Topline
Pornhub, one of the most popular adult video-streaming websites, said it would make significant changes Tuesday to how it operates after a New York Times column published over the weekend raised questions about the site hosting and monetizing videos of child abuse and sexual assault, which led credit card companies Mastercard and Visa to say they would examine their relationships with the platform.
Key Facts
Pornhub said in a statement it will only allow verified users to upload content from now on, ban users from downloading most clips on the site and expand its content moderation efforts.
The porn giant will continue its partnerships with nonprofit organizations like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to flag potentially illegal content, as well as release transparency reports of its content moderation results next year and undergo an independent review.
The New York Times column highlighted stories of multiple underaged girls who said they had explicit videos of them posted onto the platform without their consent and struggled to have the clips taken down.
“Pornhub became my trafficker,” one woman told the New York Times, saying videos of her being abused as a child are still being reuploaded by users to the site: “I’m still getting sold, even though I’m five years out of that life,” she added.
The announcement comes after major credit card companies Visa and Mastercard both said this week they would cut ties with Mindgeek, Pornhub’s parent company, if the allegations printed in the column were found to be true by their respective investigations.
Key Background
According to Pornhub, the website received 42 billion visits last year, an average of 115 million visits per day. User-uploaded videos, which will now be banned, have been a major source of content for the website. According to Pornhub, more than 6.83 million videos were uploaded by users on to the site in 2019 alone. “To put this in perspective–if you strung all of 2019’s new video content together and started watching them way back in 1850, you’d still be watching them today,” a statement from Pornhub reads.
Further Reading
The Children of Pornhub (The New York Times)
