The platform deleted most of its content after an investigation showed that many were illegal. Some involved child abuse victims
News that makes you think. The Pornhub platform removed most of its content after an investigation showed that many of it was illegal or inappropriate and some even involved child abuse. The cleanup meant that the total content of the popular adult entertainment site, one of the largest in the world with over 100 million hits per day, went from 13 million content to just 4 million . Visa and MasterCard have cut ties with Pornhub and its affiliates, while the platform specified in its blog: «This means that every content on Pornhub now comes from verified users, a requirement that platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat and Twitter have yet to set up ».
Pornhub is owned by Luxembourg-based company Mindgeek, whose businesses are based in Canada, often referred to as the leader in online pornography as it also has YouPorn, Tube8, Xtube, SexTube and RedTube in its portfolio and is also a company of adult video production. According to reports from La Stampa , for the first time last August Mindgeek released its economic data, declaring a turnover of around 30 billion dollars. Mindgeek, and in particular Pornhub, has been the subject of protest and awareness campaigns for years, which have denounced the lack of control of the uploaded content and the presence of child pornography and revenge porn material.. It is no coincidence that one of the most criticized aspects of Pornhub is the presence of the “download” button, which allows you to download the contents and distribute them even once they have been banned from the original platform.
The problem of illegal content …
A recent New York Times investigation told the stories of some boys and girls, now of age, who have been victims of abuse and whose videos have ended up on Pornhub, following the complicated legal battle and personal vicissitudes. Stories that well exemplify the difficulties encountered when sensitive content ends up on the internet, even more so if against the will of those who are the protagonists: the cancellation is still a very difficult undertaking today and the opacity of many online platforms, not just Pornhub, continue to make victims. Prior to the recent deletion, Pornhub had also set up specific tools to track and remove such content, such as Vobile, a state-of-the-art third-party fingerprinting software, which scans any new uploads for potential matches with non-content material. authorized and makes sure that the original video is not restored.
… And the difficulty in blocking them
However, adult sites are certainly not the only ones where this kind of content spreads: another NYT investigation , dating back to last year, had in fact found that in 2018 something like 45 million photos had been exchanged on the internet and videos showing abused minors, more than double the previous year. In 1998, complaints for material of this type were no more than 1000, ten years later, in 2008, they had already risen to 100,000, while in 2014 they exceeded one million for the first time. In 2018 there were 18.4 million reports, thanks to which those 45 million photos and videos reached the competent authorities. A hallucinating number.
One of the causes of the exponential increase of this content is to be found in the advancement of new technologies , which have moved the exchange of this type of material to simple and accessible platforms, such as Facebook Messenger, Tumblr, Bing, WhatsApp or Dropbox. According to the report, 12 million reports occurred on Messenger alone in 2018.
Then there is the inadequacy of the response of the tech greats , who still do little and badly to track and block this content: there are databases that help in the identification of child pornography content, for example, but there isn’t any. one for revenge porn . In the past three years, Facebook has reported 84 million cases of child sexual abuse. During the same period, the Internet Watch Foundation, an independent association, reported 118 incidents on Pornhub. For this reason, Pornhub, despite acknowledging the gravity of the allegations, claims to have been targeted as a company dedicated to adult entertainment. A legitimate defense if you look at the data:the problem is much bigger than just one porn site
