing traffic double year-over-year.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, many websites ostensibly complied with the law while criticizing it, linking to a petition urging repeal, or even offered instructions for getting around it.<\/p>\n John Scott-Railton, a researcher at the University of Toronto\u2019s Citizen Lab, told the Post that this is \u201ca textbook illustration of the law of unintended consequences,\u201d adding that the law \u201csuppresses traffic to compliant platforms while driving users to sites without age verification.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n