An incredible New York Times investigation denounces the amount of videos of child rape, "revenge porn" and racist and misogynistic content on the Pornhub platform.
"Pornhub's problem isn't pornography, it's rape." This is what assens reporter Nicolas Kristof in The New York Times. In a careful investigation by the American newspaper, released on December 4, 2020, the journalist warns about the abject content hosted on the Pornhub platform. The two Pulitzer Prize winner accuses the site of being infested with rape videos, and more than that. "It monetizes child rape, 'revenge porn', videos of women taking a shower, racist and misogynistic content, and images of women suffocating in plastic bags, he explains. I came across many videos which were assaults on unconscious women. (…) The rapists opened the victims' eyelids and touched their eyeballs to show that they were unresponsive. For his survey, Nicolas Kristof performed keyword research, such as "girls under 18" or from "14 years old", which led him to no less than 100,000 videos. "Most don't concern abused children, but too many do", adds the great reporter.
Distressing testimonies
Throughout the investigation, Nicolas Kristof has accumulated the testimonies of teenage girls whose life is nothing more than an endless nightmare: suicidal thoughts, drugs, school dropout due to blackmail and humiliation, all because of sequences non-consented which are found in one click. The newspaper has gone through the history of complaints, petitions and other remedies, and conjures up unthinkable stories. Like that of this 15-year-old girl, who disappeared in Florida, whom her mother found on Pornhub in nearly 58 sex videos. Other business:“The sexual assault on a 14-year-old Californian girl was posted on Pornhub and was reported to authorities not by the company but by a classmate who viewed the videos. In each case, the offenders were arrested. for these assaults, but Pornhub escaped the responsibility of sharing the videos and profiting from them", explains the newspaper.
Unlike YouTube, where videos are streaming only, Pornhub allows users to download video content. Result: even if a rape video is removed at the request of the authorities, it is already too late, because it will continue to live, downloaded and shared sometimes hundreds of times. Journalist Nicolas Kristof does not see why search engines, but also banks or credit card companies with which users pay their Pornhub account should support a company "which monetizes sexual assault on children or unconscious women." The author details three measures that he believes would be useful for better control: only allow certified users to post videos, prohibit downloads and finally, increase moderation. For its part, Pornhub has promised an upcoming wave of checks. Promises that seem to dig deep when we know the underside of this type of platform.
A porn juggernaut
As the New York Times survey reminds us, Pornhub attracts 3.5 billion visitors per month, more than Netflix, Yahoo or Amazon. The platform is thus the 10th most visited website in the world. A 2020 study by a digital marketing company even concluded that Pornhub was the technology company with the third greatest impact on society in the 21st century, after Facebook and Google, but ahead of Microsoft, Apple and Amazon … But who? is in charge? The very obscure Mindgeek, a private conglomerate, which claims a hundred websites, production companies and brands dedicated to pornography. What generate profits as monstrous as its illegal content.
In France, director Ovidie explored the issue of these platforms in a documentary entitled Pornocracy the new multinational sex companies, released in 2017. It revealed serious problems in the mainstream X sector, in particular, among "tubes", these content agglomerators like YouPorn and PornHub. In order to satisfy their appetite for content and clicks, these web ogres favor increasingly extreme and even dangerous practices for performers and untenable working conditions for many of them. In addition, the majority of hosted videos are uploaded illegally, after having been pirated, and offered to Internet users for free. Result, record revenues for the platforms, which have nothing to pay for their content, but no remuneration for porn pros or even control of their own image.