In recent weeks, Pornhub has gained increasing criticism surrounding its moderation of unethical content and negligence towards cases of trafficking or sexual assault on the site. This condemnation has boiled down into a number of movements aiming to get the site completely shutdown, with the main petition gaining over 1 million signatures.
However, as the red flags for unethical porn are notoriously hard to spot, this has left a lot of unanswered questions for the average consumer. How do you know which videos are exploitative? Where do you find ethically produced content? Pornhub say that they take these issues seriously, why are they potentially getting shutdown? We investigate.
With porn viewership skyrocketing during lockdown, actors, producers, and advocates have banded together to demand justice for those who have been exploited by major sites, such as Pornhub. But, what happens if these sites get shut down? We break down the best ways to ensure that the porn you are watching is ethical.
For those not up to date with Pornhub’s long history of problematic conduct, let’s do a little run down. A number of disturbing examples have reared their heads in the last few weeks, but there are three that stand above the rest. Let’s start with the site’s negligence towards content depicting child sexual assault, exploitation, or trafficking.
Website Traffickinghub.com has recently launched in order to spread awareness of Pornhub’s misconduct, provide a platform for victims to speak out, and to bring the site to justice. Also starting a contingent change.org petition to completely shut down the organisation, the site lists a number of horrifying cases which have either been ignored by the site or approached with extreme negligence.
Amongst countless others, the petition brings attention to one truly harrowing investigation. “In 2019 the Internet Watch Foundation stated that it alone had confirmed 118 cases of child rape and sexual abuse on Pornhub—half of the videos were Category A level abuse, which includes penetration and sadism,” Traffickinghub.com writes.
“The Sunday Times investigation into Pornhub reported finding ‘dozens’ of illegal child abuse videos within ‘minutes’, including abuse images of children as young as three years old. Some of the videos identified by the newspaper’s investigation ‘had 350,000 views and had been on the platform for more than three years.’ It went on to say ‘three of the worst clips still remained on the site 24 hours later.’”
At the time of writing, Traffickinghub.com advertise that over 1.5 million users have signed to hold Pornhub accountable.
The next example would be the mistreatment of former porn actor Mia Khalifa. Despite only working in the industry for three months back in 2014, Khalifa is still one of Pornhub’s most popular actresses, her videos boasting millions of views each. However, the violent backlash following a scene in which she was forced to wear a hijab deeply scarred the actress, contributing to her recent Post Traumatic Stress Disorder diagnosis.
“I said to [the director], ‘You’re going to get me fucking killed’. And not even a week later, the death threats were racking up. The entire Middle East was after me,” Khalifa revealed in an interview. “I could have [refused to wear it] but being 21 and moderately demure, I didn’t know that I could speak up and say that.”
