The popular Instagram account for Pornhub has been suspended by the social media network.
Pornhub had more than 6,200 posts and 13.1 million followers on Instagram before the account was deleted. A request for comment was not answered by representatives of Instagram’s parent company, Meta.
The action was taken after Visa and Mastercard revoked TrafficJunky’s payment credentials, the advertising division of MindGeek, the parent company of Pornhub. That came after a federal court decision in July that denied Visa’s request to be excluded from a case in which MindGeek is accused of distributing child pornography and in which it is claimed that Visa deliberately made it easier for MindGeek to monetize the unlawful content.
Pornhub posted non-pornographic videos and photographs to its Instagram account. Dawn Hawkins, CEO of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, said that it had “directly promoted pornography” and included movies like “Next Career Goal” that encouraged people to become pornography performers. The NCOSE was one of many supporters that urged Instagram to take down Pornhub.
It’s time for all corporate entities to follow Instagram’s brave decision to quit working with Pornhub, according to Hawkins.
Both Pornhub’s official YouTube channel (882,000 subscribers) and its Twitter account (3.4 million followers each) continue to be active, sharing “safe for work” video content.
Feras Antoon, the CEO of MindGeek, and David Tassillo, the COO, resigned in June. Additionally, an undetermined number of workers were let go by the Montreal, Quebec-based business.
Serena Fleites is the plaintiff in the lawsuit against MindGeek in which Visa is named as a defendant. At the age of 13, Serena claimed that her then-boyfriend forced her to make a sexually explicit video, which he then allegedly uploaded to Pornhub without her knowledge or consent. Fleites is one of over two dozen individuals who filed a lawsuit against Pornhub and MindGeek last year, accusing the companies of monetizing child pornography, rape movies, trafficked content, and stolen property.
MindGeek had declared that it has “zero tolerance for the uploading of illicit information on its platforms and has implemented the most thorough controls in the history of user-generated platforms… It is totally untrue to imply that MindGeek does not take the removal of unlawful content seriously.
The company claims that in order to prevent removed videos from being reposted, it has banned uploads from anyone who has not provided government-issued identification that has been verified by a third party, removed the option to download free content, integrated several content moderation tools, and implemented digital fingerprinting on all videos found to be in violation of its policies against non-consensual content and child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Additionally, MindGeek claims to have partnered with other charitable groups globally and increased its moderating methods and employees.