MONTREAL -- Pornhub’s online traffic has plummeted in recent weeks amid controversy and ongoing lawsuits for allegedly hosting videos including minors and non-consenting adults on the site.
What was once the world’s most popular adult website has dropped to third place, behind xvideos.com and xnxx.com, according to an online traffic tracker.
From December to January, there were about 694 million fewer visits to the site, according to the tracker. In the US, where about a quarter of Pornhub’s traffic comes from, clicks decreased 25 per cent.
Meanwhile, engagement on other top sites was stable or increased over the past two months.
In recent months, lawsuits have been brought against MindGeek, the Montreal-based Pornhub parent company, as allegations surfaced that the Pornhub had allowed videos of underage girls and non-consenting women to be uploaded.
Serena Fleites alleged before Canada’s federal ethics committee in February that a video of her was posted to the site when she was in Grade 7. She said Pornhub took more than a week to respond to her request to take down the video, and weeks more to actually remove it.
Days later, she alleged, the video resurfaced.
American lawyer Michael Bowe, who also testified before the committee, alleged he was aware of "hundreds of accounts" from children and non-consenting adults who had images of them uploaded to Pornhub.
Days later, MindGeek executives David Marmorstein Tassillo and Feras Antoon delivered their own testimony in front of the committee. They said they were investigating Fleites’s case.
The website has a huge volume of material, with millions of videos uploaded every year.
A significant portion of those videos were removed in December, after Pornhub announced it would remove all "unverified" content from the site in an effort to remove unknown, non-consensual content.
“We're trying to create a safe environment for people to consume adult content, and we understand there are people out there that are trying to misuse these platforms,” said Tassillo.
