The War on Porn Regular Updates about the Assault on The Adult Industry
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There’s something oddly symbolic about a digital front door. You don’t see what’s inside yet. You pause. You decide whether you’re allowed in. That’s essentially the vision being pushed now, as U.K. regulator Ofcom laid out new guidance on where and how adult sites should place age checks under the Online Safety Act.
In a statement posted on its website, the agency noted that while adult sites have been experimenting with different ways to position age checks, Ofcom’s preferred method is a so-called “front gate,” where users encounter “a blank landing page, with no content visible until they have completed the age check.”
The agency considers this to be the safest and most compliant way to handle age gating — basically, no peeking through the curtains before you prove you’re old enough to be there.
Other approaches to age assurance are still allowed, the agency added, as long as they truly prevent children from seeing pornography before hitting the age check. For instance:
Blur gate. If a site opts to use a “blur gate,” where users see only blurred images before the age check, the blurring must be “sufficiently strong and across enough content to ensure that the content is not pornographic.” Not a polite fog — more like a real visual wall.
Image gate. A site using an “image gate,” where users can see clearly visible images but must click a thumbnail to reach an age check, has to ensure that the images and preview videos shown beforehand are not pornographic. In other words, curiosity can’t be rewarded too generously.
In-video gate. A site using an “in-video gate,” where users see thumbnails with clearly visible images and may even watch parts of videos before being sent to an age check, would need to make sure that any video content available before the check is not pornographic. That gray zone? It’s getting a lot smaller.
Ofcom’s statement also makes it clear that content doesn’t have to show nudity or explicit sex acts to qualify as pornographic. Sometimes the tone, framing, or intent tells the real story — anyone who’s ever scrolled the internet for more than five minutes knows how slippery that line can be.
“When deciding what content is suitable to include before an age gate, services should refer to our guidance on pornographic content, considering the wider context of their site and whether the images or videos are accompanied by sexually explicit language in titles, for example … What matters is whether it is reasonable to assume the content was produced principally for the purpose of sexual arousal,” the statement clarifies.
The statement concludes, “We will continue to engage with and monitor the adult sector to identify and address non-compliance, including whether services’ placement of the age check is compliant.”
Which really translates to this: the front door is being watched, the rules are tightening, and the era of half-open windows and blurred excuses is quietly coming to an end.
