Even as Wikipedia faces criticism for allowing pornographic content and images, including paedophilia, another angle has emerged showing the dominance of major porn websites on the online encyclopaedia. It seems that global porn major Pornhub has dedicated personnel to monitor the Wikipedia page of the site, and the moment any negative content is edited to the page, it is promptly deleted by them.
On 24th June, a para was added to the Wikipedia article on Pornhub, mentioning an online petition filed against Pornhub for abusive content hosted on the adult site. The petition “Traffickinghub” was launched in February this year by Laila Mickelwait from Exodus Cry, a US-based Christian anti-trafficking group, after several videos of sexual abuse were found on Pornhub. The petition has got over 1.2 million signatures till now. Accordingly, a para about the same, and response of Pornhub saying they will remove such content, was added to the article. But it was promptly deleted by one user with the username Applepie655.
The reason given for deletion was that the sources india.com and dw.com are not notable sources. It may be noted that india.com is a major portal in India, and dw.com is a major portal in German, and they are indeed notable sources. Moreover, the petition has its own website and it as filed on change.com, so there is no doubt about the petition, to which even the Pornhub has responded.
Earlier in May, the same user had removed a para in the page that informed that The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) found 118 instances of child sexual abuse material on Pornhub between 2017 and 2019. First the user had removed it saying that only a small number of such videos were found and they were removed by the site, so it does not need to be included in the Wikipedia page. When other editors contested and re-inserted it, the user against removed it saying not all the videos had child rape. But after that another editor pointed towards a BBC report confirming the same, and the para was again added.
The user Applepie655 seems interested only Wikipedia pages related to pornography, and the user is very prompt to remove any negative content added in those pages.
The edit history page of the user shows several edits per day on various pages of porn websites and companies, including MindGeek, the company that owns several porn websites like Pornhub, RedTube, and YouPorn, as well as several adult movie production companies.
Pornhub under fire
The world’s largest porn site Pornhub has been under the fire for videos of rape and sexual abuse uploaded on the site. It has been accused the safety measures deployed at the site are not adequate to prevent users for uploading such videos. The petitions filed against the company says that they do not have an effective system in place to verify reliably the age or consent of those featured in the pornographic content it hosts.
In the past, several child rape videos were found to be uploaded on the site, which were removed after they were pointed out by others. The videos has passed the monitoring system that the company has claimed to be in place to prevent such videos getting uploaded.
