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Pornhub restricts uploads and disables downloads from the New York Times.
Pornhub has made substantial improvements to its advertising policy after a New York Times article outlining the harm incurred by non-consensual videos shared on the site frequently featuring underage children.
In today's release, Pornhub revealed a new series of rules aimed at keeping non-consensual videos off the site. Most notably, the website will no longer support uploads from anonymous people, a major change for a business that has based its platform on non-professional uploads. In the short term, this would limit uploads to content partners and participants of the Model Program of the Website, while Pornhub aims to launch a wider authentication mechanism for daily users in 2021.
After material has been uploaded, Pornhub would prohibit the uploading of information completely, no longer enabling users to access content from the web outside of paying downloads triggered by the company's checked method.
PornHub also vowed to improve the moderation of material already on the site by a recently formed "Red Team" devoted to proactively sweeping content already uploaded for potential violations and identifying any breakdowns in the moderation process. PornHub also pledged to launch its first accountability report in 2021, documenting the progress of the moderation from the preceding.
In its statement, Pornhub credits the improvements to the independent investigation conducted in April, aimed at banning all illicit content from the site. However the move comes just four days after Nicholas Kristof's searing New York Times article, which sparked a huge uproar against the organization and its policies. The study highlighted a number of underage girls who against their knowledge, featured in videos posted to Pornhub. And after the videos were flagged and destroyed, the downloaded versions began to circulate, frequently with extreme and troubling personal implications.
In the wake of Kristof's post, Pornhub's business partners were under increasing pressure to close relations with the platform—particularly payment processors such as Visa and Mastercard.
Dawn Hawkins, Senior Vice President and Executive Director of the National Centre for Sexual Abuse, spoke out in advocating for the platform to be shut down. Companies like Visa and MasterCard who are partners with Pornhub also benefit from child rape, Hawkins said in a statement after the piece was released.
Kristof seems slightly hopeful about the improvements on Twitter. A great deal depends on how responsibly Pornhub implements these measures, and my trust has not been earned at all, but they seem to be significant, he stated. A lot will also depend on whether past content, already on the site, is vetted or deleted.
Pornhub did not respond immediately to a request for feedback.
