Pornhub Makes A Big Change For Revenge Porn Victims

The site has just taken big steps in tacking revenge porn

Pornhub. A pornographic site that cares? Or at least one that has a great marketing team... Either way, there's no denying that the company are trying to improve their reputation, first by donating thousands of dollars to breast cancer charities back in 2012, then it launched a scholarship for US students.

But now, the site is cracking down on something a little closer to home; revenge porn.

The adult entertainment website revealed that it will now be launching a new online submission form whereby users can flag any pornographic images or videos that are unwittingly uploaded without their consent. All victims have to do is complete the form and include their name and email address. So far, so easy, right?

Pornhub also says it ”takes all content removal requests seriously” and has introduced the submission form in stark contrast to other porn websites who request a government-approved photo ID as well as other documentation, making the process of getting content taken down that much longer and difficult for the victim.

Pornhub is free to use but relies on a large proportion of user-generated videos, i.e. homemade porn films. Although it declined to disclose how many revenge porn takedown requests it receives annually, the site did reveal these requests were down 38% in the past two years. All good news. The sites’ terms of service don't actually specify anything about not wanting revenge porn, but it does ban “content which is illegal, unlawful, harassing, harmful, threatening, tortuous, abusive, defamatory, obscene, libelous, invasive of one's privacy including but not limited to personal information”. In the UK a new law came into practice earlier this year which means that those who send explicit images without consent can now go to prison for two years and get a fine.

Pornhub's latest move follows that of Microsoft, who in April of this year introduced a similar web form on their search engine, Bing, to allow victims to report content their weren't happy with.

So it looks like things are slowly starting to change to help victims of revenge porn. Steps like this are a huge victory for those who have fallen prey to having their private images online. It will also come as some solace to the many women who have had explicit images stolen from them through hacking, such as the 200+ A-listers involved in the '4chan' phone hacking scandal last year such as Jennifer Lawrence, Vanessa Hudgens and Kristen Dunst - who have since spoken out about the laws surrounding revenge porn saying more needed to be done.

Let’s hope now these companies are making moves to tackle this meaning that the sharing of explicit images of those who have not given consent will eventually become impossible.