Instagram disabled Pornhub’s account on the platform for undisclosed reasons.
The NSFW website’s Instagram account has amassed 13.1 million followers and 6,200 posts. It is unclear whether the ban will be permanent.
Instagram’s Content Guidelines Prohibit Nudity and Sexual Contentbut Pornhub’s Instagram account not shared pornographic posts.
according to motherboarda Pornhub spokesperson said: “Our accounts were temporarily disabled, as has happened so many times in the past, because Instagram is overly cautious about scrutinizing the adult industry, and while not violating any of Instagram’s terms, thousands of people are violating every day. Services for adult performers to deal with this fact. We look forward to reactivating our accounts as usual.”
Pornhub’s Instagram account was also deleted in June 2021, but in less than a day — This time, the site’s Instagram ban has been extended for three days, and it’s still going. Instagram did not respond to a request for comment on the reasons behind the ban.
Pornhub also blamed “anti-porn crusades” for the new ban.Laila Mickelwait, leader of the movement to shut down Pornhub, tweeted a screenshot Shows a notification from Instagram that they deleted the account following her report. According to Mickelwait’s post, Instagram removed Pornhub’s account for violating its Community Guidelines, but Instagram has not confirmed this. Mickelwait was the repeal director of Exodus Cry, a nonprofit dedicated to combating sex trafficking and exploitation.But reports from vice and the daily beast Said the group wants to completely ban pornography on the internet.
“Anti-porn crusaders like [the National Center on Sexual Exploitation] (formerly known as Media Ethics) deliberately misled reporters about why Pornhub’s Instagram profile was disabled and actively misled people into believing they were responsible,” Pornhub told Motherboard.
Pornhub did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
The deletion of the account was recently ruling In a lawsuit, Pornhub is accused of knowingly distributing child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on its website. Visa, which handles transactions for the site, could be implicated as complicit in the monetization of child pornography, a California judge said. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit allege that MindGeek profited from videos she filmed when she was a minor and uploaded to Pornhub.
Pornhub is facing a years-long crackdown on the site’s content moderation policy. In 2020, credit card Companies like Visa, Mastercard, and Discover cut ties with Pornhub’s parent company MindGeek over concerns about the proliferation of CSAM on the platform. Later that year, Pornhub removed millions of unverified user-uploaded videos in what the site called “one of the most comprehensive protections in the history of a user-generated platform.” For victims of abuse and trafficking, however, the policy came too late – once the video was on the internet, it was difficult to completely remove it.
As it all unfolded, both MindGeek’s CEO and COO abruptly stepped down this summer with no succession plans.
As user-generated content platforms struggle to police CSAM, sex workers express concern about how Strengthen supervision threaten the security of their legitimate online business.Last year, OnlyFans announced it would ban NSFW content in a bid to change Mastercard’s policy, which the ACLU described as violation rights of sex workers. After a swift backlash, OnlyFans suspended the decision, saying it resolved issues with the bank provider.
OnlyFans runs a different business than Pornhub. OnlyFans earns revenue from creators on the platform who sell adult content to subscribers – in order to post on OnlyFans, creators must use Authentication service Confirm that they are not minors.
When platforms like OnlyFans threaten to ban sex workers, it can mean the loss of their livelihoods. It can also push them into more dangerous offline working conditions.
Congress introduced Safe Sex Worker Learning Act In 2019 examine the impact of legislation such as the Fight Against Online Sexual Transactions Act (FOSTA).While the legislation aims to curb sex trafficking, it could make sex work online more difficult. This study found that “community organizations [had] An increase in sex worker homelessness has been reported after the loss of “economic stability provided by access to online platforms”.
