Predictable: UK Residents Head to Unregulated Porn Sites in Droves

Another longstanding warning about age verification in the UK has come true as UK residents head to alternative websites.

Digital rights advocates, along with Freezenet, have long warned of why age verification laws, and the technology they push, is so fundamentally flawed that such laws shouldn’t even be passed in the first place. We’ve warned that the technology is unreliable and easily circumvented, unsecure, would lead to increasingly broader categories of otherwise legally protected speech to be censored, and would lead to people simply visiting sites not using the technology. This, of course, isn’t even getting into the legal implications of the technology in the first place. Anti-speech supporters have long contended that none of this is true and that the technology is “world class”, “reliable”, and “secure”.

So far, pretty much every prediction for people like us have come true. First of all, the technology has become comically unreliable as people circumvent these checks using VPNs, video game characters, and fake IDs. This along with a body of research that concludes that the technology is frequently wrong in determining age. So, score that in the win column for critics of age verification.

Second, the technology is proving to be insecure. The technology has already suffered from data leaks and multiple hacks, allowing nefarious third parties to make off with tens of thousands of government IDs, drivers licenses, and facial recognition scans so they can be used for blackmail purposes. Another win for critics in determining what these predictions would ultimately mean for users.

Third, increasingly broad categories of speech have been censored. Once sold as little more than a requirement for porn websites to prevent minors from viewing hardcore pornography on their services, age verification laws have widened to include political debates and even discussions about flags. In Australia, things have spiralled so far out of control that whole platforms like YouTube are being censored completely – thus leaving the door open that this could be a glimpse into the future of what other countries could do – censor whole platforms entirely and not even targeting any particular kinds of content at all. Yet another prediction that has come true.

That leaves the fourth point: users heading to websites that don’t employ age verification technology at all. Reports are surfacing saying that this is, indeed, what is also happening at this point in time. From the BBC:

The number of people in the UK visiting the most popular pornography sites has decreased sharply since enhanced age verification rules came into place, new figures indicate.

Data analytics firm Similarweb said leading adult site Pornhub lost more than one million visitors in just two weeks.

Pornhub is the UK’s most visited website for adult content and it experienced a 47% decrease in traffic between 24 July, one day before the new rules came into place, and 8 August, according to Similarweb’s data.

Over the same time period, traffic to XVideos, another leading adult site, was also down 47% and OnlyFans saw traffic drop by over 10%.

The number of average daily visits to Pornhub fell from 3.2 million in July to 2 million in the first nine days of August.

However, the data also showed that some smaller and less well regulated pornography sites saw visits increase.

(emphasis mine)

This is not at all surprising. If users are masking their location with a VPN and pretending to be in another country, then data tracking companies will invariably see a drop in UK users because of that. What’s more, some people are going to go the rout of looking for alternatives that don’t ask for privacy invasive things like government ID or facial recognition scans.

Now, are these alternatives as safe to use? Maybe, maybe not. Are these alternatives sourcing their material from authorized sources? Maybe, maybe not. These other sites are unlikely to be as closely vetted as Pornhub from the security research community (although I’m honestly sure they are trying at least).

The knee jerk response from anti-speech supporters of these laws is that Ofcom would eventually go after these sites as well. Yes, we are aware of this aspect since it was us that reported Ofcom expanding its age verification racket to smaller websites. The problem, however, is the fact that you are engaging in an endless game of whack-a-mole. As soon as some websites are targeted, more will crop up – some likely by the same people behind the other sites that have already been targeted. This is a losing battle in the same way that the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) was facing a losing battle of suing everyone in an effort to make people go back to the brick and mortar retailer stores to buy expensive pieces of plastic or vinyl. There is no “getting every single last one of them”.

So, I would say that is a clean sweep for critics of age verification laws. Every major prediction about these laws have come true. Just to be clear, however, there are no “winners” in this. People are going to suffer under these laws one way or another. Some are going to suffer more than others. The open web is under increasing threat from excessive regulation. This as the “problems” that supporters sought to fix remain permanently unresolved. It’s a mess that only stands to grow in size as time progresses. All of this could’ve been avoided, but government is hell bent on leaning on to magical thinking that getting others to “nerd harder” will lead to an internet that they envisioned. It isn’t happening.

Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.