Update Jul 26th -
Age verification is now active. If you experience any problems please contact us by email on contact@sheezy.art.
Age Verification is going to be necessary for anyone to view or post Explicit rated content on Sheezy starting from July 25th 2025.
Clarification -
This only applies to the Explicit rating. General and Mature ratings will still be fully accessible without age verification. You will always be able to access your own content, regardless of rating.
We've heard your feedback regarding this issue, and we agree with you!
This sucks, and it will not solve the fundamental problem of young people being able to access harmful content online.
That said, this is law and - as I mentioned in my recent Blog post - it's not unique to the UK.
Our hands are very much tied in this situation, and we are not alone. You will likely see more and more websites and services introduce age verification as time goes on until eventually it will become the norm, unless something changes.
Petition -
If you live in the UK, or know someone who does, please help us fight back! There is a petition that's gaining traction that you can sign here: petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903.
Privacy is a huge focus for me, and has been since day one of Sheezy's development. We will be using Stripe's Identity service as I have worked with Stripe extensively in the past and I trust them.
Starting from July 25th, you will see a purple "Verify" button in your Maturity Settings panel when attempting to switch your maturity level to Explicit. The process is extremely simple - you are taken to Stripe, whereby you upload or take a photo of an ID card or other official document, they confirm whether the document is legitimate, and then you are brought back to Sheezy. You can read more about their privacy policies here.
The only information we keep is a Yes/No toggle - whether you are 18 or over. If you are under 18, the verification will fail and you will not be able to access Explicit content. If you are 18 or over, the Consent checkbox will appear like normal and you will be able to switch freely between maturity ratings.
We are also required by law to accept manual verification, whereby you can email us directly at contact@sheezy.art with an identifying document and our Admins can manually verify your age. Do bear in mind, however, that this process can take days, if not weeks.
I am actively looking into better, safer means of age verification as part of The Rebuild.
To be clear, I do not disagree with the sentiment behind this law. Ensuring the safety of young people is extremely important, and there is a great deal of content on the internet that children should simply not have access to. You wouldn't expect your local grocery store to sell cigarettes or alcohol to a child - so I can certainly see the reasoning behind age verification in regards to potentially harmful content.
Perhaps it could have been handled better. Perhaps browser and device manufacturers could have shipped a software update that uses on-device information or hardware to inform websites and services as to whether the person holding the phone is 18 or over. The technology definitely exists. But, alas, we are where we are.
I fully understand how frustrating this is. We hear you, and we stand with you.
But the law is the law and, as I said in my last blog post, I don't want to get arrested. I can't work on Sheezy from prison.
Ry
hey, with the UK news being scary right now what would sheezy's approach be? If there's no answer to that currently that's understandable. everything sucks right now.
I found an old petition https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/757233 that jumped to 100k at some point if that gives UK users somewhere to channel frustration.
So....why do those of us who do NOT live in the UK have to verify...doesn't seem fair.
as time goes on, the nonsense transpiring with discord has me afraid. I don't recall which verifier they used that was in the leaks a few months ago but now they're using that palantir company? the one that may or may not share information with ICE?
I'm afraid for my American friends. At least Stripe is a British company from the looks of it but I don't know. The upset tag is not "I am upset with sheezy" to be clear, its just... holy fucking shit have things gotten worse, I feel hopeless. :(
Wouldn't it be possible to have an option of using a credit card for age verification rather than an id card ? It sounds extremely unsafe.
I am actively looking into alternative methods of verification for the upcoming rebuild
Thank you ! I'd much prefer giving a credit card number than my full face and address to an unknown party (that most likely retain it for ages until there's a data breach)
I think it'd be nice if you added this on the original post as well so people know they wont be stuck with only one way of verifying ! :D
I also hope this UK law gets taken down sooner or later, so you dont even need a risky verification system anymore, also i think linking the petition is a great start, I do wonder if there's also good other methods to get it taken down hmm
Good idea. Have added a sentence to the news post!
Thank you! and also thank you for your hard work, i really hope this place can thrive :D
device verification is also a bad idea, and you shouldn't advocate for it. I think the trust system used for the past fourty years online, despite its flaws, is the most ethical and reliable system.
There is no perfect system, really. I'm just grasping at straws 😅
I agree that there is no perfect system. There are numerous obvious flaws in the trust system, such as the fact people just lie. This is the flaw all ID verification laws are trying to address, but I do believe its a solution worse than the problem.
Speaking of the UK, can't you verify users location with their IP address? Would that be enough to appease UK legislators? If you can think of a shortcoming IP addresses have, I can't, I think its the perfect solution, also 🤫🤫🤫🤫🤫.
Honestly, I'd prefer Sheezy to check my IP and see I'm not in the UK and let me through too, but I have no idea if it's allowed under the law
I personally can't find any articles on how Ofcom expects websites to check where their users are from. This all sounds so stressful for international webmasters of small/medium sized sites. Some small/medium UK sites are considering closing down.
I do run a site and its a teeny tiny blog, my plan is to do nothing and hope they can't sue me because my site earns me negative dollar.
It is incredibly stressful. One the one hand, I don't want people to feel the pressure of what is, clearly, censorship from a government they're not even a part of. On the other hand, I don't want to track peoples' private information (ip location included) as it goes directly against my morals.
Also yeah, the actual fiscal cost of age verification may well be enough to snuff us out as well. Only time will tell on that front.
I understand. I thought IP addresses were fairly public, as websites share IP addresses when they connect to each other. As long as it's not front-facing information and its not retained, I... I'm old online and I do struggle to view IP Address as private information. I think I'm out of touch.
A lot of legislation focuses on the Big Platforms, and I get it, from the normie perspective. Its the only internet normies see, and its the worst part of the internet. But a lot of this legislation also calcifies the Big Platforms as the only platforms, which is very bad.