QotD: “The Truth About Pornhub”

You have probably never heard of MindGeek, the huge tech company that owns Pornhub: the world’s most popular porn site. Pornhub, which has 42 billion visits per year, is currently under fire for its apparent lack of safeguarding checks. Six million videos a year are posted on the site; some, according to anti-porn campaigners, depicting rape and sexual abuse. The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has found more than 100 cases of child abuse on the site between 2017 and 2019.

Inspired by the Traffickinghub petition which recently hit two million signatures, campaigners are taking the fight against pornography directly to MindGeek’s doorstep. Today, a demonstration, with facemasks and social distancing, of course, is taking place outside its UK HQ in Uxbridge, Greater London, in the hope that this public display will put pressure on the Government to expedite the Online Harms Regulation and hold porn sites accountable for their complicity in sexual exploitation.

MindGeek is the parent company to almost 100 websites that collectively consume more bandwidth than Facebook, Twitter and Amazon combined. It has become the largest multinational porn conglomerate in the world, controlling most of the major free porn sites. Pornhub entices traffic by offering free access but then users get bombarded with advertisements for pay-sites.

According to Gail Dines, a leading authority on the porn industry, ‘rather than take responsibility for content uploaded to their sites, MindGeek pushes the line that they are not the creators but merely the hosts, and that the performers are all engaging in porn consensually’.

I have spent many hours combing through the content on Pornhub and can confirm that it is vile in the extreme. Pornhub hosts videos including ‘sleep forced abuse drunk passed out’. There is also overt racism, such as ‘Ebony slave girl porn’ and ‘the most racist porn video ever created.’

Pornhub has been accused of turning a blind eye to the exploitation of women featured in the videos on the site. Now, mainly because of survivors speaking out, the feminist anti-porn movement has gathered pace in recent years. But the battle against the commercial sex trade should not be left only to feminists. Any human rights campaigner should be challenging Pornhub, because of the horrific videos appearing on the site.

Julie Bindel, full article here