{"id":341710,"date":"2025-08-13T17:32:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T17:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/341710\/"},"modified":"2025-08-13T17:32:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T17:32:11","slug":"uk-traffic-to-popular-porn-sites-slumps-after-age-checks-introduced-internet-safety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/341710\/","title":{"rendered":"UK traffic to popular porn sites slumps after age checks introduced | Internet safety"},"content":{"rendered":"

British visits to popular pornography sites have slumped following the introduction of strict age checks last month<\/a>, data shows.<\/p>\n

Daily visits to Pornhub, the UK\u2019s most used porn site, fell from 3.6m on 24 July, the day before age-gating was introduced, to 1.9m on 8 August, a drop of 47%.<\/p>\n

At the next most popular sites, XVideos and xHamster, visits fell 47% and 39% over the same period, according to the data from Similarweb, a digital market intelligence company.<\/p>\n

The data, first reported by the Financial Times, appears to show the impact of strict age-checking rules from 25 July under the Online Safety Act. However, social media sites that also introduced age checks for material barred to under-18s, such as X and Reddit, did not experience dips in traffic over the same timeframe.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Pornhub said: \u201cAs we\u2019ve seen in many jurisdictions around the world, there is often a drop in traffic for compliant sites and an increase in traffic for non-compliant sites.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Online Safety Act contains rules on protecting children from harmful content that require sites or apps showing pornography to prevent children from seeing it.<\/p>\n

Ofcom, the UK watchdog overseeing the act, has backed age assurance measures including: facial age estimation, which assesses a person\u2019s likely age through a live photo or video; checking a person\u2019s age via their credit card provider, bank or mobile phone network operator; photo ID matching, where a passport or similar ID is checked against a selfie; or a \u201cdigital identity wallet\u201d that contains proof of age.<\/p>\n

However, the act also requires online platforms to prevent children from viewing content including material that encourages suicide or self-harm, and to suppress the spread of content such as dangerous challenges, showing serious violence or inciting hatred against people. This has led to the age-gating of content such as an alcoholic recovery forum on Reddit and footage of an anti-migrant protest<\/a>, which led to warnings that the new law was already over-regulating<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ofcom maintains that the act does not suppress freedom of expression and has pointed to provisions that protect free speech. Breaches of the act carry a range of punishments, from formal warnings to a fine of up to \u00a318m or 10% of global turnover or, in extreme cases, the site being blocked in the UK.<\/p>\n

Nigel Farage\u2019s Reform UK party pledged to repeal the act after the introduction of age checks, sparking a war of words<\/a> in which the technology secretary, Peter Kyle, accused Farage of siding with \u201cpeople like Jimmy Savile\u201d. Farage described Kyle\u2019s comments as \u201cso below the belt\u201d.<\/p>\n

The introduction of age-checking has also led to a surge in the downloading of virtual private networks, which allow people to circumvent a country\u2019s restrictions on viewing certain websites. The top five of Apple\u2019s app store have been regularly dominated by VPN apps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"British visits to popular pornography sites have slumped following the introduction of strict age checks last month, data…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":341711,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-341710","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-northern-ireland","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115022656033372033","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}