Pornhub adds range of new safety features including identity verification for users

A Pornhub logo is displayed at the company's booth at the 2018 AVN Adult Entertainment Expo at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino on January 24, 2018 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Getty Images)

Pornhub has announced a range of new safety and security features intended at addressing accusations that its site has been used to upload abusive and illegal content.

The new changes follow a major report in the New York Times that accused the company of hosting videos that included child abuse, revenge porn and other content that should have been removed from the site.

The report drew attention to what it said were issues with the adult website's moderation measures, which meant that users could upload videos that were both illegal and against the site's own rules.

Soon after that report, Pornhub took a range of significant measures, including removing the option the download videos from its site, and banning all uploads from any users that had not been verified.

It also removed millions of videos from the site that had been uploaded by unverified users.

The site now only takes new uploads from those users who are in its Model Program, which is intended as a way of certifying verified individual users and studios.

The company is now rolling out new security measures that include a way for users to get themselves verified, and thereby admitting into the program that will allow them to upload their own videos. That will be done by a third-party company called Yoti, which Pornhub says uses "secure biometric technology" so that neither of the two companies actually sees the paperwork required.

The company will keep the rules announced in December in place, so that only users who are verified through that system will be able to upload new videos.

Downloads will also remain banned, and Pornhub says that it is using "fingerprinting technology" that will be able to automatically identify those videos to ensure that videos that have been removed cannot be re-uploaded.

Pornhub's parent company MindGeek – which also runs other adult websites such as YouPorn – said that it was adding new moderation measures. They include an expanded list of banned keywords that will be regularly updated to catch any new terms that abusers are attempting to use to upload illegal content, and a "live content audit team" that will be scanning for "potentially illegal material".

Those moderation decisions will be published in a transparency report that will explain the result of any decisions for 2020, it said.

"Much like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other tech platforms, Pornhub seeks to be fully transparent about the content that should and should not appear on the platform," it said in a statement announcing the chantes. "This report will be the first of its kind among adult content platforms, setting the standard for transparency and accountability in the industry."