“Woah … is this you??”
That one simple text message blew my life apart. It isn’t me. I never filmed that video. It isn’t real!
But that doesn’t matter. Because it looks real. And it’s on Pornhub.*
Most of you are probably aware of how Pornhub, the internet pornography giant, has come under fire in recent years for hosting and profiting from child sexual abuse material, recorded rape/sex trafficking, and non-consensually distributed sexually explicit content. This is not new news.
However, there is another category of abusive content that Pornhub profits from at scale, which has received less attention. This is synthetic sexually explicit material (SSEM), colloquially known as “deepfake pornography.”
In February 2018, Pornhub became the only mainstream pornography website to ban SSEM, declaring it a violation of their “Non-Consensual Content Policy.” Sounds great, right? Way to go, Pornhub?
Not quite.
Two months after this ban was announced, investigative journalists exposed how Pornhub’s exploitative and deceptive business and moderation practices were still allowing the platform to promote and profit from SSEM, despite the new policies. Now, five years later, Pornhub has yet to clean up its act.
If Pornhub’s deceptive business and moderation practices were a mathematical equation, it would look something like this:
If that went straight over your head, no worries! We’ll break it down for you—just keep reading.
Step 1: Utilizing inactive links of deepfakes/SSEM as clickbait to drive traffic to the site
While Pornhub has removed a lot of SSEM, they’ve found a back door that allows them to continue profiting from the content even if it’s been taken down. What happens is this: when Pornhub removes illegal or violating content, they leave the inactive links up on their site. This allows them to continue using these links to drive traffic to their site—therefore garnering significant profits, since Pornhub’s business model is built on maximizing traffic and views.
Through Pornhub’s advanced search engine optimization (SEO), a Google search for deepfake content will lead users to the inactive links Pornhub left up. It’s a form of clickbait, since users won’t be able to watch the removed content—but it achieves the goal of getting people to the Pornhub site. One researcher found that Google searches for Mr.Deepfakes Pornhub content returned dozens of results. Mr.Deepfakes is arguably the most prolific “deepfake pornography” website in the United States.
Step 2: Suggesting deepfakes/SSEM to users through exploitative algorithms
After Pornhub has attracted users to their site by using inactive links as clickbait, they then use their algorithm to keep them engaged. Drawing from the keywords and tags of the user’s Google search, as well as the title of the removed content, Pornhub suggests similar content the user can watch. In other words, they’re saying, “Oh, sorry, this particular deepfake video has been removed … But hey, since you like deepfakes, check this video out instead!”
Two months after Pornhub banned it, investigative journalists reported that, after finding and clicking through roughly seventy SSEM video, they were continually recommended SSEM on Pornhub’s homepage. This demonstrates that Pornhub’s algorithm recommends content that violates their terms of service.
Step 3: Participating in and facilitating the deepfake/SSEM marketplace through secondary markets
Pornhub has also facilitated the creation of what investigators referred to as a “secondary market,” in which users advertise the creation and monetization of SSEM. Users place ads at the beginning of synthetic sexually explicit materials (SSEM), offering their “products and services”—which consist of “personalized” SSEM or “DIY” tutorials for creating “deepfake pornography.” According to investigators, these ads or videos lead users to external sites like Telegram, where they can interact in an encrypted environment.
One Pornhub account read:
What we have for sale: 500 deep fakes and number is growing you can purchase them one by one or in one full pack with a big discount.” The account then proceeded to advertise secondary services, including “access to private forums,” a “guide on making deep fakes,” and a tutorial on “how to make money selling deep fakes.
Thanks to platforms like Microsoft’s GitHub, it has become alarmingly easy for non-experts to create SSEM, then monetize it on sites like Pornhub. For this reason, NCOSE placed GitHub on our 2023 Dirty Dozen List (Learn more here).
Despite both platforms instituting policies against SSEM, GitHub and Pornhub remain in the top ten referral sites to Mr.DeepFakes.com.
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Step 4: Advertising deepfakes/SSEM through TrafficJunky
Like YouTube and other tube sites, Pornhub generates most of its revenue from advertising. In fact, in 2021, the former CEO, Feras Antoon, estimated that 51% of Pornhub’s revenue came from advertising. According to a 2018 news article, however, this number may be significantly higher, as MindGeek generated $213 million in advertising in 2018, and only $52 million in premium subscriptions.
TrafficJunky is the advertising portal through which Pornhub makes all their ad revenue. Disturbingly, TrafficJunky has been shown to specifically and intentionally monetize abusive content through “keyword targeting.” A 2022 article published in the Logic exposed how TrafficJunky allows targeting around keywords that denote child sexual abuse, incest, rape, and other illegal activity. The way this targeting works is that an advertiser can pick specific keywords people may use to search for pornography on MindGeek sites and opt to have their ads show up when these keywords are searched.
In March 2023, one researcher identified SSEM on Pornhub through keyword searches. The video was uploaded by a verified user and garnered more than 2,100 views in under a week. Altogether, this video featured over six different TrafficJunky advertisements (e.g. rotating banner ads, side bar ads, and ads that would appear upon pausing the video). Every ad was marked in the top right corner with the TrafficJunky logo, clearly announcing Pornhub’s complicity in the monetization of SSEM.
The same researcher also discovered that in February 2023, TrafficJunky was named one of the top ten advertisers for Mr.DeepFakes.
In 2018, investigators uncovered that Pornhub strategically placed advertisements before the most popular SSEM videos, some of which had amassed hundreds of thousands and even millions of views, to maximize revenue. In January 2023, five years after Pornhub banned SSEM, a Twitch streamer by the name of Atrioc was publicly exposed for viewing SSEM of female Twitch streamers and friends, claiming that he was led to an SSEM website from an ad on Pornhub.
Step 5: Providing a database of abusive content to facilitate the creation of SSEM/deepfakes
Pornhub, a known archive of illegal and abusive content, also serves as a database which perpetrators draw on to create deepfakes and other SSEM. In November 2020, investigative journalists discovered a database dedicated to the collection of images and videos of victims from Czech Casting and GirlsDoPorn—two pornography companies that were both indicted for sex trafficking, coercion, and rape, amongst other crimes. The journalists found that this dataset was “circulating in deepfake porn creation communities online.”
Even with the knowledge of the indictments, Pornhub was slow to remove Czech Casting and GirlsDoPorn’ content from their platform, as both were long-time content and advertising partners with Pornhub. Deepfake perpetrators were using the dataset to generate new pornography. At the time of the dataset’s creation, the thousands of GirlsDoPorn and CzechCasting videos on Pornhub had amassed billions of views, and at the time, users were still able to download the content.
Investigators confirmed that videos depicting the actual rape, sex trafficking, and abuse of victims were present in the dataset. In one video in the dataset, “a woman starts to cry during filming and asks the man to stop. When he does, the camera zooms in on the woman to show that she is bleeding. The man hands her a towel and tells her to clean it up.”
Pornhub truly earns its “XXX” title, acting as a triple threat to victims around the world—a hattrick, you could say, as it serves as a database for creating SSEM, actively hosts SSEM, and openly profits from SSEM content on and off its platform.
Coupled with Pornhub’s monetization of child sexual abuse and rape, the rampant SSEM on the platform further evinces what was already beyond clear: Pornhub prioritizes profit over people, and always will.
*Composite story based on common survivor experiences
