Reddit's Chaotic UK Online Safety Act Age-Verification Rollout

To comply with the UK's Online Safety Act 2023, Reddit rolled out mandatory age verification for UK users on 25 July 2025. Rather than the old self-attestation prompt, users had to prove they were over 18 by uploading a government-issued ID or submitting a selfie for facial age estimation, processed through a third-party vendor.

The rollout drew immediate criticism for sweeping up communities far beyond pornography. Users reported being walled off from subreddits dedicated to LGBTQ+ support, sexual-assault recovery, smoking cessation, menstruation, and conflict journalism, raising concerns that the law's 'harmful content' framing produced blunt over-blocking of legitimate health and identity discussion.

Privacy advocates, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, warned that requiring identity documents to access a social platform creates a persistent link between a person's real identity and their online activity, concentrating sensitive data in third-party systems vulnerable to breach.

UK users responded by downloading VPNs in large numbers and by signing a UK Parliament petition calling for the Online Safety Act to be repealed, which surpassed the 100,000-signature threshold for parliamentary consideration and continued climbing past half a million signatures. The UK government stated it had no plans to repeal the Act and would continue working with Ofcom to implement it.