TikTok boots Pornhub from app amid child porn allegations: 'A predatory business'
TikTok joins companies such as Meta in throttling Pornhub's reach on their platforms
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr discusses bipartisan calls to ban TikTok, arguing it's time for the Biden administration to step up as concerns grow regarding the platform's ties to the Chinese government.
TikTok took down Pornhub's account amid allegations that the pornography behemoth has profited from content involving children and others without consent.
The social media app, which is owned by the China-based ByteDance, pulled Pornhub's account swiftly after receiving a complaint from the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), according to a statement released Monday by the nonprofit.
A spokesperson for TikTok confirmed to FOX Business that the platform removed Pornhub's account for violating its community guidelines.
"Pornhub maintains the absolute best Trust and Safety measures on the internet and takes special care to ensure it does not violate any of TikTok's Community Guidelines. 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," a spokesperson for the site told FOX Business.
"Performers and sex workers are marginalized groups that rely on social media to engage with fans, earn money, and support themselves and their families. TikTok'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," the spokesperson added.
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A California lawsuit alleges that Visa played a role in monetizing child pornography distributed on MindGeek's websites, such as Pornhub. (Nikolas Kokovlis/NurPhoto / Getty Images)
Dawn Hawkins, CEO of NCOSE, praised TikTok's decision in a statement, saying, "TikTok joins several mainstream companies that have made the principled decision to deny Pornhub another avenue from which to profit off exploitation."
"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," Hawkins continued.
NCOSE has been pressuring other companies to disassociate from Pornhub as part of its "Dismantle Pornhub" campaign.
"Pornhub’s very existence on TikTok 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," Hawkins said.
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TikTok logo is displayed on a smartphone in this illustration taken Jan. 6, 2020. (REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/File Photo / Reuters Photos)
Pornhub and its parent company MindGeek have been slapped with multiple class-action lawsuits in recent years that claim they monetized material on the site without the consent of those involved.
Two child sex abuse survivors were among those who filed a lawsuit against MindGreek in July 2021, claiming videos of their rape were distributed by the company without verifying their ages or consent to have the videos public.
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Earlier this year, a $500 million class-action lawsuit was filed on behalf of a Canadian woman who alleged pornographic videos of her were uploaded to Pornhub without her consent.
Visa and Mastercard suspended the use of their cards on Pornhub following a 2020 New York Times report about how the company allegedly profited from sexual abuse.
Visa and Mastercard both suspended use of their cards on Pornhub following a 2020 expose from The New York Times. (iStock / iStock)
Mastercard later made rules requiring banks to ensure pornography websites such as Pornhub verify the age, identity and consent of people featured in videos or images.
Serene Fleites filed a lawsuit against MindGeek in July alleging that Pornhub allowed a sexually explicit video her boyfriend uploaded of her when she was 13 years old in 2014 without her consent. The lawsuit claimed MindGeek profited from the video, which racked up more than 400,000 views.
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In September, the Meta-owned Instagram also suspended Pornhub's account, which had 13.1 million followers and more than 6,200 posts.
Instagram, which is owned by Meta, also suspended Pornhub's account from its platform earlier this year. (Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images / Getty Images)
The images and videos on Pornhub's Instagram account were not pornographic, though NCOSE claimed they "directly promoted pornography" and encouraged users to begin a career in pornography.
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Approximately 33% of Instagram's users are between the ages of 13 and 24, according to Statista, a market and consumer database company.