Pornhub Says UK Visitors Down 77% Since Age Checks Came In

Yes, and we were right.

It was billed as something that most adults would accept. It's not plausible that 77 percent of Pornhub's UK traffic came from non-adults.

It has therefore failed. Obviously a huge number of adults did not accept it, and either went around it or stopped using the site. What they did not do was to comply with the supposedly "measured, reasonable and non-intrusive" AV measures. They accepted costs and inconveniences to avoid that.

It was billed as something that would only affect children. It has in fact affected many adults. That means it has failed.

Of course, many of the 77 percent have probably moved to VPNs (or other sites) rather than actually not using Pornhub... which means they were only inconvenienced, not deprived of porn or even of Pornhub.

But those approaches are just as available to non-adults as to adults. Although the AV nonsense probably did actually deter some number of underage users, you can't know what that number was. It would be possible for literally every single underage user to have simply switched to a VPN. The 77 percent number tells you exactly nothing about how many children have been deterred from watching porn. Probably not very many.

So although this does give you proof of some of the ways it's failed, it does not give you any evidence that it's succeeded in anything at all.

That said, that kind of "success" is not the main issue. The main arguments against this AV stupidity were and are that it's not worth the huge costs in money, convenience, security, and privacy, and that it helps create machinery that can and probably will be abused for other purposes later. All of which are still absolutely true.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45769504

Instead of large, accountable providers, now three quarters of their customers use vpns or switched to sites without age verification.

How does this apply here?

I'm not aware of any religious groups in the UK who have significant influence on legislation, perhaps unlike the US.

That's pathetic, there's really pathetic, and then there's whatever this is.

Yes. That’s exactly what we believe.

Do you believe that 77% of UK Pornhub users suddenly stopped wanking?

Seems pretty implausible to me.

Whenever there's a blocker (one case from my childhood was how to use net send to broadcast profanity across the network), someone will figure it out, and by the end of the day EVERYONE knows.

Basically every youtube video for the past decade has been sponsored by a VPN service offering first-joiner discounts. My cousin uses a VPN and has no idea what it is and how it works, just that "he should protect himself while browsing". Those VPNs have invested massively in UX and ease of use so out of that 77% of users, I'd guess more than 80% of it switched to VPNs.

Or just find another porn site that doesn't adhere to the law.

I'm not saying UK is great, but surely ahead of what the US is doing by a wide margin.

FWIW the male spaces I'm in are supportive of porn bans.

You don't like our privacy violating laws? Well that's because you're a nasty disgusting pervert. You don't want to be a little pig man do you? Great, then support our law!

See also: you want children to be raped, you're a pedophile, you have something to hide, show me your hard drive...

Everyone that defects to the Lib Dems, Greens or even the Tories stops helping Labour get past the post first.

These are all unforced errors they could have seen coming.

They're so focused on building a surveillance state for themselves that they've stopped worrying about what happens when Reform get control of it.

I don't actually see watching porn as immoral, although I am aware that there are a large number of people who do. Hence my surprise that so many people were willing to tie their identities to it.