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Johannesburg - Pornographic video website Pornhub has reported a sharp dip in traffic followed by a sharp increase in Hawaii, after residents were erroneously warned of an incoming ballistic missile.
On Saturday at 08:07 residents of the US state received an text message stating that a ballistics missile was on its way to the island and that they should seek safe shelter immediately.
This was a false alarm.
On Wednesday, Pornhub, one of the world's largest porn websites, said traffic to its sites from the area had decreased after the message was sent, then spiked after the all-clear was given.
“We can’t begin to imagine what would go through someone’s mind after reading that message, but based purely on the traffic numbers, it’s NOT to be watching porn,” the website said in a statement.
Pornhub said that traffic had dipped by a massive 77% in the region by 08:23.
“Based on real-time, per-minute pageviews, and compared to levels on the previous two Saturdays, our statisticians found a precipitous drop in traffic at 08:07 immediately after the warning was sent out,” Pornhub said.
“As residents were notified around 8:45 that the initial warning was sent in error, traffic began to return to normal and Hawaiians collectively breathed a sigh of relief. Those seeking further relief, headed back to Pornhub where pageviews surged +48% above typical levels at 09:01,” website added.
During its 2017 Year in Review, Pornhub said it had received about 28.5 billion site visits during the year, which equates to an average of 81 million people per day.
A graph depicting the change in traffic to the site (Pornhub)
“With 24.7 billion searches performed on the site this year, there was clearly a lot to find, as this translates to about 50 000 searches per minute and 800 searches per second. This is also incidentally the same number of hamburgers that McDonalds sells every second, which has nothing to do with us but somehow makes the numbers easier to digest?” the website said.
A total of 3 732 petabytes of data was streamed in 2017.
“That is enough data to fill the storage of all of the world’s iPhones currently in use. In fact, every 5 minutes Pornhub transmits more data than the entire contents of the New York Public library’s 50 million books,” the website said.
As AFP reported, the missle alert was a false alarm.
"I know firsthand that what happened [on Saturday] was totally unacceptable," Hawaiian Governor David Ige said of the alert, which was also broadcast on some local television stations.
"I'm sorry for that pain and confusion that anyone might have experienced."
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