Mandatory age verification: British visits to porn sites plummet
Since the end of July, porn sites in the UK have had to "highly effectively" check the age of users. Initial data suggests that visits have halved in some cases.
(Image: Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock.com)
After porn websites in the UK began verifying the age of their users, the number of hits has plummeted. This was reported by the Financial Times, citing data from the analytics company Similarweb. According to the report, traffic to Pornhub fell by 47 percent within two weeks of the Online Safety Act regulations coming into force; Similarweb calculated the same figure for XVideos. Traffic to xHamster fell by 39% in the same period. This means that traffic from the UK to the three largest porn websites has almost halved in some cases. At the same time, smaller platforms – which presumably do not always adhere to the guidelines – have “dramatically” increased their reach.
No drop for other sites that check age
The age verification requirement serves to protect minors from content that is harmful to minors. Social networks and portals for user-to-user communication must also comply with this requirement. According to the report, Similarweb has not noticed a comparable drop in access to the short message service X and the social news aggregator Reddit. The figures for these are comparatively stable. The newspaper points out that the use of VPN services in the UK increased massively after the regulations came into force. Anyone using them to access porn websites would no longer be assigned to Great Britain for Similarweb. The extent to which this is happening is unclear.
Videos by heise
The obligation to implement “highly effective” age verification measures for sites with user-generated pornographic material has been in force since July 25. After the providers of the porn websites had resisted this for a long time, they gave in shortly before and complied with the requirements. Regarding the figures from Similarweb, Pornhub now states that it has already observed in many other countries how such rules lead to a decline in visits to sites that adhere to them, while portals that do not do so record an increase, according to the Financial Times.
According to the newspaper, the guidelines are supported by large sections of the population. However, there has been criticism of the implementation of age verification. Data protection concerns have been raised in particular. Shortly after it came into force, a developer also showed how the measures could be circumvented using the simplest of means. The Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, has also criticized the Online Safety Act. It wanted a court ruling to ensure that the strictest regulations did not apply to the online encyclopaedia, but failed for now. The fact that they could apply to Wikipedia with its user-generated encyclopaedia articles at all is presumably not intentional.
(mho)
