Last week, Pornhub made policy shifts intended to combat inappropriate and/or unlawful content uploads to the site. Then, in the same week, Visa, Mastercard and Discover terminated processing with the site.
This situation is developing rapidly, with changes coming day by day. As such, like much of the past week (er, the whole year), this article may be a little all over the place.
Here are some major takeaways:
- Pornhub updated its trust and safety policies, disabling free video downloads and non-verified uploads, and generally promising to improve content moderation
- Social pressure led Visa, MasterCard and Discover to cut ties with Pornhub, preventing their cards from being used on the site. This does NOT affect ad revenue earned on free videos
- All purchases on Pornhub and Modelhub have been temporarily disabled until further notice
- Pornhub deleted all content not uploaded by content partners or verified models, going from 13.5 million videos to (at the time of writing this post) around 3 million
What Happened?
Last Tuesday, on December 8, Pornhub announced a handful of major policy changes collectively intended to help prevent the dissemination of illegal content, effective immediately. (See link for all policy specifics.)
The announcement came just days after the New York Times published a scathing op-ed, “The Children of Pornhub,” which singled out the site for alleged enabling/profiting from illegal content exploiting underage persons. The op-ed author recommended Pornhub: Allow only verified users to post videos, prohibit download and increase moderation.
Jiz Lee voiced a common reaction echoing throughout the industry when they tweeted it was nice “to see PH finally acting like an actual, law-abiding porn site.” The statement also touched on the fact that community members had been voicing concerns for a long while — but no one really listened until the mainstream media got involved. (They also got a good reminder jab in there about Pornhub’s roots and the fact that the site itself was built via egregious piracy.)
A reminder that content creators have been demanding this for well over a decade… many of whom lost their biz no thanks to piracy. Glad to see PH finally acting like an actual, law-abiding porn site, not surprised it was due to pressure from the NYT article. 🙄
Listen to SW! https://t.co/L7VX0G6svk— Jiz Lee (@jizlee) December 8, 2020
Then, in the following days, Pornhub’s acceptance privileges with Visa, MasterCard and Discover were terminated, purchases were temporarily disabled on Pornhub and Modelhub and Pornhub deleted all unverified content.
And now, as Pornhub’s acceptance privileges — referring to the ability of a merchant to accept payment from a customer/cardholder via the card company — with the aforementioned payment processors have been terminated, customers cannot use those cards to make purchases on Pornhub.
So, to put it simply, all purchases on Pornhub and Modelhub are currently disabled until further notice.
The Aftermath (so far)
Pornhub boasts more than 100 billion video views per year. When Pornhub introduced its Model Partner Program, adult performers began to be able to earn money from views of what was previously simply pirated/stolen videos added to the site, as well as uploading their own content.
Even so, this didn’t undo the years and years of piracy by random uploaders, and it didn’t stop viewers from seeking out stolen porn. Creators would encourage viewers to only watch videos uploaded by profiles with the verified checkmark, but this could only reach a minuscule fraction of Pornhub’s traffic. So, earlier this week, Pornhub finally removed all content not uploaded by verified models or content partners — and Pornhub went from almost 14 million videos to just a few million.
(Of note — there are still random videos available from non-verified profiles and can still appear in search. It’s unclear why this is or what the company intends to do about it.)
Sex workers were asking for this from pornhub for months because we knew the backlash from religious extremists was imminent. If only they had listened to us back then. I wonder how things would be different now 🙃 https://t.co/NJu3CRitgM
— 💕Ginger Banks💕 (@gingerbanks1) December 14, 2020
Pornhub said in a recent blog post: “We continue our work to champion for sex workers rights” [sic]. Their recent moves have been unprecedented, but also extremely overdue. I hesitate to call the company a champion. Pornhub should absolutely not have waited this long to ban unverified uploads, go hard on moderation or put together transparency reports.
For years, sex workers have been asking Pornhub to prohibit unverified uploaders to reduce nonconsensual and otherwise illegal content and the loss of our own revenue to copyright infringement. Once, Pornhub’s algorithm recommended to me a video titled something like “Hurry before delete.” Sometimes, I would notice something like “OnlyFans leak” was a trending search on the site, and those leaked videos rack up the views easily because users knew they could find paywalled content (for free) on Pornhub.
