Pornhub says shutdown petition is ‘intentionally misleading’

The ongoing rumblings against adult portal Pornhub have led management to come out fighting, once again.

Following accusations that some actors appearing on the site were under-age, coerced into appearing, or both, a petition calling for the closure of the site began to gather some momentum.

Pornhub has denied all the claims, and now, a lengthy rebuttal from the company’s Vice President Blake White explains exactly what it does to protect adult performers – starting with a fierce statement of intent:

“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.”

White explains that, in fact, he believes that Pornhub’s policies and initiatives are significantly more robust than many non-adult sites. These 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.”

He adds YouTube’s CSAI Match and Microsoft’s PhotoDNA features as examples of above-and-beyond security offered by the site, as well as Vobile, which it uses to compare uploads to videos already in its system, including attempts to re-upload content that has already been banned once.

In a final crescendo of defiance, White assures readers that “Pornhub will continue to work with law enforcement efforts and child protection nonprofits in the goal of eliminating any and all illegal content across the internet.”

The statement ends with equally barbed words towards Exodus Cry, the group behind the petition.

“The petition is not only factually wrong and intentionally misleading; it was created and is promoted by a radical right-wing fundamentalist group in the United States, a group whose founders have long vilified and attacked LGBTQ communities and women’s rights groups, aligned themselves with hate groups, and espoused extremist and despicable language.”

At time of writing, the petition, organised by campaign group Exodus Cry, has over 352,000 signatures, but it’s unlikely to have much of an effect, beyond forcing Pornhub’s management into issuing more strongly-worded statements.

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