After the campaigners’ pressure against the site increased, Instagram removed the official account of the famous porn site PornHub.
The news was first reported by Variety, and at the time of its removal, PornHub’s Instagram account was stated to have approximately 13.1 million followers and 6,200 posts. The account was posting safe content promoting various videos of PornHub. PornHub continues to operate its still popular accounts on other social media platforms such as Twitter.
It’s not entirely clear why Instagram’s parent company Meta removed the account, but screenshots shared by anti-PornHub campaigner Laila Mickelwait show the account was shut down for violating Instagram’s community guidelines.
Mickelwait is the founder of the “TraffickingHub” campaign. This campaign; It strives to “shut down Pornhub and hold its administrators accountable for facilitating, distributing and profiting from rape, child abuse, sex trafficking and criminal image sexual exploitation”.
Mickelwait positions himself as an anti-sex trade campaigner, but critics note his links to evangelical Christian groups that advocate the abolition of all sex work and commercial pornography.
In a statement posted on Twitter, Mickelwait says Instagram and Meta made the right decision by cutting ties with Pornhub, and it’s time for other big tech companies like Google, Amazon and Microsoft to follow suit.
Criticism of PornHub for facilitating the distribution of child abuse content has increased in recent years, affecting its business partners; It led to the resignation of its CEO and COO. In 2020, Visa and Mastercard stopped processing payments on PornHub due to “illegal content” on the site.
In response to the criticism, PornHub has taken steps such as removing all content from unverified users and removing the download functionality that allows any user to download any video.
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