To become verified, users are required to submit a photo of themselves holding a piece of paper with their username, according to Pornhub’s site. Since Pornhub’s launch in 2007, any user could upload content to the site.
“This news is crushing for the hundreds of thousands of models who rely on our platform for their livelihoods,” Pornhub said of the initial moves from Mastercard. Pornhub’s removal of millions of videos may pose a significant threat to sex workers, already struggling during the pandemic, who use the platform’s sales as a source of income.
The purge by Monday morning brought the total number of videos on the site down from 13m to just 4m, a report from Motherboard found. “At Pornhub, the safety of our community is our top priority.” “This means every piece of Pornhub content is from verified uploaders, a requirement that platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat and Twitter have yet to institute,” the company said in a blog posted announcing the changes.
