Pornhub has a serious problem
Women are continuously exploited for views on the platform
The porn industry takes a significant chunk of traffic in today’s internet-fueled world. In 2019 alone, Pornhub, the world’s biggest porn site recorded over 42 billion visits. This roughly translates to 115 million visits per day. In the same year, the site recorded over 6.83 million new videos uploaded by users. The COVID-19 situation only seems to be fueling the growing consumption levels. But even so, the industry is facing some serious allegations, specifically the likes of Pornhub.
Laila Mickelwait’s online petition is accusing Pornhub of profiting from rape and sexual abuse content. With over 1 million signatures, the petition is an ongoing effort to “to hold the largest porn website in the world accountable for enabling and profiting off of the mass sex trafficking, rape, and exploitation of women and minors”.
In February, the BBC reported Rose Kalemba’s tragic story where she was raped as a 14-year-old back in 2009. Just months after her incident, videos of her abuse ended up on Pornhub. “I sent Pornhub begging emails. I pleaded with them. I wrote, ‘Please, I’m a minor, this was assault, please take it down.’”
But even as Rose pleaded with the company the videos remained on the site. It took her posing herself as a lawyer and threatening legal action to get the videos taken down.
Last October, there was also an incident of a missing teenage girl from Florida. The 15-year-old has been missing for almost a year until her mother discovered sexually explicit content on Pornhub. A 30-year-old Christopher Johnson was arrested in connection with the incident, accused of statutory rape. Johnson was discovered after the police found the girl appearing in 58 videos, including on Pornhub.
The videos have been taken down following the report.
During the same year, Pornhub also removed the “Girls Do Porn” partner channel from the site. “Girls Do Porn” was accused of coercing women into making porn and then releasing them to porn sites, including Pornhub without the women’s consent.
But Pornhub only took down the channel just months after courts started hearing evidence against the channel in question. An investigation from Motherboard revealed that hundreds of those videos were still available, as recent as February 2020. The report further states that “Searching Google for Girls Do Porn videos leads users to Pornhub, where these videos are hosted against pre-roll and banner ads that Pornhub’s parent company Mindgeek profits from.”
Fortunately, the channel’s owners have been charged with sex trafficking. The 22 women who were defrauded by the channel have been awarded $13 million in damages by a US judge.
A platform for non-consensual content?
Unfortunately, non-consensual videos continue to thrive on MindGeek’s platforms, with victims left in dire situations.
Kate Isaacs started the #NotYourPorn campaign after a friend’s iCloud account got hacked. Videos of her and an ex-partner had been stolen and uploaded to Pornhub. According to Kate, it took weeks to take down the video. But by then there were already identical videos uploaded to the website, which continued on for months. “My friend fell into a state of depression at the knowledge that she had been reduced to a search term, her body packaged up as porn and sold for profit,” says Kate.
In an op-ed to The Guardian, Kate shares the horrific story of Catherine (not actual name). She discovered that her ex had secretly recorded of both of them having sex. Her ex had uploaded these videos to Pornhub. She went on to discover that there were “videos of what appeared to be other unsuspecting victims too, all promoted under “secret recording” categories on the website.”
In 2015, Pornhub implemented a submission page for the removal of non-consensual content. The move was supposed to make things easier for victims of revenge porn to report such videos. Sadly there has not been any shortage of revenge porn horror stories.
How is PornHub addressing these problems?
This begs the question, what is Pornhub doing about this? Following the report of Rose Kalemba’s case, Pornhub responding to the BBC mentioned that the incident took place back in 2009, several years before acquired by Mindgeek. “So we do not have information on how it was handled at that time”, the statement reads.
More interestingly, the company further stated how it is putting in safeguards and policies to combat these matters. One of these includes Vobile, “a state-of-the-art third-party fingerprinting software, which scans any new uploads for potential matches to unauthorized material and makes sure the original video doesn’t go back up on the platform.” Additionally, the company also utilizes Microsoft’s PhotoDNA technology. Essentially, this helps track down and remove known images of child exploitation.
But these solutions meant to prevent non-consensual videos from spreading have not fixed the problem. Even after the courts ruled in favor of the 22 women victimized by “Girls Do Porn”, the videos continued to exist on porn sites including Pornhub. This was in spite of the channel being removed, along with the website.
