Online ‘strangulation porn’ set to be made illegal

Online pornography showing violent acts such as strangulation is set to be banned through an amendment to the Government’s Crime and Policing Bill.

Depictions of strangulation and suffocation will be classed as a priority offence under the Online Safety Act, requiring firms to take proactive steps, such as automated moderation tools, to ensure users cannot see such content.

Although the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 made non-fatal strangulation and suffocation illegal, there is currently a loophole allowing such acts to be viewed online.

‘Vile and dangerous’

The Government crackdown follows a recommendation from Baroness Bertin’s Independent Porn Review, which found that violent pornography has led to strangulation becoming a ‘sexual norm’ among young people.

Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology Liz Kendall stated: “Viewing and sharing this kind of material online is not only deeply distressing, it is vile and dangerous.

“Those who post or promote such content are contributing to a culture of violence and abuse that has no place in our society. We’re also holding tech companies to account and making sure they stop this content before it can spread.”

The British Board of Film Classification welcomed the changes, but called for “broader reform to ensure parity between online and offline content standards” by extending the rating board’s role to cover material on the internet.

Age checks

According to Pornhub, UK visits to its website have dropped 77 per cent since the Online Safety Act required it to introduce robust age-verification checks in July. Ofcom has also reported that visits to online pornography websites in the UK have reduced by almost a third in the three months since the rules came into force on 25 July.

But Cybernews information security researcher Aras Nazarovas told the BBC that when “age checks kicked in, VPN apps jumped to the top of the UK App Store, and at least one provider saw a 1,800% surge in downloads”.

He argued that part of Pornhub’s decreased traffic is “being reclassified as non-UK traffic”, while other users are “shifting to sites that don’t require age checks”.

Ofcom said the new law was preventing children being able to “easily stumble across porn without searching for it”.