TikTok is joining a host of companies distancing itself from the world’s largest pornography platform, Pornhub, amid allegations the website has profited off child sexual abuse material.
The video-sharing app, owned by the China-based ByteDance, erased the Pornhub account just hours after receiving a complaint from the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, according to a statement released Monday by the nonprofit.
“TikTok joins several mainstream companies that have made the principled decision to deny Pornhub another avenue from which to profit off exploitation,” said NCOSE CEO Dawn Hawkins. “Pornhub, the purveyor of child sexual abuse material, rape, sex trafficking, sexual violence, and extreme racism has no place on a social media platform like TikTok that is extremely popular with children.”
It’s worth noting some 60% of TikTok users are between the ages of 16 and 24.
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Hawkins argued Pornhub’s presence on the popular platform “normalizes a predatory business built on exploitation and abuse and served as implicit advertising for Pornhub’s website, which has been proven to feature videos of children being sexually abused, women who have been raped, and other sexual abuse material that was not shared with consent.”
Pornhub’s removal from TikTok came months after the pornography site was permanently banned from Instagram, a photo and video-sharing platform owned by Facebook parent company, Meta. In late October, Pornhub unsuccessfully tried to skirt Meta’s rules by creating another Instagram account with a name that did not include “Pornhub.” That account was subsequently erased.
TikTok and Instagram are just the latest companies to distance themselves from Pornhub.
Visa and Mastercard suspended the use of their cards on Pornhub in the aftermath of a bombshell New York Times report accusing the website of making money off sexual abuse situations, such as videos involving minors or women who were sexually assaulted or did not consent to their videos being posted.
In April of this year, a $500 million class-action lawsuit was filed against Pornhub’s parent company, MindGeek, on behalf of a Canadian woman who alleged her pornographic videos were uploaded to the website — which sees some 120 million visitors each day — without her consent.
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