Reddit told me in an email that it restricts certain mature content in the UK, and that it defines “mature content” for these purposes per the UK’s Online Safety Act, which includes violent ,graphic content, and porn.
As free speech advocates have argued, and as the new age verification on certain Reddit communities now show, the result of this policy in practice is also to limit access to important information across the board, regardless of the user’s age. Reddit declined to say whether it saw a drop in traffic to these communities, but the age verification system is likely to make some users turn away because they are worried about their privacy and don’t want to upload a selfie or picture of their ID, or because they just don’t want to jump through hoops. In the past few days we reported that Tea, a women’s dating safety app which required users to upload selfies in order to prove they were women, exposed all those images which are now being posted across the internet.
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