"They start getting their kicks from that."
Pornhub Premium has been made free for everyone across the world but there are questions about whether it is actually a good thing.
Italy, Spain and France were the first countries to receive free access to the subscription.
Now it has been made available to the rest of the world, with a view to help to flatten the curve amid lockdowns around the world.
The content is available for free until April 23, 2020.
In a statement, Corey Price, Vice President of Pornhub, said the company wanted to provide a way for people to pass the time under lockdown. He said:
“With nearly one billion people in lockdown across the world because of the coronavirus pandemic, it’s important that we lend a hand and provide them with an enjoyable way to pass the time.
“We hope by expanding our offer of free Pornhub Premium worldwide, people have an extra incentive to stay home and flatten the curve.”
The incentive seems to be having an effect as the worldwide traffic has increased as more countries have been placed under lockdown.
This is seen as a positive thing because some of the consumers would normally be out looking for hookups.
If people continued to go out looking for casual sex, they may be increasing the risk of spreading COVID-19. But instead, they are satisfying their sexual urges at home.
With the addition of Pornhub Premium, users have access to content that was previously behind a paywall.
The lockdown has also provided an opportunity for different demographics to explore online porn.
According to Pornhub Insights, more of the traffic is by women while over 35s are visiting the site more often.
However, with the good aspects come the bad.
As people are staying at home and accessing online porn, there has been an increase in child porn searches.
A senior police officer in the UK warned that men between 18 and 26 are emerging as a “new group” of online paedophiles.
Norfolk Police Chief Constable Simon Bailey explained that some men are searching for child abuse imagery after becoming “desensitised” to legal pornography.
He revealed that the UK is the third biggest consumer of online child sexual abuse.
The free access to Pornhub Premium may only fuel that as more content is accessed, the more likely some people become unstimulated.
He said: “What we are seeing is a new group of young men aged between 18 and 26 who have been brought up on a staple diet of going to visit Pornhub and sites like that.
“They get to the point where there’s no pornographic material that is stimulating them so then they start to explore what child abuse imagery might look like.
“They start getting their kicks from that.”
He went on to say that the problem may get worse as technology advances.
Mr Bailey added: “You look at the opportunities that will be afforded by people who are living in poverty to then exploit children to generate income.”
He said that 500 offenders are arrested and 700 children are safeguarded every month, however, the number of referrals and the level of depravity “just keep growing”.
Mr Bailey said: “We have got to start being very honest about this, we have got to start debating this more in public.
“We’ve got to start coming to terms with the fact that there are some appalling things taking place online that unfortunately, the internet is probably the route of most of the evils.
“We have to start looking at that and we have to start genuinely asking the question, how much more are we going to tolerate?”
The NCA previously warned that at least 300,000 people pose a sexual threat to children during the lockdown period.
The link between lockdown and paedophilia can be backed up with a report from India which revealed an increase in demand for child porn.
This goes back to the negativity that surrounds Pornhub Premium being made free as consumers lose interest so they look for something else to engage them sexually, resulting in them disturbingly conducting online searches for children.
As well as making Pornhub Premium free, the company donated 50,000 masks to frontline workers in New York.
They have also said that they will be giving more funds to its ‘models’.
However, their work does not distract from the abusive practices that the company has been accused of.
For example, the ‘Sex Worker Outreach Project’. The term “sex worker” usually comes from someone who profits from looking the other way from the realities of sex trafficking.
The reality is that the industry is fueled by the trafficking of vulnerable youth and others through force, fraud and coercion.
This covers up the facts and increases the demand for porn. Consumers do not feel bad watching the videos as they think it is consensual sex between adults.
Pornhub has had multiple sex trafficking cases associated with them.
One of the most high-profile cases happened in June 2019 when 22 women sued a group called Girls Do Porn for manipulating them in porn production that produced videos made available on Pornhub.
In October 2019, the owners were arrested and charged with counts of federal sex trafficking, and Pornhub removed the Girls Do Porn partner page from its site.
But in the same month, a 15-year-old girl who had been missing for a year was found to have been abused and raped in 58 videos on Pornhub.
PayPal subsequently stopped doing business with Pornhub.
One trafficking survivor named Jewell Baraka said:
“Minors in pornography is not an issue separate from the adult porn industry.
“There have always been teen girls and boys in the adult porn industry. I was one of those. I was 14 when I was trafficked in porn.”
Away from Pornhub’s sex trafficking connections, it is also hurting the men and women of the receiving end of the screen.
Research shows that increased porn use hurts people, relationship and society so making porn completely free is potentially making it easier for viewers to hurt themselves.
While Pornhub Premium has encouraged people to stay home, it does have some alarming aspects which could negatively affect a wide demographic as the lockdown continues.
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