Instagram Suspends Pornhub's Account

CYBERSPACE—A flurry of news sites reported Saturday that Meta-owned social media titan Instagram sometime within the previous day or so suspended Pornhub's account on the platform, which had a follower count of over 13 million before being taken down. Neither Pornhub parent company MindGeek nor Meta has yet commented publicly about the account's removal. Being abruptly purged from Instagram is a familiar occurence for adult industry members in general, but this particular instance drew heightened attention undoubtedly due to having come, as entertainment trade journal Variety noted, "one month after Visa and Mastercard cut off payment privileges of TrafficJunky, the advertising arm of Pornhub parent company MindGeek," a move that "followed a fedral court ruling in July rejecting Visa's request to be removed from a case in which MindGeek is being sued for allegedly distributing child pornography and that alleges Visa knowingly faciliatated MindGeek's ability to monetize the illegal content." The closure of Pornhub's IG page was apparently first blasted to public light Friday morning by anti-porn crusader Laila Wickelwait (now the CEO of nonprofit organization Justice Defense Fund, and a longstanding affiliate of religiously grounded lobbying group the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, or NCOSE), who tweeted at 11:46 a.m. Friday: "Pornhub's Instagram account just disappeared. #Winning #Traffickinghub". NCOSE as well chimed in to applaud Instagram's shutdown of the account, with the group's CEO, Dawn Hawkins, releasing this statement to the NY Daily News: "Instagram was right to remove Pornhub from its platform for violating its community standards given the increasing reports of Pornhub hosting child sexual abuse materail, sex trafficking, filmed raped, and non-consensual videos and images. Instagram served as a distribution partner with this criminal enterprise, helping to push millions to their website, including children. We are grateful that Instagram has heard the voices of sexual abuse survivors who have been personally harmed by Pornhub's insatiable appetite for profit." Instagram logo by Web999 from Wikimedia Commons