Instagram Removes Pornhub's Account (variety.com) 34
Variety reports:
Instagram has suspended Pornhub's widely followed account on the social platform. Before the sex site's account was removed from Instagram, Pornhub had 13.1 million followers and more than 6,200 posts.
Reps for Meta, Instagram's parent company, did not respond to a request for comment.
The move comes one month after Visa and Mastercard cut off payment privileges of TrafficJunky, the advertising arm of Pornhub parent company MindGeek. That followed a federal court ruling in July rejecting Visa's request to be removed from a case in which MindGeek is being sued for allegedly distributing child pornography and that alleges Visa knowingly facilitated MindGeek's ability to monetize the illegal content... In June, MindGeek CEO Feras Antoon and COO David Tassillo resigned. The Montreal, Quebec-based company also laid off an unknown number of employees.
The article notes that two dozen individual plaintiffs sued Pornhub and MindGeek last year alleging, among other things, "exploitation and monetization of child pornography."
Reps for Meta, Instagram's parent company, did not respond to a request for comment.
The move comes one month after Visa and Mastercard cut off payment privileges of TrafficJunky, the advertising arm of Pornhub parent company MindGeek. That followed a federal court ruling in July rejecting Visa's request to be removed from a case in which MindGeek is being sued for allegedly distributing child pornography and that alleges Visa knowingly facilitated MindGeek's ability to monetize the illegal content... In June, MindGeek CEO Feras Antoon and COO David Tassillo resigned. The Montreal, Quebec-based company also laid off an unknown number of employees.
The article notes that two dozen individual plaintiffs sued Pornhub and MindGeek last year alleging, among other things, "exploitation and monetization of child pornography."
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
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That's probably the best explanation. As long as the $$$ were rolling in, they turned a blind eye, now suddenly they opened it with a surprised "hey, where's my cut?" expression.
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Well played.
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Re: Why? (Score:1)
Kind of kills the narrative of corporate power when a minimum wage slave working at a content filtering sweat shop can ban a multi-billion dollar porn company. Such power.
Re: Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because there's a court case about it and if PH is in danger of losing it IG doesn't want to touch them with a 10ft pole.
Re: Why? (Score:4, Informative)
Because there's a court case about it and if PH is in danger of losing it IG doesn't want to touch them with a 10ft pole.
Forget the conspiracies. Instagram regularly bans posts for even containing a nipple, to say nothing of an outright ban of porn on the site. Most probable is that someone just realised that Pornhub had an account and pointed it out internally and some person said "wtf ban that shit".
We know that there are times when people might want to share nude images that are artistic or creative in nature, but for a variety of reasons, we don’t allow nudity on Instagram. This includes photos, videos, and some digitally-created content that show sexual intercourse, genitals, and close-ups of fully-nude buttocks. It also includes some photos of female nipples, but photos in the context of breastfeeding, birth giving and after-birth moments, health-related situations (for example, post-mastectomy, breast cancer awareness or gender confirmation surgery) or an act of protest are allowed. Nudity in photos of paintings and sculptures is OK, too.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Informative)
IG hosts all kinds of porn, why censor PH and now of all times? I don't get it, everybody stopped being all puritan about porn way before the pandemic.
Whatever you think of porn content involving minors who don't have the ability to consent is highly problematic.
And the issue is with PH's ability (willingness?) to block that content, FTA (emphasis added):
The plaintiff in the case against MindGeek and Visa is Serena Fleites, who, when she was 13, was pressured by her then-boyfriend into making a sexually explicit video — which he allegedly uploaded to Pornhub (with the title “13-Year Old Brunette Shows Off For the Camera”) without her knowledge or consent. Fleites’ attorneys say the video, which was alleged to have been viewed millions of times on MindGeek sites, destroyed her life:
If you know that child porn is an issue on your platform you should at the very least have some filters that tell your moderators to take a look at videos with titles that contain "X year old" where X is less than 18. And certainly once that video has been detected there's video fingerprinting tech that should help you inhibit re-uploads so it doesn't get viewed millions of times.
Frankly it sounds like MindGeek knew child porn was a problem and they deliberately didn't try very hard to fix it.
Now, whether Visa should also be liable is another discussion, but I don't blame Instagram from getting ahead of the issue and booting them off the platform.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you know that child porn is an issue on your platform you should at the very least have some filters that tell your moderators to take a look at videos with titles that contain "X year old" where X is less than 18.
I think you may be new to pornography on the internet. Titles in videos are clickbait that largely don't contain anything even remotely related to the content, *especially* when talking about anything related to age (young anyway, the term "matures" normally does describe content) or relationship.
