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Govt effort to "discourage" pornography in reverse gear: India a top country with high porn viewership

Top nations attracting porn sites
By Jag Jivan* 
Adult website Pornhub, one of the many pornographic sites, which were sought to be banned by the Government of India in August 2015 through an order of the Department of Telecom, has claimed that India has the world’s third largest population viewing pornography, next only to the United States and the United Kingdom.
The Indian ban ordered the service providers to block access to 857 websites hosting pornographic content. But, as is known, the Government of India could predict the scale and level of outrage that the order unleashed, as influential sections of Indians, belonging to mainly Internet-friendly middle classes, heaped criticism and scorn on the move. The ban had to be withdrawn.
In its controversial annual report for 2015, the "popular" site says, “The United States remains at the top, with American visitors accounting for about 41% of our overall traffic, followed by the United Kingdom in at second place. India knocks Canada out of third place with a one rank position gain” over the last year.
Pointing towards the the worldwide average length for a visit to the Pornhub site, the report says, it “was 9 minutes and 16 seconds”, adding, “Over the course of 2015, this figure extended by 4 seconds, with the average session duration now clocking in at 9:20.”
It adds, “The countries with the lengthiest average visit durations also each added a few seconds their times. The Philippines remain in the top spot with visits lasting a leisurely 12:45 on average, which is 5 seconds longer than last year. The US added 11 seconds to their average time on site. India added over a minute to their now 9:30 average since last year”, the report states.
Time spent per visit on porn site: Top 10 countries
Comments the report, “The world watched a lot of porn this year. In 2015 alone, we streamed 75GB of data a second, which translates to enough porn to fill the storage in around 175 million 16GB iPhones”, though adding, “This indicates that most people are not ‘addicted’ in a way that they spend all of their time on porn, or doing little else with their time.”
It further states, “eMarketer reports that we are now spending an average of 5.6 hours online per day, up from 5.3 in 2014. The countries with the lengthiest average visit durations also each added a few seconds their times.”
The report contends that the top searches in India for the Pornhub site included Indian bhabhi, Indian actress, Indian wife, Indian college, Indian aunty, desi and Indian teen, among others. However, it notes some “interesting changes” over the last one year.
“While the vast majority of top, gaining and relative searches here contain ‘Indian,’ search terms ‘Japanese’ and ‘Indonesia’ both made some impressive leaps to get into the top 10 list with 14 and 47 place jumps respectively”, the report says, adding, Bollywood actress Sunny Leone was “the top searched” porn star.
Pointing towards what adversely affects port traffic, the report says, “Traffic dips by about 39% on Christmas Eve worldwide, with the biggest drops having taken place in France and Belgium. Smaller but still significant drops are noted on Christmas Day and Easter Sunday.”
It interestingly adds, “Romania’s May Day celebrations brings traffic down by 18% while the beginning of Ramadan caused traffic to come down by 15% in India. Argentina‘s National Day on October 12th and Day of respect for cultural diversity on May 25th each brought traffic 14% below average in the country.”
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*Freelance writer

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