New York (AFP)

Pornhub is one of the most visited pornographic video sites in the world but this high attendance is no longer enough to convince major brands to advertise, fearing to be associated with contents of dubious legality.

The group, physically based in Montreal, Canada and fiscally in Luxembourg, and whose goal is to trivialize porn, has benefited from a greater tolerance for pornography to attract advertisers.

But this trust capital seems to erode following revelations in the British newspaper The Sunday Times, which claims to have found on the platform illegal content, including videos of child pornography.

Approximately 47 cases of sexual content involving children have been found on Pornhub since January 2019 by the British NGO Internet Watch Foundation. In two years, pedo-pornographic videos exploded 62% on the platform, according to the IWF, which alerted the site to remove these contents.

These revelations prompted large groups, who were surfing the wave of "cool" porn, to distance themselves.

Food groups Unilever and Kraft Heinz, with iconic brands, who had bought advertising space on Pornhub this year, were afraid of being splashed by a scandal.

"We will make sure that none of our brands will still broadcast an ad on Pornhub or any porn site," told AFP a spokesman for Unilever.

Kraft Heinz had played on the concept of "food porn", a phenomenon of posting food photos on social media, to promote Devour, his American brand of frozen products on Pornhub.

"The brand was explicitly talking about + food porn +, which had become a cultural phenomenon on Instagram," said a spokeswoman.

- Impossible to regulate -

While it is not forbidden or illegal to run ads on porn sites, many companies do not want their products, especially those intended for the general public, associated with equivocal content.

Companies are also questioning the control of sexual content freely available online by Internet users, who could violate the new US FOSTA / SESTA laws to close websites that facilitate prostitution and sex trafficking.

One of Pornhub's most alarming activities is that of the private "chains" owned by actresses or actors, the "Model program".

Paypal, the group of US financial payment services, decided last week to no longer serve as an intermediary to pay these actors, who produce different sexual content pay.

The company considers impossible to ensure that they are adults or that they are not victims of human trafficking or procuring networks, told AFP sources close to the case.

"It's impossible to regulate online content" as part of the "Model program," said one source on condition of anonymity.

Contacted by AFP, the major US banks have for the most part announced that they did not intend to replace Paypal despite the 33.5 billion visits claimed by Pornhub in 2018, each of an average duration of 10 minutes and 13 minutes. seconds, mostly by men.

"It's really hard to tell the difference between legal porn and illegal porn and for a bank like ours that is highly regulated we can not afford not to regularly monitor money movements," says a bank.

"There are too many risks," says another.

- Fantasies -

"Anti-porn groups like to say that most sex workers are networked, that's a myth," said Corey Price, vice president of Pornhub, adding that the platform is working with the authorities "to monitor and report any illegal activity ".

He says that all the actresses or actors of his "Model program", which counts more than 100,000 people, are at least 18 years old.

"We ask them to hold a photo, with a sign with their username next to their face, and only accept their application after submitting, for verification, a piece of official ID with a photo showing that they are 18 and over, "he explains.

But, "regarding age, it is even more difficult to check on the cam-girls side than free videos", especially in the United States where it is easy to obtain a false identity card, Judge Laureen Ortiz, journalist and author of a book on this industry, "Porn Valley".

"Prostitution networks around the world can get along without worry," she adds.

© 2019 AFP