Furthermore, the same Motherboard investigation states that the content removal and fingerprinting systems can be circumvented with slight editing techniques. Essentially, this means that almost anyone could post non-consensual videos on to the platform. Furthermore, the investigation also points out the problematic nature of Vobile.
Asa Akira, a pornstar who also works with Pornhub recently responded to Exodus Cry’s video. She claimed the video to be “dangerous, misguiding, and highly irresponsible”. Akira further stated that “every single video & photo uploaded to Pornhub is reviewed manually by a large and extensive team of moderators — actual human beings — before being published.”
However, the above stories alone have proven otherwise. Furthermore, it is equally problematic considering how easy it is to sign up and become a verified member on Pornhub.
It should also be noted that this is not a unique problem to Pornhub. Content moderation itself is an ongoing problem with many online platforms today. But Pornhub is the biggest porn site in the world and its one of the top ten consumers of internet bandwidth.
The site recorded over 42 billion visits and 6.83 million video uploads in 2019 alone. Over 98,000 “amateur models” joined the platform in the same year. The sheer volume of traffic itself dictates the need for proper content moderation. If not, Pornhub may play host for more Rose Kalemba stories in the headlines.
Thereby, a large part of the responsibility falls on the likes of MindGeek.
Is MindGeek a monopoly?
As of now, MindGeek owns four of the top 10 porn aggregator “tube sites”. These sites facilitate widespread piracy of porn content made by performers and content producers. This leads to viewers opting to pirate porn instead of paying for the content.
Most websites respond to Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown requests. Pornhub itself has a detailed page that oversees takedown requests. But smaller studios and performers lack the resources to constantly file for copyright infringement. As adult film star Siri mentions, “force copyright holders to jump through hoops to get our content removed.”
Currently, MindGeek claims ownership to several top porn production studios including Digital Playground, Brazzers, Babes.com, and Mofos. Essentially, this makes it difficult for most stakeholders in the industry to avoid MindGeek.
However, Michael Willis, Communications Manager at MindGeek states that claims of Pornhub’s monopoly are an exaggeration of MindGeek’s assets. He points to public viewership data that MindGeek only owns seven of the top 100 adult sites of the world, and that both top two spots aren’t owned by MindGeek.
The monetization conundrum
So why let the content be pirated on its own sites? For MindGeek it is a matter of realizing income either way. With pirated content, the company would still stand to earn via ad revenues while cutting out the performers entirely. Although MindGeek disputes the claim that its tube sites are dependent on pirated content. According to Michael, MindGeek’s tube sites have three main sources,
- Licensing: Accounts for 25–55% of all content
- Content Partners: Accounts for 30–50% of all content
- User-Generated Content: Accounts for 15–25% of all content
Apart from the tube sites, MindGeek also has its “Pornhub Model Program” where over 100,000 independent models upload their self-made content. The company states this “program boasts some of the highest payouts for ad revenue across the entire industry, paying out nearly all of the ad revenue earned to content creators”.
Unfortunately, the result is still declining wages for porn performers. As MindGeek owns a significant stake in the industry, many performers are left with little choice. This forces performers to get into more extreme genres of porn or look for other work like prostitution.
It’s like we’re stuck between a rock and a hard place in a way, because if I want to shoot content then I kinda have to shoot for [Mindgeek] because that’s the company that books me because they own…almost…everything. — Tasha Reign, porn actress
This situation bleeds into the even bigger issue of enabling sex trafficking and exploitation of women and minors. Knowingly or unknowingly, MindGeek owns and monetizes many sites that thrive on pirated porn. Incidents like Rose Kalemba’s and the 22 victimized women from “Girls Do Porn” will only worsen as long as pirated content is monetized and MindGeek hold a monopolistic power.
Monopolies are never a good thing, both for industry and society at large. Porn is no different.
What we can do
To be clear, the idea is not to ban porn itself. But rather, to address the dangerous side of the industry; how it enables sex trafficking and exploitation of women and minors. Holding companies like MindGeek responsible is vital if one hopes the situation to get better by any means.
This brings us back to Laila and Exodus Cry’s petition. So far, the movement has gained over a million signatures. You can sign up here to show your support. Additionally, you can contribute to the #Traffickinghub campaign as well.
As users, choosing to watch porn is a personal choice. But what’s important is to support ethical porn instead of enabling the other. So next time you’re on Pornhub, you might want to think twice before offering your time and money to a problematic platform.
Update [20th July 2020]: Article has been updated to reflect response from Pornhub
