After eight years of launch of the Pornhub official channel on YouTube which is a video promotion platform sex site was taken down.
The Pornhub Official Channel had approx. 900,000 subscribers at the time of taking down on Friday. But now the channel URL shows a 404 error (“not found”) on the internet. The sex promotional video platform was launched in 2014 December.
Pornhub allegedly broke rules and policies of YouTube by linking to third-party websites that were not permitted on the platform itself.
YouTube spokesperson Jack Malon in a statement said to Variety that “Upon review, we terminated the channel Pornhub Official following multiple violations of our Community Guidelines.” “We enforce our policies equally for everyone, and channels that repeatedly violate or are dedicated to violative content are terminated.”
According to a spokesperson of MindGeek who owns the company Pornhub, the firm “vehemently denied” which means that its YouTube content had links to porn websites.
“Pornhub maintains the absolute best trust and safety measures on the internet and takes special care to ensure it does not violate any of YouTube’s Community Guidelines,” the company said in a statement.
“Unfortunately, this is just the latest example of discrimination against those in the adult industry, a trend seen across social media and all other facets of life, especially as groups disingenuously conflate consensual adult content with exploitation.”
MindGeek’s statement continued, “Performers and sex workers are marginalized groups that rely on social media to engage with fans, earn money and support themselves and their families. YouTube’s haphazard and arbitrary enforcement of its policies against Pornhub and those involved with the adult industry is dangerous and harmful, and we demand that social media companies treat us the same way they treat everyone else.”
Instagram announced a permanent banned on Pornhub at the beginning of September due to frequent violations of its community rules by the site including its almost ten-year-old restrictions against sexual solicitations. An additional account was made by Pornhub to avoid the suspension of its main account but one month later the second account was disabled by Instagram.
Sexually explicit content is not permitted on the YouTube platform community guidelines but the YouTube account of Pornhub did not contain it. Instead, the Official YouTube Channel of Pornhub has different categories on fashion, music, and the Pornhub Awards in contrast to series like “Advice for Models,” “Pornhub Models” and “Pormhub Literacy 101.”
On Friday morning, the National Centre on Sexual Exploitation which is a porn organization warned Pornhub’s Youtube channel of a possible violation. “Pornhub has lost yet another means to market and profit from exploitation, and we are grateful to YouTube for removing the account of this predatory enterprise,” Lina Nealon, director of corporate and strategic initiatives for the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, said in a statement.
“Pornhub was driving people directly to their pornography site – a violation of YouTube’s policies — which mounting evidence shows is rife with child sexual abuse material, sex trafficking, rape, and image-based sexual abuse.”
