Why PornHub’s traffic is down

Already and this is the Daily Art.

This is the Daily ohs oh, now it makes sense. Good morning and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Monday, the eighteenth of August. I'm Billy Fitzimon's I'm Emma Gillespie. Traffic to porn Hub in the UK has dropped by forty seven percent since new age verification.

Laws were enforced.

It's all because of the UK's Online Safety Act, which requires adult sites to check the age of.

All UK users. So how are they doing that?

Today? We are going to break down what these new laws involve and their immediate impact on online behavior. That first quick message from our sponsor, Billy. Let's start with these new figures about changes in online traffic in the UK. What exactly has happened to Pornhub?

Yeah, I mean before we even get into that, we Emma did have a conversation off Mike about whether or not we actually need to explain what porn hub is. I think most people would be familiar with it. If you're not, It is the most popular pornography website in the world. I actually looked it up and it is in the top twenty most visited websites in the world.

Wow.

It's even above Netflix.

There you go. I was gonna say it's like YouTube for porn, but maybe it's like Netflix for porn.

Yeah, and I think the reason why it's actually so popular is because it's free, or there is a free version of it.

Okay.

Now, the reason we are talking about it today is because traffic to porn Hub in the UK dropped by forty seven percent between the twenty fourth of July and the eighth of August this year, So in less than a month. That's according to data seen by the Financial Times in the UK.

So a nearly fifty percent reduction in the number of people or the number of visits to n Hub in.

Just a couple of weeks. Yes, exactly.

Now, the reason for that is because of new age verification requirements that have come into effect in the UK.

Billy, this is so fascinating to me because obviously in Australia we have our own age verification conversations going on. So tell me about the state of play in the UK.

Yeah, So the new age verification requirements, they're all because of a new law that came into effect in July in the UK, which is called the Online Safety Act, and that act requires all adult sites to check the age of all UK users. So previously anyone was just able to visit these sites regardless of your age. There was kind of no checking system, just that anyone could go there. But this piece of legislation put the onus on the adult sites to ensure that only people above

Yeah, well, you can't watch sexually explicit material if you're under eighteen in a movie. We have all kinds of classifications around that type of content elsewhere in media exactly.

And this is all about making sure that there are those checks and balances in place to make sure that they can't view this material.

Now, this was actually.

Passed in the UK Parliament in twenty twenty three, okay, but the age checking measures didn't come into effect until July just passed.

Okay, So what does the age verification actually involve? How does it work? Because again with such a conversation going on here in Australia about how age verification would be rolled out on social media. I think all of us are really interested in this technology.

Yeah, this is the key question that everyone has. How do you prove someone's age?

Yep?

And a key part of this is that you can no longer just tick a box. So if the website says are you eighteen, you can't just say yes, I am and then proceed to the website. You actually have to verify your age. And I think what's interesting is, you know, obviously visiting a website isn't like going to a bottle store where someone is physically looking at your idea and they're looking at you. It's a very different process.

So what when you say verification that you have to have your age verified in practice, what does that involve?

So Offcom, which is the UK's communications regulator and they are the ones responsible for enforcing this law, they have given seven different options for what websites could do to ensure that they are checking the age. All right, I'll go through them because I think they are so interesting. The first one is facial age estimation. So this means just your phone looking at you through a cam and estimating how old they think you are based on that.

Wow. First of all, I mean part of me feels like if I use that technology I would be offended. Yes, it deemed me old enough. But what's the difference between a seventeen year old face and an eighteen year old face?

Great question, and that is one that only technology could answer. I don't quite have the answer, but yeah, obviously, you know, I think we do have questions about that.

So what are some of the other options?

So another one is open banking, so that involves giving permission for the websites to access information from your bank account, which would be on your phone, and that would be able to tell them whether or not you are over eighteen.

So giving porn harb your bank details exactly.

And another one which is quite similar to that, is giving pornhub your credit card details, even if you're not buying anything, because in the UK you need to be over eighteen in order to have a credit card, so if you give them those details, that means that you are over eighteen.

So facial age estimation, these banking details, credit card age checks not perfect options. Lots of privacy concerns probably around those. So what else is on the list?

Other ones on the list is digital identity services. So that's just like checking your digital IDs.

That are on your phone.

Or Another one which is similar to that is photo ID matching, So that's where you would provide a photo of your physical ID and also provide a photo of your face and they'd be able to check that. Other ones is email based age estimation. Now what I could gather from this is that you provide your email address and then they, using technology, will look at your banking or your utility providers and be able to look at that and again estimate your age based on that information.

This is wild. I had no idea that these were the options, but there were so many ways to get around age verification it's so interesting.

And then the last one is mobile network operator age checks. Now that would involve checking if your mobile phone number has age filters applied to it.

