Pornhub has settled with the Federal Trade Commission and the state of Utah over claims it “inflicted grave harm on children.” As part of the proposed settlement, Pornhub and its parent company, Aylo, must pay $5 million to Utah and address the FTC’s allegations, which included:
- Allowing the dissemination of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and nonconsensual material (NCM) on its platform.
- Not reviewing content flagged as CSAM or NCM until it was reported at least 16 times.
- Not doing enough to block users who uploaded CSAM from creating a new account and uploading it again.
- Failing to maintain paperwork to verify the age of individuals in content on its sites, and not protecting this information, including dates of birth, Social Security numbers, and government IDs.
Pornhub must also implement policies to combat CSAM and NCM. In a press release sent to The Verge, Aylo says the settlement doesn’t introduce “any new substantive requirements that were not either already in place or in progress.”
Pornhub has long struggled with content moderation, but things came to a head in 2020, when The New York Times published a report detailing the presence of CSAM and NCM on Pornhub, leading Visa and Mastercard to stop processing payments on the site. Pornhub later implemented a policy that requires uploaders to verify the age of the individuals in their videos, as well as confirm that they consent to their appearance.