Pornhub is like any other platform, they don't automatically do anything. They have a content reporting system which goes to review, and they also had a history of working with the police. As for fingerprinting, I think you have a rosy view of the technology world. Fingerprinted videos are trivially worked around such that even today the likes of Youtube can't effectively automatically ban videos automatically despite throwing a shitton of money and expertise at the problem, to say nothing of a company that doesn't exist to attract the best and brightest talent in the tech world or the fact that you're talking about something which happened nearly a decade ago.
Things are not as easy as you think they are.
but I don't blame Instagram from getting ahead of the issue and booting them off the platform.
Forget the issue, it's irrelevant. Instagram's community guidelines don't even allow association with nudes. Heck you'll get banned for so much as showing nipples unless it's a picture which would likely get them criticised for taking down. The real WTF thing here is that Pornhub managed to have an account on such a sexually conservative platform at all.
Not kidding about the nipple bit either, directly from their guidelines:
It also includes some photos of female nipples, but photos in the context of breastfeeding, birth giving and after-birth moments, health-related situations (for example, post-mastectomy, breast cancer awareness or gender confirmation surgery) or an act of protest are allowed. Nudity in photos of paintings and sculptures is OK, too.
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Surely this is about posting it on Instagram itself, not some official account of an entity that posts such material elsewhere?
Instagram is a social media company run by a large tech company. The only thing sure here is that will haphazardly and quite inconsistently apply their banhammer. Seriously accounts especially in the Facebook world have banned for the dumbest shit while others actually in breach of the community guidelines run rife.
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If you're not removing videos with titles like "13-year-old..." then at best what you're doing is attracting an audience looking for CP. That's not the pool of users you want.
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If you're not removing videos with titles like "13-year-old..." then at best what you're doing is attracting an audience looking for CP. That's not the pool of users you want.
I personally have zero interest in barely legal or younger stuff, but science says that sexual maturity occurs when puberty occurs, and through most of recorded human history was the dividing line for pedophilia. All other mammals similarly recognize this as the end of so-called childhood. The notion that a 17 year-old is a child fo
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Do you have kids?
A 16 year old is way less "mature" than an 18 year old.
Yes, the numbers are somewhat arbitrary but I know this: 18 is probably still too young too but since we send 18 year olds to war....
From where I sit, age isn't the only measure of maturity. If you're not at least 18 and able to take care of yourself you're a kid. You're still in college and living off your parents at 24? Kid. Mature people have their shit together.
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I moved out when I was 15, but you do know it's a lot harder for this generation to move out than it was for the prior generation, for whom it was a lot harder than the one before that...
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I don't know how long ago this was, but I think it very unlikely a title like that would have remained up today.
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then at best what you're doing is attracting an audience looking for CP. That's not the pool of users you want.
Pool of users you want? The "teen" category is literally the single most popular category of any porn site anywhere on the internet. Not even the internet, Larry Flynt is on the record as saying that Barely Legal was as popular in circulation as Hustler. Literally most of the industry has content targeting people who are looking for young looking porn stars. Or do you think "Seventeen" actually had 17 year old girls in every edition? None of that shit ever is actually real, you just come to expect that when
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then at best what you're doing is attracting an audience looking for CP. That's not the pool of users you want.
Pool of users you want? The "teen" category is literally the single most popular category of any porn site anywhere on the internet.
I doubt it. The most popular category now is probably step-incest. Which I guess is technically "teen" except the majority of the actors aren't.
It's also irrelevant to the point I was making, but thanks for trying, I guess. Try harder next time, though.
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Porn on the Internet is filled with "teens" who are closer to 30 than they are to being a "teen"
he said, with a quiver in his voice and a tear in his eye.
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tell your moderators to take a look at videos with titles that contain "X year old" where X is less than 18. And certainly once that video has been detected there's video fingerprinting tech that should help you inhibit re-uploads
Those things aren't free like porn...
Exodus Cry, a real world conspiracy (Score:4, Informative)
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IG hosts all kinds of porn, why censor PH and now of all times?
IG has a policy not only against porn, but against even seeing nipples. They regularly throw the banhammer at accounts. That some slip through is not relevant. What is really surprising is that Pornhub had an account that amassed followers at all. I would have thought they'd be banned long ago.
Scapegoat time! (Score:2)
Let that goat have it. Punishing him will make all the problems go away. No need to check for kiddie porn on other big tech platforms.
Now ban everyone else (Score:1)
Don't stop there. Ban everyone!
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Don't stop there. Ban everyone!
I'm issuing a preemptive ban on myself. Right after this wank.
Playboy (Score:1)
well just looked at playboy's account and that's still there, LOL!
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Only old people. Who are also the ones that can't find porn on the internet and have to rely on established sites.
Oh, no! (Score:2)