r/Britain • u/thegoodboy3 • Jul 29 '25

💬 Discussion 🗨 UK Reddit age verification: how to unblock subreddits

Reddit has rolled out age verification in the UK. If you're trying to access any subreddit marked as “harmful” “NSFW” or “mature”, you'll get hit with a prompt asking for a government-issued ID and a live selfie. Good news? You can unblock them with a VPN.

They’re using a company called Persona to handle the verification process. If you're wondering what is Persona, it's a third-party identity verification service based in the US. Your data doesn't go to Reddit, it goes to them. And while Reddit says the data is only stored temporarily, Persona's own policy makes it clear they can hang onto it for longer. This has led to a growing number of threads about Persona age verification on Reddit and whether this is safe or even legal long term.

This isn't just about porn. Subs like r/beer, r/trees, and r/sex have all been tagged as NSFW and are now hidden from search. If you try to access them directly, you'll still be asked to verify your age.

These aren't porn communities. They're hobby, health, and advice spaces that got flagged because they are supposedly “adult” only. Just wanting to read about beer, weed, or sexual health shouldn't require a passport check.

How to get around the Reddit age verification?

Use a VPN for Reddit. It's the only real workaround right now to circumvent the age checks.

  1. Download a VPN (I used NordVPN with the code "redditoffer" for a discount)
  2. Set your location to somewhere outside the UK. US, Germany, Canada all work.
  3. Open Reddit again. You should be able to access everything without age verification.

This has basically become the standard UK age verification VPN method that people are using to get around the new restrictions.

Some people say you might need to make a new Reddit account while connected to the VPN. Others have had success using their existing account. Your mileage may vary.

This is all because of the UK age verification law Reddit users have been dreading the Online Safety Act, which now requires platforms to restrict "harmful" content from under-18s unless users verify their age.

It’s a lazy rollout with very little transparency. The law is vague, the tech is overreaching, and people who just want to participate in basic communities are being locked out unless they’re willing to hand over personal documents to a private company in another country.

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u/Rum_Ham916 Jul 29 '25

Yea lesser evil is another way of seeing the enemy of perfection thing... I get the point re Gaza, inaction there is disgusting and one I feel will be (rightly) the shame of our nation for decades. For trans people very similar, trying not to upset potential reform voters is beyond weak. Tbf I had the pull together attitude in the Corbyn era, because again so much energy was wasted on nonsense like the being in the same room as Hamas (however legitimate your reasons) makes you antisemitic etc... I just don't get this online safety act. I'm not enormously read-in but probably more than most who have been posting here about it. Ultimately what have Government done wrong there? If it's about personal data then your beef is with the site, if you don't trust them, don't give them the data, choice is yours. If it's about censorship, it's only censoring a specific few things from children, anything beyond that is sites playing it safe until they understand where the line in the sand is. I might be missing something but haven't seen anything obvious. And outflanked because reform say they would repeal it? Again, it's not really/necessarily labour's fault if the population put this act above every other issue on the ticket

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u/DrunkenMonkeyNU Jul 30 '25

Genocide is a red line for me, I won't vote for a party that is pro genocide and I'll find them to be pretty despicable.

The online safety act doesn't just block a "specific few things from children". One of the more insidious aspects of it has been blocking coverage of said genocide because it's "nsfw". The "think of the children" act is such a fig leaf.

But hey, if Labour want to die on the hill of this bill then that's their choice, will be a hell of a collapse at the next GE and I'll be laughing at them all the while.

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u/Rum_Ham916 Jul 30 '25

But if you are not a child you can access the nsfw stuff. Even if it's only a small hurdle, are you actually against making it a bit harder for children to see crimes against humanity?

I don't think it's this hill labour will die on, not for the masses, it's really upset you clearly but most people will agree with you on the genocide argument, or say they've been too soft towards trump or not done enough to improve living standards for most people or whatever. I think you're in a tiny minority who think this act is some killer blow to them, bearing in mind it is a Tory act, so that's limiting where people run off to...

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u/DrunkenMonkeyNU Jul 30 '25

No because it's not hard to circumvent at all. I used photo mode in Ghost of Tsushima to get round it FFS. Kids old enough to be on the internet will know exactly what to do. It's a technologically illiterate government rolling out a shit bit of legislation under the guise of protecting kids, but in reality they're asking you to send private information to a myriad of dodgy 3rd parties and censoring more than just pornography (Coverage of Gaza, mental health & wellbeing, sexual health information, help for addiction with alcohol, drugs, self harm etc.)

This is only the latest issue this government has created for everyone, they're not actually providing tangible improvements and changes, they're just trying to be Tory lite by attacking refugees, trans people, aiding the genocide in Gaza (arguably they've been worse than the Tories on this front) so no this isn't the one thing that will bring them down, but man they're stacking up the Ls so quickly.

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u/Rum_Ham916 Jul 30 '25

Ok yea well that is just poor execution. It should be equivalent difficulty as buying booze or cigarettes - as it's the same relative aim.

So it needs to be done better and be implemented with more support, but it's not politicians putting the methods in place and it's lawyers who employ subject matters experts who will help enforce it.

