Context:

Internal documents from Pornhub reveal a disturbing lack of accountability in addressing videos depicting child sexual abuse and nonconsensual acts, with employees often ignoring flagged content. The platform's policies historically made it difficult for users to report problematic videos, leading to delayed removals that allowed harmful content to amass millions of views. Despite some recent policy improvements, the pursuit of profit often overshadowed ethical considerations, as evidenced by internal discussions prioritizing market share over safety. Victims, including minors, have suffered severe personal consequences, with some taking legal action against the company for hosting videos of their abuse. Efforts by activists, legal systems, and new corporate ownership seek to enforce stricter content moderation and accountability, though skepticism remains due to the platform's past behavior.

Dive Deeper:

• A filing error in a Federal District Court in Alabama made public thousands of internal documents from Pornhub, revealing a troubling culture where employees often disregarded or laughed off the presence of child sexual abuse material. The documents showed that the company did not review flagged videos until they were reported multiple times, resulting in a massive backlog of harmful content.

• Pornhub's policy required users to register before they could flag videos, significantly reducing the number of reports and delaying the removal of illegal content. An internal memo revealed that by May 2020, there were 706,000 videos flagged for issues such as child rape, but the company prioritized market growth over addressing these severe problems.

• Victims of abuse, such as Serena Fleites and Stephanie Stewart, have shared harrowing accounts of their experiences with videos of their abuse being uploaded to Pornhub, leading to severe personal repercussions including public shaming, dropping out of school, and even attempts at suicide. Legal actions have been taken against Pornhub, highlighting the platform’s failure to swiftly remove these videos despite repeated pleas from the victims.

• Since the exposure and subsequent public outcry, Pornhub has made some policy changes, such as stopping downloads and verifying the age and consent of individuals in their videos. However, skepticism remains about the effectiveness and sincerity of these measures, as many of the same executives remain in charge and there are ongoing issues with unverified content.

• Efforts to combat the prevalence of nonconsensual and underage content on Pornhub include lawsuits against financial entities that support the site, as well as initiatives like Prune, which pressures online infrastructure providers to distance themselves from websites with harmful content. Despite progress, challenges persist, especially in ensuring effective and comprehensive content moderation across languages and regions.