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By Gavin Boyle
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) is warning that popular porn sites are promoting illegal content like child sexual abuse and rape, hooking users on these brutal scenes while raking in the profits.
“They’re trying to zero in on what you’re interested in,” said Haley McNamara, NCOSE’s senior vice president of strategic initiatives and programs. “And unfortunately, we know that with even mainstream pornography, even on the front page, first-time users are exposed to scenes of sexual violence.”
Though these sites have previously faced public backlash for including this type of material, it hasn’t taken long for it to resurface as mainstream. In 2020, Pornhub, one of the most popular adult sites, took down over half of its content after a New York Times exposé piece revealed that the site was ignoring millions of requests from women who had been uploaded to the site without their permission. Later, in 2023, Pornhub’s parent company admitted that it had been knowingly promoting and profiting off of abuse material from 2017 and 2019.
Ultimately its parent company rebranded with a new name and CEO, alleging the company had changed its practices and would no longer feature abuse, rape, child content or other illegal videos.
“Pornhub’s parent company is desperately trying to rehabilitate its image from the litany of sexual abuses it has fostered and the lives it has damaged,” McNamara said in 2023. “MindGeek/Aylo, or whatever the pornography purveyors want to call it this week, is still the same company that systematically hosted and profited from child sexual abuse, sex trafficking, rape, image-based sexual abuse, racist, and nonconsensual material.”
Unsurprisingly, this content has now returned and is once again being pushed to mainstream users. This, however, may be a strategic ploy to set itself apart and desensitize users to “softer” pornography as states crack down on access to adult websites.
Related: PornHub Parent Company Changes Name But Can’t Erase Exploitative History
Twenty-one states along with Washington D.C. have passed legislation requiring age I.D. verification to access adult websites. This has left sites like Pornhub scrambling as not only does this cut off access to their underage market but also reduces the likelihood that legal adults go through the time and effort to verify their age. To protest these laws, Pornhub has completely cut off access in these states, claiming age verification encroaches on their users’ rights.
“The safety of our users is one of our biggest concerns. We believe that the best and most effective solution for protecting children and adults alike is to identify users by their device and allow age restricted materials and websites based on that identification,” explained porn star and Pornhub spokesperson Cherie De Ville. “Until a real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website.”
As age verification laws become more popular, these adult websites may be ramping up the content they are pushing in an attempt to hook users on videos they cannot find anywhere else to get them to come back once age verification is the norm across the board.
Read Next: How Porn Sites Hook You on Illegal Content
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