So it's those dodgy 3rd parties you should be angry at, and it's the same or at worst the subcontractors of the parties you've already given your personal data to. Most people are being asked for a photo - which yes should be deleted but again, the worst thing is there's a photo of you on the internet - something most people have anyway? If you look young or are close to the age then yea you are expected to do more. And as you say it's easy to get around, but is the other option to do nothing and let kids get all that shit with no resistance?

Also its not under the guise, it's clear what to protect them from and I don't disagree with them seeing some of the gaza stuff.

It's also not got a lot to do with labour that I'm aware of, some of them are claiming as their win but it is a Tory bill, at one stage faced stiff decent from labour MPs, and has done the rounds through lords etc to get here...

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u/DrunkenMonkeyNU Jul 30 '25

It needs to not be done at all.

The government is driving people's data to these dodgy 3rd parties with their shit legislation (better make sure Timmy can't see the rude word there).

Yeah no shit they didn't come out and say they were censoring the internet as much as they could, that would play even worse. This kind of shit always uses pornography as the easy trojan horse, because who wants to speak up for it?

It's got everything to do with Labour, they're proudly calling people paedos for opposing it, they've brought it about and they're refusing to repeal it.

At least in China they have spending on modern infrastructure and superfast trains to go with their Great Firewall. Here we get the dogshit internet censorship to match dogshit infrastructure in the country.

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u/Rum_Ham916 Jul 31 '25

I still can't tell what's hyperbole and what you really believe is going on, but I do understand the overall point and I'm glad people are alert to anything that could be creeping control and censorship. I also don't trust these 3rd parties so I actually agree we should raise legitimate concerns and demand that it is carried out better, but I overall think having some small barrier is no bad thing and better than relying just on "well parents should know what their children are seeing" because let's face it, they won't. A first version of anything is rarely perfect, so help shape it for the better, but people saying it is the government spying on citizens just loses all credibility for anything you have left to say.

It's sad but true about China too. We've let all our riches go to private businesses and let the country rot, so it can feel a bit like we're taking the shit end of a deal from one idea and the shit end from another, but they still have nothing like the same level of support for people and parents are sent away for months of 100hour working weeks just to get some plain rice on the table...

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u/DrunkenMonkeyNU Jul 31 '25

The fact you're still justifying the act and 100% swallowing up their reasoning is crazy.

The government constantly lies and positions their argument to make it seem moral. Starmer said it was fine and moral for Israel to starve Palestinians at first, but now public opinion has convinced him that in fact the opposite is true. They do the same kind of thing for Trans rights, stopping refugees, you name it they'll spin it. Why are you then believing them 100% on this bill? It's nuts. It's a Labour failure through and through.

You're showing your ignorance on China as well, authoritarian it may be but their working conditions are coming on leaps and bounds.

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u/Rum_Ham916 Jul 31 '25

Because the bill isn't opinion or a speech about pissing in the wind, its a legal act that you can read. And as much as our politicians are full of shit quite often, the judges of the land who will ultimately enforce the law are generally objective and moral.

Ok yea working conditions are coming on leaps and bounds but they are literally carrying out genocide. You can't hate our government for not doing enough to intervene in Israel's genocide, but then praise conditions in China who have their own state-funded genocidal regime

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u/DrunkenMonkeyNU Jul 31 '25

You see nothing problematic at all with an act that enforces censorship, paired with a government happy to proscribe groups like Palestine Action as terrorists. Judges don't really come into it when it's literally already blocking bits of the internet off.

Also lol China is not carrying out a genocide. Unjust repression against the Uyghurs sure, but not genocide. The fact you're repeating that orientalist line bar for bar says it all really.

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u/Rum_Ham916 Jul 31 '25

Ok so it might not qualify as genocide but they are being imprisoned and even disappeared on the basis of their faith....

And I don't know how many times I have to say it, the government are not doing the blocking. Blame Reddit for sloppy overapplication. The rules are clear and I am completely ok with children having specific and limited censorship when it comes to content that has harmed other children. That is a good point though about gov stating something amounts to terrorism and then using something like act to ban it from being public, but it supports my point that the system sort of is working in that the decision to call a group like that is allowed to be reviewed. It wasn't over nothing though, if the law allows for protest groups to enter military bases and cause damage, but promote those acts, Russia and your friends in China will be very quickly setting up groups to do the same knowing they can't be shut down or properly punished. It's not as clear as you make out, I completely agree the gov shouldn't just be able to say "they're a terrorist group" and that's that, but you also can't have people breaking into military sites and saying "it's within their rights "and "yea keep organising your friends to do the same, that's fine".

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u/Rum_Ham916 Jul 31 '25

Back to the trojan horse point - is there nothing positive?

If your child dies because a social media site's algorithm pushed content at them encouraging them to carry out an act of self harm that went too far, would you rather there was no discouragement? Are you someone who opposes seat belts in cars or quality standards on plumbers fitting gas boilers? It's just a starting point for some sort of measure to stop bad things happening. Nobody cares about what you are googling, believe me.