Following a New York Times exposé, Montreal-based Pornhub has opted to remove all unverified user content from its platform.
Reports have appeared that Pornhub, headquartered in Montreal under its parent company Mindgeek, has been hosting illegal videos of underage people and abuse. This occurs because most of the sites that Mindgeek owns operate much like YouTube by allowing users to upload their own content.
As the issue has gained more attention over the last few weeks, both Visa and Mastercard pulled their support from the platform. This is a significant issue for Pornhub given many of its amateur creators rely on Visa and Mastercard transactions to be paid for their work. The platform’s ‘Premium’ subscription is also facilitated through Visa and Mastercard.
In an effort to solve the problem, Pornhub has removed all unverified content uploads until they can be verified at some point in 2021. However, it should be noted that Mindgeek’s other porn websites, RedTube, YouPorn and many more, have not made the same change. However, The Verge notes that Mindgeek has said it plans to implement an updated verification policy across all of its websites in 2021.
The publication also notes that this has brought Pornhub’s total videos down from 13.5 million to 2.9 million.
The move to limit user uploads by Pornhub is a good first step to solving the porn platform’s issues. Still, since Mindgeek only applied these rules to one of its several sites, it seems more for optics instead of actually addressing the problem of hosting unverified and illegal content on its websites.
The new rules going forward limit user uploads to accounts that are in either part of the company’s ‘Model‘ and ‘Content Partner‘ programs. These are higher-tier Pornhub accounts that provide each user with a channel, higher pays per view and more. These accounts also have a more robust verification process.
Mindgeek already offers a verification tool that allows users to submit a photo of themselves to Pornhub, but it appears this process is being revamped in the new year to be more secure.
If you want to find out more about Pornhub’s response to this issue, you can find it out on the company’s blog.
