Last year, the Sunday Times reported that an investigation showed that material featuring people under the age of 18 had remained on Pornhub for three years. Here are three different reports- one from 2018, one from 2019, and one from 2020-about arrests of alleged abusers spurred by the upload of child sexual abuse material to Pornhub. To avoid illicit material, your best bet is to purchase professional porn.Ĭhild sex abuse material (the term experts prefer over “child pornography”), like you read about last fall in the New York Times, is more prevalent on the dark web than the so-called clear net, or publicly accessible internet, but it has certainly appeared on mainstream sites.

The short answer is: You cannot be sure of the legality of any individual video on tube sites, especially if it’s an amateur video. It’s so simple, yet I couldn’t find clear information no matter where I looked, and its answer points to a moral muddiness-if not flagrant hazards-we are willing to tolerate for the sake of democratized access to pornography. This is one of the best questions this column has received.