Is there any serious investigation or a good article that explain how these ID check laws got simultaneously rolled out in the UK, EU and Australia? As well as the main payment processors heavily restricting adult content? It seems like there are remarkably powerful groups pushing for these things, or maybe it really is just happenstance.
You might find the following video useful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJ2AokZujC0 (The UK’s Online Safety Act didn’t come from Parliament or the public) Jump to about the 4:20 mark to skip the history of Carnegie.
The video makes the case that it was private interests that pushed for this in the UK - specifically the Carnegie 'charity'. They apparently defined the problem (i.e. what 'online harms' are), lobbied for it to be addressed, and then largely authored the policy/solution.
Edit: The claim is also made that Carnegie operates parallel influence and alignment campaigns globally. That may reveal the link you are looking for.
Canada too. It’s corporate interests that want a government mandated customer base with a legal requirement to participate. Get ready for verified id on everything, and to pay for it via taxes.
Next step: mandate that every web site verifies the identity of its users, no matter the content, whether users register or not. Goodbye old style personal static sites and blogs. Everyone forced to join a content silo or serve no content.
An additional consequence is it’s going to be significantly harder to set up an alternative social media site, as you’ll have to play by these rules which might end up favoring a certain provider’s implementation, or delegating the government the ability to shut down your site on a whim (even if through a court). This, I think, is way more concerning than having to ID your account on Meta.
It didn't, quite. The UK has been trying various laws like this for a very long time, and nearly passed something massively more censorious nine years ago (IMO the OSA is not censorship) and then backed out.
The OSA has actually already been law for about two years!
It was just awaiting secondary legislation (statutory instruments) that Ofcom has been developing, in conjunction with industry.
The web industry either knew or really if it was responsible and serious should have known this legislation was coming in 2025. Ofcom have not kept secrets.
So if there is a co-ordinating entity, it's likely the porn industry itself and in particular Aylo/Mindgeek, who would very much like a situation where governments let them show porn to people they can sell things to, and who therefore stop using Visa and Mastercard as proxies.
And, again, for clarity: the OSA does not require you give "ID" to any porn sites. Just that you verify your age via mechanisms that might include making a small credit card payment or visiting a link on your phone (since your phone will need to have been unblocked to view adult material, which is an industry standard parental control since on-device controls are often either non-existent, easily-circumvented or utterly confounding)
Anecdotal but my UK friends ere blindsided by this too, at least a number of them who are otherwise quite clued in. They said they felt like they had no idea this was coming at all.
No idea? But it was enacted into law two years ago, and we (web developers in particular) should have easily been aware that it set timescales for things.
It didn't come out of nowhere -- it literally came out of the previous government and a Queen's Speech.
the mandate existed forever in different levels, but now they actually finally ended up deciding on waht kind of techinical implementation would exist.
Plenty of these groups pushing these laws are already publicly linked via $ and staffer revolving door: DonorsTrust -> SPN -> ALEC -> CLI -> Heritage -> $ from Dunn & Wilks and other christian millionaires -> continue the circle etc. [6, 7]
Their playbook - which is sadly working:
- far right christian anti-porn, anti-lgbtq crusaders use 'child safety' or revenge porn to organize public outrage and direct that pressure on the choke point of payment processing. For example the writer of the viral pornhub article worked for anti-porn christian group that also helped pass extreme anti lgbtq laws in africa, such as Uganda's gays “should be castrated” insanity [1]
- Recent Australian version of this same story. Again, the buried lede is going after queer content (not by accident) [2]
- Same in the UK: ADF creates UK branch. CARE, Christin Concern, etc. Same anti-porn, anti-lgbt. Same tactics and messaging. Also throw in anti-abortion. [3, 4]
- Groups like Heritage & ALEC & SPN put out the blueprint and write the actual laws. Copy paste across red states. For instance Project 2025 advocates sending porn producers to jail & again backdoors targeting of Trans and queer people [8]. Another example in Tennessee [5]: define drag as adult only. impose narrow worldview that any gender expression not assigned at birth is wrong and adult only (pornagraphic). Just throw away 1a and dare scotus to blink on law 'loopholes' with private right of action b.s.
It's all just to inflict their christian worldview and 'morals' on the rest of us.
You know the porn thing is just a b.s. excuse to get their foot in the door because only a couple of large companies like Aylo (formerly Mindgeek) comply. They are the only porn sites with the $ and morals to actually moderate in the first place.
Whilst the other 99% of the internet is just an open stream of content with no care & no humans in the loop.
Therefore it's all just virtue signaling at best, and personally I see a very organized sinister plot to impose christian rule. Could you imagine if it was a muslim group organizing at this scale? Sharia anyone?
Ah yes, the eternal horseshoe of censorship, where both ends of the political spectrum discover they're passionate defenders of "the children" and "democracy" whenever it's convenient for controlling what others can see and say.
The same payment processor chokepoints and platform pressure tactics you're describing have been gleefully wielded by progressive activists to deplatform "dangerous misinformation," "hate speech," and "extremist content."
Remember when everyone cheered Mastercard and Visa cutting off WikiLeaks? Or Cloudflare and Kiwifarm? Or celebrated when payment processors started dropping anyone deemed "problematic"? The infrastructure for financial censorship didn't materialize overnight when Christian groups discovered it existed.
The left pioneered the modern "advertiser pressure" playbook - organizing campaigns to get platforms to ban everything from "Russian disinformation" to "COVID misinformation" to whatever qualified as this week's "stochastic terrorism." The same NGO-to-government pipeline exists there too: activist groups coordinate with sympathetic staffers, push model legislation, and pressure companies through ESG scores and brand safety concerns.
Both sides have their "think of the children" trump cards. One side waves "grooming" and "pornography," the other waves "radicalization" and "harmful content." Both genuinely believe they're saving society from moral decay, they just disagree violently on what that decay looks like.
The real tragedy is that both camps are so busy fighting their culture war that they've handed unprecedented censorship power to payment processors and tech platforms who answer to no one. Congratulations to both teams - you've successfully created the infrastructure for whoever wins to impose their vision of morality on everyone else.
