Things We Don’t Have to Worry About: The Article on the ICPF Report on Child Sexual Abuse Imagery
Last week saw an article published stating that “Online Child Porn traffic rise by 95% in India”. The article mentioned that it was based on a report from the India Child Protection Fund (ICPF). We couldn’t find a copy of the report anywhere on the public internet and hence decided to address the specific issues mentioned in the article that appeared in the online version of The Hindu on 13th April 2020.
1. The Article States: “Traffic from India increased by 95% between March 24 and 26, as compared to average traffic before the lockdown,” the India Child Protection Fund (ICPF) said in a statement citing data from Pornhub, the world’s largest pornography website.”
Pornhub Statistics Are Not Indicators of Child Sexual Abuse Material
To equate rise in PornHub viewership to rise in consumption of child sexual abuse material is a kind of leap that has no rational basis. PornHub is a free pornographic website owned by porn conglomerate MindGeek. It features adult pornography. It has a zero tolerance to CSAM policy. Like any other popular online platform where users can upload content, it does have a CSAM issue. But it monitors its content and also takes down criminal content on reporting.
Currently Pornhub is not even among the top 50 most accessed websites in India. Only one pornographic website (LiveJasmine) makes a mention. There are no justifiable ground for Pornhub being used a site for an inquiry on CSAM.
2. The Article States: “The spike in consumption indicates “millions of paedophiles, child rapists and child pornography addicts have migrated online, making the Internet extremely unsafe for children. Without stringent action, this could result in a drastic rise in sexual crimes against children,” says ***, spokesperson for ICPF.”
So Why did The Pornhub Viewership Increase?
First, it must be acknowledged since the lockdown there has been an unprecedented increase in general online traffic and not just on pornhub.
Pornhub has always been prone to PR stunts. The most recent one in the light of worldwide lockdown was when they opened up the premium content part of their websites to visitors for free which resulted in a surge in popularity. This was also picked up newspapers and websites across the world and became a popular online event which drove further traffic onto the website. And it bears repeating that we are talking about adult pornography here and not CSAM.
So No, to use the term coined by the immortal Chris Morris- It is not Paedogeddon yet, as the above excerpt tries to suggest.
3. The Article States: “Online data monitoring websites showing an increase in demand for searches like “child porn,” “sexy child” and “teen sex videos.”
Relating Search Trends with Actual Crime is Mere Speculation.
We did a bit of speculation on our own. We entered “child porn” and “sexy child” into google trends.
this is the graph for “child porn” over a period of 30 days:
this is the graph for “sexy child” for the same period:
Both charts indicate a spike on April 14th, the day after the article was published.
Based on these charts, it would be irresponsible of us to state something to the order of ‘the press release by the foundation resulted in huge spike in a search for CSAM’. And if we did so, we would be clearly in the wrong in making such a stretched co-relation.
And as for search terms like ‘teen’ and ‘school girl’ – a working knowledge of any pornographic site will tell you that these terms do not clearly signify a preference for underage girls. What they do clearly signify is the preference for a certain body type.
Is this preference a cause for worry? Maybe.
Does it mean they are all searching and watching illegal content? No.
4. Spreading moral panic based on the thinnest of speculation especially during a stressful pandemic is Irresponsible
On part of the newspapers that carried it without basic questioning as well as the Foundation that decided that the report was good enough to publicly release.
Such reports risk taking away from the seriousness of the issue and gives ammunition to those who are opposed to meaningful progress on the same.
We make a sincere request and implore ICPF to do the right thing and clarify the claims they are making or else make a public retraction of the report.
5. So What is Happening With Pornography During Covid?
Shooting for mainstream porn has all but ceased. Some studios will shutdown by the time the lockdown ends.
There has been a increase in the number of cam girls as the actors can stream even in quarantine. Even the most popular pornographic website in India today is a cam site. Cam girls have stated that their workload and earnings have increased. That would be an area for the sector to keep an eye out for (without ensuing moral panic, of course), especially as the world reels from economic distress.
