What's frustrating me about this is that theoretically this list should include every MUD and BBS, if they don't want to get in trouble. It's a horrible law, which forces people into the pockets of the largest sites which can afford to do the age verification.
Speaking as a Brit, I wish Wikipedia would just go black for the UK. That might focus some minds.
> bsky.app | @greg.org on Bluesky
https://bsky.app/profile/greg.org/post/3lvt3mjvskk2i
Reported: 07 August, 2025 at 19:53
Shut down on: 07 August, 2025
Geoblocking due to OSA
Statue of |david behind age verification filter
So, going forward, will similar pieces of art be blocked in the British Museum as well? Like physically?
Yeah, the government that let the strets go rampant with crime, that they don't even bother tracking anymore, is concerned about the people's "online safety"...
I always hear this but it seems to mostly be made up? Like yeah, there’s crime in London, but less than in most European or American cities… seems like a narrative that keeps being pushed without merit
The idea that the uk is a remotely dangerous country is probably why it's now seeing more and more nanny state laws. It's also probably part of why Brexit happened.
This is a confusing mix of sites that have decided to geoblock UK users because they don't want to deal with the regulations (fair enough) but also ones that have age verification and no geoblock
EDIT: I was wrong in this comment, I thought it was blocked but the owners decided to take it down.
Original comment follows:
They blocked irish.session.nz: "Resources for learning Irish music by ear".
This is either a mistake or a very early example of a political abuse of the OSA. Both are wrong of course and prove what a stupid and concerning thing OSA truly is.
If I am right it is the opposite. It's because website owners block the UK IP addresses, as otherwise they could face criminal charges unless they buy an expensive compliance-as-a-service solution to check the age of all visitors and hire lawyers to craft "compliance policy" Ofcom can read. Otherwise you have a criminal liability.
Think it as a bit like GDPR but 1) much more expensive 2) with criminal liability 3) Makes even less sense than GDPR as it does nothing to prevent harm for minors 4) derimental for user experience and users.
"Funnily enough" the companies who lobbied for Online Safety Act, and former Ofcom employees, are now selling age verification check services and compliance services related to Online Safety Act. They have pretty good profit margins there, making even Google and Facebook look poor.
The data quality here seems poor, eg it lists reddit.com as having shut down, which is clearly false. I think some list like this would probably come across better with some curation so it isn’t largely a list of unsympathetic porn sites and no-name blogs being blocked to spite the UK.
True, but certianly doesn't make me feel any better about it. If we started getting school shootings in the UK, and someone said ah but the US has that too, I wouldn't feel much better.
Judging from how most of the reports are phrased, the shutdowns and blocks are initiated by the content providers. Some are for legal reasons, some because they are legitimately concerned that they may be covered by the act, and some to protest the act. Those who are claiming that the government shut down these sites are spreading disinformation. It is more accurate to describe it as a chilling effect.
>Those who are claiming that the government shut down these sites are spreading disinformation. It is more accurate to describe it as a chilling effect.
Same difference. Making a pedantic distinction to mud the waters is the real disinformation.
Fully understand the reasons for the site - and the title on HN is shutdowns and site blocks - but the site itself displays self-enforcinging sites and shows them as potential government blocks.
There are blocked sites but you have to look for them in different sections of the site.
One site shown at the start of the other pages, adult friend finder is showing as blocked, however I can access it from my UK provider so honestly not sure what value this site brings (yet) apart from highlighting those that have a self-enforced blackout due to "451 Legal Reasons".
I'm on mobile so difficult to copy and paste - but that site was the top of an alphabetical list after I made my way past a few VPNs.
At this point, I am pretty confident I can live the rest of my life without ever entering British air space.
So I ask myself - could I come up with a simple HTML page that would be illegal in the UK without age verification checks? I won't host pornography, but it seems to cover a lot more than that. Photos from contests? Calls to overthrow the government?
I'd put it under some creative commons license so other people could host the exact same content. What if there were thousands, or tens of thousands of sites that did it. It'd be wonderful if people were willing to put their money where their mouth is how them how impotent and illegitimate their laws really are.
I don't think it will take long for most people in the UK to realize what's going on, they're already protesting, and it's clear that protest footage is being blocked too.
I also don't think it would take the UK too long to block sites like what you're describing. It's now totally doable that ISPs would run non-whitelisted websites through an AI screening before serving them to the user. Or they might choose to go after individuals accessing them multiple times, as repressive governments go after individuals possessing/viewing politically "harmful" material.
