Pornhub, a name once synonymous with the vast world of online adult entertainment, has a sinister underbelly that remains hidden behind its sleek interface. Despite new ownership and attempts at rebranding, the platform continues to be a hub for unverified, illegal content. This article delves into the dark reality of Pornhub, revealing how it remains a trafficking hub, perpetuating the trauma of countless victims while evading true accountability.

Pornhub: A Digital Crime Scene
Pornhub is a crime scene. You read that right. The site, now owned by a hastily formed private equity firm called Ethical Capital Partners, continues to monetize and globally distribute countless user-generated sex videos. These videos were never reliably verified to ensure that the individuals in them are not children, rape victims, trafficking victims, or revenge porn victims. Even under new management, the site is still infested with illegal content.

A Dramatic Downfall
Over the past few years, Pornhub has faced a dramatic downfall after being exposed and held accountable for profiting from mass sexual crime. The fallout included the site taking down 80% of its videos—totaling 10 million unverified videos and over 30 million images—being completely cut off by Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and PayPal, and losing all mainstream advertisers. The CEO and COO of its parent company resigned in disgrace, and the distressed company was sold.

New Owners, Same Problems
However, the new owners aren’t much better than the old ones. They renamed the parent company from “MindGeek” to “Aylo” in an attempt to distance it from its toxic reputation. Yet, men who have been with the company well before it was exposed—those who enabled the global distribution and monetization of victims’ trauma—still occupy executive offices.

The Public Face of a Dark Reality
The public face of Pornhub’s new ownership, Canadian criminal defense attorney Solomon Friedman, has defended men accused of possessing and distributing child sexual abuse material. He even praised an attorney who got a man off on a technicality after being found with 7,730 images of child sexual abuse. Does he intend to try and get Pornhub off the hook the same way? The victims of Pornhub won’t allow it.

Immortalizing Trauma
The consequences for victims of this abuse are severe. Victims often describe the widespread dissemination of their rape and abuse as the “immortalization” of their trauma. They could be fighting to remove their abuse from the internet for the rest of their lives. This constant battle leads many survivors to become suicidal, with nearly half of the victims contemplating suicide and some tragically dying by suicide.

Legal Battles and Explosive Evidence
Since 2020, nearly 300 victims have sued Pornhub in 25 lawsuits for its knowing distribution and monetization of rape and trafficking. These lawsuits include multiple class actions representing tens of thousands of child victims, and the U.S. federal government has criminally charged Pornhub for knowingly profiting from sex trafficking. Just last month, 13 child victims sued Pornhub as well as its owners and financial enablers.

Whitewashing and Renaming
No amount of whitewashing, renaming, and rebranding can hide the truth. As one attorney defending over 100 victims said about the attempted rebrand, “If you swim in a sea of s**t, it’s hard to lose the smell.” The Canadian government conducted a multi-year investigation of Pornhub, culminating in a damning report that found it had violated Canadian privacy law. Pornhub’s new owners sued the government to hide the report from the public but lost.

Still a Trafficking Hub
A quick search on Pornhub today reveals highly monetized, unverified, homemade videos showing vulnerable, drug-addicted, homeless women being coerced into sex acts. In minutes, I found unverified homemade videos of women yelling at their abusers to stop, crying out “it hurts!” and “turn the camera off.” There is no doubt that Pornhub is still a trafficking hub. It’s time to force it to delete every unverified video on the site.

A Call for Justice
But that isn’t nearly enough. Victims deserve the full weight of justice. They need to see criminal convictions and significant restitution for how their lives have been shattered. We urgently need laws mandating reliable, third-party age and consent verification for every individual in every video on every website distributing user-generated porn.

The Fight Continues
It’s time to hold Pornhub and its owners accountable to the full extent of the law and to enact policies to prevent this kind of abuse in the future. We must do it because serious harm demands serious consequences to bring true justice to victims and deter future abusers.

Laila Mickelwait is the Founder and CEO of the Justice Defense Fund, Founder of the Traffickinghub movement, and the author of “Takedown: Inside the Fight to Shut Down Pornhub for Child Abuse, Rape, and Sex Trafficking” (Penguin Random House/Thesis, July 23, 2024).

Source: Traffickinghub