[michaelt]

The "online safety act" introduced mandatory age verification starting in July 2025.

The government announced "plans to fine Imgur after probing its approach to age checks and use of children's personal data" in September 2025 [1]

Are you telling me those were unrelated? How are you going to fine a website over age checks without the law that requires age checks?

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gzxv5gy3qo

[philjohn]

Seeing as the investigation was by the ICO instead of OFCOM, yes, very much so. Do you have any evidence to the contrary?

[card_zero]

That makes no difference. "Data protection" or not, it was pressure for age verification.

[philjohn]

Can you please provide a source for your claim?

[card_zero]

No, it doesn't need a source. It's not mysterious. To meet the demand, age verification would be necessary. What's your claim?

I guess you could be saying that the regulators were carrying out legal duties like blind automatons, without giving a thought to the way their requirements would have to be met.

[philjohn]

My claim is the documentation about the ICO investigation and the resulting fine.

It's an entirely different piece of regulation to the "horror" of the OSA.

It's not hard - you're not allowed to target adverts for children - if Imgur aren't able to agree to that, they are within their rights to decide they don't want to properly safeguard the private information of children and withdraw from the market. That many other providers haven't thrown their toys out of the pram and complied with the law would show they decided if they can't tailor ads to children they wouldn't be able to turn a profit in the UK.

[daveoc64]

Yes. The ICO investigation that resulted in Imgur blocking the UK pre-dates the Online Safety Act coming into force.

As others have mentioned, Ofcom is responsible for enforcement of the OSA - but the investigation against Imgur was carried out by the ICO.

[ww520]

The governments of the countries that dabbling into the "think of the children" laws should build their own "safe" internets for their citizens, walling them in, requiring them to "verify their age" before letting them out of their cages into the Internet.