100 years ago the British Empire tried to thought-control India. Today the empire is a bunch of demented aristocrats who are thought-policing those few who are still under their control.
Yes, these days our prime ministers normal, everyday knights, etonians and billionaires. Sometimes they'll be photographed without a tie, or they'll have a chummy nickname like Tony or Dave or Liz.
The list's probably going to get a lot longer. I wonder how it's going to compare to the list of sites who block Europeans due to GDPR concerns. I've only ever noticed two sites that did that, even though the amount of noise from Americans was not insubstantial. The OSA is a lot more invasive than the GDPR though.
It’s not just the UK implementing age verification actively. 5 EU member states [0] are actively participating: Denmark, Greece, Spain, France [1], and Italy.
Are any countries in the EU a lot less online than the rest, to the point that this matters more than a few percentage points? Even grandmas in Eastern Europe have smartphones now, and I don't think the EU has expanded to Sub-Saharan Africa quite yet (unless you want to count Réunion).
Invasive from the content providers' POV, yes. Mostly in good ways in my experience being on the other side of that, but its obviously not completely non-invasive, given that a few things happened after the GDPR came into effect. If it was completely non-invasive, then nothing would have happened, and there wouldn't have been any point in passing it. No point in passing a law you don't want to actually affect anything.
How about when it’s a local site, they don’t really care about EU traffic? It’s too much “pointless” effort to comply such as having EU servers to process user data, extra code to show the ugly cookie consent, and privacy policy and terms of service that would comply with GDPR.
Or perhaps just don't use sketchy 3rd party advertising and analytics? You can always offer companies to send you PNG's of ads and serve them to the user without any of this. You can always analyze server logs to see which pages are the most popular, without deanonymizing the users. It's how some news agencies in the EU already do.
If you are a local site by a local company on the other side of the world you don't need to block anyone, you just ignore foreign laws.
In the case of those news sites, though I suspect that most are owned by large multinational companies whose lawyers advised that blocking EU visitors is the only 100% sure way to avoid hypothetical retaliations by EU authorities.
As well as seemingly completely innocent things like renaultevclub.co.uk - Renault EV Club. What on earth did they think was going on there to get them on the list?
Any forum, really. Abundance of caution. It's a cost/benefit thing. Also I suppose forum users of an EV site will be able to get around the block anyway.
It's a site were users can post content that can be seen by other users. Yes, it is that simple. Can't have the common folk spouting uncontrolled narrative without us knowing their identity now can we.
Same reason many local US news sites etc just block anyone from the EU. They don't want to bother with GDPR and perhaps don't really get enough visits to warrant the effort either.
Why are people so bothered with govt requiring a single photo for some websites when private companies already have all the data of almost all humanity?
There are many reasons that you could research with a quick search but simply put, it breaks the anonymity of web use and has huge implications for intentional and unintentional surveillance and data misuse. What is asked for here is much more and much more strongly linked to an individual than the data you refer to.
It requires everyone to upload either ID and/or high quality photos & videos of themselves to a random company. Not just one company one whomever a website chooses for age verification, which can include doing it themselves. This creates multiple massive treasure troves of IDs that will attract hacking attempts (for example the Tea app breach). It creates opportunity for blackmail from this data (for example the Ashley Madison breach but much worse). For those age verification services that require a photo/video, that creates a resource for deep fakes. Plus any 15 year old boy worthy of their digital device will be able to get around age verification using fake id/photos or a VPN, whilst a less savvy adult trying to access information about quitting drinking or drug abuse will face a barrier.
And this is for ANY website that has a very broad range of content that the OSA mandates age verification for. It's easier for a website to err on the side of caution and just block the UK. That especially includes websites that have zero reporting back to Meta/Google/etc... for usual marketing profiling. If anything it pushes more people into the limited, monitored and advertising driven Meta/Google web.
Because it could end up with the government blocking access to websites critical of it, or going after individuals accessing such websites as they will now have all "proof" they'd need for that.
In an extreme case, they could potentially blacklist your ID to prevent you from spreading "harmful" political opinions, cutting you off the web entirely.
Speaking as a Brit, I wish Wikipedia would just go black for the UK. That might focus some minds.
Likewise. People (organisations/companies), as far as possible, shouldn't be pandering to this stuff, it's not the answer, it doesn't help them or us.
So, going forward, will similar pieces of art be blocked in the British Museum as well? Like physically?
Is there any verification on submissions to this?
Original comment follows: They blocked irish.session.nz: "Resources for learning Irish music by ear". This is either a mistake or a very early example of a political abuse of the OSA. Both are wrong of course and prove what a stupid and concerning thing OSA truly is.
