With more time in hand and premium content available for free, Indians seem to be getting not enough of Pornhub as the popular adult entertainment site has seen massive rise in traffic since the start of the 21-day lockdown period in the country.
Compared to traffic to the site from India on an average day, the growth spiked to over 55 per cent on the first day of the lockdown and March 27 recorded the peak in growth in traffic that month at 95 per cent, data released by Pornhub last week showed. In fact, traffic to the site started increasing considerably from March 8.
However, since Pornhub and other adult entertainment portals are banned in India, the users are talking other online routes like virtual private networks (VPNs) to access such websites.
What also contributed to the massive rise in traffic is that Pornhub made its premium content free worldwide apparently to encourage people to stay at home and flatten the coronavirus curve.
"Stay home and help flatten the curve! Since COVID-19 continues to impact us all, Pornhub has decided to extend Free Pornhub Premium worldwide until April 23rd. So enjoy, stay home, and stay safe," the adult entertainment website said on March 24.
However, it will be unfair to say that only Indians showed increased interest in poronographic content during this critical time when the COVID-19 pandemic is spreading fast.
Pornhub saw a spike in traffic from other countries as well, including the US, Italy and Spain -- some of the countries hit hardest by the pandemic.
Worldwide, over 1,280,000 people have got infected by COVID-19, while more than 70,000 have already died.
Amid the coronavirus lockdown, there were reports that India had ‘unofficially lifted the porn ban’ to keep people inside during the 21-day lockdown.
A report on IBTimes.com claimed that several porn sites were opening during the lockdown. While Pornhub.com and xvideos.com were inaccessible, the report stated that pornhub.org was accessible.
However, when we checked all the three aforementioned sites were inaccessible.
The website staid: “Your requested URL has been blocked as per the directions received from Department of Telecommunications, Government of India. Please contact administrator for more information.” However, Pornhubselect appeared to be working as was ‘xvideos’ in other languages such as ‘xvideos.es’.
Interestingly, xHamster was also available at the time of writing.
In 2018, India had banned hundreds of porn websites which coincided with the downloads of VPNs. While many companies had launched mirror URLs, they were blocked on major providers like Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio.
