It depresses me that the UK Pornhub restrictions will probably boost VPN sales more than anything else going on in the world

I’ve been writing about VPNs for almost five years now. Keeping on top of all news related to them helped make me profoundly aware of the threats facing internet privacy from governments and shady individuals alike. I love to champion VPNs as the protectors of individual privacy in an increasingly invasive internet – but deep down, I know the truth. Nothing will motivate people to get a VPN more than protecting their access to porn.

From February 2, Pornhub will be inaccessible to everybody in the UK apart from those who have an existing account on the site. This new development comes as a consequence of the UK Online Safety Act, which requires internet users to upload their ID if they want to access adult content. In the words of Alex Kekesi, the Head of Community and Brand for Pornhub’s parent company, Aylo: “Our sites, which host legal and regulated porn, will no longer be available in the UK to new users, but thousands of irresponsible porn sites will still be easy to access.”

Essentially, the stance is that the Online Safety Act does more harm than good, because instead of going to Pornhub, kids will find unregulated purveyors of pornography on the internet who didn’t bother to put the age checks in place, despite their legal obligation. It’s a slightly odd stance to take, really, but it looks more like Aylo is trying to put pressure on the government to get its pageviews back up.

Don’t get me wrong, the Online Safety Act is problematic, and I’ve already expressed my concerns about it in the past. Basically, I worry that genuinely helpful and educational content for young people could get blocked as ‘adult content’. However, I don’t know if Pornhub is really in a position to be high-horsing the UK government over this. For instance, as much as it claims to be the home of ‘legal and regulated porn’, it has a long history of hosting (and therefore profiting from) highly illegal and exploitive content.

So when Pornhub suggests that teenagers who don’t access the ‘legal and regulated’ porn on its site will instead have to visit ‘irresponsible’ porn sites, I can’t help but imagine the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, disguised as her grandmother and saying, “Oh you better not go out in the woods, there might be wolves out there!”

To clarify here, there is ‘legal and regulated’ content on that site; it’s just mixed in with some really bad stuff. I don’t want to shame anybody who wants to engage with sexual content in a healthy and ethical way, or even anybody who has used Pornhub – at this point, which websites aren’t actively bringing harm into the world? All I’m saying is, if you’re in the UK and you feel bad about losing access to Pornhub, there are better sites out there.

I also don’t doubt that loads of people will just reach for one of the best VPN services like NordVPN, Proton VPN, Surfshark, CyberGhost, or ExpressVPN so that they can keep looking at it anyway. I recommend you switch sites, though – websites like Cheex, PinkLabel, or Make Love Not Porn will give you the same kind of content without the risk that you might actually be watching a crime. But then, it’s still worth getting a VPN while you do it, otherwise you’ll have your internet service provider (and half a dozen other businesses) leering over your shoulder while you do, like the absolute creeps that they are. NordVPN would be our top recommendation.

Whatever people at large may think of Pornhub, I think we’ll inevitably see a greater uptick in VPN usage from this than from anything else in the last year. In a world where privacy and freedoms are being continuously eroded, that’s kind of depressing.