YouTube removes Pornhub channel

YouTube has removed the official Pornhub channel, the sex site's promotional release for videos, coming eight years after Pornhub launched its account on the platform.

Before it was taken down on Friday, the official Pornhub channel had nearly 900,000 subscribers. It was first launched in December 2014. The channel URL now shows a 404 ("not found") error on the web.

Representatives for YouTube and MindGeek, Pornhub's parent company, did not immediately respond to inquiries of comments.

In early September, Instagram permanently banned Pornhub, citing repeated violations of the site's Community Guidelines, including a ban on sexual solicitation, for more than 10 years. A month later, Instagram deactivated a second account that Pornhub had created in an attempt to circumvent the ban on its main account.

Pornhub's YouTube channel did not feature sexually explicit content, which is . Instead, Pornhub Official on YouTube had featured series such as "Advice for Models", "Pornhub Models" and "Pornhub Literacy 101", as well as sections on fashion, music and the Pornhub Awards.

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Watchdog group National Center on Sexual Exploitation had flagged Pornhub's YouTube channel for alleged violation more early Friday, the group told me. "Pornhub has lost another way to market and profit from exploitation, and we are grateful to YouTube for removing this predatory company's account," said Lina Nealon, director of corporate and strategic initiatives at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. statement. “Pornhub was driving people directly to its porn site – a violation of YouTube policies – which mounting evidence shows is full of material of child sexual abuse, sex trafficking, rape and sexual abuse. 'image-based sexual abuse.'

In September, Pornhub and dozens of adult industry allies published an open letter accusing Instagram of double standards by banning Pornhub but allowing celebrities like Kim Kardashian to post photos with nudity.

Instagram and YouTube's Pornhub platform comes after Visa and Mastercard cut payment privileges from TrafficJunky, the advertising arm of Pornhub's parent company, MindGeek. Payment processing giants reacted after a Federal Court decision in July denied Visa's request to be removed from a case in which MindGeek is being sued for allegedly distributing child pornography and which alleges Visa knowingly facilitated MindGeek's ability to monetize illegal content.

MindGeek, which is currently based in Luxembourg, has previously stated that it has zero tolerance for posting content illegal content on its platforms and claims to have in place the "most comprehensive protections in the history of user-generated platforms... Any insinuation that MindGeek does not take the removal of illegal content seriously is categorically false".

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