Pornhub’s account was yanked off Instagram by the social media giant for a reason yet to be disclosed.
The main reason behind the sudden account removal is said to be as a result of campaigners’ pressure against the site.
The story was broken by Variety which also stated that at the time of its removal, Pornhub’s Instagram account has amassed a huge 13.1 million followers and over 6,000 posts.
The company’s account posts safe-for-work content that promotes various of its videos and performers. However, the giant internet porn site still has its accounts operational on other social media platforms including Twitter.
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Back to the removal of Pornhub’s account from Instagram, the reason is yet unclear even though there have been a lot of screenshots being shared by anti-Pornhub campaigner Laila Mickelwait which suggests the account may have been taken down over violation of Instagram’s community guidelines.
Mickelwait is the founder of the “TraffickingHub” campaign: an advocacy group devoted to “shutting down Pornhub and holding its executives accountable for enabling, distributing and profiting from rape, child abuse, sex trafficking, and criminal image-based sexual abuse.”
She also positions herself as an anti-sex-trafficking campaigner even though some critics note her connections to evangelical Christain groups that advocate the total abolition of all sex work and commercial pornography.
Mickelwait’s website gave more perspective about her work experience one of which is Exodus Cry, a Christian abolitionist group that wants to “end the sex industry” and it lists “TraffickingHub” under the “Our Campaigns” section of its website.
As reported by The New Republic, Exodus Cry “appears to have been incubated in IHOPKC [International House of Prayer Kansas City], the Christian ministry led by pastor Mike Bickle, a dominionist, believing, as Political Research Associates describes it, that ‘God has called conservative Christians to exercise dominion over society by taking control of political and cultural institutions.”
In a statement posted on Twitter, Mickelwait said Instagram and Meta had made the “right decision by cutting ties with Pornhub” and that it was time for other big tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft to “follow suit.” We’ve reached out to Mickelwait for comment and will update this story if we hear back.
On the other hand, is Pornhub whose criticism for facilitating the distribution of child abuse materials has grown in recent times which has ultimately implicated the business partners of the porn site and led to the resignation of its CEE and COO.
In fact, Visa and Mastercard back in 2020 stopped processing payments on Pornhub over the presence of unlawful content on the site even though this hasn’t stopped the lawsuits proceeding against the companies.
In August, a California judge allowed a lawsuit against Visa to continue, arguing that the company “intended to help MindGeek monetize child porn.”
Pornhub in response to the criticism took a number of steps by removing content from unverified users as well as the removal of the download function of content on its website.
We hope to hear more about the reasons why Instagram got Pornhub booted off Instagram soon.
