Virtual insanity: UK edition

An attempt to restrict access to harmful material on the internet and protect children is back-firing in Britain

by Rob Corbidge

Published: 15:00, 31 July 2025

It's been a good week for VPN providers operating in the UK. As in, a deluge of new subscribers good. As in, we're going to have to hire more staff good.

In what could generously be described as a rather ham-fisted approach to internet regulation, the UK's new Online Safety Act came into force last Friday and made its presence felt by barring access without age verification for material on a host of sites carrying content deemed unsuitable for minors. Over 6,000 platforms, including all the major social media networks and pornographic sites, have introduced age checks under the new Act. 

Failure to comply with the new rules could see companies hit with penalties of up to £18 million or 10 per cent of the offending company's turnover, whichever is greater.

The aim of the part of the Act in question is to prevent minors from accessing material that they shouldn't, with the primary, but not sole target, being the pornography industry. It's a laudable aim, and you'd need a warped mind not to agree with it, given how easy it is for youngsters to access such material. And in its defence, other aspects of the Act have enabled some awful people to face justice, such as dealing with those who encourage suicide.

Anyone who has grappled with an age verification process knows how hard that is outside of using payment systems as verification. Indeed, in a separate development, such payment processors themselves are at the centre of a censorship furore over in the gaming world. Other options are being offered for verification in the UK, such as facial age recognition, yet the good news for shareholders of VPN businesses is the simple fact is that a VPN trumps them all. 

Indeed, the platforms as a whole seem to have taken to a very stringent reading of the provisions of the Act, at least until someone else tests them, and consequently are seemingly blocking access to a host of material that one can make a very strong argument should not have been blocked. Some of this material can be regarded as being political in nature and political exchanges have occurred over the law's implementation.

To lay my own cards out, I'm Democratic societies require robust maintenance cycles. It's how they survive. Indeed it is the essence of what they are.

Consequently, we are now in a situation where one of the world's oldest democracies has joined a pretty rotten list of countries in which you need to use digital trickery to access the full internet. I can remember asking a wonderfully knowledgeable tour guide about twenty years ago in Myanmar if he could access the internet freely. "We can't, but we can" he winked. I'm winking back at him now. Didn't see that coming.

In fact, I found it necessary to perform a sanity check. This article from Politico "UK’s new tech law triggers upheaval" is an outsider's take on what has just happened in the UK and confirms to me I'm not losing my marbles.

Many of us, myself included, already use VPNs as a matter of course. They are just a wise prophylactic on an internet that punishes those who do not exercise caution. However a piece of legislation that acts only to rapidly and hugely increase the number of people using such services cannot be regarded as successful. Check the Apple app download charts in the UK to see the volume of those doing just so right now.

What we have here is an example of an attempt at national governance meeting a global system, and the national governance isn't winning if it can be sidestepped so easily.

To quote the above linked BBC News article "When we wrote about the seven methods of age verification adult websites may use in the UK and the companies who may be employed to do it, one reader comment resonated with many others.

"Sure, I will give out my sensitive information to some random, unproven company or... I will use a VPN," they said. "Difficult choice."

For those who think in terms of the ends justifying the means, I would offer the caution that any such legal tool is great until it's turned on you. Indeed, I'm reminded of a apocryphal anecdote attributed to Marshall Tito of Yugoslavia. Asked whether it was wise to keep stores of military grade weapons in places such as power stations and factories, in keeping with the country's mass mobilisation strategy in the event of war, it was suggested to him that the weapons could be turned on his own government. "was Tito's apparent response. Such an understanding of the nature of power would be welcome in our own debate.

It's our job here to look out for the main chance that publishers might exploit, and once again in this age-of-tech-meets-state-regulation-clash story, there's a beam of light for us - and that beam of light is that publishers don't host unexpected content. 

We are not reliant upon automated systems to weed out trouble in our material. We do not have random uploaders and posters - other than the odd tentacle hentai post we must remove from the comment section, if we have one. We have control over our content. Indeed, it may be that a publisher will brush up hard against the actual implementation of this new UK act, but it will do so knowingly and produce an educative effect for us all.

This will be, in effect, an assertion of the role the professional media has to play in our societies, the media that is answerable, and a reminder of its value.