Viewing porn online in the UK will soon require a digital ID scan, AI age check, and/or a bank check
Listen to the adult content creators screaming about this. This will not benefit users, and it will be extremely expensive for sites to implement. If this government handout to the companies making this "age verification" snake oil doesn't receive a lot of pushback, the people in power will wall off the rest of the Internet too.
First, thank you for a lovely "yes, and" post, that's always appreciated. ❤ Unfortunately, I have an answer for your most pressing question:
What is certain: ""Someone"" doesn't like adult content.
NCOSE, formerly known as Morality in Media, is behind most of these shenanigans. They're lobbying credit card companies in the US to stop processing payments for adult entertainment, and the American legal system agrees:
On July 29, 2022, a federal judge [ruled] that there was enough evidence to show that Visa “knowingly provid[ed] the tool used to complete the crime” of distributing child sex abuse material. [...] NCOSE continues to call on both major credit card companies to completely sever ties with MindGeek [parent company of Pornhub]
Why would they do this? Here's what they think of pornography:
The Internet and other technological advances have made pornography more accessible than ever before. [...] As a result, pornography use, even among children, is more prevalent and normalized than at any time in human history.
In sum, pornography is a deeply damaging social influence that corrodes relationships, erodes the sensibilities and sexual freedom of consumers, and dehumanizes those used to make it.
This organization does not believe that adult entertainment should exist, and they are winning.


(we'll try the bigger version of that store another day)
In Germany, the Supreme Court ruled the classic age gating inadequate for adult games on Steam and ordered Valve to put up a system that would check government ID on purchase and every time an adult game is launched(!). So Valve decided to just... stop selling adult games to customers in Germany.