IG Has Banned Pornhub 'Permanently' But Kim Kardashian Can Still Post 'Her Fully Exposed A**'

The Pornhub Instagram account has been permanently disabled, and the adult website company has demanded an explanation for the ban.

A spokesperson for Meta, the company that owns Instagram, told Vice's Motherboard on Tuesday that they have "permanently disabled this Instagram account for repeatedly violating [their] policies."

But Pornhub, one of the world's most-visited adult websites, denied violating Instagram's guidelines on their account. The company shared a public letter claiming discrimination, signed by 63 co-signatories in the adult industry, which immediately pointed fingers in the direction of public figures such as the Kardashians, whose R-rated content on their Instagram accounts is tolerated by Meta.

In the letter posted on Twitter, Pornhub directly addresses Meta officials, including Mark Zuckerberg. The endorsers include pornographers, models, and famous performers such as Riley Reid and Lucy Hart.

"Sex workers and performers have been unfairly targeted in the form of bans, shadow bans, suspensions, loss of Live privileges and content removal, despite taking extra care not to violate Instagram's Community Guidelines," the letter reads.

Pornhub claimed that their former Instagram account was banned despite posting fully PG content, but mainstream celebrities, who regularly post risqué media on their profiles, are not accorded the same treatment.

"Kim Kardashian has posted her fully exposed a** to her 330 million followers without any restrictive action from Instagram," they said.

Indeed, Kardashian had recently posted an image from a magazine photoshoot, in which her derriere is on display in a white thong.

"We are happy to see that Kim and the artistic team behind the image are free to share their work on the platform but question why we are denied the same treatment," the signatories argue.

Instagram had first removed Pornhub's account three weeks back because it allegedly went against their Community Guidelines -- as claimed by Justice Defense Fund CEO Laila Mickelwait, an activist dedicated to “combating the injustice of sex trafficking.”*

The JDF’s lawyer told Narcity the group is exclusively focused on “removing criminal nonconsensual content from the internet such as rape, trafficking and child abuse.” Mickelwait is also the founder of the #Traffickinghub campaign, which claims to be a “non-religious, non-partisan” effort to hold PornHub “accountable for enabling and profiting from sex trafficking and criminal sexual exploitation of countless victims.”

The campaign has come under fire for its ties with Exodus Cry, a Christian “sexual exploitation abolitionist” group that opposes porn and legalized sex work as “commercial sexual exploitation.”

Mickelwait was the director of abolition at Exodus Cry when she launched the #Traffickinghub movement in 2020.

Although the specifics of Instagram’s Pornhub ban are not publicly available, figures like Mickelwait celebrated it, stating Instagram's grown a so-called “conscience.”

Mickelwait has accused Pornhub, which lost more than 13 million followers on the platform, of knowingly monetizing sex trafficking and criminal abuse of countless victims, including children.

The credit for Pornhub's Instagram ban was taken by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) which, according to its own website, is an "organization exposing the links between all forms of sexual exploitation such as child sexual abuse, prostitution, sex trafficking and the public health harms of pornography."

However, a spokesperson for Pornhub had told Mashable that "anti-porn crusaders like NCOSE [...] intentionally misled reporters about why Pornhub’s Instagram profile was disabled, and actively misled people into believing they were responsible."

"Instagram does not take business dictation from anti-porn zealots, especially ones with noted histories of propagating false information and extremist policies against sex workers," they added.

Despite criticizing the level of censoring, MindGeek, Pornhub's mother company, has previously been found guilty of profiting from non-consensually shared adult content and even sexual abuse content, some including minors.

A New York Times report in 2020, investigated child pornography on the web and even prompted payment gateways like Mastercard and Visa to announce they would stop processing payments on the site, as per their rules and conditions prohibiting transactions related to adult content.

Pornhub had responded by suspending content from all unverified accounts on the website, but also highlighted the 84 million instances of child sexual abuse material on Facebook, a Meta subdivision, in the preceding three years.

The adult website initially believed that their account's Instagram ban was temporary, as it had been many times already, but the permanent nature of the decision has given the controversy a new complexion. A statement from Pornhub on this development is awaited.

This article's cover image was used for illustrative purposes only.

*This story has been updated to reflect the stated goals of the JDF, Exodus Cry and #Traffickinghub, along with Laila Mickelwait's connection to each group.