Pornhub’s account, in particular, is accused of violating the policy on posting external links (YouTube users cannot link to prohibited content on the platform, such as pornography).
“After review, we have suspended the Pornhub Official channel due to multiple violations of our Community Guidelines. We enforce our policies equally for everyone, and channels that repeatedly violate our policies or are dedicated to content that violates the rules will be terminated,” YouTube spokesperson Jack Malone told The Verge.
The Pornhub account, which had nearly 900,000 subscribers before it was taken down, posted safe content on the channel promoting the site and its artists. The company has also applied 18+ age restrictions to videos posted on YouTube and “strongly disputes” claims that they contain adult content.
“Pornhub upholds the rules of trust and safety on the Internet and takes steps to ensure that it does not violate YouTube’s community policies. Unfortunately, this is just the latest example of discrimination against members of the adult industry. This is already a trend that can be seen in social networks and other areas of life, especially when groups confuse consensual adult content with exploitation,” said a representative of Pornhub.
In September, Meta permanently blocked Pornhub’s Instagram account with the same rhetoric it used on YouTube: the company said the site had repeatedly violated Instagram’s terms of use regarding nudity, adult content and sexual harassment over the past decade. According to the New York Post, the account encouraged users to go to the porn site through the social network.
In response, Pornhub posted an open letter on Twitter calling the decision unfair and asking Meta to clearly explain why its account and the accounts of other adult content creators are being permanently deleted. The petition was signed by 63 organizations, activists, models and porn actors, including the Free Speech Coalition, Riley Reid and King Noire.
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Meta has permanently banned Pornhub’s Instagram account
Pressure on Pornhub and its Luxembourg-based parent company MindGeek continues to mount. Some have accused the site of not moderating content and allowing videos containing child abuse material and videos of people without permission to be posted.
These concerns led to the resignation of Pornhub CEO Feras Antun and COO David Tasillo, and affected Pornhub’s relationships with other companies. In 2020, Visa and Mastercard stopped transactions on Pornhub due to the site’s “illegal content”, although both companies are still dealing with a lawsuit that accuses them of “helping MindGeek monetize child porn”.
Allowing the community of wrongdoing, Visa is supporting Pornhub’s acceptance privileges to respond to our ongoing investigation. We establish financial institutions that promote MindGeek to prevent payments for fees through the Visa network.
— VisaNews (@VisaNews) December 10, 2020
