Everyone knows that the world’s most popular online activity is watching pixellated strangers having implausible sex. But the thoughtful folks at ExtremeTech have done some digging to unearth a few hard numbers – and they are pretty impressive, or depressing, depending on your view of humanity.
First of all, reports Sebastian Anthony, “Xvideos, the largest porn site on the web with 4.4 billion page views per month, is three times the size of CNN or ESPN, and twice the size of Reddit.” And while the average visitor to your typical news site spends only a few minutes there, porn visitors linger for four or five times as long. YouPorn, another popular if unimaginatively-titled site, serves up 100 million page views every day. All told, Anthony estimates that “porn makes up 30% of the total data transferred across the internet.” Kinda makes you feel better about piano-playing cat videos.