Washington, DC (December 12, 2022) – The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) lauded TikTok for swiftly removing Pornhub’s account.
After #traffickinghub founder, Laila Mickelwait, posted a screenshot of a Pornhub tweet announcing they were now on TikTok, NCOSE alerted TikTok and within hours the account was removed.
“TikTok joins several mainstream companies that have made the principled decision to deny Pornhub another avenue from which to profit off exploitation. Pornhub, the purveyor of child sexual abuse material, rape, sex trafficking, sexual violence, and extreme racism has no place on a social media platform like TikTok that is extremely popular with children,” said Dawn Hawkins, CEO of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation.
“Pornhub’s very existence on TikTok normalizes a predatory business built on exploitation and abuse and served as implicit advertising for Pornhub’s website which has been proven to feature videos of children being sexually abused, women who have been raped, and other sexual abuse material that was not shared with consent.
“Pornhub presented the façade of being a wholesome Hallmark-like channel but it is anything but. Its presence on TikTok risked bringing in more customers to buy images of rape, sex trafficking, child sexual abuse, and extreme violence. TikTok made the right move to eliminate Pornhub’s account as soon as it was notified it was there and joins other mainstream companies that refuse to do business with this known exploiter,” Hawkins said.
Visa, Mastercard, Roku, Comcast, Unilever, Kraft-Heinz, PayPal, and Instagram are among a growing list of corporations that have rightfully cut ties with Pornhub.
Multiple lawsuits have been filed against Pornhub parent company, MindGeek, and NCOSE is co-counsel on a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of two survivors of childhood sex trafficking whose videos and images of their abuse were posted on Pornhub and other MindGeek-owned sites. In February 2022, the judge ruled against MindGeek’s motion to dismiss, enabling the lawsuit to move forward.
TikTok’s Community Guidelines state that: “[They] will temporarily or permanently ban accounts and/or users that are involved in severe or repeated on-platform violations; [TikTok] may also consider actions on other platforms and offline behavior in these decisions.”
About National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE)
Founded in 1962, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) is the leading national non-partisan organization exposing the links between all forms of sexual exploitation such as child sexual abuse, prostitution, sex trafficking and the public health harms of pornography.
