P0rnhub, a website owned by Canada-based company Mindgeek, has been forced to remove all content uploaded by unverified users from its platform in the wake of allegations that it hosts ch!ld abuse content.
The move comes after a recent New York Times report that P0rnhub hosts videos of child se.xual assaults and exploitation. Opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote that the site carried revenge p0rn0graphy and explicit video taken without consent of the participants.
The column, published December 4, asserted that among the 6.8 million new videos posted on the site each year, a majority ‘probably involve consenting @dults, but many depict ch!ld abuse and non-consensual vi0lence’.
‘[The] site is infested with r@pe videos,’ Kristof said in the article.
‘It monetizes child r@pes, revenge p0rn0graphy, spy c@m videos of w0men sh0wering, r@cist and mis0gynist content, and f00tage of w0men being asp.hyxiated in plastic bags.’
The accusation led credit card companies Visa and MasterCard to announce on Friday that they would no longer allow their cards to be used on the P0rnhub site.
MasterCard said its move was permanent, while Visa said it was suspending activity while it carries out its own investigation.
More than 10 million videos have been removed as part of the Canadian-owned p0rn0graphy site’s purge, according to figures on its homepage.
There were 13.5 million videos on P0rnhub on Sunday evening, as noted by Motherboard, but the total stood at just 2.9 million as of Tuesday lunchtime.
P0rnhub, the 10th most visited website in the world, said in a statement that it has ‘no tolerance’ for content that shows se.xual @buse of children and denied it knowingly allowed such images.
Any assertion that we allow CS AM [child se.xual ab.use material] is irresponsible and flagrantly untrue,’ P0rnhub said.
P0rnhub also said that two groups that have ‘spearheaded the campaign against our company’ – the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (formerly known as Morality in Media) and Exodus Cry/Traff!ckingHub.
‘These are organisations dedicated to abolishing p0rn0graphy, banning material they claim is obscene, and shutting down commercial s3x work,’ P0rnhub said in the blog post.
‘These are the same forces that have spent 50 years demonising Playboy, the National Endowment for the Arts, s3x education, LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, and even the American Library Association.
‘It is clear that P0rnhub is being targeted not because of our policies and how we compare to our peers, but because we are an adu.lt c0ntent platform.’
