Ask HN: What should we do about state ID legislation?
VerdisQuo5678 Thursday, July 17, 2025On July 25th the UK government will start enforcing ID checks to access porn sites. Any site which allows UK residents to connect to is forced to comply, or face major fines. Ofcom, the regulator, has ordered both large (like Reddit which no longer allows anonymous access to NSFW subreddits in the UK) and niche sites (Certain dating apps, grindr, etc) to comply. Somewhat interestingly this law only effects "user-to-user" content instead of all porn sites. Additionally US courts now uphold state ID laws https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44397799 and the EU is planning to roll out ID verification infrastructure aswell.
Even if you could not care less, or hate porn, you can clearly see the direction the first world is going in. The aforementioned US ruling already includes anything sexual, even text, naturally including LGBT topics and sex education. Is there anything we can do to combat this and hold out the open internet a little longer?
The best I can think of is a neocities but for tor, making it easy to transition some useful content to somewhere with less prying eyes. I am also dismayed about the lack of coverage on this issue, a few years ago when states started rolling out ID verification it was news worthy, even in other countries. Now not even a blip on the radar, its somewhat surreal.