Unilever and Heinz distance themselves from Pornhub amid paedophilia row
Big brands including Unilever and Heinz have distanced themselves from Pornhub after they were criticised for funding advertising campaigns for male grooming products and frozen food on the platform.
Unilever & Heinz distance themselves from Pornhub in paedophilia row
This follows reports in The Times that the site is flooded with illegal content including footage of underage girls, in violation of strict rules setting a lower age limit at 18. Alongside such footage, Unilever ran a campaign for its subscription razor service Dollar Shave Club with the message: “If you use our bathroom products you won’t have to visit this site as much.”
The consumer goods giant has vowed to dissociate itself from the website as a result of these reports with a spokesperson saying: “This type of content is deeply troubling and we will ensure that none of our brands advertises on Pornhub again, or on any other porn sites.”
Kraft Heinz meanwhile went one step further by taking over the Pornhub homepage for a day to promote its frozen food brand Devour, with the food giant leaving the door open to future collaboration by saying only that: “The brand was explicitly talking about #Foodporn, which has become a cultural phenomenon on Instagram.”
Critics accuse the site of enabling paedophiles to share illegal content by allowing user uploads of unvetted footage which can rack up thousands of views before being taken down.
Blake White, Pornhub vice president, said: “It is important to note that oftentimes videos described as ‘hidden camera footage’ or ‘young teen’ are in fact legal, consensual videos that are produced to cater to various user fantasies. They are in fact protected by various freedom of speech laws. Certain words are banned from being used in titles and tags, and we will be doing a thorough audit of our websites to update and expand this list.
Pornhub has worked hard to market itself as the respectable face of the internet porn industry, generating 110m daily visits to become the most popular such website in the UK.
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