Regulating the ‘Wild West’ of Internet Pornography

Many people are becoming increasingly aware of the harms of the online world and the ways in which websites can cause “corrosive and abhorrent” harms to individuals, communities and to our society and our fundamental democratic principles. ¹

“…there is a strong case for governments and policy makers to intervene in the unrestricted supply of internet pornography to all consumers, particularly adolescents. The precautionary principle should be invoked to minimize the likelihood that internet pornography consumption will become a global public health crisis.”Darryl Mead, The Reward Foundation ²

The internet has been like a steroid to the porn industry, since it has allowed users “to buy and consume porn in private, without embarrassing trips to seedy stores or video rental shops.” ³ Porn consumption has gone through the roof and the industry has exploded in scale. And it has done so with little control or regulation, nurtured by the prevailing culture of “cyberlibertarianism” which has prioritised tech companies’ profitability over safeguarding concerns.

Today, porn sites receive 130 million visitors per day – and around 35% of all internet downloads. ⁴ The industry is worth an estimated $100 billion globally ⁵, and sophisticated PR strategies have presented it as “fun, edgy, chic, sexy and hot.” ⁶

Online porn companies have grown into global corporate behemoths, enthusiastically portraying themselves as frontiers full of possibilities and conduits of personal and collective freedoms. They tacitly align the lack of legal regulation with sexual liberty, radical democracy and freedom from repressive authoritarianism.

But the problems with the online porn industry are increasingly hard to ignore.

Problem 1: Online porn sites are being accessed by kids

Even though online porn isn’t for children, children are accessing it, to the detriment of their wellbeing and social, emotional and cognitive development. Internet access is an essential part of daily life for most children, and the lack of online protection means children in the UK are being exposed to pornography at unprecedented rates. ⁷ According to UK Government statistics from 2015, 1.4 million children visit porn sites from their desktop every month. ⁸

A British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) survey from January 2020 found that most children stumbled across hardcore pornography unintentionally, and many younger respondents said it left them feeling “grossed out” and “confused”. ⁹

In addition to the shock and trauma children experience when they encounter online porn, research confirms that it can also cause them profound psychological, social, emotional, neurobiological and sexual harms, as Dr.Gail Dines explains : “Extensive research has shown that porn undermines the social, emotional, cognitive, and physical health of individuals, families, and communities. These studies also demonstrate that porn shapes how we think about gender, sexuality, relationships, intimacy, sexual violence, and gender equality.”¹⁰

David Austin, Chief Executive of the BBFC, points out that online porn is also “affecting the way young people understand healthy relationships, sex, body image and consent.” Watching online pornography normalises sexual aggression, risky sexual practices and men’s violent sexual domination over women. It drives real-world harassment and coercion; indeed many experts suspect it to be behind the sharp rise in peer-on-peer sexual abuse that has occured in schools across the country.

What’s more, by reinforcing sexual objectification and peddling harmful gender stereotypes, online porn can negatively impact girls’ body image and create unhealthy pressures for them to perform sex acts that are painful, risky or humiliating.

“The younger you get them, the longer you’ve got them. It’s like handing out cigarettes outside the middle school.”
Dr Gail Dines, Culture Reframed ¹¹

Children are particularly susceptible to pornography’s addictive qualities. In 2018, the alcohol and drug rehab provider UK Addiction Treatment Centres (UKAT) reported that the number of teenage admissions for porn addiction had more than tripled over the previous three years. ¹² The compulsive consumption of novel, “unreal” porn sex can have a profound impact on young people’s mental health, cognitive ability and academic performance. ¹³

What we need: Robust age verification for all online porn sites

The professional consensus is that the world-leading age verification software, developed in the UK, is the most robust and effective mechanism for protecting children from harmful online content. The regulator must have the power to mandate the use of such technology for all online pornography platforms, since they pose such a high risk to children.

“Commercial pornography websites are continuing to allow, and profit from, the use of their sites by children – with deeply harmful consequences. The Government already has the powers and mechanism to prevent this. Child protection cannot wait.”
Kat Banyard, UK Feminista¹⁴

Problem 2: Online porn platforms host illegal material

In 1996, the Communications Decency Act (Section 230) protected online service providers against legal liability for the content uploaded by their users. Journalist John Naughton explains that many big tech companies have exploited this loophole, “allowing anyone to upload anything – good, bad and unconscionable – and then monetising the user engagement generated by that free content.” ¹⁵

The ability to host user-generated content has been revolutionary for many tech industries, who enjoy high advertising revenues by maximising the frictionless circulation of users’ preferred content. Whether this ‘preferred content’ is illegal or harmful makes zero difference to the bottom line – and being shielded from liability, web platforms are effectively off the hook for facilitating crime.

