Sasse Again Demands Investigation as Pornhub Changes Policies After Allegations of Child Sexual Exploitation
Mary Margaret Olohan /
Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., repeated his demands for a full investigation into Pornhub after the pornography website rapidly changed its policies over allegations of child sexual exploitation.
“Just the other day Pornhub was insisting that it didn’t have a problem with rape and assault videos, and that its ‘vast team of human moderators’ was magically capable of working around the clock to review the 2.8 hours of video that were uploaded to the site every minute,” Sasse said in a statement to The Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Today, they’re doing a complete 180 by changing their policies,” Sasse added. “These new changes underscore the need for a full [Justice Department] investigation.”
Pornhub announced changes to its website’s safety measures Tuesday following a New York Times column alleging that the site is “infested with rape videos.”
“Going forward, we will only allow properly identified users to upload content,” Pornhub said in a Tuesday statement. “We have banned downloads. We have made some key expansions to our moderation process, and we recently launched a Trusted Flagger Program with dozens of non-profit organizations.”
Pornhub just announced huge changes: a.) allow uploads only from verified users; b.) no downloads; c.) improvements in moderation. Initial take: A great deal depends on how responsibly Pornhub implements these, and it hasn’t earned my trust at all, but these seem significant.
— Nicholas Kristof (@NickKristof) December 8, 2020
Pulitzer Prize-winning opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof had accused Pornhub of monetizing “child rapes, revenge pornography, spy cam videos of women showering, racist and misogynist content, and footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags,” in a Friday New York Times op-ed.
The popular pornography website has been listed as the 10th-most-visited website in the world, with 3.5 billion visits a month and profits from almost 3 billion ad impressions every day, according to Kristof.
Kristof’s story sparked backlash against Pornhub, prompting lawmakers to call for investigations into the pornography website. Major credit card companies also began reviewing their relationship with Pornhub.
“The Department of Justice needs to open an investigation into the scumbags who run Mindgeek,” Sasse told The Daily Caller News Foundation Friday following the report’s release. “Sexual exploitation and human trafficking are abhorrent, period. A decent society should be working to end this.”
“It is completely unacceptable that Pornhub and its parent company Mindgeek make money from rape, sexual abuse, and the exploitation of minors,” the senator, who also called on the DOJ to investigate Pornhub in March, added. “They need to be investigated, and the DOJ needs more urgency about building cases against creeps.”
The DOJ has not responded to requests for comment from The Daily Caller News Foundation.
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