You're Not Going to Believe Some of the Crazy Stuff That's Banned Because of the UK's Online Safety Act

The author of the Online Safety Act obviously never had teenagers. From my own experience, if you tell a teen that he can't view something, he's going to try like hell to see it. Once he finds it, they're going to pass the hack on to their friends.

Reason.com reports, "The portion of the law that took effect on July 25 requires websites with content that authorities have deemed 'harmful to children' to verify user ages and restrict content for anyone under age 18, or anyone who declines to submit to an ID check, facial scan, or other privacy-invading measures."

Along with blocking artistic treasures, the act is censoring news about the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, "grooming gangs," and amusingly, "A Thread About the Things Being Blocked Has Been Blocked."

"Benjamin Jones of the Free Speech Union, who has been posting to X about content being restricted for U.K. residents, said his thread about the restrictions was itself restricted."

U.S. companies are objecting to the new censorship rules. Wikipedia is suing. X is warning about government overreach.

https://t.co/FWpT1tBH7o

— Global Government Affairs (@GlobalAffairs) August 1, 2025

Reason.com:

"We're already seeing reports of content being age gated when it really shouldn't be," posted the Open Rights Group. "These include: sexual health subreddits including r/STD, r/safesexPH and r/stopsmoking [and] news subreddits including r/Aljazeera and r/israelexposed."

Public health information—including subreddits about periods and quitting drinking—has also been restricted, according to tech writer Taylor Lorenz. And "other subreddits that provide essential community support to users including minors like r/sexualassault, for example, are also blocked."

In one Reddit thread, users claiming to be in the U.K. have been keeping tabs on the myriad subreddits they supposedly have to show proof of age in order to view.

"Spotify is testing age assurance technologies in select markets, utilizing our own internal age estimation technology and partnering with Yoti, a trusted digital identity company," the company said.

Some music videos are "labelled 18+ by the rightsholder for that video, Spotify may serve a prompt to confirm your age."

"BBC Verify found a range of public interest content, including parliamentary debates on grooming gangs, has been restricted on X and Reddit for those who have not completed age verification checks…." reports Reason.

Among the restricted content identified by BBC Verify was a video post on X which showed a man in Gaza looking for the dead bodies of his family buried among the rubble of destroyed buildings. The post was restricted despite not showing any graphic imagery or bodies at any point in the clip. X subsequently removed the warning after being approached by BBC Verify.

When users who had not verified their age attempted to access the post they were met with a message reading: "Due to local laws, we are temporarily restricting access to this content until X estimates your age."

Don't think for one minute that the government of Keir Starmer is thinking of repealing or modifying this law. The Labour Party's prime minister fully supports the censorship regimen of the law and may look to add to it in the near future.