Porn sites that comply with age verification regulations see a drop in traffic from the UK, while those that ignore them more than double

The UK's Online Safety Act, which was enacted in 2023 and is being implemented in stages, requires that pornographic sites and other inappropriate content that minors may encounter must verify the user's age using facial recognition and banking information. It has been reported that the age verification requirements under the Online Safety Act have led to a more than tenfold increase in VPN service users , and that 'sites that comply with age verification rules have seen a decrease in traffic, while sites that ignore them have seen a sudden increase in access.'

Porn sites that ignore age-check laws are getting a flood of traffic - The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/08/31/age-verification-uk-porn-sites/

Age verification legislation is tanking traffic to sites that comply, and rewarding those that don't | PC Gamer
https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/age-verification-legislation-is-tanking-web-traffic-to-sites-that-comply-and-rewarding-those-that-dont/

The Online Safety Act is described as 'imposing new safety obligations on social media companies, search engines, messaging apps, gaming apps, dating apps, pornography sites, and file-sharing sites,' and in July 2025, Bluesky , Reddit , and major pornography site Pornhub introduced age verification, which includes specific checks before displaying restricted content. According to the data analysis service SimilarWeb, several major pornography sites saw a significant drop in traffic from the UK after introducing age verification under the Online Safety Act.

Major porn site Pornhub loses 47% of traffic due to mandatory age verification in the UK, XVideos and xHamster also see sharp declines - GIGAZINE

To assess the short-term impact of implementing age verification under the Online Safety Act, The Washington Post collected estimates of the number of UK visitors to 90 major pornography sites ranked by SimilarWeb over the past year. They then used a VPN service to visit the sites as UK users and check whether they had implemented age verification under the Online Safety Act.

The analysis found that 76 sites were implementing age verification and 14 sites had no formal age verification system, and that all 14 sites saw a nearly threefold increase in UK visitors between August 2024 and August 2025.

When the Washington Post provided the findings to Ofcom , the UK's internet regulator, Ofcom declined to comment on individual sites, but said, 'Ofcom monitors the daily visitor numbers of thousands of pornography sites, and the information provided, such as 'surging traffic' and 'sites promoting illegal activity,' will help investigators decide which sites to prioritize.'

'Online safety laws drive users to sites that don't require age verification, while throttling traffic to compliant platforms,' said John Scott-Railton, a researcher in digital surveillance and rights at the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab. 'This is a textbook example of the law of unintended consequences : the more governments tighten the screws, the more sites that ignore government rules benefit.'