Pornhub just made a massive downsize in their videos in an effort to combat unsolicited content.
What We Know:
- The adult content platform has reported that the number of videos on Pornhub had dropped from 13.5 million on Sunday to about 4.7 million by Monday morning. The massive decrease in content was a result of the company eliminating all unverified user-generated content and blocking unverified accounts from posting videos.
- This action is believed to be a direct response to a recent New York Times piece by columnist Nicholas Kristof that cited Pornhub as a platform tainted with child sexual assault, sex trafficking, exploitation, revenge pornography, and explicit videos created without the consent of all participants involved. He also claims that the site allows users to download and save content, some of the underage girls, that can be spread around the internet. Pornhub has denied these allegations.
- As a result of the controversy, CBC News reports that credit card giants, Visa and MasterCard, have announced that they will no longer allow their credit cards to be used on Pornhub. While MasterCard said this termination is a permanent action, Visa has only suspended usage while performing its own investigation of the site.
- Pornhub has released a blog post on the issue stating, “Last week, we enacted the most comprehensive safeguards in user-generated platform history…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. […] It is clear that Pornhub is being targeted not because of our policies and how we compare to our peers, but because we are an adult content platform.”
As of now, it is unclear if the adult website will be making any other changes to its platform in response to this recent backlash.
