UK porn site traffic tumbles following age gating rules

Figures reported by BBC News show that popular pornography websites are seeing far fewer visitors from the UK since the country enforced mandatory age verification requirements for online platforms. Pornhub saw a 47 percent decrease in UK traffic between July 24th (a day before the age-gating rules came into effect) and August 8th, according to data from analytics firm Similarweb, losing more than a million visitors in two weeks.

XVideos also saw a 47 percent drop during the same period, while UK traffic to OnlyFans declined by 10 percent. Similarweb data also found that visits to some smaller and less well-regulated pornography sites had increased by comparison.

Most of the age verification systems implemented by online platforms are easy to bypass using VPNs, however, which mask the user’s location using overseas IP addresses. Proton VPN told The Verge that it saw a 1,800 percent increase in daily sign-ups from UK-based users in the three days following the UK’s age-gating rules taking effect, and at the time of writing, three out of the top ten iOS apps in the UK are currently for VPN services.