Trigger warning: This article includes mentions of rape, trafficking, exploitation and harassment.
You know something is seriously wrong with the world when you set out to research a piece and type ‘Pornhub non-consensual videos case’ in a hurry, only to be hit by hundreds of Pornhub links that show you the ‘best site to discover XXX videos under Non-Con (aka non-consensual) category’.
A recent viral video exposed Pornhub as a ‘trafficking hub’ for its lack of a vetting process – putting a big question on how consensual some of the videos really are. The #Traffickinghub campaign, founded by Laila Mickelwait, has put out an online petition that aims to ‘Shut down Pornhub and hold its executives accountable for aiding trafficking’, which has already picked up over a million signatures.
The petition alleges:
“Pornhub, the world’s largest and most popular porn site, has been repeatedly caught enabling, hosting, and profiting from videos of child rape, sex trafficking, and other forms of non-consensual content exploiting women and minors. We’re calling for Pornhub to be shut down and its executives held accountable for these crimes.”
Globally, porn is a $97 billion industry. Pornhub, one of the largest pornographic video sharing websites in the world, has 115 million unique visits every day on average. The amount of content that’s live on the site adds up to a streaming time of 170+ years.
Before we dive deeper, let’s understand how Pornhub works. In March 2010, Pornhub was bought by MindGeek, which owns many porn websites. To upload videos to Pornhub, which is a user-generated content platform, all you need is an email ID to upload from – there’s no identification and no verification beyond that. The main revenue streams include ad revenue, data collection and premium subscription.
According to data released by Pornhub, the ongoing pandemic has increased porn consumption across the world. Back home in India, where there is an apparent ban on watching porn, there had been a 95% spike in traffic to adult sites during just the initial three-week lockdown. There was also a steep jump in demand for searches like “child porn”, “sexy child” and “teen sex videos”. The Internet Watch Foundation also said that it found 118 cases of child abuse on Pornhub from 2017-2019.
Also read: Breaking Down the Big Jump in Demand for Child Porn in India During Lockdown
Personally, I understand sex work is a real job and should be respected. But keeping the data and news in mind, it’s important to remember that the porn industry has time and again forced thousands to join its ranks either by manipulation or sex trafficking.
Celebrities like Mia Khalifa have played a pivotal role in exposing this practice. At the age of 21, Khalifa was manipulated into the industry for three months and paid $12,000 for her work. Despite several attempts, till today, Pornhub refuses to remove her videos. According to legal professionals, Pornhub, at a conservative estimate, has easily made revenue of at least $500,000 using her videos.
Not only does she have zero rights, she can’t even retrieve her own domain name. All this while Pornhub continues to make money from clicks and ad revenue. Till date, Khalifa has gotten multiple threats, including threats from ISIS; she has been traumatised and has sought therapy. To top it, instead of empathising and supporting her to hold the right people accountable, people by and large still choose to dehumanise and slut-shame her for a profession she was manipulated into joining when she was 21.
By not holding Pornhub accountable, we enable and allow the company to profit from rape, abuse and child sex trafficking. Be it the videos of the 14-year-old who was raped for 12 hours at gunpoint or the 58 videos of rape and abuse that were found of a 15-year old missing girl. In the first case, Pornhub didn’t reply to the multiple requests of the rape survivor. The girl had to set up a new email address and pose as a lawyer to eventually get through to Pornhub. After this, her video disappeared within 48 hours.
In the second case, by the time the videos were taken down, the survivor’s images had already been cloned and used across various porn websites. In addition, there have been many instances across the world where hackers have hacked into iCloud accounts and have misused photos and videos by uploading them onto Pornhub. This lead to the beginning of #NotYourPorn campaign.
It’s important to remind ourselves that these instances are not limited to a few cases, the numbers are beyond something one can fathom.
Let’s jump to a major red flag as we try to understand the various issues with the porn industry and porn consumption patterns. The Indian Child Protection Fund (ICPF) had officially announced in March 2020 that the demand for child pornographic material has been rising. This announcement came with the warning that such consumption patterns indicated that millions of pedophiles, child rapists, and child porn addicts have migrated online, making the internet extremely unsafe for children.
In addition to this, according to data, as of 2019, the overall demand for child pornography was an average of five million per month in 100 cities on the public web. In fact, some of the most searched keywords by Indians on porn websites include “forced sex India” and “rape sex videos Indian”.
Let that sink in.
With 6 million videos uploaded every year and billions of unique active yearly users, it’s a shame to have no system in place to reliably verify the age or consent of those featured in the pornographic content that Pornhub hosts and profits from actively. By allowing this, Pornhub is letting users upload videos of actual, real-life sexual violence resulting in memorialising trauma, forever.
In addition to holding Pornhub accountable, it is important to ensure we consume ethical porn. Ethical porn is largely defined as porn that is produced legally, with due respect to the rights of the performers.
Ethical porn shows and celebrates sexual diversity. By doing so, we normalise and embrace porn. Befriend the porn stars you watch on social media, and familiarise yourself with them. Support them in any way you can to recognise that it’s labor and not all fun for them. This way, you know their age, the content they are sharing, and generally talking about, so you can feel safe that the mentioned content is consensual. Some companies also film consent being given by the cast and crew before filming the actual video. Additionally, you can look at performer consent policies followed by different companies to ensure you consume ethical porn.
Last but not the least, try and not make snap judgments on the content you are exposed to. For example, contrary to popular belief, it’s important to recognise that BDSM is the consensual exchange of power between two adults. One person trusts the other person to not do any harm to themselves or them. In case that does not happen, either party can withdraw consent at any given point.
This, in a nutshell, is the crucial lesson to take away – consent is mandatory.
B.S. Bhuveneswari is a marketer, feminist writer, and a mental health advocate in progress based out of Bombay. She is looking to build a world sans hatred and violence, tell stories, and hopefully someday, put a ding in the universe.
Featured image credit: Guillaume Louyot/Alamy Stock Photo