The disgraced pornography website Pornhub, the largest in the world, has reportedly removed millions of videos from its platform, a momentous step sparked by months of increasing pressure.
Pornhub — long known by activists to be a platform for illegal content like child pornography and videos of coerced sexual activity as well as footage of assaults and rapes — took the noteworthy action following a New York Times piece condemning the site for being “infested” with illicit material.
Vice News first reported on the development Monday morning:
Pornhub said the videos will be removed pending verification and review, and the verification process will begin in the new year. Prior to this change, anyone could create an account on Pornhub and upload any video they wanted to, since the platform’s launch in 2007.
In a new statement, a spokesperson for Pornhub said the platform has “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.”
Prior to the Sunday purge, the smut site hosted around 13.5 million videos, a great deal of them from unverified user accounts. As of Monday morning, that number shrunk to somewhere between 4.7 and 7.2 million.
While this is a good step toward weeding out some of the illegal content hosted on Pornhub, it’s worth noting the platform’s “verification” process is hardly protective. All one needs to do to obtain a “verified” account is submit a selfie holding a piece of paper with his or her username written across it. Officials with the website have claimed the process will become more involved in the new year, though they have, so far, offered no specifics.
Laila Mickelwait, founder of the viral Traffickinghub petition calling for Pornhub to be stripped from the internet, praised Pornhub for scrubbing the videos from its website.
“Over 10 million videos infested with rape and trafficking are now gone,” she wrote Monday morning. “This is a good day for victims who have been begging Pornhub to remove their abuse.”
Mickelwait is still calling for the website to be shut down altogether.
In February, Mickelwait told Faithwire the porn site is “profiting off of those crime scenes,” referring to the illegal content hosted on Pornhub.
“I think it’s something that we’ve known all along, but right now, we have evidence of what is actually taking place,” she said.
The action taken by Pornhub over the weekend came after two credit card companies — Visa and Mastercard — terminated the use of their cards on the embattled website.
Mastercard terminated its relationship with Pornhub after its own investigation “over the past several days has confirmed violations of our standards prohibiting unlawful content on their site.”
Pornhub staffers tried to claim they were “exceptionally disappointed” in the credit card companies because their actions would negatively impact the livelihoods of “hundreds of thousands of models who rely on our platform.”
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who has been very critical of Pornhub, praised the pressure so many have kept on Pornhub.
“Amazing what public pressure will do,” he wrote Monday. “Now Congress should pass my legislation that would make Pornhub liable for all content that is non-consensual or produced through fraud or coercion.”