is a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO.
On July 25th, the UK became one of the first countries to widely implement age verification. Its Online Safety Act requires sites hosting porn and other content deemed “harmful” — including Reddit, Discord, Grindr, X, and Bluesky — to verify that users are over the age of 18. The early results have been chaotic. While many services have complied, some have pulled out of the country rather than face the risk and expense. Users have tricked the verification tools or bypassed them with VPNs. It’s just a taste of the issues that many other countries might face as they launch their own systems, and it’s a situation that privacy and security experts have long warned about — to little avail.
Following a yearslong political push to make the internet safer for kids, age verification has started seeping into online spaces across the globe. Lawmakers in the US, Europe, Australia, and elsewhere have all passed age-gating rules, and platforms have begun to comply. The likely methods for verification are similar to those in the UK. Platforms typically ask users to either enter a payment card, upload a government-issued ID, take a selfie, or allow a platform to use their data (like account creation dates and user connections) to “estimate” their age. Most rely on third-party services: Bluesky uses the Epic Games-owned Kids Web Services; Reddit is working with Persona; and Discord has partnered with k-ID.
The outcome so far is an assortment of online services handling sensitive user information — a “privacy nightmare,” says Cody Venzke, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. “There is no standardization of how age verification is supposed to take place.”
Some age verification platforms promise to erase your data after a certain period of time, like the seven days that Persona says it will keep the information used to verify your age on Reddit. But there’s no guarantee every service will do this, and there are still massive security risks given how common data breaches have become. Last year, a security researcher found that AU10TIX — an identity verification solution used by TikTok, Uber, and X — left user information and driver’s license photos exposed for months, 404 Media reported.
Governments are plowing toward the future of an age-gated internet
“When uploading your ID ... you are handing it over to a third party,” Venzke says. “You’re going to take their word that they’re going to delete it or remove it after they’re done using it.”
Despite these potential pitfalls, governments are plowing toward the future of an age-gated internet anyway. In addition to a crackdown in the UK, the European Union is hurdling toward a broad rollout of digital IDs, Australia is age-gating search engines, and users in many US states need IDs to access porn sites.
Age verification was long viewed as unconstitutional in the US, but the Supreme Court overturned that precedent earlier in 2025, concluding “adults have no First Amendment right to avoid age verification” if it’s meant to protect underage users from “obscene” content. Several states, including Alabama, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Texas, have implemented laws requiring verification measures on adult websites. Some have tried to extend this to social media or app stores as a whole, but so far, they’ve failed — lawsuits filed by NetChoice, a technology trade group backed by Google, Meta, X, Amazon, Discord, and other tech giants, have successfully blocked bills in California, Arkansas, Georgia, Ohio, and Florida.
As in the UK, there’s no guarantee against privacy and security breaches for states with age verification laws, and there’s little standardization in this bevy of rules. Efforts in the US also coincide with escalating government digital surveillance and attempts to declare expressions of LGBTQ sexuality, like drag shows, as obscene, raising the risks of handing over personal data even further.
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