First there was the Tumblr Purge, and now we've gotten so much worse.
So for the three people who don't use Pornhub and don't know what's up, two days ago the site decided to completely fuck itself (yes, pun intended). Pornhub has made the decision to delete EVERY SINGLE VIDEO on the website uploaded by unverified accounts, in response to allegations of the site hosting child abuse videos and. Two days ago, Pornhub had well over 13.5 million videos hosted on its servers. That number is now down to 2.9 million, meaning Pornhub has deleted over 78.5% of its content. The allegations of child sex abuse come from Exodus Cry, a Christian advocacy group known for its anti-sexualism and anti-LGBT rhetoric. Another group in on the action is the Internet Watch Foundation, which has a habit of blacklisting sites with perfectly legal content without even notifying the site owners first.
Needless to say, people are pretty pissed off, and rightfully so. Pornhub says they're just being persecuted for being a porn site, and it is clear as day that they are right. For the past few months PH has been the target of a relentless campaign to get it blacklisted, on charges of 118 instances of hosting videos of underage girls, rape videos, etc. Which, nobody is actually really denying could be on there. With so many videos and so much user freedom, of course things will slip through the cracks, and it's the job of PH staff to deal with that.
But Facebook, Instagram, TikTok (aka ChinaWare) and pretty much every single other major social media site are also well known for having issues of child abuse content being hosted, often MUCH more egregiously than Pornhub. But Facebook has also done so much insane shit over the years that they are now an untouchable god and even the biggest of lawsuits and/or hate campaigns levelled against them wouldn't do much damage. And TikTok is essentially owned by the CCP, so of course they'll never be held accountable for what really matters. Pornhub meanwhile is obviously not in such a lucky position, and being the most recognisable porn site out there means that they get all the public scrutiny that their brand of content can get. So when shit hits for the fan for them, of course they're going to oblige to anything in order to keep themselves afloat. You could say they don't have much of a choice.
But here we are once again, in the exact same situation as Tumblr, and in a very similar situation YouTube always seems to be finding itself in. The last straw for Pornhub was when Visa and Mastercard abandoned Pornhub due to the child abuse allegations, a big blow for their Model Program. So, to desperately keep companies from continuing to leave them, 80% of all the content on Pornhub is gone now! So many of my favourite videos are lost to oblivion, and I'm sure many of yours are too. In response, many PH users are declaring they are now leaving the site in search of better weather, having to deal with the fact that THE porn site for everything is now just a shell of what it used to be.
To quote one commenter under PH's official blog, "Oh hey. Looks like you have a tiny skin lump on your finger. I would suggest cutting off the entire side of your body as treatment."
This is the Tumblr purge of 2018 ramped up past 11, and just is yet another example of how unnecessary outside pressure will push companies to do the stupidest things just to avoid financial setbacks. And when I say this is like the Tumblr purge, I mean it is exactly like it in every way. Tumblr banned all the porn, lost a huge swath of its audience, and as a result suffered way worse financial setbacks than it would have if it never did anything in the first place. Pornhub has banned 80% of its content, a huge swath of its users are pledging to leave, and it will no doubt suffer way worse financial consequences than if it never did what it did to begin with, now that they don't even have the user traffic needed to facilitate its growth.
I do understand why they want to do more than just ban the singled out content, though. They want to show that they actually care about the problem rather than only taking the most minimal of action because they got called out. But I think even PH users can come up with better solutions. Maybe just ban the rape category? Don't allow videos that depict nonconsensual sex at all, real or staged? Don't allow super extreme content in general? Surely any of these options would alienate your audience far less than banning 80 fucking percent of everything on your website.
But I guess ultimately it's doubtful that these "minor" changes would bring all the ad companies and payment processors back, and is certainly not what these evangelical (literally) watchdog groups want to see happen. Maybe Pornhub really didn't have much of a choice after all. It's clear enough from their blogpost that they aren't exactly proud of the whole situation, but not being proud doesn't take away from the fact that you guys pretty much just signed your own death certificate. I know this may sound like a stretch, but I will be very surprised if Pornhub is at all relevant like it usually is within the next few months.
It's also a funny coincidence that this purge, which happened on the 13th, comes almost as the exact time as the Tumblr purge did in 2018, December 17. December seems to be the new designated month for porn purges. So much for Dick Destroying December, eh?
In any case, 2020 really has been just one disaster after the other, and this Pornhub purge will hopefully be one of the last ones. But that does little solace to the fact that the most prominent porn site ever has pretty much resigned to a premature death, as is always the case when these scandals against social media sites happen. But really, the main reason Pornhub was the target here is very simple, and that is the fact that, well, they host porn. The Pornhub blog says it very well:
It is clear that Pornhub is being targeted not because of our policies and how we compare to our peers, but because we are an adult content platform. The two groups that have spearheaded the campaign against our company are the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (formerly known as Morality in Media) and Exodus Cry/TraffickingHub. These are organizations dedicated to abolishing pornography, banning material they claim is obscene, and shutting down commercial sex work. These are the same forces that have spent 50 years demonizing Playboy, the National Endowment for the Arts, sex education, LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, and even the American Library Association. Today, it happens to be Pornhub.
Until the higherups in our society can get over the fact that people want to jerk off, this shit will continue to happen. And that's why you should support Newgrounds! Because unlike Pornhub, we're actually focused on being self-sufficient and not relying on the corporate doghouse to fund our existence!
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