Pornhub makes it easier for revenge porn victims to remove content

As a pre-emptive measure against revenge pornographers, Pornhub has announced a new online submission service which will help victims flag non-consensual content published without their consent on the adult entertainment website. Earlier, revenge porn victims could submit requests to take down content only through email correspondence.

"It is vital that we continue to make our community feel safe," Pornhub vice president Corey Price was quoted as saying by The Verge. "We want all Pornhub users to know that this new reporting process is for their security and peace of mind first and foremost."

To remove content from the website, victims will first have to fill in the submission form, which will ask for their name, email address, and the URL of the content to be removed. After providing basic details, victims will be asked if they had consented to the use of the content on the website. Finally, victims will have to submit their digital signatures.

Armed with these details, Pornhub will start an investigation and remove the content it finds has been uploaded without the consent of users. Moreover, to make the process discreet, Pornhub is not seeking government-issued photo IDs of users who request for content removal.

"Being a revenge porn victim is embarrassing enough as it is. We would rather not make the reporting process equally awkward, or make people feel apprehensive about approaching us to begin with," Price said.

Mary Anne Franks, a law professor at the University of Miami and vice president of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, said: "To my knowledge, [Pornhub] is the first major adult site to take a public stand against nonconsensual pornography or to offer a streamlined process to report it.

"This move by Pornhub would provide victims with a way to have their private material removed from one of the major pornography platforms, which is a significant help," she added.

Complaints of revenge porn content on the website have fallen by 38% over the past two years, according to Pornhub, which gets around 60 million visitors a day. In many US states and in some countries where there are laws against revenge porn, convictions have been made.