Pornhub Announces Major Policy Updates to Safeguard Platform
Pornhub today announced the most comprehensive safeguards in user-generated platform history when it implemented a series of policies and practices to help ensure the safety of the Pornhub community.
Going forward, Pornhub will only allow properly identified users to upload content. It has banned downloads. It has made some key expansions to its moderation process, and it recently launched a Trusted Flagger Program with dozens of non-profit organizations. Earlier this year, it also partnered with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, and next year Pornhub will issue its first transparency report. Full details on the expanded policies can be found below.
“At Pornhub, nothing is more important than the safety of our community,” Pornhub said. “Our core values such as inclusivity, freedom of expression and privacy are only possible when our platform is trusted by our users. This is why we have always been committed to eliminating illegal content, including non-consensual material and child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Every online platform has the moral responsibility to join this fight, and it requires collective action and constant vigilance. Over the years, we have put in place robust measures to protect our platform from non-consensual content, and we are constantly improving our trust and safety policy to better flag, remove, review and report illegal material. We hope that we have demonstrated our dedication to leading by example.”
Effective immediately, only content partners and people within the Model Program will be able to upload content to Pornhub. In the new year, Pornhub will implement a verification process so that any user can upload content upon successful completion of identification protocol. Pornhub has retroactively removed any content that has not been uploaded by a content partner or people within the Model Program, pending verification.
Effective immediately, Pornhub has removed the ability for users to download content from the platform, with the exception of paid downloads within the verified Model Program. In tandem with Pornhub’s fingerprinting technology, this will mitigate the ability for content already removed from the platform to be able to return.
Pornhub has worked to create comprehensive measures that help protect its community from illegal content. In recent months Pornhub deployed an additional layer of moderation. The newly established “Red Team” will be dedicated solely to self-auditing the platform for potentially illegal material. The Red Team provides an extra layer of protection on top of the existing protocol, proactively sweeping content already uploaded for potential violations and identifying any breakdowns in the moderation process that could allow a piece of content that violates the Terms of Service. Additionally, while the list of banned keywords on Pornhub is already extensive, Pornhub will continue to identify additional keywords for removal on an ongoing basis. Pornhub will also regularly monitor search terms within the platform for increases in phrasings that attempt to bypass the safeguards in place. Pornhub's current content moderation includes an extensive team of human moderators dedicated to manually reviewing every single upload, a thorough system for flagging, reviewing and removing illegal material, robust parental controls, and utilization of a variety of automated detection technologies. These technologies include:
- CSAI Match, YouTube’s proprietary technology for combating Child Sexual Abuse Imagery online
- Content Safety API, Google's artificial intelligence tool that helps detect illegal imagery
- PhotoDNA, Microsoft’s technology that aids in finding and removing known images of child exploitation
- Vobile, a fingerprinting software that scans any new uploads for potential matches to unauthorized materials to protect against banned videos being re-uploaded to the platform.
If a user encounters a piece of content they think may violate the Terms of Service, please immediately flag the content or fill out the Content Removal Request Form, which is linked on every page.
Pornhub‘s policy is to immediately disable any content reported in the Content Removal Request Form for review.
Pornhub recently launched a Trusted Flagger Program, a new initiative empowering non-profit partners to alert the platform of content they think may violate the Terms of Service. The Trusted Flagger Program consists of more than 40 leading non-profit organizations in the space of internet and child safety. Partners have a direct line of access to Pornhub’s moderation team, and any content identified by a Trusted Flagger is immediately disabled. Partners include: Cyber Civil Rights Initiative (United States of America), National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (United States of America), Internet Watch Foundation (United Kingdom), Stopline (Austria), Child Focus (Belgium), Safenet (Bulgaria), Te Protejo Hotline - I Protect You Hotline (Colombia), CZ.NIC - Stop Online (Czech Republic ), Point de Contact (France), Eco-Association of the Internet Industry (Germany), Safeline (Greece), Save the Children (Iceland), Latvian Internet Association (Latvia), Meldpunt Kinderporno - Child Pornography Reporting Point (Netherlands), Centre for Safer Internet Slovenia (Slovenia), FPB Hotline - Film and Publication Board (South Africa), ECPAT (Sweden), ECPAT (Taiwan).
Last year, Pornhub voluntarily partnered with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) in order to transparently report and limit incidents of CSAM on the platform. In early 2021, NCMEC will release the total number of reported CSAM incidents alongside numbers from other major social and content platforms. Pornhub will also continue to work with law enforcement globally to report and curb any issues of illegal content.
In 2021, Pornhub will release a Transparency Report detailing the content moderation results from 2020. This will identify not just the full number of reports filed with NCMEC, but also other key details related to the trust and safety of the platform. Much like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other tech platforms, Pornhub seeks to be fully transparent about the content that should and should not appear on the platform. This will make Pornhub the only adult content platform to release such a report.
As part of Pornhub’s commitment, in April 2020 the platform hired the law firm of Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP to conduct an independent review of its content compliance function, with a focus on meeting legal standards and eliminating all non-consensual content, CSAM and any other content uploaded without the meaningful consent of all parties. Pornhub requested that the goal of the independent review be to identify the requisite steps to achieve a “best-in-class” content compliance program that sets the standard for the technology industry. Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP is continuing its review, but has already identified and categorized a comprehensive inventory of remedial recommendations, supported by dozens of additional sub-recommendations, in addition to the steps identified above, based on an evaluation and assessment of Pornhub’s current policies and practices. Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP is soliciting information to assist with its review and in developing recommendations regarding Pornhub’s compliance policies and procedures. If anyone would like to provide compliance suggestions, please do so here.