An investigative report aired on ABC last week exposing Pornhub's involvement in illegal activities, the suffering caused to victims, and the prevalence of incest and child abuse themed content.
Caitlin’s ex boyfriend posted two videos on Pornhub without her consent. 13 years later the video has been viewed 5 million times across 45 sites. Caitlin, who now suffers from PTSD, describes the experience as “being virtually raped”.
When former Pornhub moderators were asked about vetting videos for consent one responded: "It doesn't matter if they have consent unless they get caught. That's pretty much their point of view". Another stated: "If the girl's not crying, there's no blood, there's no gun, there's nothing we see to suggest that the girl wants to say no, if we don't see that, for us that was automatically consent so we let it go up".
In Dec 2020 the New York Times found Pornhub overrun with rape, minors, revenge porn and other stolen racist and misogynist content. As a result, Canadian authorities began investigations and summoned executives from Pornhub’s parent company MindGeek to give evidence.
We contributed to the Canadian Parliamentary inquiry which you can read more about here:
Past research found that 1 in 8 titles on the front page of mainstream porn sites represent sexual violence. More recent investigations reveal that the situation has worsened with descriptions and representations of sexual violence now 1 in every 5 titles.
Despite pressure to clean up its act Pornhub continues to not only host, but feature sexually violent videos, with ‘family’ and ‘incest’ among the most popular search terms.
A former MindGeek employee stated: “It’s giving people what they want and it’s also slowly training people to a new thing. Because we’re talking hundreds of millions of people a day, so you can just shift a whole population a little bit just by showing, just by changing the average of what they see...”.
Influencing the sexual desires of an entire population.
Sociologist, Fiona Vera-Gray summarises:
“Routinely the harm against women and girls is being normalised and trivialised and sexualised and sold to the next generation as a bit of a laugh. It also has massive impacts for men and boys and some of the messages that are going out to them about their own sexuality and what they should find sexually arousing.”
Join us in taking action to hold Pornhub, it's owners and executives accountable by signing the petition here.
‘Porn: A Ruthless Business’ is available to view on ABC iview now:
See also:
Win – Pornhub executives resign!
"Pornhub actively profited from my rape"
Child sexual abuse, trafficking, rape: the global push to shut down Pornhub
Add your comment