I mean, in the second or third round of this with the tories in 2016, Aylo (Mindgeek) were offering up their own solution for age verification. So they are not exactly unconflicted.

But the fact remains here that the world's largest porn company is not presenting this as a big civil liberties issue; they have moved on from that.

I think it's important to understand that Ofcom isn't just imposing nonsense policies without any consultation with the very people they are trying to regulate.

They may not be succeeding, and people can disagree with the policy outcome, but there's a huge amount of misinformation suggesting that this is simple thoughtless autocratic censorious wishful thinking, when it is in fact an attempt at a policy of industry self-regulation backed by penalties, which is how the ombudsman system is meant to work.

Also I think a lot of US commentators don't understand that mobile phone providers in the UK block adult content by default and have been moving to that position over the long term because it is the only practical parental control mechanism that exists in a market of devices with different operating systems, menus, and often absence of on-device parental control mechanisms at all.