UK internet age checks have boosted rogue adult sites, says Pornhub

somenameforme

https://archive.is/xQiFO

micromacrofoot

when you make something more difficult to access a black market profiting from easier access will always appear

realusername

That was 100% obvious that would happen, the law will only be followed by good actors and bad actors now have an additional advantage

everdrive

This outcome was always obvious. The internet is too big. You can degrade the sites that are legitimate enough to follow the law, but that's just a drop in the bucket in the sea of porn.

iso1631

Another The UK tried to ban choking porn. Quite reasonable given the realities of monkey-see monkey-do. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/06/chokin... Trouble is, "nobody in the UK" consumes porn. Had they not passed the "ban porn site" bill then the majority of people would be viewing porn on sites which will enforce (or at least attempt to enforce), and consumption of it would reduce. Instead UK people consume port from places which is quite happy to have choking, bestiality, and child porn. Good job Mary Whitehouse Brigade.

a_c

Tax and regulations always punish the good actors

Razengan

Who the fuck was actually dumb enough to believe that all these laws are actually honestly intended to ""protect children""? ..the answer is almost everyone, apparently

WarmWash

I think the most damning thing about porn hysteria is that society as a whole ran the experiment of an open internet for 30 years, long enough for a full generation of people to be fully raised on it and -none- of the things the anti-porn crowd cried about came true. In fact things actually moved in the opposite direction. The whole think is unsurprisingly just as bunk as the hysteria over violent video games and "demonic" music. It seems plain old social media is the actual damaging thing to come from the internet.

jalapenoj

>Aylo said last year that traffic to its Pornhub had fallen 77 per cent since the introduction of the Online Safety Act. So just MindGeek kvetching about a good thing.

tom1337

And something similar will happen with chat control I'm afraid. Make every public messenger scan all messages to "protect the children" and those people that would be affected by these scanners will simply find another way to communicate (or build their own E2EE chat app like EncroChat in the past) and the only ones that suffer are the normal people who are now being surveilled and with no real reason.

drbscl

I don't recall her name, but a past government hired a consultant before implementing the age verification laws, who warned that this would obviously happen, and they promptly fired her.

AlexDragusin

If only there was a period in the 1920s that could have predicted this outcome...

mattrighetti

Probably boosted Mullvad’s ARR as well