Pornhub Become a Partner with a UK Charity to Help in Stopping a Distribution of Child Sexual Abuse Material

Pornhub's parent Aylo partnered with UK charity IWF on voluntary standards to combat child sexual abuse material on porn sites through age verification and content moderation.

Aylo, the mother company of the porn site Pornhub has announced a new partnership with the UK-based charity, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), one of the leading organizations, which campaign against online child sexual abuse. Aylo is a new partner to IWF, the latter of which has assured the latter of a set of voluntary standards developed according to those of IWF a year and a half ago that are obligated to better protect children from exploitation on pornography sites.

The standards set requirements for the sites including e. g. using AI tools to check the ages of people in uploaded data, checking consent was given by all parties, doing cross-checking with databases of known child abuse imagery, and including strict age verification for users who want to have access to the sites. 

Susie Hargreaves, OBE CEO of the IWF claimed the adult industry could take the role "to make sure the ever-growing billions of users of the internet are in a safe place". Aylo's David Cooke was very happy about the cooperation with the IWF which led to the safety measures for different platforms being put in place.

Nevertheless, the action has sparked concern among the same activists who had previously slammed Pornhub for the way it dealt with non-consensual and illegal sex videos. Elena Michael, co-founder of Notyourporn, contrasted this with "a mere marketing strategy" that wouldn't bring about any real change. Another announcement by this company does not make any sense for attorney Michael Bowe who has been aggressive in bringing legal action on this company.

The IWF allows that concerns in the past have been noticed and acted upon but states that now that new safeguards have been introduced, not a single report of child sexual abuse material has been prompted on Aylo's sites in the past year. The implementation of voluntary standards will be checked by the auditors selected independently by the auditors.

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The UK's Online Safety Act, which is expected to become law soon, is believed to be going to have new requirements for pornographic websites to have robust age verification and safety measures in place. Aylo affirms its commitment to comply with all the law-enacted provisions.