It seems like certain sites have adopted it in the UK and certain ones haven’t. The Kink.com sites (including KinkVR) make you do age verification and have done for a while. PH make you age verify and I’m seeing anecdotal stuff saying porn is no longer showing up on people’s twitter feeds although it still shows up on mine at the moment.
I’ve signed up to enough porn sites over the years with my credit card that I’m sure that people who monitor these things already know that I watch porn. I also don’t disagree that there needs to be more safeguards to stop kids getting access to extreme porn, especially when it is a free tube site and not at least hidden behind a paywall.
I can live with age verification more than with censorship. When I was growing up in the UK and into my mid 20’s. Hardcore porn was illegal in the UK even in specialist sex shops. All porn films were edited so as not to show erect penises or penetration (oral or intercourse). It was only the arrival of the Internet and eventual domination of the internet that caused them to change the law as there was simply no way to stop access to porn anymore.
The UK actually relaxed obscenity laws further only a few years ago to allow pretty much anything between consenting adults so stuff like golden showers and other more kinky stuff became legal to produce here. I have seen stuff recently though suggesting that they are looking to start implementing censorship. In particular, I have seen it mentioned that they are looking to ban choking/strangulation in porn here. Not sure how far that goes in terms of whether the girl actually has to be getting choked out or whether anything where the hand goes around the throat will be banned. Obviously they justify that as it being life threatening and, again, I don’t entirely disagree that we shouldn’t have extreme stuff where people are going unconscious. Other justifications though are more subjective stuff about misogyny and it being degrading to women and that becomes a slippery slope. Lots of stuff in porn, you could argue, is degrading to women. Slapping, spanking, pissing, face fucking, facial cumshots, hair pulling, even dirty talk. If we start banning anything that could be interpreted as degrading, porn could become very dull and uninteresting.
Surely, if we are putting in more restrictions to stop impressionable kids from seeing porn, we can leave consenting adults to do what they like (within reason) as adults should know the difference between porn fantasy and reality.
I also still find it strange that porn has to live by different rules to mainstream tv and movies. You can show incest roleplay on tv and movies but not in porn. You can show rape in tv and movies but not in porn. You can show people getting drunk and having sex in tv and movies but not in porn. You can show racism in tv and movies but not in porn. The double standards are strange.
