this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2026
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If you live in the UK or in another country where porn is being restricted:
You don't need to be a porn addict to do these things. In fact, they have started with porn, but they may as well keep going and fight for age verification in other types of content, making access to said content way more difficult. The best thing you can do right now is to learn to fight back.
Hmmmmm... Maybe not though
" Help me, stepbro. I can't access PornHub anymore π₯Ή "
Im stuck in age-verification
UK is going to be requiring age verification for VPN access. https://reclaimthenet.org/uk-house-of-lords-votes-to-extend-age-verification-to-vpns
Will this mean all VPNs will comply? Obviously not, but the bigger names will either pull out or comply as we seeing with the bigger porn sites.
The next step after this will be criminalization of using a VPN without age verification.
Wait, WHAT? They already voted? I didn't expect that so soon...
It was planned from the beginningas the real drivers behind the detail of the legislation, the security services, knew people would use VPNs and those have always been the main target.
Its why the legislation was written in the first place. Most people's identity is already tied to their connection via big tech social media. Its the people who use VPNs they can lose track of.
I would expect this to be a live requirement by the end of the year at the latest.
Just be glad the client side scanning keeps getting rejected thats in the same legislation.
Advertising for mullvad harms the peer2peer network. (They blocked port forwarding and won't be bringing it back)
Are there any VPNs that didn't? I couldn't really find any, and tbh it's not a massive issue for torrenting. I still upload a fair bit, but obviously not as much as I would be if I had ports open.
Maybe not massive issue for individuals yet, but I guarantee anti piracy orgs love everyone switching to a VPN that inherently weakens the torrent ecosphere.
Private Internet Access and Njalla both allow port forwarding.
Mullvad is heavily shilled, and for some reason no online discussion ever ends on a critical note. Be wary and don't assume the group is always correct.
You say that Mullvad is heavily shilled, and I'd like to learn more about it. Would you mind showing a concrete example, so I can better inform myself?
AirVPN allow port forwarding.
I use Mullvad for my day to day devices like my phone and laptop, and AirVPN in my homelab for things like torrenting.
Thanks for the recommendation!
I'll try this out with my current torrenting setup and see if it is better
How does it harm p2p? I've been downloading and seeding without issue. Genuine question
P2P requires at least 1 person to have open port forwarding. Ideally, everyone has it open on their VPN. The more people start recommending vpns without it, the more torrents as a whole start to die as everyone I inherently becomes a burden on the system.
I had no idea. According to what I'm reading, if I switch to IPv6, it would effectively solve the problem? I see that mullvad does support it, but will have to look into the individual containers I'm using, as well as docker itself I guess.
Networking is a nightmare to understand
What VPN(s) would you recommend?
PIA (Private Internet Access) seems really good. I am currently finishing up a 2 year discounted Protonvpn subscription but am reevaluating it as a viable option due to recent political posts from the CEO. As far as the service goes it was great though.
Fair point. I just assumed most people reading my message wouldn't care much about torrenting, but in this economy where censorship is pretty much happening, port forwarding would definitely be a plus. Do you have better suggestions?
Airvpn or Private internet access seem to be the good options nowadays, MAYBE protonvpn if you can separate the product from the owner, due to the CEO making inflammatory statements on his socials. That's a call you have to make for yourself and your own threat model.
Sorry it took so long, but I added some of your suggestions in. Thanks.
Donβt use tor for porn. Use i2p. You can torrent without breaking shit on i2p.
Here's a free VPN that you can use: https://riseup.net/en/vpn
Try not to assume that there aren't free alternatives to what "the crowd" is constantly herding you to pay for. Do some digging, and you may be surprised by what you come across.
Most of the good stuff is buried underneath mountains of bullshit.
That's the same as Mullvad then, or more if you consider that everyone who can afford it should pay for more than their fair share because some can not.
There's always a π€‘ trying to get people to pay for what they can be getting for free.
If no one pays for it then it disappears, dummy.
Honk honk
It's a volunteer service. If you use it and don't donate but could afford to, you're just selfish.
Now it's a circus!