Online age check leads to less traffic on porn sites

Following the introduction of age verification for visiting pornography websites in Great Britain, visits to the larger sites by Britons have apparently decreased significantly. This was stated by the British media regulatory authority Ofcom (Office of Communications) to media representatives. The company Aylo, operator of the Pornhub platform, which has the widest reach in Great Britain, confirmed this.

Ofcom reports that the number of visits to pornography sites in Great Britain has fallen by almost a third since July. Pornhub goes even further, speaking of a 77 percent decrease in data traffic. The background is the introduction of the Online Safety Act, which requires age verification for all British users. This involves either uploading an ID, entering credit card details, or a facial scan of the user.

Users initially fled to VPNs

As early as August, a few weeks after the regulation was introduced in July, surveys by the web analytics firm Similarweb showed that services like XVideos recorded 47 percent fewer accesses and xHamster 39 percent fewer. Providers that violate the Online Safety Act face high penalties, which are based on the companies' revenue.

Some users apparently used Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) as a way to circumvent national blocks by connecting to servers abroad after the age verification came into force. VPN usage has doubled since July, according to Ofcom, to around 1.5 million daily active users. However, by the end of September, the number had fallen back to about one million active users. Aylo denied according to the Financial Times that there was a noticeable increase in traffic using their services in this way.

Doubts about usefulness

Whether this actually makes access to pornography more difficult for children and adolescents is controversial. Ofcom justified the measure, among other things, by stating that according to surveys in Great Britain, eight percent of children between the ages of 8 and 14 come into contact with online pornography monthly. According to media reports, users are resorting to websites that they can easily find via search engines and that do not require age verification. In some cases, even more extreme content can be found there than from the providers with the widest reach, who are obliged to check age.

Aylo therefore calls for age verification not to be carried out on individual websites, but to be anchored at the device or operating system level. The pornography site operator is confident that users are more willing to share their data with Apple, Google, and Microsoft to prove their age than with pornography sites.

Ofcom also announced that 62 investigations have been initiated. These concerned possible violations of the obligation to verify age.

(mki)