Spoken on behalf of the Government on BBC Radio 4's Any Questions, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury wants pornography gone from the UK on the basis of protecting women's and girls safety and fighting misogyny in society.
Bear in mind, this is separate from the Online Safety Act about to be enacted and the age verification plan any website not "suitable for children". Also bear in mind VPN's operating in the UK are also required to comply with the law.
The UK Government is about to go to war on pornography and appease both the feminists who believe it is exploitative and harmful to women while turning men into misogynists and the traditional conservatives who also believe it is harming masculinity, encouraging bachelorhood and contributing to the decline in birth rates.
Pretty much the 70's and 80's all over again. With a shitty and subpar cyberpunk veneer.
Reminds me of how comically weird some of the B-movies on that kind of subject were, like back in the 80's especially. Yet somehow even those cheap productions couldn't paint as bleak or shitty of a backdrop as we're seeing now.
Also, I'll have to correct myself. Porn legality went sort of back and forth in the US during the 70's and 80's, but mostly veered towards excessively legal. I mostly just think back to that era because of how extra cheap and shady shit seemed back then. Plus there were a lot of stories about a lot of seedy underground productions/distributions during that era as well.
All of that kind of gave a weird impression of stuff going on beneath the radar as a result of heavy regulation and bans, when in reality, it was because of a lot of other reasons (IE, pre-Internet meant localized distribution which was a lot less profitable for such niche products that were already not popular with the most of the general public).
We are in neo-puritan times where moral panics and witch hunts are the order of the day.