The Guardian view on regulating pornography: a £1m fine does not prove the Online Safety Act is working | Editorial

Thu, 04 Dec 2025

As technology advances, so does the problems it causes. Ministers as well as regulators need to be tough and proactive

Awareness of the harm caused by online pornography is rising. Last month, the government bowed to pressure from campaigners and pledged to make depictions of strangulation illegal. Research showing that a majority of children have viewed this kind of material is extremely disturbing, all the more so given evidence that viewing “choking” makes people – mostly men – more likely to do it in real life. This week, the Guardian examined the distressing effects of deepfake pornography in schools, and interviewed the women behind the successful campaign to criminalise the nonconsensual creation of deepfake intimate images.

Ofcom’s announcement that it has issued a £1m fine to a Belize-based pornography company, AVS Group, thus seems timely. Oliver Griffiths, the regulator’s director of online safety, referred on BBC radio to a “tide turning” as enforcement powers in the Online Safety Act take effect. The age-verification checks on AVS’s websites, introduced to protect children, are judged not to be effective enough. If the company does not pay up, Mr Griffiths said that he would move to block the site.