Okay, So does that mean that some under eighteen year olds have certain restrictions on their phone coverage?

Exactly?

Okay, let's talk about porn Hub though. We know that they've seen a significant dip in the number of clicks and use on their website. So which age verification technology are they using?

Well, they are providing options, so they there are a range of different options, which includes the ones that I've just mentioned, so it's not just one of them. What we do know is that they are now enforcing this and they are asking all users in the UK to now do one of those options. So it could be uploading identity documents, or scanning your face with a camera, or entering credit card details, any of them porn Harb is using.

Okay, because I guess for the over eighteen users, if you are porn Harb, you probably want to provide enough options that it will be easy or fast enough for those users to get through the verification process, I would imagine, but also maintaining rigorous enough channels to be adhering to the law.

Yeah, it's so interesting because I guess in the real world, if you're forty, then the age verification rules don't really apply to you. You don't actually really need to go through those processes unless you are being checked for your idea at the club, which is amazing for you. But what's interesting about this is that it will impact every single person. So you could be an eighty year old person and you are still needing to prove your age because of these laws.

Okay, now I want to talk a little bit more about some of the privacy concerns we've touched on a little bit. What are the specific issues that are being discussed.

Yeah, yeah, I'm sure that a lot of people do have these privacy concerns. And what is actually interesting is that Alo, which is porn Hub's parent company, they did raise a concern about privacy before these laws came into effect.

Okay, and that's the statement from the company that owns porn Hub.

Yes, that was two years ago, so I presume now they would be saying that all of the data is protected, but that was one of their key concerns when this legislation was first passed. Now, obviously it has now come into effect, and I mentioned Offcom before, which is the UK's communications regulator, and they have really assured users that data protection is of course already regulated and enforced in the UK, so this now isn't a new issue that they're needing to deal with.

It is already regulated.

They also said that proving someone's age is not a new thing, like I said before, so people obviously do this all the time in the offline world, and they're really encouraging people to just see it as the same thing here.

All right, So we know where a low the pornhub parent company was on this issue a few years ago. Have we heard from them or any porn hub spokespeople more recently.

Yes, porn Hub. A spokesperson for porn Hub did put out a statement and they basically said that this significant drop in traffic is the cost of compliance.

Was basically what they said.

Their direct quote is, we've seen in many jurisdictions around the world there is often a drop in traffic for compliance sites and an increase in traffic for non compliance sites. So that was in a statement to the Financial Times. I do think it's worth noting that in the UK VPNs, which basically changes what country your computer thinks you're in, they have drastically increased in traffic at the exact same time that porn Hub's traffic has dropped.

Okay, so workarounds that people are negotiating. I think that's a really interesting statement from porn Hub, this idea that they are complying with the legislation, but that platforms or websites that aren't complying will, at least in the short term kind of benefit from a band like this.

Well, I think, and that's for websites that are not as big as porn Hub. Yeah, and so perhaps aren't under as much pressure to comply.

This forty seven percent drop in traffic to Pornhub, though, that is a pretty staggering figure. Do we know if all of those users are underage users?

Yeah, I don't. We don't know, but I think that you can presume. No, it probably isn't all minors that now make up that forty seven percent. So many people are saying that this drop suggests that a lot of users just aren't willing to go through the age verification process. Either it's just too much time, too much effort, or they could also be concerned.

About their privacy, like we talked about before.

Yeah, it's so interesting, Billy, and I wonder if the raft of age verification options are something that we'll see rolled out here in Australia. There's been a little bit of contention around what technology will be the best technology to enforce our social media ban.

Yes, so for anyone who missed it or who wants a reminder. In Australia last year we introduced this social media ban. It passed parliament last year, but it comes into effect at the end of this year. What's interesting is so that's for under sixteens, that's for social media sites, that's not for porn sites, and so it is a little bit different, but is similar between these two pieces of legislation is that the onus is on the companies. Yeah, now we don't yet know how the companies will enforce

There are age verification trials that are ongoing at the moment to figure that out. But there were some reports a couple of months ago about flaws in some of the technologies that were being trialed. I remember an ABC report that had found some technologies had gotten the ages wrong of users, that teenage users were passing as twenty five year olds. So clearly it's not perfect. But this is an evolving technology and a space that is going to see a lot of investment and interest in the future.

It's clear that there is a lot of movement in this area of trying to protect young people from potentially harmful content online.

Absolutely, Billy, thank you so much. Thank for bringing us such an interesting story and unpacking it in such a fascinating way. That's all for today's deep Dive. Thank you so much for listening. We will be back a little bit later on with your evening news headlines, but until then, have a great Monday.

My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bunjelung Calcuttin woman from Gadighl Country.

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