New rules for the internet will start being enforced on Friday, which may well change how you browse.
Ofcom’s Children’s Codes, a set of regulations designed to protect young people online, will mean sites hosting adult content like pornography will need to have “highly effective” age verification in place.
Social media sites will need to make sure their algorithms aren’t pushing harmful content to young people and if their terms and conditions say those kinds of posts aren’t allowed, the sites will have to make sure their own rules are properly enforced.
So what’s going to change?
The biggest change you’ll notice straight away is around age verification.
Many adult sites currently have simple boxes for users to tick and say they’re over 18 – that’s no longer good enough, according to Ofcom.
Instead, they’ll have to properly verify their users’ ages before allowing them to see adult content.
So on Friday, users visiting adult websites should be presented with a screen that offers them a few different ways to verify their age.
That could be by checking credit card details, checking ID or by using AI facial age estimation.
This is different to AI facial recognition; whereas facial recognition “recognises” a face by comparing it to an ID or to a database, facial age estimation doesn’t attempt to identify the individual.
Instead, it judges faces based on the positions of their features and other ageing traits to estimate how old a user is.
“Facial age estimation is effectively taking a selfie in front of your mobile phone or your laptop, and we capture that image […] on behalf of the business,” Robin Tombs, the chief executive of age estimation company Yoti, told Sky News.
“[The AI] checks ‘liveness’ to ensure it isn’t a photo of somebody older and then estimates the age from that selfie, and then returns an over-18 or under-18 message to the business.
“It then deletes the image.”
Every company with adult content on its site is obliged to put these rules into place and Ofcom is willing to “be tough” with non-compliers, according to Jessica Smith, the regulator’s online safety principal.
It can impose fines of up to £18m or 10% of revenue and, in very serious cases, stop sites operating in the UK.
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Will it actually make a difference?
Plenty of people hope so – the government, Ofcom, children’s groups and campaigners are all banking on these new rules to change children’s experience on the internet.
“We’ve had unrestricted access to this content for a generation of children which has had a lot of impacts,” Ms Smith told Sky News.
“It is widely accepted that you have to check your age before you can drink alcohol, and so this is a kind of social change as well as a technical one.
“It’s about what we, as a society, say is normal for our online experiences. And I think these protections will be important for children in all walks of life.”
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This isn’t necessarily going to stop determined young people from seeking out adult content, according to Ms Smith, but it should stop inappropriate posts from popping up unexpectedly on young people’s feeds.
“The most common way that children come across pornography, at least at first, is that they come across it accidentally,” she told Sky News.
“So they’re not seeking out, they are just scrolling through a social media service and then they’ll see something that they don’t want to see. And that can be really shocking and disturbing for them.
“But it also shows them what content is out there and introduces them to a new type of online content.”
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Some websites and apps have already announced they’ll implement the changes, including the UK’s biggest pornography site PornHub, social media sites Discord and Reddit, and dating app Grindr.
Reddit is already enforcing age verification on content like self-harm, suicide and pornography.
