October 31, 2025
VPNs are the new trench coat
Pornhub says UK visitors down 77% since age checks came in
Commenters say viewers didn’t quit — they cloaked up on VPNs, amid privacy panic and malware fears
TLDR: Pornhub says UK traffic plunged 77% after age checks, while officials report a broader drop in adult-site visits. Commenters say most viewers just switched to VPNs, sparking a fierce privacy-vs-child-safety fight and fresh warnings that users may drift to riskier sites — a big shift in how Brits browse adult content.
Pornhub says UK visits crashed 77% after the Online Safety Act rolled out stricter age checks (including facial scans). The community’s immediate verdict? Not abstinence — evasion. The top chorus argues the “disappearing” viewers just slipped on VPN masks, with one joker boiling it down to: “UK visitors not using a VPN down 77%.” Google searches for Pornhub are down nearly half, and Ofcom says overall porn visits fell by almost a third, but commenters point to the VPN explosion: downloads jumped, some providers saw an 1,800% surge, and daily UK VPN usage spiked, per Cybernews.
Cue the drama: privacy hawks call age-gates “de-anonymize yourself to watch” and slam it as surveillance creep pushed by moral crusaders. Child-safety defenders clap back: if kids can’t stumble onto porn, the policy’s doing its job. Meanwhile, Pornhub’s parent tells the BBC the rules are “unenforceable” across 240,000 adult sites, and alleges noncompliant rivals are booming — a claim commenters fear leads users to sketchier, malware-riddled corners of the web. Memes and puns fly: “VPN is the new trench coat,” “end of the age-blind internet,” and “Brits went incognito.” Underneath the jokes, a real split: protect kids vs protect privacy — and whether the traffic drop is real or just reclassified. For context: Pornhub is the world’s biggest porn site (19th on the entire web, per Similarweb).
Key Points
- •Pornhub reports a 77% decline in UK visitors since stricter OSA age checks began; the BBC has not independently verified this.
- •Google data shows UK searches for Pornhub fell by nearly half after the law took effect.
- •Ofcom says UK visits to porn sites dropped by almost one‑third in the three months since 25 July and emphasizes protecting children.
- •VPN usage spiked after age checks: Ofcom estimates up to 1.5 million daily users in July; Cybernews counted over 10.7 million UK VPN app downloads in 2025.
- •Aylo’s Alex Kekesi argues enforcement is unenforceable given scale; Ofcom prioritizes high‑risk, high‑user sites and warns non‑compliant sites of enforcement.