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In late July 2025 the Online Safety Act 2023 was passed in the United Kingdom (my home country) and similar legislations were passed in some other countries. These legislations aim to protect the children from adult/NSFW content, i.e. those inappropriate for children. Websites need to implement robust age verification to access adult content. However, wikiHow contains many articles (5-10%) on adults-only content, i.e. pornography or sex, and when accessing them in the UK, there are no age verifications yet.

What should wikiHow do with articles on adults-only content to comply with these legislations? In my opinion, there are a few choices:

  1. Restrict these to over-18s via a robust age verification system (adds more cost, decreases privacy)
  2. Delete these articles (loses some visitors)

Any thoughts on these legislations and how these affects wikiHow?

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This is a question better suited for wikiHow’s legal team to comment on, rather than a community-wide discussion. That being said, I can see you have already inquired about this, and received a response on your talk page from the @CommunityTeam :

Hi there, thanks so much for bringing this up! While this isn’t my area of expertise, this law is on our team’s radar, and we’ll be sure to communicate any relevant updates to the community when ready.

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From a quick glance through the legislation, the question appears inherently flawed as it is based broadly on a misunderstanding or misapplication of what the law actually says. A soft age gate (i.e. user confirms they are over 18) that may be applied to articles in a certain category would be the only potential requirement for compliance.

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It’s partly up to interpretation. However, at least in the UK, “Platforms will be required to prevent children from accessing harmful and age-inappropriate content.” [ Online Safety Act: explainer - GOV.UK source] I’ve seen other sites partnering with age-estimating software (YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, etc.) Maybe we could do the same?