Welcome to the ‘papers, please’ internet
TL;DR
The Stepback newsletter discusses the UK's 2018 'porn pass' proposal, a physical ID-based system for age verification on adult websites, highlighting the internet's increasing regulation.
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How it started
Back in 2018, two years after the UK government decided to implement mandatory hard age gates on adult websites, it floated an idea called the "porn pass." The porn pass was a physical card you'd buy by handing over your ID to a brick-and-mortar shop attendant. It would contain authentication information that would act as a low-tech anonymization system, letting you verif …