The companies behind some of the world’s biggest condiments are caught up in a messy situation. Both Kraft Heinz (makers of America’s most popular ketchup) and Unilever (the parent company behind Hellman’s mayonnaise) made waves when they advertised on Pornhub earlier this year, marking a first for major mainstream brands. But though eyebrows were raised in January by Heinz’s #foodporn ad for their frozen food line Devour (which also ran during the Superbowl in January), and later by Unilever’s Dollar Shave Club ad on the streaming porn giant, the ad campaigns went without incident…until now.

England’s Sunday Times recently searched Pornhub for illegal content and reported that it found dozens of examples of illegal material on the website “within minutes.”

“Pornhub is awash with secretly filmed ‘creepshots’ of schoolgirls and clips of men performing sex acts in front of teenagers on buses,” the Times’s Shanti Das reported last weekend. “The website says it bans content showing under-18s and removes it swiftly. But some of the videos identified by this newspaper’s investigation had 350,000 views and had been on the platform for more than three years. Three of the worst clips that were flagged to Pornhub still remained on the site 24 hours later.”

Meanwhile, RT.com reported, “The Internet Watch Foundation said it has identified dozens of examples of child sexual abuse on the website. In 2017 there were 29 cases, in 2018 there were 42 and there have been 47 instances so far this year.” 

The idea that the folks behind Jell-O and Fudgsicle might do business with Pornhub has, now that these revelations have come to light, upset the British people. “Labour party politician Yvette Cooper, chair of the home affairs committee, called the Times’s findings “horrendous.” The Times quoted her as saying, “This material is illegal and dangerous. There is no excuse for complacency or claiming ignorance when children are being put at risk by the proliferation of this poison.” Cooper is calling for a police investigation.

Yikes.

Look, I find it a bit odd that, so many months after these mega corporations advertised on a site that’s notorious for allegedly allowing its users to break numerous laws—particularly copyright laws—people are suddenly upset. And at condiment companies, no less. Pornhub has been an alledged hub of illegal activity for twelve years, but it took ketchup- and soap-making conglomerates’ dealings with the company for anyone to take notice? Bizarre

All that being said, the real issue here is that Pornhub absolutely must do better at policing the content on its site. The thing that makes Pornhub so dangerous in the first place is its come-one-come-all-just-come attitude about user-uploaded content. Whether that content is merely consensually, legally made porn that’s uploaded without the creators’ knowledge (and thus would be illegal), or portraying truly despicable acts involving minors (which obviously would be horrendously illegal), it shouldn’t be allowed on the site. Period.

CNBC reported, “A spokesperson for Pornhub said the site has a team of reviewers who monitor videos and report illegal content to the authorities,” but that team is clearly not doing its job. If it takes Mayochup and Q-tips to bring that reality to light, then so be it.

Then again, there’s also a matter of consumer education about pornographic content. The Pornhub spokesperson mentioned in the statement that “videos described as ‘hidden camera footage’ are often legal, consensual and professionally produced to cater to particular tastes.”

“Consumers of these porn websites should know that there is often no way to tell whether they are consuming images of children, and that every time they visit sites like Pornhub they are contributing to the problem,” Kate Isaacs, a spokesperson for #NotYourPorn, was quoted as saying by RT.com. I find myself wondering if the Sunday Times and the Internet Watch Foundation are really qualified to know the difference between staged content and truly illegal material.

Whatever the case, however, Pornhub clearly needs to do better. As a company that regularly panders to public opinion by creating environmental clean-up campaigns, funding art gallery shows, and giving out PR-friendly awards to celebrities, it’s on the streaming giant to make their site as mainstream as they want it to be.

Photo by Engin Akyurt from Pexels