Norway launches ads on porn site warning about child sex
The health ministry paid Pornhub 75,000 kroner ($7,365) for the campaign.
OSLO (AFP) — Norway has launched an ad campaign on porn website Pornhub offering help to users who might be having sexual thoughts about children, a senior health official told Agence France-Presse on Thursday.
Anyone searching on Pornhub for terms such as "teens," "preteens" or "barely legal" will see an ad asking: "Are you having sexual thoughts about children?", providing the user with a link to a specialized support websites.
The Directorate of Health, an agency under the supervision of the health ministry, paid Pornhub 75,000 kroner ($7,365) for the campaign, which began this week and will last for a month.
Similar campaigns have already been run in Britain, Canada and the Czech Republic.
"We are determined to prevent and stop sexual abuse against children, and therefore we need to rethink how to precisely reach the target audience," directorate chief Cathrine Lofthus told AFP.
She said sexually assaulting a child was "one of the worst things imaginable, and if we manage to prevent just one abuse of a single child, then that's worth every penny."
Norway's police said they received reports of almost 490 rapes of children under 14 in 2024.
Some in the agency were opposed to the campaign, Lofthus said, but it was ultimately launched because traditional preventative efforts often miss the target audience.
"We are dealing with taxpayers' money, so we knew that some people would react to the fact that, as the Directorate of Health, we would choose to put an advert on a platform like Pornhub," she said.
"But at the end of the day, for us it's about prevention: we want to prevent the sexual abuse of children, to intervene early on and reach the people who have sexual fantasies about children."
A 2020 New York Times investigation revealed that Pornhub and fellow porn site Youporn were hosting rape videos and other abusive pornography.
The two sites have since been bought by Canadian fund Ethical Capital Partners, which vowed to clean them up.
The Directorate of Health said that based on international studies, it estimated there were 100,000 men and 30,000 women in Norway over the age of 18 who were sexually attracted to children, in a country of 5.6 million.