PornHub Purges Unverified User Content Amid Allegations It Hosts Child Rape Videos

The Canadian-owned adult video website belatedly took the action following years of pressure from anti-child porn groups. Mastercard and Visa last week, halted payments on the website amid the allegations.

According to figures on its homepage, Pornhub has removed from the platform, all videos uploaded by unverified users, reducing its content which stood at 13.5 million videos last Sunday down to just 2.9 million as of midday, Tuesday.

The adult video giant has also removed all previously uploaded content that was not created by official content partners or users signed up to its Model Program initiative.

"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," Pornhub said in a blog post on Monday. "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."

The adult video giant promised to implement a verification process in 2021. Since its launch in 2007, Pornhub had allowed any user that signed up to upload videos.

Pornhub has customers as high profile as Hunter Biden, the corrupt son of former United States vice president and Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Pornhub in their blog post attacked the two main activist groups that have been raising awareness about the atrocious and illegal content on the adult video website.

The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (formerly known as Morality in Media) and Exodus Cry/TraffickingHub have for years, been spearheading the effort to hold Pornhub accountable.

"These are organisations dedicated to abolishing pornography, banning material they claim is obscene, and shutting down commercial sex work," Pornhub said in the blog post.

Pornhub did not address in the blog post how these two groups are related to Nicholas Kristof's report in the New York Times.

The column, published December 4, asserted that among the 6.8 million new videos posted on the site each year, "many depict child abuse and non-consensual violence."

"[The] site is infested with rape videos," Kristof said in the article. "It monetises child rapes, revenge pornography, spy cam videos of women showering, racist and misogynist content, and footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags."

Reacting on Fox News Tuesday night, Laila Mickelwait founder of the TraffickingHub movement called for justice for the victims, and for criminal prosecution of the adult video giant.

"Pornhub has known that there's been child rape monetized on their site for over a decade now," Mickelwait said. "They've only done this big change because they had global spotlight on them. They've been financially strangled by the credit card companies who pulled their services from the company, and fear prosecution."

Pornhub, launched by four Canadian college friends dubbed "the kings of smut," is the 10th most visited website in the world, according to figures from web analytics company SimilarWeb.

The adult video website's parent company MindGeek, based in Montreal Canada, also owns other adult video portals, including YouPorn and RedTube.