After much back and forth and many delays, UK age verification regulations are finally scheduled to take effect in April 2019.
Over 26,000 xHamster UK users weighed in regarding the pending regulations. Their responses indicate a broad lack of awareness about and understanding of the regulations, which may result in large scale passive noncompliance. Further, there may be a spate of active noncompliance, as savvy users opt for VPNs or other workarounds in order to avoid entering personal data.
As such, a “Sexit” is apparently brewing.
xHamster conducted its “2019 Age-Verification Compliance Study” over the course of six days in March. They asked UK visitors whether they were aware of the regulations, whether they planned to comply and which methods they would use to do so.
xHamster found that almost half (47.4 percent) of respondents were not aware of the regulations scheduled to take effect in April. Further, fewer than 40 percent of respondents plan on complying. More say they will use a VPN to avoid compliance.
Data privacy concerns and government intrusion were named, at 74.7 percent and 63.5 percent respectively, as respondents’ top issues and reasons for noncompliance. Only four percent believe the regulations will be “completely effective.” Nearly 60 percent feel they will not be effective at all.
“We launched this survey to help us understand how our own visitors planned to react and were shocked by the large number we saw who were not planning to comply,” said Alex Hawkins, Vice President of xHamster.
A majority of respondents said that, given the option of a VPN or offline, non-age-verified material, they’d go around the system — a “Sexit,” in which vast numbers of adult content users either abandon regulated sites or use a VPN to avoid detection by British authorities.
“We support efforts to limit access to adult material by [underage persons], and we will be complying with the UK regulations,” said Hawkins. “However, the data seems to show that a vast majority of porn users will abandon the UK regulations, either by leaving UK internet space, or by abandoning online content altogether. Such a “Sexit” of nearly 60% of current adult content consumers has major implications, not just for adult sites, but for the BBFC which has designed the regulations.”
Being a tube site and all, xHamster is not the best place to find compliant users respectful of adult industry labor. In fact, one might even expect xHamster users to balk at any attempt to treat adult content as a viable and valuable commodity, age verification regulations or otherwise. Regardless of their sample population or data gathering methods, these findings are telling — in addition to a “Sexit” brewing, so is a good ol’ fashioned clusterfuck.
Read more about xHamster’s data gathering efforts here: 2019 Age Verification Compliance Study.
All graphics via xHamster.
