Instagram has removed Pornhub’s account.
Before Pornhub’s account was removed, it was verified with a blue checkmark and had 13.1 million followers and more than 6,200 posts. Variety reports that reps for Meta, Instagram’s parent company, did not respond to a request for comment.
The account was removed on September 3rd, and has not reappeared—though it still could in the future. As of now, Pornhub still has active accounts on other social media platforms like Twitter and YouTube.
On its Instagram account, Pornhub shared suggestive but non-explicit videos and images—but had direct access to the site by clicking the link in the bio. However, as Dawn Hawkins—the CEO of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation—has said, it had “directly promoted pornography” and featured videos like “Next Career Goal” encouraging people to become pornography performers.
Note that there is still a massive porn problem on Instagram, though. Click here to learn more about it.
“Instagram was right to remove Pornhub from its platform for violating its community standards given the increasing reports of Pornhub hosting child sexual abuse material, sex trafficking, filmed rape, and non-consensual videos and images,” Hawkins said.
Pornhub’s other recent struggles
Instagram deleting the porn platform’s account is the latest challenge in a more recent string of events that Pornhub and its parent company MindGeek have been facing over the last couple of months.
Just one month ago, Visa and Mastercard cut off processing payments through TrafficJunky, the advertising arm of Pornhub’s parent company, due to allegations that MindGeek has profited from child sexual exploitation material (CSEM)—commonly known as and legally defined as “child pornography.”
That move effectively demonetized a large part of MindGeek’s business model due to the significant percentage of revenue that comes from ads on MindGeek sites like Pornhub.
A week before that, a federal court ruling in July rejected Visa’s request to be removed from a case in which MindGeek is being sued for allegedly distributing CSEM and that alleges Visa knowingly facilitated MindGeek’s ability to monetize the illegal content.
The lawsuit against MindGeek and Visa is ongoing.
The deterioration of Pornhub
Since December 2020, MindGeek has been more widely criticized by the public, dozens of survivors have filed lawsuits against the company, it has been investigated by the Canadian government, and its CEO and COO and dozens of employees were laid off.
In December 2020, the New York Times published an investigative op-ed by Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof. In the piece, titled “The Children of Pornhub,” Kristof provides evidence and survivor stories that reveal just how Pornhub and MindGeek have allegedly profited from child exploitation and knowingly made it difficult or impossible for illicit content to be removed from the site even after reporting.
The fallout from that article has cascaded into the events that are currently happening with the porn giant nearly two years later.
To learn more about what has happened with Pornhub and MindGeek since December 2020, listen to our breakdown:
In June 2022, MindGeek CEO Feras Antoon and COO David Tassillo resigned after another scathing Pornhub exposé, this time by The New Yorker. The piece shared that Pornhub hosted sexually explicit nonconsensual videos including those with children, an additional public criticism of the company after December 2020’s New York Times scathing exposé. The Montreal, Quebec-based company also laid off an unknown number of employees after the piece.
As more and more people are made aware of the unthinkable exploitation that happens on most porn sites, they will come to understand how porn, exploitation, and sex trafficking are intrinsically tied together.
All of these events have been years in the making. Countless anti-exploitation advocates and survivors of trafficking, child abuse, and image-based abuse have worked tirelessly to expose the questionable business practices of the porn industry and the proliferation of nonconsensual content on porn sites.
It’s more important than ever to take a stand against exploitation and educate on the realities of the porn industry and porn’s harms to individuals, relationships, and society. What we’re seeing now is only the beginning of what is being uncovered.
To learn more about porn and exploitation, we invite you to read our research-based articles and survivor stories.
Sexual exploitation is not sexual entertainment, despite what too many porn sites may show.
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