Pornhub Removes Over 10 Million Videos Amidst Public Scrutiny At Their Role In Proliferating Illegal Porn
Pornhub, arguably the most famous pornography website on the internet, took the drastic step of removing 10 million of the videos hosted on the platform uploaded by unverified partners this week, cutting their library to a fraction of the content they once boasted. Before Sunday's purge, the site had nearly 14 million videos; as of now, it boasts 2.9 million.
The trouble for Pornhub started after a December 4th New York Times report in which people allege that the site's mechanics allowed for graphic material of themselves to be uploaded to the site without their consent, downloaded, and uploaded elsewhere. Since the site's inception in 2007, Pornhub allowed any user with an account to upload content and download content. While there is a system in place to prevent reuploads, it is easily circumvented.
Furthermore, a lack of adequate moderation on Pornhub allowed genuinely illegal content such as pedophilic or non-consensual "spy-cam" content to slip through the cracks. Pornhub is owned by Mindgeek, which also owns other popular pornography sites such as Redtube and YouPorn, and there are 89 moderators who have to review every video to see if the content is genuinely illegal or fantasy fulfillment.
At the end of their report, New York Times writer Nicholas Kristoff suggested Pornhub increase moderation, prohibit downloads, and only allow uploads from verified users.
The report shook the pornography industry and led Visa and Mastercard, two companies that list Pornhub as an allowed vendor, to temporarily ban the use of their credit cards on their platform while they review the site. Visa also banned the use of its credit cards on all Mindgeek sites.
Pornhub has protested the scrutiny on them, saying it is part of an anti-pornography campaign that has been spearheaded by lobbies that have led sex panics of the past.
"It is clear that Pornhub is being targeted not because of our policies and how we compare to our peers, but because we are an adult content platform," they wrote. "These are the same forces that have spent 50 years demonizing Playboy, the National Endowment for the Arts, sex education, LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, and even the American Library Association. Today, it happens to be Pornhub."
The future looks rough for Pornhub at the moment unless some fundamental changes in site structure can be put in place to prevent illegal content in the future.