Europe

Over the past several years, our industry has aggressively battled European regulators over mandatory age-verification protocols, which many have argued lack privacy safeguards for visitors and unfairly burden businesses. During the battle over the 2019 Digital Economy Act, adult sites were almost uniformly opposed — and helped kill the bill.

So it was notable this summer when OnlyFans broke with the industry to publicly endorse the UK’s controversial Online Safety Bill, which requires mandatory age-verification of visitors to adult and social media sites. OnlyFans already requires visitors to submit IDs and submit to biometric age-verification and says it hopes the bill will force rivals to do the same.