Porn Blocker Company Finds .COM Trumps .XXX

SAN FRANCISCO — Despite the industry hoopla and drama associated with .XXX, the recently adopted top-level domain may not be making a dent in the online porn universe.

At least that's according to a report in The Guardian, that cites analysis by San Francisco-based "family safety" porn filtering company MetaCert that found the .com domain far surpasses sites with .XXX.

MetaCert claims it has been researching and developing its crawling and classification platform for the past six years, and has just spent the last year tweaking the crawler-based algorithms to construct the world's largest database of porn sites.

The company scanned 645 million web pages out of 3 billion and discovered more than 31 billion links to porn.  But MetaCert reported that the .XXX gTLD has had little or no effect on web real estate with just 0.56 percent of the sites that it blocks, while the original .com, .net, and .org domains account for 83.32, 8.13, and 0.9 percent of the relevant domains respectively, adding up to 92.35 percent.

And although the U.S. still houses most porn sites with 58.9 percent of the market, MetaCert found that The Netherlands ranked second with 27 percent  — not a real surprise to the adult industry —  with the country’s .nl suffix making up 2.41 percent of the total porn found by the company.

Following the U.S. and The Netherlands, are the U.K. with 7.4 percent, and Germany with 1.5 percent.

"Every day we are given a list of .XXX domains that are registered," Paul Walsh, chief executive of MetaCert, told the Guardian. "We upload the domains to our system and they are then automatically labeled and crawled. All other sites/TLDs to which they link and also contain porn, are then labeled and crawled for more sites."

MetaCert also found that there are approximately 5,000 URLs per porn site, and that on average each site links to another 10 sites.

Because the majority of porn suffixes are still .com, the MetaCert findings apparently supports .XXX critics who felt the new suffix would not make porn easier to block.

Walsh also said that domains like .XXX and new ICANN entries like .sex and .love won't be a serious problem for his porn filtering company.

"Given that the number of .XXX domains represents 0.56 percent of our data set and they have been on sale for a year — it's coming up to the anniversary this week — I would say that new TLDs will not pose any issues for two reasons. Firstly because I don't anticipate an upsurge in domains sales specifically for pornography and secondly, our system is constantly crawling, identifying and labeling new sites," Walsh said.

Related:  

Copyright © 2024 Adnet Media. All Rights Reserved. XBIZ is a trademark of Adnet Media.
Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission is prohibited.

More News

Justices Alito, Thomas Invoke Victorian-Era Morality Law, Raising Censorship Concerns

Several national publications reported this week on widespread concern among Free Speech advocates after U.S. Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas repeatedly invoked during a hearing the infamous segregation-era law the Comstock Act, which was the cornerstone of U.S. censorship of sexual material from the 1870s until the 1970s.

Skinfluential Management's FansFuel Acquires Fanwire

FansFuel has acquired creator account management tool Fanwire.

Nebraska AV Bill Moves Forward Despite Privacy, Free Speech Concerns

Nebraska’s unicameral Legislature has given first-round approval to LB 1092, the state’s version of the age verification bills being sponsored around the country by anti-porn religious conservative activists.

AEBN Celebrates 25th Anniversary

The Adult Entertainment Broadcast Network (AEBN) is celebrating its 25th year in business this week.

Performers in Meta Blacklisting Lawsuit Seek to Preserve Antitrust Claims

Adult Performance Artists Guild board officers Alana Evans, Kelly Pierce and Ruby have informed a California court that, although they want to drop their lawsuit claiming that Meta conspired with OnlyFans to blacklist rival premium fan platforms’ talent, they may still pursue antitrust claims in the future.

FSC, Co-Plaintiffs to Ask US Supreme Court to Review Constitutionality of Texas Age Verification Law

Free Speech Coalition (FSC) and its co-plaintiffs in the challenge to Texas’ controversial age verification law have petitioned the United States Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to stay its recent decision upholding the law, because they intend to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to review the law’s constitutionality.

FSC Vows to Fight Florida Age Verification Law

Free Speech Coalition (FSC) has issued a statement vowing to continue fighting Florida’s new age verification law, which was signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday as part of a comprehensive bill targeting minors’ use of social media.

Kansas Republican Aims to Create New Bureaucracy to 'Investigate' Porn Websites

Republican state legislators succeeded Monday in moving forward Kansas’ version of the age verification bills being sponsored around the country by anti-porn religious conservative activists, despite serious concerns raised by House Democrats about the cost of establishing a new bureaucracy tasked with investigating websites for pornographic content.

SK Intertainment Launches 'Skinfluential Management' Agency, FansFuel Joint Venture

Mr. Skin/Mr. Man parent company SK Intertainment has launched new creator agency Skinfluential Management, as well as a new joint venture with Showbizz Media's creator stats and affiliate marketing platform, FansFuel.

Industry Attorney, Free Speech Champion Clyde DeWitt Passes Away at 75

Noted industry attorney Clyde DeWitt passed away on Friday in Las Vegas at 75, according to friends and colleagues.

Show More