5 ms·

Porn is probably 50% of the internet, the other 40% is online streaming (netflix, amazon video, youtube etc) the last 10% is other traffic. Pretty much all of

Porn is probably 50% of the internet, the other 40% is online streaming (netflix, amazon video, youtube etc) the last 10% is other traffic. Pretty much all of the big telcos, all of the networking equipment makers etc - are made out of porn money at the end of it all.

ma2rten 6y ago
I would have guessed that the average person spends more time watching non-porn movies than porn and that non-porn streaming takes more bandwidth because it tends to be higher quality.
LordDragonfang 6y ago
According to Forbes [1], it's much less: > In 2010, out of the million most popular (most trafficked) websites in the world, 42,337 were sex-related sites. That's about 4% of sites. > From July 2009 to July 2010, about 13% of Web searches were for erotic content. Granted, that's number of sites and not content/traffic, but streaming has exploded in the past decade, so I doubt it's gone up. They also specifically call out the "50%" claim, and say it's an outdated one from the early days of the web, from when it was more niche and had a more male-dominated culture. Side note, the most interesting part of the article, and relevant here: > So what’s the most popular porn site on the planet? > The single most popular adult site in the world is LiveJasmin.com, a webcam site which gets around 32 million visitors a month, or almost 2.5% of all Internet users! > You’re telling me a webcam site is more popular than PornHub? But once again, ten-year-old data. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/julieruvolo/2011/09/07/how-much-of-the-internet-is-actually-for-porn/?sh=53c9771b5d16 https://www.forbes.com/sites/julieruvolo/2011/09/07/how-much...
- noizejoy 6y ago
  But what are numbers for network traffic (percentage of petabytes transmitted)?
  - walrus01 6y ago
    From an ISP perspective with a lot of singlehomed business and residential users, the vast majority of traffic by volume in Gbps is not immediately obvious as porno. It's normal looking traffic coming from the major CDNs, youtube, netflix, amazon, hulu, etc. And then from the big cloud providers (amazon aws, google/gcp, azure, etc) For a small ISP that's purely buying transit, once they establish a presence at a major IX point and can peer with some huge content sources, it'll drop their transit bill in half almost immediately. Then you do have porno content coming from huge hosting companies/entities such as Choopa. https://www.peeringdb.com/net/813 https://www.peeringdb.com/net/813 It's actually pretty rare to peer directly with a porn host, if I had to guess at it, I'd say most of the traffic is coming in via transits such as hurricane, cogent, telia, ntt, etc. one note, ISP traffic isn't measured in disk space measurements like terabytes or petabytes, it's measured in present tense Mbps or Gbps.
    - noizejoy 6y ago
      Sounds to me like it’s quite difficult to determine traffic percentages then. - Which in turn makes any discussion of “porn is x% of the Internet” kind of impossible to have in a realistic way.
      - walrus01 6y ago
        Yes and no. When during peak evening traffic, by netflow analysis and sheer volume in Gbps on discrete peering connections, I can confidently say that 40%+ of the entire aggregate incoming traffic is netflix, youtube and amazon video, therefore that's 40% at minimum which for certain is not porn.
  - LordDragonfang 6y ago
    I tried specifically to find those numbers, but finally gave up since the most I could find was (barely) educated guessing on sites like quora. If anyone can find those numbers, I'd love to see it.
- throwaway_45 6y ago
  35% of internet traffic is porn https://www.webroot.com/us/en/resources/tips-articles/internet-pornography-by-the-numbers https://www.webroot.com/us/en/resources/tips-articles/intern...
  - bigbubba 6y ago
    That says 35% of downloads, which might mean as you say. But it may also be using the word as it is commonly used by the general public; referring specifically to browsers placing a file in the user's '~/Downloads' directory. That page doesn't seem to clarify. It's unclear if 'streaming' is counted as 'downloading.'
    - throwaway_45 6y ago
      I guess you are right, but to me even streaming videos are downloaded to your computer. I also have seen the 30% number of other sites so I thought it looked reasonable.
  - LordDragonfang 6y ago
    That's a web blocking software using inflated, completely unsourced numbers to sell a product. The Forbes article I linked called out this exact thing: >Web filtering companies used to always release competing figures on the number of porn sites they blocked, but these numbers were almost certainly boosted to get sensationalist headlines and to seem competitive with other filtering companies that filtered "less" adult sites. For example, N2H2 claimed there were 260 millionpornsites (ed. correction: pages) --haha, one for every American citizen! :) Conservative groups are always coming up with porn figures that are crazy high, too, especially with regard to children's exposure to porn.
- barkingcat 6y ago
  Yah .. I wouldn't trust Forbes re: porn on the internet. Ask your 18 year old son and he'll tell you the truth.

ma2rten 6y ago

I would have guessed that the average person spends more time watching non-porn movies than porn and that non-porn streaming takes more bandwidth because it tends to be higher quality.

