Age verification

RumRat

No, advertising a VPN isn't covered by the legislation.

Newcad

It does get quite interesting about just what is expected.

I'm a forum moderator, and have been modding various fora for years.

I have removed thousands of p##n spam posts in the past.

However those posts and images will be visible for a time before we take them down.

So does the new legislation mean that every forum (and Social Media site) now needs to age verify, just in case someone posts such spam that a minor may inadvertently  see?

Obviously that's ridiculous- but at the moment that is what the legislation implies.

I have to say that although with good intentions it's poorly thought out, and mayde poorly written, legislation.

GDB2222

Good points Newcad. It seems wrong to exclude younger people from a forum like this, just on the off chance they might see something that they should not. 

QrizB

Newcad said:

It does get quite interesting about just what is expected.

I'm a forum moderator, and have been modding various fora for years.

I have removed thousands of p##n spam posts in the past.

However those posts and images will be visible for a time before we take them down.

It seems that the MSE forums are only moderated in working hours Mon-Fri. I've seen posts stay up for hours or days outside these periods, despite reporting them.

Will MSE need 24/7 moderation? Can the organisation afford that?

RumRat

I think everyone needs to take a deep breath....
'Platforms must prevent young people from encountering harmful content relating to suicide, self-harm, eating disorders and pornography from 25 July'. 
'Ofcom's rules are also designed to protect children from misogynistic, violent, hateful or abusive material, online bullying and dangerous challenges'. All of these are currently banned from most forum sites like this one anyway.
The act is bad enough without sensationalising it with unrealistic scenarios.

Newcad

Being honest I think we all know that it's just another attempt to close down the "Adult Entertainment" industry (With the Child Protection aspect being used as a smokescreen. "You can't argue against it, think of the children").

You can see what will happen; the big players will be forced to age verify, the majority of their current users will switch to using smaller providers who don't age verify because they don't care about laws and/or are a portal for malware.

The big players will close down for lack of support so instead of a small number of trusted/estabilished sites we will be back to the 'wild-west' days of 10-15 years ago.

As I said above prepare for a new rash of forum prawn spam.
Or maybe not; perhaps this time they will be more interested in spamming Faceache, Ticky-Tacky, and X?
It's noticiable that none of those seem to be having the age verification requiment imposed on them despite a lot of "possibly harmful to children" content being hosted there.

RumRat

I think the social media channels are included as far as what is available for children to see...
As for the Adult industries, they'll just continue as they do now....They aren't reliant on the UK for their profits, most are based in other more tolerant countries.....I know some think the world spins around the UK but that ship sailed long ago.

Newcad

There is an announcement banner with a link to a good article (imformative and not too ranty) about it all in the UK and the rest of the world on the criss-cross videos site today.

They are now complying but I assume the banner is going to remain; at least for a while.

I won't  post a link to the xx site or the linked article for obvious reasons, they can be found easily enough if you want to check it out.

mta999

I can confirm that by simply going to your Opera browser and turning on the inbuilt VPN (a simple slide switch), age verification is bypassed

Totally ridiculous!

marcia_

 I clicked a news link in an email yesterday. In the article was an image that was deemed sensitive with a view anyway button. Up pops apple pay for £0.00 so they were going to credit check me leaving a footprint on my credit record no doubt.