An online petition accusing Pornhub, the UK’s biggest open access porn site, from profiting from videos of rape and sexual abuse has reached more than 350,000 signatures.
Pornhub is the world’s biggest porn site and was visited 42 billion times last year. It is free to access, with no age restrictions, and raises revenue through advertising and paid-for promotions by porn producers.
The allegations levied against Pornhub owner Mindgeek center on the perceived insufficiency of the company’s safeguarding checks on the 6 million videos a year that are posted on the site, many by amateur producers.
Over the past year the company has faced multiple accusations that rape and abuse videos were widely posted on the site.
The petition was started by a group called Exodus Cry in the US, but is being supported by activists in the UK, where Mindgeek also has offices.
“This is a company that is generating millions in advertising and membership revenue, and yet they do not have an effective system in place to verify reliably the age or consent of those featured in the pornographic content it hosts,” Exodus Cry founder Laila Mickelwait said.
Mindgeek — based legally in Luxembourg but with offices in Montreal, London, Nicosia and Los Angeles — denies the allegations made in the petition, saying that it does have thorough procedures for removing illegal content.
“Pornhub has a steadfast commitment to eradicating and fighting non-consensual content and under-age material. Any suggestion otherwise is categorically and factually inaccurate,” Mindgeek said in a statement to reporters.
Other campaign groups say that the criticisms of Pornhub are based on evidence of poor practice.
Some of the videos on Pornhub show extremely hardcore and violent pornography.
Campaigners say that this fact, coupled with the high prevalence of videos promoting sex with teenagers means there is an urgent need to know for certain that videos are made consensually.
In October last year, a 15-year-old girl who went missing in Florida was found after footage of her allegedly being raped was uploaded to Pornhub, among other sites.
Pornhub removed the video once it was reported to it and a man accused of statutory rape in connection with the case is currently awaiting trial.
The site was also criticized for continuing to host videos by a company that offered girls being featured in porn “for the first and only time” even as a court in San Diego heard evidence that the videos were made using dishonesty and abuse.
The men who ran the contributing company were found liable in a civil case. Two are in custody and are now facing criminal charges of sex trafficking, while a third has fled Britain and is considered a fugitive.
Last month the BBC reported the story of a woman who was raped at 14, with the video of her abuse ending up on Pornhub.
She said she then faced a long struggle to have the video removed from the site.
Pornhub insists that it has robust procedures to stop illegal content being posted and defend the material posted as legitimate content protected by freedom of speech.
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