Pornhub has been suspended from Instagram

Pornhub has been suspended from Instagram, forcing fans of sexual imagery to stop lying to themselves and just go to the website.

As reported by Variety, Instagram took down Pornhub's official account over the weekend, setting over 13 million thirsty followers adrift. A spokesman for Pornhub claims this is a temporary measure, and that the company expects the account to be reinstated.

It's unclear exactly why the account was removed, with a screenshot shared by anti-Pornhub activist Laila Mickelwait only stating that it violated Instagram's community guidelines. While the nature of its business makes it reasonable to assume Pornhub's social media presence leaned toward the erotic, it reportedly didn't post any explicit nudity or pornography that would violate parent company Meta's nudity policy.

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Some activists such as Mickelwait have already claimed Pornhub's removal from Instagram as a victory. Mickelwait is the founder of Traffickinghub, a movement started in 2020 dedicated to shutting down Pornhub, and describes the porn website as "infamous for monetizing the sex trafficking and criminal sexual abuse of countless victims including children."

"The Traffickinghub movement is solely dedicated to holding Pornhub and its parent company MindGeek accountable for the global distribution and monetization of criminal non-consensual content such as child sexual abuse, sex trafficking, and rape," Mickelwait said in a statement sent to Mashable, noting the movement is made up of over 2.2 million people, including survivors, from 192 countries, as well as over 600 organisations. "Traffickinghub is not aimed at the legal porn industry, but is exclusively focused on shutting down Pornhub for the criminal exploitation of countless victims."

Traffickinghub itself has also been subject to justified criticism from sex workers and industry observers, who claim its true aim is to destroy the porn industry. This is supported by the fact that Traffickinghub is backed by Exodus Cry, a Christian advocacy group for whom Mickelwait worked for as Director of Abolition (Mickwelwait has not worked with Exodus Cry since the end of 2020, according to a statement sent to Mashable), and the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, formerly known as Morality in Media. Both of these organisations seek to abolish pornography and the sex industry altogether.

Tweet may have been deleted

"Anti-porn crusaders like NCOSE... intentionally misled reporters about why Pornhub’s Instagram profile was disabled, and actively misled people into believing they were responsible," a spokesperson for Pornhub told Mashable in an email. "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.

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"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 everyday despite not violating any of Instagram’s terms of service. We look forward to our account being reactivated, as it always has."

Nevertheless, sexual exploitation and trafficking is a serious concern for Pornhub and its parent company Mindgeek, which have come under scrutiny for allegedly profiting from such abuse. In 2020, a New York Timesreport found Pornhub hosted videos of children, prompting Mastercard and Visa to announce they would stop processing payments on the website. Mindgeek has also been the subject of several lawsuits alleging complicity in sexual exploitation.

In response, Pornhub made drastic changes to its platform. This included massively overhauling its account verification system as well as removing all videos uploaded by unverified accounts — amounting to over 10 million videos and almost 80 percent of its content.

"Over the last three years, Facebook self-reported 84 million instances of child sexual abuse material," Pornhub wrote in a blog post at the time. "During that same period, the independent, third-party Internet Watch Foundation reported 118 incidents on Pornhub. That is still 118 too many, which is why we are committed to taking every necessary action.

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"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."

Mashable has reached out to Meta for comment.

UPDATE: Sep. 6, 2022, 3:37 p.m. GMT Added statement from Laila Mickwelwait, and included the detail that Mickelwait has not worked with Exodus Cry since the end of 2020.

UPDATE: Sep. 7, 2022, 9:17 a.m. AEST Updated with statement from Pornhub, and clarification that the company expects the suspension is temporary.