Porrnhub has officially purged its platform of all unverified content.
Reports of how many videos remain on the service are still coming in, but as of today, Hypebeast reports that there are as low as 4.7 million videos remaining on the website. It previously housed an archive of 13.5 million.
The official amount of content that has been removed has yet to be verified, but all deleted videos have been replaced with a message that says the video has "been flagged for verification in accordance with our trust and safety policy."
The move comes after major allegations, via an exposé by theNew York Times, that a portion of Pornhub's user-uploaded videos contain illegal content, such as child sexual abuse and non-consented activity. After this discovery, credit card companies Visa, Discover, and Mastercard announced that they would be terminating the use of customers' cards at the website.
The latest on our commitment to trust and safety.https://t.co/9Rf7I33wbC pic.twitter.com/xsmPg23zOq
— Pornhub ARIA (@Pornhub) December 14, 2020
In response to these kickbacks, Pornhub made the decision to get rid of unverified content.
In a blog post on the website, Pornhub outlined its steps to making things right, also noting that it believes it is being unfairly targeted.
"As part of our policy to ban unverified uploaders, we have now also suspended all previously uploaded content that was not created by content partners or members of the Model Program," the post reads. "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," it continues before naming the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (formerly known as Morality in Media) and Exodus Cry/ TraffickingHub as the organizations it believes to be targeting them.
'These are organizations dedicated to abolishing pornography, banning material they claim is obscene, and shutting down commercial sex work," the statement continues. "These are the same forces that have spent 50 years demonizing Playboy, the National Endowment for the Arts, sex education, LGBTQ rights, women's rights, and even the American Library Association. Today, it happens to be Pornhub."
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