Mainstream online porn platforms make it easy for anyone to upload any explicit / pornographic material to their websites. The fact that there is no control or regulation over user uploads means they are often contaminated by an unknown quantity of child sexual abuse material and other illegal and non-consensual content. As well as hosting footage involving trafficking, rape and abuse, they also feature ‘revenge porn’ (which spiked during the COVID 19 lockdown ¹⁶) and ‘spy-cam porn’ (showing footage from cameras hidden in women’s bedrooms, toilets, locker rooms, gynaecology wards, etc.).¹⁷

It’s hard to overstate the distress experienced by victims of such illegal and non-consensual material. Many suffer from PTSD and depression as they deal with the humiliating knowledge that the material has been viewed and even potentially downloaded by countless others, not merely anonymous viewers and potentially even their own friends and family. ¹⁸

As you might expect, online porn sites’ policies, guidelines and terms of service state that users must not upload material that’s illegal, abusive, hateful, obscene or defamatory – many even stipulate that users must obtain written permission from those featured within their video uploads, along with evidence that they are over 18.

In reality, however, these prohibitions are often useless in practical terms, because they’re simply not robustly enforced. When the inevitable happens and violative content is uploaded, the sites make it clear that they bear no responsibility.¹⁹ And they are able to get away with this because, ultimately, they are entirely self-regulated, unaccountable to any government and immune from legal liability.²⁰

What we need: Age and consent checks for all content

The current system of voluntary self-regulation by the industry is failing. Rather than adopting a proactive and robust, risk-based approach, most porn platforms at best tend merely to moderate material they are already hosting, distributing and monetizing.

But even if content is moderated before it’s posted (a move recently announced by Pornhub), the bottom line is that it’s often objectively impossible to tell whether something is legal just by looking at it. For example, how can we know if the person featured in the video is actually 18 when they look younger? Or if they’ve agreed to have the video posted online for the world to see? How can we tell whether rape-themed porn is ‘simulated’ (i.e. made with consent) or if it’s ‘real’? Although whether it’s OK for people to consent to being harmed at all is another matter.

What we need is a robust mechanism for verifying the age and consent of every person featured in every single video posted online. This is the only way we can hope to eliminate image-based sexual abuse, sexual activity with children, footage of real rape and assault, and other content that’s either illegal in and of itself, or posted without a person’s explicit permission.

Problem 3: Porn that’s legal but harmful

Matching its own explosion in growth, the online commercial pornography industry has also seen an escalation in extreme, hard-core pornographic content. Violent, deviant and paraphilic material that would once have been banned, refused classification or relegated to niche genres, is now unexceptional in mainstream pornography, the result of the competitive forces of an unregulated and rapidly-expanding marketplace.

“As more and more pornographic images become readily available, it takes much more to scratch one’s sexual itch… that leads to the necessity for extremism.”
Mark Schrayber, Jezabel²¹

Far from merely reflecting our sexual tastes and preferences, online porn plays an important role in actively shaping them. Watching porn is an escalating habit and heavy users require increasingly extreme content in order to maintain arousal over time. Knowing this, porn sites use algorithms to keep users engaged by introducing them to new categories that include the depiction of unethical or illegal scenarios.

Most online porn platforms say that they prohibit this kind of material. For example, Pornhub’s extensive and comprehensive Terms of Use ban anyone from “post[ing] any Content depicting underage sexual activity, non-consensual sexual activity, revenge porn, blackmail, intimidation, snuff, torture, death, violence, incest, racial slurs, or hate speech, (either orally or via the written word).”

But a cursory glance at the website shows there are literally tens of millions of videos that contravene these terms, with footage that depicts the abuse of women, children and minorities; many even have their own search tags such as ‘babysitter’, ‘voyeur’, ‘it hurts’, ‘slave’ and ‘rough painal’.

When journalists pointed this out, Pornhub responded by stating: “We allow all forms of sexual expression that follow our Terms of Use, and while some people may find these fantasies inappropriate, they do appeal to many people around the world and are protected by various freedom of speech laws.” ²²

The point is that Pornhub does host content that doesn’t follow its terms of use – and the implications that the depiction of illegal sexual activity is harmful because it:

allows real abuse videos to be camouflaged and go undetected.

increases demand for ‘real’ illegal material.

impacts users’ ideas, values and behaviour.

There is in fact a vast body of evidence that watching porn influences users’ real-world attitudes and behaviours. It increases people’s likelihood of believing rape myths (false, stereotyped beliefs about sexual assaults, rapists and rape victims), holding less sympathy for victims of sexual violence and being coercive and aggressive during sex.

It also drives popular trends such as heterosexual anal sex, strangulation and other kinds of ‘rough sex’ which are high risk for women and girls. What’s more, police investigators are noting an increasing trend for men who have no prior sexual interest in children to ‘cross the line’ from adult to child pornography as a result of heavy porn use, often via the bridge of ‘teen porn’.

What we need: External regulation

The porn industry has demonstrated that it cannot be trusted to self-regulate. Governments must put in place designated regulators to ensure transparent and consistent moderation of legal but harmful content. Porn companies must be made to comply with their own terms and conditions.

As a society, we’ve been conditioned to accept pornography wholesale, without looking too closely or asking too many questions. Those who challenge the platform are told they are endangering the principles of free speech and attacked as “befuddled if well-intentioned moralists”²³– but this has to change.We must regulate the online porn industry to curtail its harms and abuses once and for all.