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Any sort of gating will always lower certain web usage, that's obvious.

It's also much more obvious that a taboo/illicit service asking you to, essentially, deanonymize yourself is going to be hit the hardest.

Obviously this is because 77% of all pornhub viewers were underage, and NOT because privacy-infringing age checks create a deterrent effect that reduces all pornography consumption, which totally was NOT the goal all along by the puritanical fundamentalist religious groups backing this expansion of warrantless state surveillance.

It was definitely to protect the kids and NOT to try to quash all depictions of human sexuality due to a fetish for appeasing the arbitrary whims of the invisible sky daddy, as told to us by the people who pinky promise they were speaking on behalf of invisible sky daddy.

Is it really down or do they just use a VPN
Does that mean porn is watched by 77% fewer people or does that mean it is watched elsewhere? It may just lead to a greater exposure to malware of the UK.
In related news [1] "VPNs top download charts as age verification law kicks in [...] one app maker told the BBC it had seen an 1,800% spike in downloads."

It's going to be interesting to see how this plays with voters at the next election. Politicians think this censorship is a vote-winner, presumably because on the doorstep voters are unlikely to talk about their love of porn. Yet in online spaces, this policy seems wildly unpopular - especially with the high profile leaks of age validation services' user data; the government's legal battles with Wikipedia; Steam's demand for credit cards (debit cards are more common in the UK); and sites leaving the UK market all together.

I suppose we'll get to see whose polling is more accurate at the next election.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn72ydj70g5o

Probably another push towards Reform, for better or worse.

>Reform UK's online policy reform proposal is to scrap the Online Safety Act

Labour seem to have forgotten that splitting the vote helps Reform get into power.

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.

If nothing else it is an interesting experiment. I'm just not sure what we should expect the result to be, both in terms of teen mentality and industry impact.
Interestingly, Google is still allowed to show explicit search results from these sites, which is absurd, and is a gap in the law, as now "search" sites have appeared which just do the same thing, but use videos.
At least some grease in the Digital ID machinery.
Given the harms of the pornography industry to both those directly exploited by it and those who consume its output, this is excellent news, even if the statistic only reflects a smaller deterrent effect due to VPN use and so on.

Certainly a win for drafters of the OSA, despite the controversy stirred up over its enactment.

Civilisation would be better off without porn but this was obviously always a non-solution. In fact Google doesn't even censor its images still.
I'm so glad there are people like you with opinions about what's best for me and civilization.
I guess some other places got an increase that summed up are close to that 77% :)
Shockingly, visits from datacenters just inside the EU have more than tripled in the same time frame.
This is really surprising. 23% of pornhub users in the UK are willing to identify themselves to access porn.

I guess there are some who really want their porn and either don't know about the alternatives (VPN) or genuinely don't mind handing over identifying info to do it.

In any other sexual context you'd be saying "wow such sexual liberty" "theyre so brave being straight up about themselves."

That watching porn is still an immoral act is implicit in your surprise.

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Doe that imply 77% of the visitors were underage?
UK wouldn't need this if their education system and culture didn't produce depraved and degenerate people, not to say anything of the ones they import. Neither the policy nerds nor Reform can fix the culture. It will come from below or not at all.