And so it has begun. Wired is reporting that a number of accounts have been vanished as Twitter bows to pressure to make it harder for children to find adult content online.

Twitter has been blocking the profiles of adult content creators in Germany since late 2020. The move comes in response to a series of legal orders by German regulators that have ruled that online pornography should not be visible to children and must be hidden behind age-verification systems. The nationwide block of certain profiles in Germany is a rare example of a major social media platform bowing to regulatory pressure to make it harder for children to view porn online.

Anyone trying to view one of the blocked accounts in Germany sees a message saying it has been “withheld” in Germany “in response to a legal demand.”

The exact number of accounts blocked in this way is unknown. One pornographic account displaying this message has more than 700,000 followers.

As Twitter doesn’t have an age-verification system in place, it has responded to legal demands by outright blocking the accounts for anyone in Germany. Under German law, regulators say, Twitter accounts posting pornographic content should not be accessible as there are no age checks in place to make sure that people viewing them are over the age of 18.

Twitter’s response to the German legal request has been to effectively vanish dozens of profiles for millions of people. Anyone viewing a blocked profile will be unable to see the profile picture, bio, or any posts; if another account has retweeted it, these posts are also blocked. A notice from Twitter directs people to its explanation of why accounts are withheld in certain countries—the same message is included on all accounts blocked at the request of governments.