According to Pornhub's seventh annual report, India has gone from ranking 3rd in terms of overall traffic among visitors to the site to ranking 15th due to a government ban on some porn sites.
“As Japan moved up, the United Kingdom moved down to third, while India moved down 12 positions from its previous third-place position in 2018 partly due to the Indian government blocking access to some porn sites.” Pornhub said.
According to the official version of the story provided by Indian authorities, the blocking of pornographic materials was aimed at combating the growth of sexual crimes.
Due to the ban, downloads of virtual private network (VPN) software increased by 405% in India in the 12 months since October 2018, according to the Global Mobile VPN report.
Despite the moratorium, India remains one of Pornhub's largest markets.