The UK government will ban online pornography depicting strangulation, suffocation, incest and adults role-playing as children under 16 starting 6 November, following amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill that became law in April.
The ban emerged from a 2025 review led by Conservative peer Baroness Gabby Bertin, commissioned by former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's government. The review found depictions of choking were "rife" on popular porn sites and had contributed to normalising the act among young people. The review cited an account of a 14-year-old boy asking a teacher how to choke girls during sex.
Publication offences carry a maximum penalty of five years' imprisonment. Publication includes uploading, posting or making content available online. Possession of such material, including storage on phones, computers or cloud services, carries up to two years' imprisonment for strangulation or incest content, and up to three years for images depicting a person pretending to be under 16.
Non-fatal strangulation has been illegal without consent under existing law, but its depiction in pornography was not previously criminal. The new rules also apply to sexual content involving step or foster-relations where someone is pretending to be under 18.
Justice minister Alex Davies-Jones said the ban was not about criminalising "harmless sexual preferences," but noted that pornography shapes perceptions of healthy relationships, especially for young people. Content that "normalises, or even glorifies" violence against women can "blur the line with what is acceptable in real life," she said.
Durham University law professor Clare McGlynn, who has previously warned that widely available extreme content normalises sexual violence, called the laws "a potential turning point" marking a line in the sand. She cautioned that enforcement would require tech platforms and regulators to act swiftly to remove violating material, noting the laws alone would not transform the online pornographic landscape.
Baroness Bertin said the change would send "the unequivocal signal" that "extreme and violent content that encourages real-life harm is not acceptable."