Top Internet purveyor of pornography, Pornhub, has announced that they plan to make “huge changes” to their policies after a New York Times report exposed the extremely common occurrence of videos on the site that feature rape, child abuse, and child-trafficking victims.
The site, which is based in Canada, averages around 3.5 billion monthly visits, which is more than Netflix, Amazon, or Yahoo. They’re saying users will now be blocked from downloading most content, which had been previously available for download, as part of the planned overhaul.
The company also says that only verified users will be permitted to upload videos and content. They also added that they plan to develop relationships with nonprofit organizations that will work to flag inappropriate or illegal content.
“At Pornhub, nothing is more important than the safety of our community,” a recent statement from the company read. “Our core values such as inclusivity, freedom of expression and privacy are only possible when our platform is trusted by our users. This is why we have always been committed to eliminating illegal content, including non-consensual material and child sexual abuse material. Every online platform has the moral responsibility to join this fight, and it requires collective action and constant vigilance.”
It’s difficult to see how “inclusivity” has anything at all to do with preventing the criminal sexual exploitation of women and children, but one doesn’t expect a particularly strong moral backbone from the operators of a site that rakes in millions entirely from the monetization of sexual objectification.
So it’s no surprise that not everyone is convinced of Pornhub’s good intentions, including the National Center on Sexual Exploitation.
“Pornhub cannot be trusted: It has profited for years from rape, child sexual abuse material, sex trafficking, and revenge pornography,” said the center’s executive director, Dawn Hawkins.
“The New York Times exposed Pornhub for what it is: a profiteer of rape. Any number of ‘improvements’ will not change that fact,” she added.
Hawkins went on to call the company’s executives “liars” for asserting that safety does matter to them. She cited the fact that numerous sexual abuse survivors have made requests to the site to remove disturbing content that shows them being raped or abused–but that these requests have been ignored.
The New York Times accounts the gut-wrenching story of a mother of a missing child who would go on to find dozens of videos depicting her daughter’s abuse on Pornhub.
There was also the teenager who informed police of footage showing a classmate being sexually abused on the site. The Times pointed out that while the perpetrators of the sex crimes were caught and prosecuted, no charges were ever brought against Pornhub.
GOP Congress members have asked the Department of Justice to make an official investigation into the site, which is owned by Mindgeek.
It’s no secret that pornography has long been blamed for fueling the sex trafficking trade. While progressives on the left want to raise your taxes to give reparations to people who have never been enslaved, real-life victims of the modern slave trade not only go unnoticed, those who profit off their exploitation largely go unpunished.
It’s time for this to change.
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