LordDragonfang 6y ago

According to Forbes [1], it's much less: > In 2010, out of the million most popular (most trafficked) websites in the world, 42,337 were sex-related sites. That's about 4% of sites. > From July 2009 to July 2010, about 13% of Web searches were for erotic content. Granted, that's number of sites and not content/traffic, but streaming has exploded in the past decade, so I doubt it's gone up. They also specifically call out the "50%" claim, and say it's an outdated one from the early days of the web, from when it was more niche and had a more male-dominated culture. Side note, the most interesting part of the article, and relevant here: > So what’s the most popular porn site on the planet? > The single most popular adult site in the world is LiveJasmin.com, a webcam site which gets around 32 million visitors a month, or almost 2.5% of all Internet users! > You’re telling me a webcam site is more popular than PornHub? But once again, ten-year-old data. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/julieruvolo/2011/09/07/how-much-of-the-internet-is-actually-for-porn/?sh=53c9771b5d16 https://www.forbes.com/sites/julieruvolo/2011/09/07/how-much...

noizejoy 6y ago
But what are numbers for network traffic (percentage of petabytes transmitted)?
- walrus01 6y ago
  From an ISP perspective with a lot of singlehomed business and residential users, the vast majority of traffic by volume in Gbps is not immediately obvious as porno. It's normal looking traffic coming from the major CDNs, youtube, netflix, amazon, hulu, etc. And then from the big cloud providers (amazon aws, google/gcp, azure, etc) For a small ISP that's purely buying transit, once they establish a presence at a major IX point and can peer with some huge content sources, it'll drop their transit bill in half almost immediately. Then you do have porno content coming from huge hosting companies/entities such as Choopa. https://www.peeringdb.com/net/813 https://www.peeringdb.com/net/813 It's actually pretty rare to peer directly with a porn host, if I had to guess at it, I'd say most of the traffic is coming in via transits such as hurricane, cogent, telia, ntt, etc. one note, ISP traffic isn't measured in disk space measurements like terabytes or petabytes, it's measured in present tense Mbps or Gbps.
  - noizejoy 6y ago
    Sounds to me like it’s quite difficult to determine traffic percentages then. - Which in turn makes any discussion of “porn is x% of the Internet” kind of impossible to have in a realistic way.
    - walrus01 6y ago
      Yes and no. When during peak evening traffic, by netflow analysis and sheer volume in Gbps on discrete peering connections, I can confidently say that 40%+ of the entire aggregate incoming traffic is netflix, youtube and amazon video, therefore that's 40% at minimum which for certain is not porn.
- LordDragonfang 6y ago
  I tried specifically to find those numbers, but finally gave up since the most I could find was (barely) educated guessing on sites like quora. If anyone can find those numbers, I'd love to see it.
throwaway_45 6y ago
35% of internet traffic is porn https://www.webroot.com/us/en/resources/tips-articles/internet-pornography-by-the-numbers https://www.webroot.com/us/en/resources/tips-articles/intern...
- bigbubba 6y ago
  That says 35% of downloads, which might mean as you say. But it may also be using the word as it is commonly used by the general public; referring specifically to browsers placing a file in the user's '~/Downloads' directory. That page doesn't seem to clarify. It's unclear if 'streaming' is counted as 'downloading.'
  - throwaway_45 6y ago
    I guess you are right, but to me even streaming videos are downloaded to your computer. I also have seen the 30% number of other sites so I thought it looked reasonable.
- LordDragonfang 6y ago
  That's a web blocking software using inflated, completely unsourced numbers to sell a product. The Forbes article I linked called out this exact thing: >Web filtering companies used to always release competing figures on the number of porn sites they blocked, but these numbers were almost certainly boosted to get sensationalist headlines and to seem competitive with other filtering companies that filtered "less" adult sites. For example, N2H2 claimed there were 260 millionpornsites (ed. correction: pages) --haha, one for every American citizen! :) Conservative groups are always coming up with porn figures that are crazy high, too, especially with regard to children's exposure to porn.
barkingcat 6y ago
Yah .. I wouldn't trust Forbes re: porn on the internet. Ask your 18 year old son and he'll tell you the truth.