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Three Ofcom regulators with clipboards spent the weekend making their way around the exhibition floor of an international adult industry conference in Prague, trying to encourage the 1,700 delegates to comply with the UK’s new Online Safety Act.
“Don’t lie to us,” one of the regulators told a room full of pornography site owners and employees during a lunchtime presentation explaining the new age verification requirements introduced in July as part of the act’s measures to stop children seeing pornography. “Be honest and open. If your measures are not good enough yet, put that on your risk assessment.”
Delegates, some drinking free champagne provided by conference sponsors, asked anxious questions. What if a company could not afford to install age verification? How big would the fines be? Could sites avoid having to comply by blocking UK traffic? Was Ofcom aware that rival site owners might be trying to sabotage competitors’ businesses by tipping off the regulator about non-compliance?
“We exist to help you,” another Ofcom regulator said to the audience of about 50 men and seven women. “It’s hard. There are many, many things you need to know, but we exist to help members of the adult industry with compliance.”
Seven weeks since the introduction of the Online Safety Act, Ofcom’s regulators want to tell a positive story about the pornography industry’s response to the legislation. All of the top 10 and most of the top 100 adult sites have either introduced age checks or blocked UK access, they said; social media sites that allow pornographic content, such as X and Reddit, have also deployed age assurance. There were 7.5m visits to the top five age verification sites in August, up from 1m in June.
The regulators like to cast the 27 July introduction of age verification as the industry’s seatbelt moment, referring to it as AV Day, a moment that would decisively shut off children’s access to pornography in the UK. The reality has been more complicated.
In the days after the legislation was launched, there was an immediate sharp spike in the number of downloads of VPNs, which allow users to mask their geographical location, and circumvent age verification requests.
“The rollout has been fairly disastrous,” Mike Stabile, the director of public policy from the Free Speech Coalition, which represents the adult entertainment in the US, said. He said that traffic had moved from compliant to non-compliant sites. “VPNs have surged; people have not been compliant; we’re seeing traffic go to pirate sites … I don’t think Ofcom would look at this and say: ‘This is what we wanted.’”
Corey Silverstein, an American lawyer who represents a number of adult industry companies and who has unsuccessfully challenged the introduction of age verification legislation in several US states, said there was considerable hostility to the regulators. “People are very professional and very polite, but this isn’t the friendliest audience. Some people steer very clear of them. You can see it must be uncomfortable for them walking into a trade show like this.”
But he gave a presentation advising pornography site owners that they would have to swallow their animosity toward the regulators and work with Ofcom to implement the new regulations.
“Their goal is not to cut your legs off. They smile and they’re very nice. They’re not trying to kill you,” he said. “My understanding is they’re actually not even looking to financially fine you. They just want to push you in the right direction for compliance.”
The Ofcom officials, wearing smartly ironed white shirts, worked steadily against a background noise of steels drums, handing out questionnaires printed on A4 paper, as a troupe of dancers in feathered leotards performed for delegates, and sponsors handed out cocktails.
The form (on paper to allow sites the protection of anonymity) asked delegates to state whether they had adopted age verification in the UK and asked companies that were not yet compliant, to explain why they had done nothing. By Saturday evening, one Ofcom official said not too many delegates had agreed to fill in the forms, but they were hopeful that Sunday might see more responses.
No site has yet been fined under the Online Safety Act, but Ofcom has opened 12 investigations into pornographic services, covering more than 60 sites and apps.
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News of these investigations has prompted some unease among owners of pornography sites, who are also contending with tightened regulation in the US and France. But there was some grudging acknowledgment of Ofcom’s willingness to attend industry events and speak to people.
“In the US, people really don’t want to talk to us,” Alex Kekesi, Pornhub’s vice-president of brand and community, said. “We appreciate that Ofcom has invited us to have a seat at the table. We’re often not included in conversations that have to do with regulating our industry.”
In advance of 27 July, Ofcom established a Porn Portfolio team, made up of six compliance officers, working on persuading companies to adhere to the rules. Members of this team (who asked for their names and images not to be released for safeguarding reasons) have attended similar conferences in Berlin, Amsterdam and LA. A separate enforcement team of more than 40 staff members works on investigating those organisations that fail to comply.
“We are very conscious of the size of the sector and the ease with which anybody can set up a service that shares pornographic content,” one of the regulators said. “We’re not saying that we are going to manage to get every single service into compliance. The approach we take is targeting our resources on those areas where the most children are at most risk of harm.” Penalties, when they are imposed, will be designed to have a deterrent effect; sites can be find up to £18m or 10% of global worldwide revenue.
“Companies can choose to not comply and take the risk that we will come after them and find them. We want enforcement to change that balance of incentives, so they think it’s just not worth taking the risk,” the Ofcom official said.
Another Ofcom employee rejected the argument that soaring VPN downloads meant the legislation had failed, arguing that the legislation was primarily aimed at preventing children from accidentally stumbling over pornographic material (rather than preventing those who were deliberating seeking out pornography from finding it).
As well as contending with new age verification requirements, pornography site owners were also grappling with how to moderate AI-generated content, to ensure users aren’t allowed to create the kind of violent and illegal material that would attract Ofcom’s attention and trigger companies like Visa and Mastercard to stop processing their payments. Sites and apps that offer AI-generated pornography are also regulated by the act.
“From a compliance perspective, how can you tell the difference between a 15-year-old AI model and an 18- or 19-year-old AI model?” one delegate asked, uncertain about how to prevent users from encouraging AI to create illegal child sexual abuse material.
Steve Jones, who runs an AI porn site, said they had to train their AI systems to understand what was unacceptable. “We say your creation has to be at least 5ft tall, can’t be completely flat-chested and we ban things like pigtails and braces and all the childish toys and teddy bears and things like that,” he said. “AI doesn’t understand the difference between an adult woman that looks young and a young girl. We have to teach it. The AI itself has no morals and no ethics.”
