Pornhub attracts 3.5 billion visits a month, more than Netflix or Amazon, and it earns tons of dollars every day. But what do we know about it? The discoveries of an investigation have recently been published on The New York Times by Nicholas Kristof, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes and columnist for the NYT since 2001. All the information reported here are taken from his article.
Thousands of people worldwide log into Pornhub in order to watch pornstars, but they don’t always know, and when they know they don’t report to the authorities, that Pornhub is infested with videos showing rapes and sexual assaults. In fact, Pornhub has found the way to monetize child rapes, revenge pornography, misogynist contents and even women being asphyxiated in plastic bags. But even when all this information reaches the public and the police officers, and the offenders are arrested for their actions, Pornhub manages not to be considered responsible for sharing these videos by making them downloadable and even earning profits from them.
We then ask ourselves why such a big service can have an empire like this without being described as an hypocrite mysogynist company supporting campaigns aimed at fighting child sexual abuse and to eradicate illegal contents and then behave incoherently. The answer is that, like every “respectable” company, Pornhub feels like being above the law and thinks it has the support of its customers, who like to be entertained by certain type of contents.
Pornhub is owned by Mindgeek, a private multinational owning more than 100 websites and focusing on pornographic content. Mindgeek is formally based in Luxembourg for tax reasons, but it is run from Montreal and coordinated by two Canadian citizens, Feras Antoon and David Tassillo. It is interesting to notice that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau defines himself as a feminist and proudly shows that his government tries to empower women worldwide. So…”Why does Canada host a company that inflicts rape videos on the world?”, Kristof asked.
After reading the article on The New York Times, MasterCard and Visa decided not to allow their customers to use their credit cards on Pornhub. MasterCard will put into practice this decision only when an internal investigation will find out that the platform didn’t respect the rules about misconduct and will also open further investigations on other websites in order to monitor their conduct, too. Visa, on the other hand, has already suspended all payments on Pornhub.
As always, the big problem is that Pornhub wants all its customers to find interesting contents, and of course it gains enormous profits through illegal ones. The only important thing for them is to earn money, money and more money. Of course, if we were to speak in philosophical moral terms we would say that it is disgustingly immoral but, telling it honestly, how many companies behave just like Pornhub? How many companies spread non-consensual and illicit contents supporting the rape culture, meaning a kind of culture where rape is considered a normal consequence of social attitudes based on gender and sexuality? Unfortunately, it is not surprising. And, as always, we are asked to boycott the website and to report to the authorities as often as possible. We live a world where rich and unscrupulous people always go unpunished, but we mustn’t forget that we can make the difference. It is difficult but not impossible. And if there’s something wrong, we don’t have to remain silent. Raising our voice and avoiding being indifferent will sooner or later force Pornhub to hire more inspectors to check all the videos that are shared on their website and who will pay the victims for the injuries caused by sensitive contents not respecting neither privacy nor consent. We are a civilized population, aren’t we? So, why do we accept that crimes on women and on children circulate on the net? Where is postal police? Where is justice?
Martina Bosi, 5C
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