In a video uploaded to the YouTube channel for Team CoCo on January 28, 2020, actor and activist Kumail Nanjiani bragged and joked at length about the free 10-year subscription to Pornhub Premium that he received from the MindGeek-owned pornography site after images of the muscular physique he developed for his role as Kingo in the upcoming Marvel film, The Eternals, were featured on Pornhub’s “Muscular Men” section.
In the midst of the segment where Nanjiani, Conan O’Brien, and Andy Richter riffed on how “nice” Pornhub Premium’s content is and the possibility of Kumail sharing the subscription with Richter and Nanjiani’s own father, the men also expressed their appreciation for free porn and how “good” it is on its own. Afterwards, they transitioned to talking about Nanjiani’s outspoken activism on other issues, such as immigration, and noting how he has been recognized for being widely influential as an activist and advocate.
With that in mind, we hope that Kumail Nanjiani (and others such as Conan O’Brien and Andy Richter) will reconsider how he uses his platform and influence when referring to massive perpetrators of sexual abuse and exploitation like Pornhub and the porn industry.
Because Pornhub and online porn—be it free or “premium”—are far from “good” or “nice.”
How Pornhub Contributes to and is Complicit with Sexual Exploitation
Every day Pornhub is host to pornographic material that features racism, incest, and violence against women. The site is also known to have hosted videos of child sexual abuse and sex trafficking victims, such as in late 2019 when it was revealed that Pornhub hosted videos of a trafficked teenage girl being raped.
This was not an isolated incident.
For years, until late 2019, Pornhub hosted content from and promoted GirlsDoPorn as one of its featured partners even after requests were made to have the content removed by the women shown in the material AND while GirlsDoPorn was in court facing charges of trafficking (and more) from over 20 women that were used in the production of its material.
.@kumailn, please reconsider how you use your platform in connection w/perpetrators of sexual abuse & exploitation like Pornhub, a site that features racism, violence against women, child sexual abuse, and the rape of sex trafficking victims. Share on XIt’s nearly impossible to stress strongly enough the reality that these cases are far from isolated anomalies. These are just a few examples of a massive problem that is baked into the porn industry.
As a result, more and more people and corporations — including very recently Kanye West, Unilever, and the Kraft Heinz Company — are waking up to the exploitative realities of Pornhub and making important changes to stop any promotion of or alignment with the sexual exploitation of their fellow human beings that are facilitated and/or featured by Pornhub and the modern pornography industry.
Also, to further drive home the fact that this problem is not “simply” related to Pornhub, it is important to realize that Pornhub is owned by a company called MindGeek, a corporate entity that owns a massive percentage of all online porn sites and which operates using a model that literally profits from this exploitation.
So, no, Pornhub and the porn industry are neither “nice” nor “good.”