A ridiculous analogy but not entirely
Think it as a bit like GDPR but 1) much more expensive 2) with criminal liability 3) Makes even less sense than GDPR as it does nothing to prevent harm for minors 4) derimental for user experience and users.
"Funnily enough" the companies who lobbied for Online Safety Act, and former Ofcom employees, are now selling age verification check services and compliance services related to Online Safety Act. They have pretty good profit margins there, making even Google and Facebook look poor.
More here:
https://x.com/moo9000/status/1950866445186818209
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43152154 ("In memoriam (onlinesafetyact.co.uk)"—147 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42433044 ("Lfgss shutting down 16th March 2025 (day before Online Safety Act is enforced) (lfgss.com)"—555 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43152178 ("Lobsters blocking UK users because of the Online Safety Act"—87 comments)
Are they really going to register individual topics for Reddit?
Wait,
> Post on social media website X claiming that content relating to protests has been age-gated due to the Online Safety Act.
Now we're reporting individual tweets?!?
Same difference. Making a pedantic distinction to mud the waters is the real disinformation.
There are blocked sites but you have to look for them in different sections of the site.
One site shown at the start of the other pages, adult friend finder is showing as blocked, however I can access it from my UK provider so honestly not sure what value this site brings (yet) apart from highlighting those that have a self-enforced blackout due to "451 Legal Reasons".
I'm on mobile so difficult to copy and paste - but that site was the top of an alphabetical list after I made my way past a few VPNs.
Get back to work Nicholas 30 ans. The Uniparty demands another day of sacrifice.
So I ask myself - could I come up with a simple HTML page that would be illegal in the UK without age verification checks? I won't host pornography, but it seems to cover a lot more than that. Photos from contests? Calls to overthrow the government?
I'd put it under some creative commons license so other people could host the exact same content. What if there were thousands, or tens of thousands of sites that did it. It'd be wonderful if people were willing to put their money where their mouth is how them how impotent and illegitimate their laws really are.
I also don't think it would take the UK too long to block sites like what you're describing. It's now totally doable that ISPs would run non-whitelisted websites through an AI screening before serving them to the user. Or they might choose to go after individuals accessing them multiple times, as repressive governments go after individuals possessing/viewing politically "harmful" material.
Do you think I could get them to send me a certificate and everything?
I'm sure someone could whip up some merch super quickly as souvenirs/protest
The King. Sorry to spoil The Crown for you, but Queen Elisabeth II has been dead for a few years.
You know, normal people like you and me.
E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords and so on.
Canada and Australia are jumping in [2] [3].
[0]: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_...
[1]: https://www.twobirds.com/en/insights/2024/france/la-loi-sren...
[2]:https://facia.ai/news/canada-proposes-age-checks-for-online-...
[3]: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-11/age-verification-sear...
Sites block for GDPR because they want to abuse visitor data and privacy
Sites block for OSA because they don't want to abuse visitor data and privacy
If you are a local site by a local company on the other side of the world you don't need to block anyone, you just ignore foreign laws.
In the case of those news sites, though I suspect that most are owned by large multinational companies whose lawyers advised that blocking EU visitors is the only 100% sure way to avoid hypothetical retaliations by EU authorities.
The amount of geoblocked/shutdown sites by far exceeds the "intended" [0] targets.
[0] Everyone knows that the collateral damage is intentional and this was never about porn.
This is another draconian powergrab designed by a Tory government and supported by a Labour government.
The Uniparty is real. The control freak technocrats are cut from the same cloth.
It requires everyone to upload either ID and/or high quality photos & videos of themselves to a random company. Not just one company one whomever a website chooses for age verification, which can include doing it themselves. This creates multiple massive treasure troves of IDs that will attract hacking attempts (for example the Tea app breach). It creates opportunity for blackmail from this data (for example the Ashley Madison breach but much worse). For those age verification services that require a photo/video, that creates a resource for deep fakes. Plus any 15 year old boy worthy of their digital device will be able to get around age verification using fake id/photos or a VPN, whilst a less savvy adult trying to access information about quitting drinking or drug abuse will face a barrier.
And this is for ANY website that has a very broad range of content that the OSA mandates age verification for. It's easier for a website to err on the side of caution and just block the UK. That especially includes websites that have zero reporting back to Meta/Google/etc... for usual marketing profiling. If anything it pushes more people into the limited, monitored and advertising driven Meta/Google web.
In an extreme case, they could potentially blacklist your ID to prevent you from spreading "harmful" political opinions, cutting you off the web entirely.