Pornhub removes millions of videos as it attempts to stop spread of sexual abuse imagery

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)

Adult video website Pornhub has removed millions of videos from its platform in an attempt to fight sexual abuse imagery.

At the same time, it said that it was being unfairly targeted over the content, and that it had done far more to combat such videos that mainstream platforms such as Facebook, Instagram or TikTok.

The company said it was being targeted “not because of our policies and how we compare to our peers, but because we are an adult content platform”.

The decision to remove the videos came after a report that found the site’s upload function – which allowed anyone to upload videos for others to view – was being used to share child sexual abuse imagery and other harmful content.

The company initially took the decision to ban all unverified uploads from posting content. It also stopped anyone from being able to download videos, a decision taken because outlawed content could be stored away even after it was removed from Pornhub, and made a host of other platform changes.

Now it says that it has extended those rules so that it would remove all previously uploaded and unverified content, too.

“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," it wrote in a blog post announcing the changes.

It also pointed to the fact that Facebook said it had found 84 million instances of child sexual abuse imagery being found on its platform, compared with just 118 on Pornhub that were found by the third-party Internet Watch Foundation.

“In today’s world, all social media platforms share the responsibility to combat illegal material,” Pornhub wrote in its blog post. “Solutions must be driven by real facts and real experts. We hope we have demonstrated our dedication to leading by example.”

The site also claimed that it was being targeted precisely because it was a platform used to share adult videos. It said that scrutiny over its content was being led by “the same forces that have spent 50 years demonizing Playboy, the National Endowment for the Arts, sex education, LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, and even the American Library Association. Today, it happens to be Pornhub.”

The company’s blog post was hit by a flurry of users who complained that content they had uploaded or regularly watched had been removed without warning, many of whom suggested they would stop using the site.