Age Verification Is Driving People to Shadier Porn Sites

New online age verification laws in the U.K. are having some unintended consequences. The rules, which require users to upload photo IDs or selfies to access certain websites, seem to be backfiring in some cases.

A new analysis by The Washington Post found that porn sites that are complying with the rules are losing traffic, while those ignoring the law are being rewarded with a boost in visitors.

The analysis comes just a month after the U.K. began enforcing the Online Safety Act, which puts new legal pressure on platforms, including search engines and social media sites, to shield users from harmful content. Lawmakers pitched it as a way to keep children away from porn and other “harmful” material tied to self-harm, suicide, and eating disorders.

But the data suggests the opposite might be happening. Porn sites that skipped the new ID checks have seen their audiences grow, while the ones that followed the rules are losing users. Some of these sites have tripled their audiences in August compared to last year, according to the Post.

One of the law’s main provisions requires porn platforms and other sites with user-uploaded content to use tech that verifies or estimates a user’s age. In practice, that usually means forcing people to upload a government-issued ID or a selfie to prove they’re old enough to access certain content.

Users are already finding ways around the digital checkpoints. Some crafty U.K. gamers discovered they could trick verification systems on Reddit and Discord using Death Stranding’s photo mode. Most are just firing up a VPN, which masks their location and makes it look like they’re browsing from outside the U.K.

Or, even more simply, they’re flocking to sites that never bothered with age verification in the first place.

What the analysis found

To see how the law has been playing out, the Post looked at U.K. traffic estimates over the past year for 90 of the biggest porn sites, using data from the analytics firm Similarweb. Reporters then fired up a VPN to mimic a U.K. user and check which sites actually asked for age verification.

They found that 14 of the 90 sites skipped the age check entirely, and every single one of them saw a major traffic surge. One site doubled its U.K. visitors since last August, hitting more than 350,000 visits.

Ofcom, the U.K.’s media regulator, told the newspaper that it has opened four investigations into porn sites over compliance. However, only one of the 14 sites flagged by the Post was on that list.

The porn industry has been warning that this could happen.

“Age assurance legislation in other jurisdictions is failing for a number of reasons, including its inconsistent and ineffective enforcement at scale, leaving hundreds of thousands of platforms with age-inappropriate content accessible, most of which do not have content moderation or uploader verification measures,” Pornhub’s parent company Aylo said in a statement in June. “We know that when people choose not to age verify, they do not stop looking for adult content, they migrate to those irresponsible platforms.”