Adult video sites have hidden hundreds of fetish clips from British buyers since Friday, when it became a crime in England and Wales to possess or publish pornography showing strangulation or suffocation, creators said.
Clips4Sale, a fetish site founded in 2003, has made the deepest cuts. Sophia Truee, a British creator, said the site pulled 392 of her 506 videos and flagged them as needing edits without saying what to change, 404 Media reported. Another creator, Madame Caramel, said her available clips fell to 198 from 900. A third, Goddess Kitty, said 931 of her videos had been restricted for viewers in Britain.
Ms. Truee said the hidden videos had nothing to do with the categories the law names. “Of course, we were all aware of the new Act coming in and prepared accordingly, but not for anything at this scale,” she told Samantha Cole of 404 Media. “We’ve had nothing since and they’ve been tweeting as normal.”
The timing hurts. Black Friday is one of the busiest weeks of the year for creators who sell clips, Ms. Truee said, and the removals landed just before it. “For many, this will be devastating, as over 20 years of the work will have just been wiped,” she said.
Clips4Sale called the removals a precautionary measure. In a statement to 404 Media, the company said the law “carries criminal penalties for possessing or distributing consensual kink and fetish content made by consenting adults, meaning our creators risk arrest if we allow them to distribute banned content in the UK.” It said it would work with the British government to comply.
The day before the law took effect, the company emailed creators to say it would review videos along with their titles, tags, keywords and descriptions. The restrictions apply only to British buyers. Creators based in Britain face a harder rule: uploads from their accounts that fall into the banned categories won’t be approved at all, so they can’t sell those clips to anyone, anywhere.
The offenses come from the Crime and Policing Act 2026, which received royal assent in April. A Ministry of Justice circular put the start date at Nov. 6. The law bans realistic images, AI-generated ones included, in three categories: strangulation or suffocation, penetrative sex between certain relatives, even when the relationship is only acted, and sexual activity in which someone appears or pretends to be under 16. The ministry treats possession as a continuing act, so files downloaded before Friday count.
Ms. Cole wrote that anyone in Britain possessing or distributing the material could face up to five years in prison. Under the act, five years is the ceiling for publishing, which covers uploading, posting or sharing. Possessing strangulation, suffocation or incest material carries up to two years, and material involving someone under 16 up to three, according to Newsweek.
Alex Davies-Jones, a justice minister, said in October that “this isn’t about criminalizing harmless sexual preferences.” She said porn can shape what people think a healthy relationship looks like, “especially young people.”
The ban carries out recommendations from a 2023 review of pornography led by Baroness Gabby Bertin. The Institute for Addressing Strangulation, a group that campaigns on the issue, welcomed the offenses under the headline “There is no safe way to strangle.” Last week’s rews report set out the offenses as they arrived.
Ms. Cole called the law one of the strictest and vaguest pornography rules in recent memory. Melissa Todd, a British writer and sex worker who offers breath play in sessions, said the practice isn’t something only men push on women. “Many women do: it really isn’t only horrid men forcing us to do these dreadful depraved acts,” Ms. Todd told 404 Media. “Interrupting oxygen supply produces the most intense sensation of euphoria.”
Other sites are moving too. Creators on LoyalFans have reported hundreds of videos removed, and the site has added strangulation and suffocation to its terms of use. JustForFans told creators they could restrict single videos or block Britain entirely.
A notice on Clips4Sale creators’ dashboards said the company expected “to be able to make additional content available again to UK users, wherever permitted” once it had more clarity on what the law requires. It gave no date.