How have these stars reacted to PornHub deleting millions of videos?

Perhaps, you’re reading this article from your United States’ home and you’ve spent a meaningful amount of time on Pornhub this year. Chances are, you couldn’t help but notice that its video search results for popular terms like anal, blowjob or varations thereof, look greatly different than they did in previous years. 

What’s most notable and universal about these categories is that there are far fewer clips extracted from scenes shot by prominent chiefly American studios. Pornhub’s results pages are featuring far more content that was produced and uploaded by independent creator-performers. The site refers to them as “verified amateurs”. 

If you’ve watched enough of the site’s uploads, you may have noticed that you hear a lot less English dialogue and background talks than in the past. People are hearing more foreign accents and languages, especially from Central and Eastern Europe. But what are people saying about the international content? And how are stars responding to Pornhub deleting millions of videos?

International

Australian creator-performer Charlie Forde says, “The international content is fun to watch. I’m a sucker for accents, even if I can’t understand what’s being said.” The new trends don’t mirror significant sudden changes in the demographics of porn creators, what they make or how they put content on Pornhub. 

It’s possible that some users haven’t noticed the change, since the interplay between platform algorithms and search histories can powerfully affect what each person sees on Pornhub. These shifts could just be some notable apparent results of Pornhub’s decision to delete millions of videos back in December of 2020. 

PornHub’s decision

Like any other site of this kind, PornHub’s content is the backbone of their profits. Now, it’s not uncommon for a site or say, a streaming platform to delete some content for coming under fire. For instance, Netflix has recently deleted the controversial social commentary film Cuties. But why would PornHub make the crazy decision to delete literally millions of their videos?

The decision targeted specific types of uploaders. It’s consequences on the content volume and diversity vastly varied from one pornographic category to the next. Maggie MacDonald from the University of Toronto Ph.D., studies digital pornography platforms, shows the net effect had a serious flattening and narrowing of the site’s offerings.

It’s created some underlying trends in porn production into keen focus. It could potentially bring greater visibility for a lot of creator-performers from beyond the Western world. MacDonald refers to PornHub as a “relentless, bottomless pit of anything you wanted to see”. 

Clipocalypse

Unsurprisingly, the decision has been given the name “clipocalypse” but here’s a little more detail on the matter. PornHub generated over 6.8 million uploads in 2019 alone. By December 2020, the site hosted about 13.8 million videos. But early that month, federal laws came into the picture. 

A New York Times opinion piece put the focus on the presence of child sexual abuse, as well as other forms of non-consensually filmed and shared materials on the site. But the article attracted ponderous criticism from many sex workers. The article mostly drew on the “dubious and distortionary findings and arguments” from one anti-sex work conservative group.

The conservative group failed to effectively put into context their findings. The article seemed designed to fuel a wide hatred of porn in general. But regardless of its accuracy, the article created an internet riot. It prompted MasterCard and Visa to stop servicing Pornhub, threatening its success, forcing the site to make that drastic decision. But what do the stars think?

Several Pornhub stars are claiming that, although their verified accounts were left unharmed, the site took away some of their potentially controversial clips such as “consensual non-consent roleplay, and more hardcore or rough content,” says Suzanne Ferrari. She’s the creator and director behind the studio.

We don’t have the exact numbers but, there were just under 3 million videos from stars remaining on the site. And that number heavily bounced back up over the next few days. Stars are still waiting for PornHub to make a comment. 

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What do you think of PornHub’s decision? Do you have more comments from the stars? Tell us your thoughts!