As the coronavirus or COVID-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc on the world, more and more people are turning to PornHub to entertain themselves as restaurants, bars, cinemas and offices across the globe shut down to contain the spread of COVID-19.
On Wednesday, PornHub released statistics detailing the global viewing trends of its users over the last couple of weeks as people started practicing social distancing to combat the deadly virus around the world.
PornHub traffic surges amid coronavirus outbreak
The website revealed that worldwide traffic to the site had increased 11.6 percent with people isolating themselves and working from home due to the outbreak. On a normal day, Pornhub has roughly 120 million visitors, but with the surge in traffic, almost 134 million people are tuning in on a daily basis.
Free Premium subscription for Italy, Spain, and France
Some of this traffic is a result of the website's free access to its Premium subscriptions to users in Italy, France and Spain, which have been largely affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Earlier this week, the adult website announced on its blog that users in Italy, France and Spain will be able to watch PornHub Premium content without entering their credit card details for a month.
On March 12, the website offered free Premium content for all of Italy, resulting in a massive 57 percent change in traffic boom. On March 16, Pornhub did the same for users in France and Spain and saw similar above-average increases of 38.2 percent and 61.3 percent, respectively.
Netflix lowers video quality in Europe for 30 days
Netflix recently announced that it would be lowering the video quality of its content in Europe over the next month in order to prevent the internet from crashing due to the sudden explosion of traffic caused by the coronavirus outbreak.
After being urged by EU Commissioner Thierry Breton to reduce streaming quality in Europe from high definition (HD) to standard definition (SD) in a bid to lower the burden on internet service providers overwhelmed by the unprecedented surge in web traffic amid the coronavirus pandemic, Netflix announced on Thursday that it would comply with the request.
With countries forced to enforce lockdowns, hundreds of millions are forced to isolate themselves within the confines of their homes. This has led to a tremendous increase in traffic on video streaming platforms, whether it's Netflix or PornHub, which in turn, has caused a huge strain on the internet.
If the surge in traffic on the adult website continues, PornHub might also be forced to reduce its video streaming quality or restrict usage in order to prevent the internet from crashing, which would make fighting the coronavirus outbreak much more difficult for users across the globe.
