Pornhub Just Absolutely Slaughtered Itself, Removed Most Content

People around the world were in for a very unpleasant surprise when they went for their morning wank today: Pornhub had been absolutely decimated. Decimated isn’t even the word, that means one in ten people were killed; Pornhub was nonagintamated because it looks like only about one in ten videos are left on the platform.

Essentially, Visa and MasterCard were pressured into refusing payment processing for Pornhub and the company responded by taking down all videos uploaded by non-verified users. And some content by verified users. In the comments to the post announcing the policy change, adult performer Mia Marley said “It seems that things like BDSM are now considered as non-consensual since I asked why my BDSM content and tickle videos were removed. One video was where I woke up to a facial was removed, the answer I got from support was that I probably didn’t look fully awake. I have to be honest, it made me a little angry but also made me laugh a little.”

Here’s what Pornhub said about why they were essentially forced to kill their own platform.

It is clear that Pornhub is being targeted not because of our policies and how we compare to our peers, but because we are an adult content platform. The two groups that have spearheaded the campaign against our company are the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (formerly known as Morality in Media) and Exodus Cry/TraffickingHub. These are organizations dedicated to abolishing pornography, banning material they claim is obscene, and shutting down commercial sex work. These are the same forces that have spent 50 years demonizing Playboy, the National Endowment for the Arts, sex education, LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, and even the American Library Association. Today, it happens to be Pornhub.

First of all, I get you have the reputation as the woke porn site to defend, but let’s not pretend that hostility to porn and sex work isn’t the main place where holier-than-though right-wing moralizers and feminist busybodies agree and work together.

But I remember the days when people would fight this sort of thing, not only for their rights but for the rights of everyone. Larry Flynt is a hero for the work he did fighting against the unjust government censorship of his publication; now that we’ve given the power of censorship over to gigantic mega-corporations that would make a cyberpunk writer blush everyone just seems to accept it, if not demand more of it.

It was a nice run for Pornhub, and I’m sure a new site will eventually make its way to the top of the pack of sites that will doubtlessly be looking to replace it, but this is the beginning of a real dark age for masturbation fans everywhere.