UK Age Verification Data Confirms What Critics Always Predicted: Mass Migration To Sketchier Sites

Failures

from the who-could-have-predicted-it? dept

New data from the UK’s age verification rollout provides hard evidence of what internet governance experts have been warning about for years: these laws don’t protect children—they systematically drive users from regulated, compliant platforms to unregulated, non-compliant ones while accomplishing nothing except creating a massive privacy surveillance apparatus.

The Washington Post has done the legwork that regulators apparently couldn’t be bothered with, analyzing traffic data from 90 major adult sites in the UK since their age verification requirements kicked in. The results are exactly what anyone with half a brain predicted:

To evaluate the early effectiveness of the law’s rollout, The Post gathered U.K. visitor estimates over the past year for 90 of the largest porn sites as ranked by the market intelligence firm Similarweb. The Post then used a software tool known as a virtual private network, or VPN, to appear online as a U.K. user and check whether the sites verified a visitor’s age.

The analysis found that 14 sites didn’t do an age check, and that all 14 had seen major boosts in their traffic from U.K. users. One explicit site saw its U.K. visitor count double since last August, to more than 350,000 visits this month.

As for the ones that actually went through complying with this poorly drafted law?

The sites that complied — by mandating that users show their government IDs or scan their faces through their webcams, so an algorithm could estimate whether they were adults — saw visits from British internet addresses collapse.

To recap: compliant sites hemorrhaged users while non-compliant sites experienced massive growth. This represents a fundamental failure of regulatory design—the law creates competitive advantages for the least responsible actors while punishing those attempting to follow the rules.

The non-compliant sites aren’t just passively benefiting—they’re actively instructing users in circumvention:

Other sites instructed users how to navigate around the age gate by, for instance, using a special browser called Tor, which was built to browse what’s known as the “dark web.” One site directed British users to sign a petition urging Parliament to repeal the law alongside the comment, “Ur gov is dumb.”

This represents the predictable endpoint of poorly designed internet regulation: Instead of creating a safer online environment, the law has systematically incentivized users to migrate toward less regulated, less safe alternatives.

None of this is surprising. Earlier this year we discussed a study about what happened after an age verification law went into effect in Louisiana, and the (limited) result suggested a similar shift in traffic from the big sites that complied with the law to the very sketchy sites that did not.

The adult industry and experts have been screaming about this exact scenario for years. A recent blog post from one adult content platform puts it bluntly:

Preserving fair competition is one of the obligations of most states — but they simply don’t give a fuck about it. Right now, there are almost 3,000 (not an exaggeration) clones of our sites — not owned by us, but designed to look like our platforms, sometimes with a different makeover — stealing our content, and soon to be massively rewarded.

Regulators have no clue where people will go — but what’s likely is that users will scatter across so many sites, apps, proxies, and channels that they’ll become untraceable, guaranteeing the failure of future regulations. And unlike today, many of those new destinations will be dangerous, unmoderated, and openly hostile to enforcement.

This isn’t speculation anymore—it’s documented reality. That same blog post gave actual numbers showing that over a three day period testing age verification tech on their sites, that they were getting around only 10% of visitors willing to go through the process, and 90% going elsewhere:

July 4th : verification rate : 10,5% (89,5% of users gone)

July 3th : verification rate : 9,7% (91,3% of users gone)

July 2nd : verification rate even lower due to technical issues.

However, keep in mind that the drop of users is (maybe significantly) higher than shown, because the ones who simply don’t return (because they know there is an AV wall), are not counted.

The entire point of these laws is folly and they’re already doing real damage. There are literally millions of adult sites on the internet, plus social media, messaging apps, search engines, and peer-to-peer networks. Going after a handful of the most responsible, regulated sites just creates a competitive advantage for everyone else.

The WaPo story also highlights how this creates perverse incentives around compliance:

Companies seeking to comply with the law must pay for the age checks, whose costs can quickly climb; an Indiana judge said last year that one porn site, Pornhub, faced potential charges of more than $13 million a day. A Yoti representative said last year the company typically charges between 10 and 25 cents per face.

So the sites that try to follow the rules get hit with massive financial penalties for the privilege of losing 90% of their users to sketchier, fly-by-night competitors who ignore the law entirely.

What could possibly go wrong?

The age verification push has always been about looking like you’re “doing something” rather than actually solving problems. It’s pure regulatory theater. Now we have the data to prove it’s making things worse—driving users to less regulated sites while creating massive privacy risks for adults who just want to access legal content.

But hey, at least politicians get to pat themselves on the back for “protecting children” while the actual kids they’re supposedly protecting figure out how to use Tor browsers. Mission accomplished?

Filed Under: adult content, age verification, online safety act, uk