SpaceHey is banned in the UK.

If you’re wondering why your British moots have vanished, it’s because, as of 25/07/25, SpaceHey is currently banned in the UK due to new online safety regulations via Ofcom, known as The Online Safety Act 2023.

To sum it up, we are now required to verify our ages on any 18+ site and many social media/internet forums. This can be done via AI, photo ID, bank, or network provider. Verifying every UK user’s age would require a lot of time and resources that SpaceHey just doesn’t have, so they cannot comply with Ofcom’s newest form of censorship. Some other sites that will require age checks are X (Formerly Twitter), Discord, Reddit, and Telegram. 

There are massive concerns over data usage and privacy with this new law, and many users just don’t have access to photo ID and don’t particularly want to trust AI to guess their age. It also means that you can no longer scroll posts online (e.g., Reddit) without logging into an account which is extremely inconvenient if you're looking for something on a site you don't use.

I don't want to say too much about VPNs as Ofcom have stated that:

"According to Ofcom, platforms must not host, share or permit

content encouraging use of VPNs to get around age checks.

The government told the BBC under the Online Safety Act,

it will be illegal for platforms to do this. The regulator

said parents should be aware children using a VPN to

access the internet "would not be able to benefit from

the protections of the Online Safety Act"."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1k81lj8nvpo

However, it seems that this only applies to talking about VPNs as a workaround for the law and not about privacy. So I will say that free VPNs do work, but keep in mind that free VPNs do not protect your data and many of them sell it off. To many, this means that you might as well upload your face or ID, as either way you will be handing over your data to shady companies. If you're looking for a VPN to protect your data and nothing else, Reddit has many resources. You can use VPNs and set the location within your country, just at a different IP address, so you can still "benefit" from Ofcom's new safety act. I am not endorsing nor encouraging anyone to use a VPN to skirt around the law.

I believe that there were good intentions with this bill. Children are able to access pornography online FAR to easily and there are huge ethical concerns with SW as a whole, however I don’t think pushing these requirements on all social media rather than just 18+ sites was a good idea.

If a child is smart enough to get around parental controls, they’re smart enough to download a VPN. All this does is inconvenience everyone else. We need more online safety lessons for both children and parents instead of punishing the population as a whole for the mistakes of technologically illiterate and irresposible parents.

Unfortunately I will likely not be as active on here anymore and I do apologise to my mutuals who's blogs I love reading. Checking my subscriptions tab was a key part of my daily routine, and I always used SpaceHey on my college's PCs when I wanted to slack off on assignments. I sincerely hope that SpaceHey are able to gather the funds to comply with UK censorship law. Remember to support SpaceHey financially if you can, as this is a fan/passion project and slow progress is the cost of not having to deal with ads.

Links for more info:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/online-safety-act

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/online-safety-act-explainer/online-safety-act-explainer

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-content/important-dates-for-online-safety-compliance