FWIW you can age-gate VPNs the same way you can age-gate anything else that is paid for: just don't let people who haven't got credit cards (not debit cards) sign up.

Or you can simply let free plans only terminate inside their own country. I noticed recently that TunnelBear has done this with their free plans — the "fastest" endpoint, which is the only one that is free, is now a UK endpoint. It still meets the security need anyone might have from a VPN.

I am honestly not that bothered about adult content age gating in principle, and I never really have been. I personally think sexual content is not remotely immoral but that it's reasonable to say the very young shouldn't be able to see it. It's not a freedom of speech issue.

Given the practical impossibility of parental regulation of access to devices when cheap phones and PAYG exist, the problem is the practice of it: how do you do that in a way that is privacy-preserving?

I feel that Apple has coped with this pretty well: they decided I am an adult automatically based on how long I have held an account.

I also think the UK PAYG mobile providers handle this well: they have simply always blocked adult content until you unlock it. I haven't bothered and I have never seen the content wall (except when deliberately testing it) so I believe its boundaries are drawn quite well.

Though I do routinely use one site that might end up blocked over time because it sits right at the boundary of the law's interest. So one day I might need to, I guess. And I have considered what I might need to do about a website for my own photographic work, which sits on the edge of the ofcom rules interest in practice.

We are missing secure anonymous age attestation but I think that will come.

I do think American critics tend to interpret this in terms of the morality and religion battle-zone that riddles US culture and encourages US states to try to police morality in bizarre ways or to extend "porn" rules to things like information about sexuality, gender or sexual health (which would just not happen here because we're actually not really religious or prudes; there is essentially no religion in our politics, which is ironic considering the C of E have seats in the Lords).

I don't think American critics should really leap to judge UK rules when you have two dozen different states imposing rule sets that in some cases came first and in many are wholly unworkable.

UK concerns are about child access to extreme material and about sexual exploitation, fundamentally. It's not easy and it's clear some aspects of the legislation are difficult, but accepting criticism from Americans as if the US position is clear, unambiguous and robust is no longer something we should entertain, especially lessons about the morality of free speech from the US administration, given their apparent selective contempt for it.

VPN ban update for UK households as government looks at 'age-gate'