Pornhub says it has removed all videos from unverified accounts from its platform; the number of hosted videos dropped from 13.5M to 7.2M
More Than 10 Million Videos — From Its Site Charlie Osborne / ZDNet : Pornhub suspends over 10 million videos to eradicate illegal content Charlesarthur / The Overspill : Start Up No.1451: the trouble with Slack and work, Apple works on replacing Qualcomm modems, Pornhub's giant purge, and more Jack Gramenz / news.com.au : Pornhub deletes millions of videos Tweets: Casey Newton / @caseynewton : If you wonder what the internet would be like without Section 230, Pornhub's response to losing its payment processors offers a pretty good preview. “Verified” content only; everything else disappears https://www.theverge.com/... Robyn Caplan / @robyncaplan : What's happening on PornHub is happening all over social media; platforms are using “verification” as a way to distinguish between sources to decrease moderation needs (or allocate resources). This acts kind of like an internal badge and can factor into things like monetization. Liana / @redlianak : Thanks to a scandal, Pornhub suddenly became the least revenge-porny social media service on the internet. The statistics on kiddie porn on Facebook here are pretty startling though. 2020! https://www.cbc.ca/... Roger McNamee / @moonalice : @andymstone @cagoldberglaw @VisaNews @Mastercard . @andymstone You say this as though you expect the world to believe 99% is good enough. At 99% there are still millions of harmful posts getting through, each with the potential to ruin someone's life. That is not acceptable. @visa @Mastercard Robyn Caplan / @robyncaplan : YouTube just used this system, for instance, when figuring out how to address videos on Covid (called it self-certification). Inevitably this ends up benefiting more some media and bigger creators, as well as “official sources” (platforms seem to see direct info as less biased) Max Burns / @themaxburns : Kind of incredible that @Pornhub takes more direct accountability for the content on its platform than Facebook does https://twitter.com/... Carrie A. Goldberg / @cagoldberglaw : Online Child sexual abuse material by numbers: 118: instances of csam found on pornhub 2017-2019 84,000,000: instances of csam found on FAcebook 2017-2019 You're dumping which platform, @Visa @Mastercard ?!?!!! https://twitter.com/... Matthew Roche / @sqlallfather : Did you have PornHub seizing the moral high ground over Facebook and Twitter on your 2020 bingo card? This is a reminder that social media platforms COULD solve their systemic problems, but they CHOOSE not to because spreading hatred and undermining democracy is too profitable. https://twitter.com/... Robyn Caplan / @robyncaplan : Er or raw data of some sort? I dunno. Anyhoo, this kind of mediation between users through verification and certification is a big move! We are seeing more of it from almost every platform (including ones you might not expect like AirBnb and Tinder). Carrie A. Goldberg / @cagoldberglaw : No. Pornhub removing unverified content is not what the internet would be like w/o 230 b/c it happened WITH 230 fully intact. But why is it bad for platforms to have actual standards for types of user content (i.e. porn) w/ high frequency of malicious publication & injury? https://twitter.com/... Mustapha Hamoui / @beirutspring : Huh... It now hit me that if YouTube had done the same, all the misinformation, fake news, extremist content and other garbage would have been gone in a second... https://twitter.com/... Casey Newton / @caseynewton : @pt Well, we don't know how Twitter would react to a world without 230. Maybe ID verification would have nothing to do with it. Seems more likely that those whose IDs had been verified would be given broader speech permissions than those who had not Olivia Solon / @oliviasolon : The verified porn performers on the platform have been asking Pornhub to crack down on unverified content for years — they lose money from unverified users posting pirated copies of their scenes & none of them want nonconsensual material next to theirs. @exoduscry : TODAY'S BREAKING NEWS: “Pornhub is removing all videos uploaded to its site by unverified users, millions of videos in total, as part of a crackdown on user-uploaded content after two major payment processors (actually 3) suspended service.” #Traffckinghub https://www.theverge.com/... Nora Ali / @norakali : This happened faster than expected - Pornhub removing all vids by unverified users; for a platform that relies on user-generated content, this is big https://www.theverge.com/... https://twitter.com/... Samantha Cole / @samleecole : everything except for what was uploaded by content partners or members of the Model Program is suspended pending review and user verification—instead of those videos, you'll see this https://www.vice.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This purge is the second domino in a rapid collapse of Pornhub's status quo. Days earlier, after a New York Times investigation alleged the site hosted non-consensual and underage footage, Pornhub had already banned downloads and blocked unverified uploads — but the catalog itself stayed intact.
What forced the deletion was money: Mastercard terminated and Visa suspended Pornhub's card processing pending review, making verified-only content a condition of getting paid back. The later arc confirms the reset stuck — Pornhub followed with biometric uploader verification and expanded human moderation, and a 2022 analysis of its transparency reports found takedowns down 98% year over year.
First-order effects
- Pornhub's hosted library halves overnight from 13.5M to 7.2M videos, wiping out every unverified uploader's distribution while verified creators and studios become the site's de facto sole supply base.
- The move is explicitly framed as the price of restoring card payments, so Pornhub's content policy is now effectively set by Mastercard and Visa rather than by its own moderation standards.
Second-order effects
- Every rival adult platform faces the same processor-imposed bar: if Mastercard and Visa treated Pornhub's unverified uploads as unlawful-content risk, peer sites must adopt equivalent verification or risk losing their own payment rails.
- Amateur and unverified uploaders lose their largest free distribution channel, pushing supply toward verified-creator platforms and paid models where identity checks are already built in.
Third-order effects
- Financial infrastructure is emerging as the enforcement layer for user-generated-content platforms: when processors can halt revenue faster than any regulator, compliance standards get written by banks' risk teams, a dynamic Casey Newton flagged as a preview of a web without Section 230 protections.
- If the pattern holds, upload verification becomes table stakes across UGC platforms generally, trading open contribution for provable identity — with the long-term cost borne by anonymous and amateur creators everywhere.
The trend: Platform trust and safety is migrating from self-set moderation rules to enforcement by payment processors, making financial access — not legislation — the binding constraint on what UGC sites may host.