New data suggests a significant decline in UK visitors to prominent pornography websites following the implementation of enhanced age verification protocols.
According to data analytics firm Similarweb, leading adult content platform Pornhub experienced a drop of over one million visitors within a two-week period.
On July 25th, Pornhub and other major adult websites introduced advanced age verification measures in response to the Online Safety Act, which mandates stricter safeguards to prevent underage access to explicit material.
Experts at Similarweb compared the average daily user figures for popular pornography sites between August 1st and 9th with the daily averages for July.
The data indicates that Pornhub, the most visited adult content website in the UK, saw a 47% decrease in traffic between July 24th, the day before the new rules took effect, and August 8th, according to Similarweb’s data.
During the same period, XVideos, another leading adult website, also experienced a 47% decrease in traffic, while OnlyFans saw a traffic drop of over 10%.
The average daily visits to Pornhub decreased from 3.2 million in July to 2 million in the first nine days of August.
However, the data also revealed an increase in visits to some smaller and less regulated pornography sites.
A Pornhub spokesperson stated to the BBC: “As observed in numerous jurisdictions globally, compliant sites often experience a decrease in traffic, while non-compliant sites see an increase.”
The UK’s new online safety rules, explained:
This development follows a surge in downloads of Virtual Private Network (VPN) apps on Apple’s App Store in the UK, coinciding with the enforcement of the age verification rules.
VPNs enable users to mask their online location, effectively accessing the internet as if they were in a different country.
These applications also complicate the process of collecting data on site visits from specific locations.
Media regulator Ofcom estimates that 14 million individuals in the UK access online pornography.
Ofcom has outlined various methods for websites to verify user age, including credit card checks, photo ID matching, and age estimation through selfies.
Critics have raised concerns that an unintended consequence of these changes could be the diversion of users to more extreme content found in less regulated areas of the internet, such as the dark web.
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