Porn showing choking or incest to be banned from early November in the UK
Online pornography depicting strangulation or incestuous relationships will be banned from early November, the government has announced.
The UK government plans to ban online pornography featuring choking or incest content starting early November. This includes the possession and publication of material depicting sexual activity between related individuals or adults pretending to be children under 16. The ban follows a 2025 review, led by Conservative peer Baroness Gabby Bertin, which found such depictions to be "rife" on popular porn sites and had normalized the act among young people.
Baroness Bertin emphasized that the new law sends a clear message to companies and society that extreme and violent content that encourages real-life harm is unacceptable. The amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill, which became law in April, seek to make the depiction of such content criminal offenses in England and Wales. Non-fatal strangulation is already an offense if not consensual, but its online depiction was previously not illegal.
The maximum penalty for publication is five years' imprisonment, while possession of images can lead to up to three years' imprisonment for depicting sexual activity with a person pretending to be under 16, and up to two years' imprisonment for depicting strangulation, suffocation, or penetrative sexual activity between certain relatives.
While the laws are seen as a significant step towards reducing the normalization of sexual violence in pornography, questions remain about how swiftly tech platforms and regulators will act to remove and mitigate the spread of violating material.
Written by urgent.news from MyJoyOnline Ghana's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
