Subreddits with War Media Are Caught in the U.K. Age Verification Law ⇥ 404media.co

Emanuel Maiberg, 404 Media:

Several Reddit communities dedicated to sharing news and media from conflicts around the world now require users in the UK to submit a photo ID or selfie in order to prove they are old enough to view “mature” content. The new age verification system is a result of the recently enacted Online Safety Act in the UK, which aims to protect children from certain types of content and hold platforms like Reddit accountable if they don’t.

One formative memory from my childhood is when I saw nightly news broadcasts about the Bosnian war. I was too young to understand it, though I remember seeing gruesome footage of bloodied bodies. I have considered that maybe this is something I should not have been exposed to, and I have also considered it is how I have grown up having a glimpse of the horrors. However, a mix of broadcast standards and my parents’ decisions is how I saw that footage. None of that changes in the post-verification era. Broadcasters will continue to show this footage, and children and teenagers will continue to see it in their homes. But they will be carded when they try to learn more on the web.

Contrary to the beliefs of one moderator of one of these subreddits, this does not seem to be motivated by burying evidence of the atrocities of war. This is the predictable overreach of Reddit choosing to require age verification to view any “not safe for work” subreddit, because of course Reddit is not going to be sensitive to context. It is not right; it is what is least expensive because it requires little additional moderation or underlying technical changes. Reddit could implement different types of NSFW labelling, but that also increases its risk of legal liability if something is improperly labelled.