‘Adults Only’: what to do if your online service allows pornography

Published: 16 July 2024

Who is this page for?

If you allow pornography on your online service, this page is for you. It explains what you need to know about the Online Safety Act and what you need to check to ensure you follow the rules.

You might work in the online adult industry or provide a social media service that allows pornographic content.

Check if the rules apply to you

Use our tool to check if the rules are likely to apply to you, and what you can do next. Answer six short questions about your business and the service you provide, then get a result.

Start now

Read our proposals on…

…illegal harms

You should check our proposals on how all services should mitigate the risk of illegal content.

Here are the harms we think might be most relevant for pornography services, and where we cover them in our consultation:

…age assurance for user-to-user services

User-to-user services that allow pornography are covered by a set of proposals under Part 3 of the Online Safety Act.

We have provided a summary of these proposals and here are the ones most relevant to you:

Volume 3: The causes and impacts of online harms to children

  • Section 7.1: Risk of harm to children of pornographic content
  • Section 8.2: Guidance on the definition of pornographic content

Volume 5: What should services do?

Annexes

  • Annex 10: Draft guidance on highly effective age assurance

…and guidance for publishers of pornography

Services that publish or produce pornography are covered by a set of proposals under Part 5 of the Online Safety Act.

Read our proposals in full or a quick guide to them.

No matter whether the content on your service is covered by Part 3 or Part 5 of the Act,  you must use highly effective age assurance measures to stop under-18s accessing pornography.

Stay in touch and up to date

Sign up to Ofcom’s Online Safety Briefing newsletter and you’ll be the first to know when we publish updates on our online safety work.

  Want to know more? You can get in touch with the Porn Supervision team here. We may not respond to every query but may update our website with more advice.

Rate this page

Thank you for your feedback.

We read all feedback but are not able to respond. If you have a specific query you should see other ways to contact us.

Was this page helpful?
Back to top