Certain adult content is now banned in the UK

As of today, publishing or possessing certain types of porn is now banned in the UK. This includes:

• Strangulation or suffocation

• Penetration of people “who a reasonable person would think are related, or pretending to be related, in a certain way”

• Sexual activity between two or more people “where a reasonable person would think at least one person is, or is pretending to be, under 16”

According to the UK government, maximum penalty for possession is two years in prison for strangulation/suffocation or incest content, and three years for content with people under 16 or perceived to be. The maximum penalty for publication is five years in prison for all of these categories.

These bans are all part of the UK’s Crime and Policing Act, and it’s already impacting adult creators. In Sept., filmmaker and performer Vex Ashley told Mashable that she censored two films, Maman and Maman II, in anticipation of the bans. The “Mommy kink” features heavily in the videos.

“We basically had to go back and dub it out in a very retro-censorship kind of way,” Ashley told Mashable at the time.

The UK government states that these bans will be listed as priority offenses in the UK’s Online Safety Act, the country’s age-verification law. This means that platforms will now have to implement systems and processes to prevent UK users from seeing this type of content.

In Oct. 28, the fetish video site iWantClips told creators it would remove 17 categories from UK access, including Choking Fantasy Play, Breath Play Fantasy, Hand Over Mouth, Face Sitting, Jeans Face Sitting, BBW [Big Beautiful Woman] Facesitting, Chest Sitting, Ass Smothering, Foot Smothering, Breast Smothering, Scissor Hold, Trampling Fantasy and Plastic Fetish, according to a press release shared with Mashable.

The UK’s Online Safety Act went into effect in July 2025. Other age-verification laws have been enacted globally, including half of the United States, as well as in France, Italy, and other regions. These laws typically require proof of age, like a government ID or facial scan, to access certain types of content — explicit, and sometimes non-explicit content nonetheless deemed “restricted to adults.”

Workers in the adult industry and free speech experts have sounded the alarm about these regulations for years, stating they will expand. The UK is also planning a broad social media ban for children under 16.

“The criminalising of our fantasies and imaginations feels like another step along the conveyor belt of puritanism to conservatism to fascism that no one feels prepared to fight,” Ashley said in a press release.