[Fraaaank]

What's stopping lawmakers to require VPN providers to verify the age of their users?

[protimewaster]

I'm guessing this is technically challenging. There are VPN protocols designed to be difficult to differentiate from other encrypted traffic. As a result, VPN providers based outside the UK know that they can just ignore the UK law and probably won't be successfully blocked in the UK.

[mtnGoat]

Enforcement, one countries laws don’t apply in another. Which is kind of why the age verification thing won’t work… There will always be some jurisdiction that’ll ignore things for profit.

[Fraaaank]

Not entirely true. If I'm incorporated in country A and want to offer a service in country B, I'll have to comply with the local regulations. Furthermore, most VPNs have local presence in the EU as well. NordVPN is incorporated in Panama, but also has an entity in The Netherlands.

[reliabilityguy]

Well, what’s preventing the UK to ban the websites/VPN services that don’t comply at the ISP level?

This is what Russia is (semi-successfully) doing.

[commandlinefan]

If that were true, we'd see the adult sites just migrating to those other, friendlier countries - I don't believe we are.