CYBERSPACE—A flurry of news sites reported Saturday that Meta-owned social media titan Instagram sometime within the previous day or so suspended Pornhub's account on the platform, which had a follower count of over 13 million before being taken down.
Neither Pornhub parent company MindGeek nor Meta has yet commented publicly about the account's removal.
Being abruptly purged from Instagram is a familiar occurence for adult industry members in general, but this particular instance drew heightened attention undoubtedly due to having come, as entertainment trade journal Variety noted, "one month after Visa and Mastercard cut off payment privileges of TrafficJunky, the advertising arm of Pornhub parent company MindGeek," a move that "followed a fedral court ruling in July rejecting Visa's request to be removed from a case in which MindGeek is being sued for allegedly distributing child pornography and that alleges Visa knowingly faciliatated MindGeek's ability to monetize the illegal content."
The closure of Pornhub's IG page was apparently first blasted to public light Friday morning by Justice Defense Fund CEO Laila Wickelwait, one of the primary figures in the onslaught against the website for allegedly hosting illegal content. Mickelwait tweeted at 11:46 a.m. Friday: "Pornhub's Instagram account just disappeared. #Winning #Traffickinghub".
NCOSE as well chimed in to applaud Instagram's shutdown of the account, with the group's CEO, Dawn Hawkins, releasing this statement to the NY Daily News: "Instagram was right to remove Pornhub from its platform for violating its community standards given the increasing reports of Pornhub hosting child sexual abuse materail, sex trafficking, filmed raped, and non-consensual videos and images. Instagram served as a distribution partner with this criminal enterprise, helping to push millions to their website, including children. We are grateful that Instagram has heard the voices of sexual abuse survivors who have been personally harmed by Pornhub's insatiable appetite for profit."
UPDATE (9.6.22): A representative for Pornhub commented Tuesday afternoon to Fox News Digital about Instagram's suspension of its account, giving the outlet this statement: "Anti-porn crusaders like NCOSE (formerly named Morality in Media) intentionally misled reporters about why Pornhub's Instagram profile was disabled, and actively misled people into believing they were responsible. Instagram does not take business dictation from anti-porn zealots, especially ones with noted histories of propagating false information and extremist policies against sex workers.
"In actuality, our account was temporarily disabled, as has happened many times in the past due to Instagram's overly cautious censoring of the adult industry, a fact that thousands of adult performers deal with every day despite not violating any of Instagram's terms of service," the Pornhub rep continued. "We look forward to our account being reactivated, as it always has."
NCOSE offered its own retort to Pornhub's statement, telling Fox News Digital: "It's ironic that Pornhub accuses Instagram of 'overly cautious censoring,' considering that Pornhub's own so-called 'moderation policies' opened the door to its hosting sex trafficking, child sexual abuse, filmed rape, and non-consensually recorded/shared content. Pornhub should focus on making its own platform safe instead of criticizing platforms like Instagram that take actual steps to prevent exploitation. No legitimate company should knowingly do business with a platform that has been exposed for hosting sex trafficking content like Pornhub. We hope Instagram's decision is a permanent one."
Instagram logo by Web999 from Wikimedia Commons