Content rules and restrictions are in place on websites to make sure the company complies with applicable laws, as well as the regulations imposed by payment processors. See “Visa’s, Mastercard’s Hold Over Adult Content Creation” for more discussion of this topic.
In a recent Periscope stream, Amberly Rothfield said the credit card processors’ decision was made “because [Visa and MasterCard] feel that Mindgeek has not been holding their end of what’s called a Safe Harbor law… Safe Harbor means, I have a website… other people can upload stuff to it. I am not culpable for what those people upload… so long as I follow certain steps to try and ensure that people don’t upload stuff that’s illegal. But if I just leave the site derelict and allow people to do whatever they want, then… obviously [the uploading of unlawful content] can happen. The site didn’t really do the most over the years… to ensure that this type of stuff doesn’t happen.”
The effect is rippling throughout the adult industry. Clips4Sale, one of the oldest and largest clip sites, is reevaluating its content and policies in response to the growing external pressure and anti-porn sentiments. Numerous categories have been removed.
Pornhub’s compliance issues could have been addressed by only allowing ID- and age-verified creators to upload content. Of course, the company could do better verifying ID submissions. There was controversy earlier this year when a 15 year-old evidently was (mistakenly) verified as an adult model. Like other content hosting sites, Pornhub’s network uses AI to scan uploads for unlawful content. Even when it’s removed, it’s hard to completely prevent users or bots from re-uploading it.
Exodus Cry leader and TraffickingHub founder Laila Mickelwait has said that the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), an independent organization dedicated to fighting child exploitation online, found 118 instances of exploitative content involving minors on Pornhub during their investigation earlier this year. Facebook’s transparency report, by comparison, indicates more than 84,000,000 instances of similar content in the last three years, and that over 99% of that content was flagged and removed by Facebook’s own technology before it was reported by users.
That means several million pieces (between 0 and 1 percent of 84 million) of illegal content were not preemptively detected by Facebook and were visible on the site before they could remove them. We will see Pornhub’s own data in their first ever transparency report next year.
The Internet Watch Foundation investigated and confirmed 118 instances of child sexual abuse and child rape videos on Pornhub. Half of them were classified as category A, the worst kinds of abuse.https://t.co/OmmkCS3hHw #Traffickinghub pic.twitter.com/LOrJmuqFtX
— Laila Mickelwait (@LailaMickelwait) March 7, 2020
Much of the anti-trafficking effort — including organizations like Exodus Cry — is explicitly anti-porn and pro-censorship, as is evidenced by the fact that not all internet platforms are getting similar attention from them. And with anti-porn activity comes anti-sex worker activity as well.
The anti-trafficking effort seems to see sex workers as disgraceful and disposable. It does not matter is one does legal or criminalized labor, online or in-person, vanilla or fetish — they will continue attacking and de-platforming the entire industry under the guise of protecting victims. They do not seem to understand the struggles or nuances of sex work or abuse victims and frankly don’t care to.
Mindgeek is not likely to suffer financially from this, but sex workers are. Dismantling payment methods on Pornhub — or, in Visa’s case, anywhere under Mindgeek’s huge umbrella — only serves to reduce creators’ incomes as Pornhub scrambles to address years of built up issues. This, as we saw with FOSTA/SESTA, increases the need to generate income from other sources, which may lead some into situations they wouldn’t otherwise choose.
same, i don't use the site myself but i am absolutely horrified because everyone i know that DOES rely on the site, either for modelhub / clip income, or to drive organic traffic to their other sites, they can't afford this. losing this means homelessness. this is insane + scary. https://t.co/7m3CymSMvD
— Ashley Lake (@AshleyLatke) December 11, 2020
The crusade will not end with Pornhub. It seems like this crusade won’t rest until sex workers — and sex trafficking victims — are forced back into the shadows and the social web as we know it is destroyed. And victims of sexual exploitation won’t be one iota safer.
Pornhub did not respond to YNOT Cam’s request for commentary by the time of publication.
For updates on this situation, check Pornhub’s blog. You can contact Pornhub’s support team here or their Model Help on Twitter, though responses may take longer than usual.
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Alsanna James is a writer, spoonie, gamer and adult content creator. Half silent oracle, half professional sexpot, you can email her at alsanna@ynotcam.com and find her on Twitter at @AlsannaJames.
Screengrab by the author.
