Tech giant gets spanked for not asking consent, then tries to clean up the mess with tiny cookie banner

Announcement – Please, try harder!

We are pleased to see that, after the public launch of our campaign just 3 weeks ago, the platform Pornhub has been exposed and forced to add a cookie banner on its website to ask consent from users for the deployment of tracking cookies. An admission of guilt by the platform for not having complied with the ePrivacy Directive for all these years, but what’s wrong with this new cookie banner?

• Pornhub is still absolutely not compliant with GDPR because in their privacy policy it is still indicated that legal basis for data processing is “legitimate interest” and not “consent”, in addition to the fact that this consent must be reinforced pursuant to art. 9 GDPR for sensitive data on users' sexual preferences;

• The banner is too small and users can still use the platform just ignoring it, which goes against the guidelines provided many European data protection authorities.

• there is no “Refuse all” option or an X to close the banner and continue navigating without accepting any cookies.

This is a clear sign of how the platform has been ignoring even the most basic principles of data protection law up until now. It has been necessary to name and shame Pornhub so that digital rights of users could be considered. We hope that this can become an example for all those who want to break the silence and the cultural taboo that at the moment is shielding porn tech giants from serious legal compliance and scrutiny by civil society.

Not only as far as this platform is concerned, the enforcement of GDPR turns out to be often ineffective, easily circumvented, and all the costs are considerable compared to the hoped-for benefits. In the end, a certain kind of user exploitation is legitimized by the addition of banners that give us no guarantees about how the data is being processed, because a large part of the data industry has learned to live with GDPR without actually changing practices.

There is no doubt that progress has been made with GDPR in the area of user privacy protection, but the debate is still open. It is through the example of the most controversial cases that, we at #StopDataPorn, intend to challenge the practice and the business of exploiting user data.

 

#StopDataPorn is a collective initiative calling on users and authorities to take immediate action and address the exploitative practices of porn platforms. This users’ data violation is not the sole abuse done by Pornhub, who is already involved in scandals about monetizing from sexual assault videos and letting children access its adult material.

 

Contact #

📬 please@stopdataporn.org 📬 #

 

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