December 17, 2020 | The Biz

Massive changes at Pornhub

It has been a dramatic two weeks for Pornhub, the well-known adult content streamer run by porn giant MindGeek, which operates hundreds of websites, including Men.com and SeanCody.com. 

Following a December 4 editorial by Nicholas Kristofin in the New York Times, the company was put on the defensive. Kristofin accused Pornhub of failing to effectively moderate and ban videos of abuse, rape and sex trafficking.

Both Visa and Mastercard launched investigations into their relationships with the company, and eventually decided that their cards would no longer be accepted on the platform. Visa also stopped providing service for Men.com and SeanCody.com.

The company, which has offices in Montreal, has even been taken to task by the Canadian government. Two executives were asked to account for the recent allegations before an Ottawa parliamentary committee. The company is expected to be asked about the issue, and to explain how it will make reparations to victims.

"I would... like to ask them how they expect to remedy the harm caused to individuals who never provided their consent for images and videos to be shared," MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith revealed.

Pornhub has not confirmed if it will comply with the request. 

However, the company did establish new Terms of Service on the site. Only legitimately verified users can upload new content going forward -- and 10 million videos that had been uploaded by unverified users have been deleted. The company has also removed the abililty to download any videos. 

Pornhub explained the changes in a press release: "As part of our policy to ban unverified uploaders, we have now also suspended all previously uploaded content that was not created by content partners or members of the Model Program. This means every piece of Pornhub content is from verified uploaders, a requirement that platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat and Twitter have yet to institute."

The company took an extra swipe at Facebook, arguing they are just as guilty of poor moderation, and less aggressive in tackling the issue.

"Over the last three years, Facebook self-reported 84 million instances of child sexual abuse material. During that same period, the independent, third-party Internet Watch Foundation reported 118 incidents on Pornhub. That is still 118 too many, which is why we are committed to taking every necessary action," the company argued.

All platforms have a lot of work to do in making sure questionable content stays off their sites; hopefully, they will all work harder to police themselves going forward.