Safer Internet Day 2022: what planned Online Safety Bill changes mean for pornography sites like Pornhub

What is Safer Internet Day?

Celebrated for the first time in 2005, Safer Internet Day is an awareness campaign that calls upon key stakeholders to make the internet a safer place - with the aims of reducing crime and exposure to harmful content, and raising awareness of online privacy and security.

This year, the theme for Safer Internet Day (taking place today on February 8) is ‘Together for a better internet’.

What is the Online Safety Bill?

The Online Safety Bill is expected to be introduced to parliament over the next few months and is designed to protect web users from harmful content.

The first draft was published in May 2021, but received criticism as it called on large social websites to remove harmful or illegal content, but the websites themselves were left to police the issue with input from Ofcom.

Recommendations were made to improve the bill, including giving media regulator Ofcom more powers to police the issue.

MORE ONLINE SAFETY: Sheffield team back vital discussion on children's safety online

What do the changes to the Online Safety Bill mean for porn sites such as Pornhub?

The draft Online Safety Bill is to be strengthened to require all sites which publish pornographic content to put ‘robust checks’ in place to ensure users are 18 or over.

Porn publishers such as Pornhub will be required to put more measures in place to prevent under 18 year olds from accessing their content - this is part of a Government strategy to reduce online harms.

How will porn website users be asked to prove that they are over 18?

These checks could include asking users of pornographic content sites such as Pornhub to prove they own a credit card or confirm their age via a third-party service.

The news that it will be more difficult for under 18s to access pornographic content under the proposed changes to the Online Safety Bill will be no doubt welcomed by those with children and other caretakers.

But it’s bad news for the porn industry, as sites that fail to act to prevent young people from accessing their content could be fined up to 10% of their global turnover.

What will happen if porn sites don’t comply with the Online Safety Bill?

The Government will establish a new regulatory framework backed by civil sanctions to monitor, notify and enforce compliance with the law.

Why can’t you access porn if you are under 18?

Age-verification was approved in 2018 as part of the Digital Economy Bill as an effort to prevent under 18s accessing inappropriate content.

The measures aim to prevent children from seeing content which isn’t appropriate for them, as exposure to pornography from a young age has been scientifically linked to negative effects such as adolescent violence and sexual aggression.

At the time, Baroness Shields, Minister for Internet Safety and Security, said: "We will help make sure children aren’t exposed to harmful sexualised content online by requiring age verification for access to commercial sites containing pornographic material.

“Just as we do in the offline world, we want to make sure that online content that is only suitable for adults is not freely accessible to children.”