Unverified content has been removed from Pornhub after reports of abuse were made.
Pornhub announced this week that it had removed millions of user-uploaded videos from its site. The move comes after a New York Times opinion piece stated that the “site is infested with rape videos.” The Canuck-born site calls it “the most comprehensive safeguards in user-generated platform history.”
Last week, Pornhub announced that only verified users would be able to upload content. Motherboard reports that the service has now halted all videos that aren’t uploaded by current partners or members of the Model program. Pornhub will re-evaluate all of the content that has been put on hold at the beginning of the next year.
As stated in a statement, this new model is the most stringent that a content platform has ever implemented. According to Pornhub, “This means that every piece of Pornhub content is from verified uploaders,” it states, “a requirement that platforms like Facebook and Instagram have yet to institute.”
Many first-person accounts of graphic exploitation were published by the Times. Search engines, banks, and credit card companies should not support a company that monetizes sexual assaults on children or unconscious women, Nicholas Kristof argued in a column published this week. “American Express, Mastercard, and Visa can suspend their cooperation with Pornhub if PayPal can.”
Eventually, major credit card companies joined in. Discover, Mastercard, and Visa have all announced that they will no longer be affiliated with the service. Pornhub was undoubtedly compelled to take even more drastic measures as a result of this new impetus.
More than 100 instances of child sexual abuse have been found on the site, according to the Internet Watch Foundation. It’s called “118 too many” by the service. In its report, the service argued that it had been singled out because of its focus on adult material.
In a statement, Pornhub explains that “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.” These are the same forces that have spent the last half-century demonizing everything from Playboy to LGBTQ rights, women’s equality, and the National Endowment for the Arts. “Pornhub” is the name of the game today.
