How Victims Are Dealing With Nonconsensual Porn
A woman, Aysha (not her real name), told Glamour about the time when someone informed her that nude images of her had been leaked online. The 30 sexually explicit images were accessed when iCloud accounts were hacked. They were posted on various porn sites, including Pornhub.
Aysha was understandably upset, had multiple panic attacks, and didn’t want to sleep alone. She talked to the police, but nothing came of it. She contacted Pornhub multiple times, but they wouldn’t do anything until she lied and said she was underage — then the content finally got taken down.
But that still wasn’t a permanent solution. Before the photos were removed, users could download them, so not long after the photos were taken down, they were re-uploaded to Pornhub again.
A spokesperson for Pornhub claims that the site employs a team of moderators who work constantly to find illegal content and remove it from the website. Pornhub allegedly uses Vobile, which is a type of software that digitally fingerprints the videos that are taken down from the site and then scans every upload to look for matches.
If this is true, then how did Aysha’s photos get back on Pornhub?
Flaws in the System
Victims can’t get the justice they deserve due to major flaws in the legal system. Kate Isaacs, an activist who launched a campaign called #NotYourPorn, says that there are actually no laws stating that porn sites cannot promote sexually explicit content of people without their consent.
The reason for this is that current laws ban this behavior by individuals, but companies are exempt. So, while the person who uploaded the content can be held accountable, Pornhub cannot be held liable.
The bottom line is that there’s really no way to know if content is nonconsensual. Victims can try to seek justice against individuals, but it’s difficult for there to be true accountability. That’s because it has to be proven that the individual intended to cause the victim to experience distress, so the person can just say they “did it as a joke” and they won’t be held accountable.
Shutting Down Anon-IB
Anon-IB is a database that lists the names and locations of nonconsensual porn victims, many of whom are underage. One woman named Emilia, 23, is doing her part to warn women about this website after an ex nonconsensually posted nude photos of her to the database. When she was first alerted that there were photos of her on the website, she found other photos of girls that went to her high school. All of them were underage at the time.
After realizing all of this, Emilia created a TikTok video about Anon-IB which was viewed more than 9.5 million times. She received comments from hundreds of women, including many of whom were also victims of nonconsensual image-sharing. Anon-IB is still up and running (although it has been shut down several times), but the good news is that Emilia’s video and other media attention toward nonconsensual porn are helping make a difference.
Not all porn on porn sites is nonconsensual, but too many images and videos are. The trouble is that viewers often can’t tell the difference between what’s exploitative and what isn’t. Is the cost of someone’s exploitation worth the click?
