Child pornography: the PLQ wants to tighten the screw on PornHub

The Liberal Party of Quebec asks the Legault and Trudeau governments to tighten the screws on PornHub, the day after an article in the New York Times who illustrated how easy it was to access child pornography on this adult entertainment site, which is based in Montreal.

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The firm MindGeek, which owns PornHub, is indeed located in a discreet building on Boulevard Décarie, in the west of the city, although we know that many of its activities are administered from tax havens.

In addition to its controversial taxation, MindGeek has been regularly accused for several years of hosting explicit content featuring minors on its popular PornHub platform. The recent article from New York Times in fact once again proof.

We learn that victims of sexual exploitation struggle to remove humiliating videos of them.

Although PornHub was recently forced by the US Congress to ban certain words from its search tab, such as “rape” or “pedophilia”, the prestigious American daily’s investigation shows that it is still very easy for anyone to ‘a little ill-intentioned to access this kind of content.

Shocked by its revelations, the Liberal Party of Quebec urged on Saturday the Minister of Public Security, Geneviève Guilbault, to implement article 5 of the report of the Special Commission on the sexual exploitation of minors. The latter provides that an expert has the task of identifying juvenile content on websites legally hosted in Quebec and that he has the power to reprimand these platforms.

“What we learn in the New York Times is a serious blow to the reputation of Canada, Quebec and the city of Montreal. We must all fight against the sexual exploitation and rape industry, ”read the statement sent by the Liberal Party.

The political party also calls on Ottawa to launch an investigation into the case of PornHub as soon as possible, as Senator Julie Miville-Deschênes has been imploring for several months, who has made this cause her hobbyhorse.

“Asked about the presence of child pornography and rape videos on the Montreal porn site PornHub, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau remains evasive about what he intends to do,” she denounced Friday on Twitter in the wake of the article of New York Times.

“We have all kinds of measures in place and we will continue to work with the security agencies to ensure that there is no exploitation, traffic (sic) of people in the country”, reacted the Prime Minister at a press conference a few hours earlier.

On the side of PornHub operators, we reiterate that we are working hard to detect and then remove offensive content.

The figures put forward by the multinational New York Times however leave skeptics.

Pornhub claims that the Internet Watch Foundation, a UK organization that combats child pornography, reported just 118 images to the site over a three-year period. By comparison, Facebook says it had to remove 12.4 million such images in just three months this year.

Many victims explain that the way PornHub works is why it is so difficult to control what is broadcast.

Because like YouTube, users of this XXX site can post videos themselves. But unlike YouTube, they can also upload videos they like directly to the site.

In short, even when a video is deleted because it is deemed inappropriate, it can quickly be put back online by another user.

According to SimilarWeb, PornHub is the 10th most viewed website in the world, ahead of giants like Amazon and Netflix.