‘The Children of Pornhub’: the hidden story behind the world’s biggest porn site

By Rebeca Crespo*

Pornhub is the number one pornography website in the world. Every day it receives 130 million visits, and its ads move billions a year.

A documentary has delved into its history, which a New York journalist began to uncover in 2020, and that has less light than shadows.

Pornhub’s history gathers the testimony of different web workers and highlights a turning point in the trajectory of the web: the implementation of the ModelHub business.

This plan eliminated the obligation to have a verified account to upload porn content to the website and monetize it and opened the possibility that anyone could upload pornographic videos to the platform anonymously, claiming that the law does not require them to be responsible for what others upload.

As it became known later, since the verification ceased to be mandatory, hundreds of videos of sexual abuse, rape, or even of minors were uploaded to the network.

Pornhub looked the other way.

In 2020, The New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof’s opinion piece uncovered the scandal.

Pornhub was hosting thousands of pedophile videos uploaded by anonymous users and making money from them.

In the article, Kristof referred to specific cases, such as that of a 16-year-old girl in Florida who, after running away from home and disappearing for almost a year, was found by her mother in Pornhub videos.

Or that of another California boy who was sexually assaulted and repeatedly assaulted by a family member who uploaded the abuse video to Pornhub until a victim’s classmate saw it on the web.

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Article (https://www.riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/modern-day-censorship/the-children-of-pornhub-the-hidden-story-behind-the-worlds-biggest-porn-site/)