Pornhub Shutdown Petition For Alleged Sex Trafficking Videos Receives Over 1 Million Signatures

Update: This article was updated to include the statement of Pornhub and remove claims that the publication was not able to verify.

A petition to shut down Pornhub and “hold its executives accountable for aiding sex trafficking” has already received over one million signatures.

The #TraffickingHub campaign led by Laila Mickelwait of Exodus Cry, an anti-sex trafficking organization, is looking to close down the adult entertainment platform, Pornhub. Mickelwait believes the platform with millions of subscribers has “no system in place” to verify the age of those featured in the videos it hosts.

As of this writing, the petition has 1,028,966 signatures.

“Pornhub is generating millions in advertising and membership revenue with 42 billion visits and 6 million videos uploaded per year. Yet it has no system in place to verify reliably the age or consent of those featured in the pornographic content it hosts and profits from,” the petition wrote.

Pornhub, however, was quick to deny these allegations. According to the platform, it has a content moderation system to combat and remove all unauthorized videos that breach its policies.

“[We are] employing an extensive team of human moderators dedicated to manually reviewing every single upload. This allows us to take proactive action against illegal content,” a representative of Pornhub told International Business Times.

“In addition, we have a robust system for flagging, reviewing and removing all illegal material, and age-verification tools.”

The company also noted that it uses several automated detection technologies to make sure all content follows its guidelines and only contain consenting adults of legal age. This is amid the petition’s claims it “has no reliable system in place to verify that those in the videos it hosts are not trafficked children being raped on film.”

The petition on Change.org also cited stories of underaged women whose videos were streamed on the platform. Some even claimed Pornhub denied requests for these videos to be removed. The platform, however, maintains that these claims are false.

Meanwhile, the “Normal People” producers also warned Pornhub over the 22-minute compilation of sex scenes from the TV series that was uploaded on the site. The adult site promptly responded and took down the video.

“We’re hugely disappointed that excerpts from the series of ‘Normal People’ have been used in this way. It’s both a violation of copyright and more importantly, it’s deeply disrespectful to the actors involved and to the wider creative team,” said Ed Guiney, executive producer of “Normal People” and co-founder of Element Pictures.