“Instagram has made the right decision by cutting ties with Pornhub, and now joins Visa, Mastercard, Discover, PayPal, Grant Thornton, Heinz, Unilever, Roku, and many other companies in rejecting to do business with Pornhub, a site infamous for monetizing the sex trafficking and criminal sexual abuse of countless victims including children,” Mickelwait said in a statement to the New York Daily News.
“It is worth remembering that it’s illegal in the United States according to the Trafficking Victim’s Protection Act to knowingly benefit from a sex trafficking venture,” she continued. “Now, it’s finally time for Google search, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Reflected Networks to follow suit.”
At the time of its removal, Canadian-owned Pornhub had over 13 million followers on IG and had made over 6,200 posts.
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation also commended IG, with the organization’s CEO, Dawn Hawkins said in a statement, “Instagram was right to remove Pornhub from its platform for violating its community standards given the increasing reports of Pornhub hosting child sexual abuse material, sex trafficking, filmed rape, 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.”
She added, “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.”
While Pornhub didn’t post explicit content to the social media platform, it advocated for pornography and emboldened its followers to become involved in pornography themselves.
