Pornhub responds to petition threatening to shut down site for promoting/aiding child sex trafficking

The world’s largest pornography site, Pornhub, with over 33 billion website visits annually, has responded to a lawsuit leveled against it, urging the courts to shut down the site because of the role it plays in aiding child sex trafficking.

According to Nonprofit organization Exodus Cry, who are behind the lawsuit, Pornhub allegedly lets users upload sex trafficking and child rape films without consequence and allows the films to be hosted on their site, thereby promoting sex trafficking globally, considering the worldwide reach of the porn site.

In the lawsuit, Exodus Cry revealed that a 15-year-old girl was recently found after being missing for a full year when her mother received information that Pornhub had videos that featured the girl being sexually abused. It was also revealed the abused teen was featured in 58 videos that were uploaded to the site.
The girl was found after her abuser was identified using surveillance footage of him with the teen.

The lawsuit calls Pornhub a “super-predator” site that does a very bad job of moderating their own community and content.

Exodus Cry started a Change.org petition urging the site to be shut down because it’s owners had to be held accountable for their roles in aiding sex trafficking. The petition currently sits around 293,000 signatures.

Pornhub, has now released a statement, defending the company’s position;

“Pornhub has a steadfast commitment to eradicating and fighting any and all illegal content on the internet, including non-consensual content and child sexual abuse material. Any suggestion otherwise is categorically and factually inaccurate. While the wider tech community must continue to develop new methods to rid the internet of this horrific content, Pornhub is actively working to put in place state-of-the-art, comprehensive safeguards on its platform to combat this material.

”These actions include a robust system for flagging, reviewing and removing all illegal material, employing an extensive team of human moderators dedicated to manually reviewing all uploads to the site, and using a variety of digital fingerprinting solutions. These include but are not limited to Microsoft’s PhotoDNA, a technology that aids in finding and removing known images of child exploitation, as well as Vobile, a state-of-the-art fingerprinting software that scans any new uploads for potential matches to unauthorized materials to protect against any banned video being re-uploaded to the platform. We are actively working on expanding our safety measures and adding new features and products to our platform to this end, as they become available. Furthermore, Pornhub will continue to work with law enforcement efforts and child protection non-profits in the goal of eliminating any and all illegal content across the internet.”