The adult site wants you to ‘fuck the planet right’
In recent years, Pornhub has capitalised on its success to launch worthwhile campaigns, including to help with the coronavirus pandemic, support indie cinema, offer valuable sex education, and encourage people to vote. Now, building on its 2019 environmental campaign, the adult site has launched ‘Sexstainability’ in an attempt to – you guessed it – make sustainability sexy.
The 30-day campaign comprises a new channel of videos teaching you how to “fuck the planet right”. In what the site is calling ‘Jerk Off Instruction’ (JOI) videos, Pornhub models provide alternative instructions on how to be more sustainable. These include: mitigating food waste, saving water and electricity, and recycling responsibly.
Every view under the channel will be turned into funds which will be donated to 2030 or Bust, an initiative teaching people how to reduce their carbon footprints.
“We’re excited to educate people in a meaningful way that will not interfere with their regularly scheduled programming on Pornhub,” Kira Noir, a Pornhub brand ambassador said in a press release. “Combining two things people really enjoy – sex and sustainability – made the most sense in creating our ‘Sexstainable’ initiative. It’s important for all of us to get down to business and come together… literally… to help save Mother Earth.”
Pornhub’s new campaign comes almost two months after a New York Times investigation detailed the prevalence of non-consensual videos on the site. In an interview with Dazed, former porn star Mia Khalifa praised the piece as deserving “pat on the back”. A week after its publication, Pornhub announced sweeping changes to its moderation policies, banning downloads and blocking uploads from non-verified users.
The crackdown on non-consensual content on Pornhub is an urgent and necessary action, but the changes meant Pornhub’s video count dropped from 13.5 million to 2.9 million, leading some sex workers to complain that their content was incorrectly flagged and removed during the purge. Speaking to Dazed last month, sex worker @loserlexxx said: “I’ve personally lost over 20 million views on videos that are perfectly compliant with the Terms of Service. When I email Pornhub about this, they put my videos back up, but they’re eventually flagged and disabled again, and the cycle repeats.”
The NYE exposé has also been criticised for its ties to the Traffickinghub campaign, which was started by Laila Mickelwait, the founder of an anti-sex work Christian organisation.
Watch the trailer for Pornhub’s ‘Sexstainability’ campaign above, and find all the videos here. You can also read Dazed’s investigation into Pornhub’s video purge and its impact on sex workers here.