Lawmakers put pressure on porn sites hosting non-consensual content

Earlier this week (December 8), Pornhub announced a blanket ban on downloads and a ban on video uploads from unverified users, after a New York Times report exposed the prevalence of non-consensual content on the site, along with a number of videos of underage girls. Now, the crackdown on the porn site continues with the introduction of a new bipartisan bill.

The bill doesn’t specifically take aim at Pornhub, but – if passed into law – would allow sexual assault and trafficking victims, as well as targets of revenge porn, to sue porn websites that “knowingly” host and distribute videos of them. This includes videos in which subjects are tricked or coerced into performing a sex act, and videos in which participants didn’t consent for footage to be shared. The bill also covers flagging illegal material, demanding websites have a clear and easy process for users to do so.

Along with the recent ban on uploads and downloads, Pornhub has announced an expansion of its moderation efforts, launching a new team that will be “dedicated solely to self-auditing the platform for potentially illegal material”. Pornhub claims that this update was already in the works, due to an independent review that was commissioned in April, but only announced it in the days following the exposé by journalist Nicholas Kristof, which revealed – besides clips of underage girls – videos containing assault on unconscious women and girls, and non-consensual torture.

Josh Hawley, the Republican Senator behind the new bill, addresses Pornhub’s changes to its moderation practices on Twitter: “If true,” he writes, “then Pornhub has nothing to fear from my legislation allowing victims of fraud, coercion, and sex abuse to sue them.”

Democratic Senator Maggie Hassan adds in a press release on the bill: “No person’s intimate images should be shared without their consent. But when this deep violation of privacy occurs, we must have legal avenues in place to empower the individual who has been violated to seek justice.”

“Currently, it is extremely difficult for survivors to remove the harmful imagery from the public sphere permanently.”

In Kristof’s New York Times report, many victims explain that they succeeded in removing clips from Pornhub, only to find them reuploaded and widely redistributed. A number of victims revealed that they had attempted suicide after videos were spread online.

“Our bipartisan bill would create a legal pathway in federal court for victims to obtain just compensation from the person who shared their images without their consent, and to compel the removal of those images,” adds Hassan. As reported by the New York Times, Mastercard and Visa have also cut ties with Pornhub in the last week, prohibiting the use of their cards on the site.

Read the original New York Times investigation here, and read the new bill in full here.