Instagram Takes Down Pornhub’s Second Account After It Tried to Circumvent Permanent Ban

Instagram has deleted a second account set up by Pornhub on the social service, which the adult-content site had created after Instagram removed its previous @pornhub account nearly two months ago in a permanent ban.

In an Oct. 18 tweet, Pornhub had said, “We are BACK on Instagram with our new official account : p.hub.forever ????????” On Wednesday (Oct. 26), the account had been removed.

Reps for Meta, the parent company of Instagram, did not respond to a request for comment about the removal of Pornhub’s second account.

Previously, a Meta spokesperson had said that Pornhub repeatedly violated Instagram’s community guidelines, including a ban on sexual solicitation, over the course of more than 10 years. The violations accumulated to the point where Pornhub’s Instagram account was permanently shut down, according to Meta.

Last month, Pornhub and several allies in the adult industry released an open letter accusing Instagram of a double standard in banning Pornhub but allowing celebrities like Kim Kardashian to post photos with nudity. “We demand an explanation and guidance as to why our accounts are continuously deleted, and why content we spend money creating in order to engage with our audience is removed, even when we do not breach any of Instagram’s rules,” according to the letter, addressed to senior Meta execs.

Before Instagram disabled Pornhub’s original account in early September, it had 13.1 million followers and more than 6,200 posts. That came about a month after Visa and Mastercard cut off payment privileges of TrafficJunky, the ad arm of Pornhub parent company MindGeek. The payment-processing giants responded after a federal court ruling in July rejected Visa’s request to be removed from a case in which MindGeek is being sued for allegedly distributing child pornography and that alleges Visa knowingly facilitated MindGeek’s ability to monetize the illegal content.

MindGeek has said it has “zero tolerance for the posting of illegal content on its platforms, and has instituted the most comprehensive safeguards in user-generated platform history… Any insinuation that MindGeek does not take the elimination of illegal material seriously is categorically false.”

[via]