But that's not what laws like these are about. In the US at least these laws are driven by Christian Nationalists are setting up a situation where PII of porn users is able to be leaked. That's what they're counting on. They also want to have political control of platforms by continually holding a Sword of Damocles above any publisher's head.
https://www.politics.co.uk/news/2025/07/29/nigel-farage-taki...
>"Nigel Farage ‘on the side of predators’ with Online Safety Act criticism, says Labour"
Is the UK's Labour Party now Christian Nationalist?
The end goal here is digital ID and censorship. Compare this to the perennial efforts for encryption backdoors. If there is a characterization that accurately encompasses this, it is the illiberal, statist, authoritarian impulse. Sure, they used a sex-panic to advance their agenda. However, this is merely symptomatic of the larger illiberal trend towards authoritarianism and the expansion of the state.
The law could mandate that retail device OSs ship with a turnkey child safe mode complete with app and extensive site whitelists and run an educational campaign on the subject. But instead they've gone the needlessly invasive route which is telling about the true motives.
The law was passed in 2023 by the tories, and Ofcom has concluded what the tories asked them to do -- write the statutory instruments that implement the law.
The Labour government would have to repeal the law (really unlikely; governments don't usually rip down their predecessors' laws because if they did no progress would occur) or set the statutory instruments aside.
I think the "true motives" are what the law says. I don't think they will ban VPNs (which would support an alternative reading of motive).
I also, again, encourage US readers to understand that your own supreme court has rubber-stamped a law that requires US porn firms to do all this and more for the benefit of Texas, and there are 24 more state laws that have similar impacts.
Pretending this is just something crazy we Brits are doing out there on our own is disingenuous at best and often hypocritical and whiny at worst.
As it happens I am from the UK and have no particular love for the way the US handles things either. In fact one of my biggest problems is that it encourages us to send extra PII to some of the most odiously associated US companies out there.
But in general I don't think doggedly pursuing this route where children get access to the full internet sans some self-selecting sites with ID checks is the way to go. There's too much out there which is outside the realms of accountability. If everyone installs VPNs (which appears to be what's going on, especially given that far more than just pornography is being blocked this way) then guess what happens when the child borrows the shared family device?
People want a magical solution which exonerates caregivers from having to worry about this and shifts the burden elsewhere but unfortunately one doesn't exist and the online safety act certainly isn't it. Education and turnkey child proofing of devices are the only thing that will really help.