It’s Way Worse Than You Think: P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait EP 225
In a Nutshell
Pornhub profited massively from unverified user uploads riddled with child rape, trafficking, non-consensual abuse, and revenge porn—exposing kids as young as 3, with executives ignoring takedown requests for years while algorithms promoted illegal content like "drugged" teens and CSAM-adjacent categories. Laila Mickelwait's Traffickinghub campaign amassed 2.3 million signatures, forced Visa/Mastercard cutoffs, an unprecedented 80% content purge (10 million videos), CEO resignations, criminal charges, and a $400M distressed sale of parent MindGeek, but verified uploaders still posted child rape monetized for hundreds of thousands of views. Urgent fixes include mandatory age/consent verification for every video performer, viewer age checks (now in Supreme Court battles), the Take It Down Act for rapid removals, and parental strategies like shame-free zones to combat sextortion, porn addiction escalation to CSAM, and kids' early hardcore exposure warping sexual templates.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
PornHub spent millions making itself a household mainstream brand: people wore their apparel in public, walked New York Fashion Week, faux commercials on Saturday Night Live. Site makes most money selling 4.6 billion ad impressions daily. Played underage guessing game, Russian roulette guessing who's 16 vs 18, rough sex vs rape. Solution: age and consent verification for every person in every video. No verification for uploaders or viewers accessing free site; kids exploited in front and behind screen.
Laila Mickelwait, founder and CEO of Justice Defense Fund, founder of Traffickinghub movement to shut down PornHub and hold executives responsible for globally distributing and profiting from rape, child sexual abuse, trafficking, non-consensual content. Fighting trafficking 18 years. Realized trafficking filmed and distributed online by big porn industry, dominated by PornHub's parent company.
Middle of night early 2020, unexpected discovery changed her life, launched Traffickinghub global movement. Nine days after son born, end of 2019: 15-year-old girl from Broward County, Florida missing year, found via PornHub user tip recognizing her; in 58 videos raped for profit, account daddy [__], rapist matched via 7-Eleven surveillance; rescued, impregnated.
London Sunday Times found dozens illegal videos within minutes, including children as young as 3 years old.
100 adult trafficking victims in San Diego operation with partner channel on PornHub: 800,000 subscribers, 600 million views; abuser on FBI's 10 Most Wanted list.
Nicole Anderson, New York mother of two young children, raped and sexually tortured by partner who filmed and uploaded to PornHub; she killed him in self-defense, sentenced to life in prison (reduced to 7 years).
Tested upload: only email required, anonymous in under 10 minutes worldwide. YouTube of porn: 56 million content pieces (2020), 170 million visits daily, 62 billion visits yearly; enough content to watch 169 years back-to-back. More visits than Netflix and Amazon. No ID verification, no consent forms. Site infested with real sexual crime: PornHub is crime scene.
Assumed professional adult porn stars. PornHub's PR: apparel in public, NY Fashion Week, SNL commercials, PornHub Cares philanthropic arm (save whales, bees, breast cancer, pandas). Tested upload: video of keyboard and rug in dark room, VPN anonymous; anyone with iPhone becomes pornographer anywhere. Much content: child rape, non-consensual (image-based sexual abuse, revenge porn), stolen copyrighted pro porn.
Posted on Twitter (#Traffickinghub), op-ed in Washington Examiner. Petition: 2.3 million signatures worldwide (traffickinghubpetition.com). Victims, whistleblowers, former owner came forward. Nicholas Kristof's NYT article The Children of PornHub (end 2020): "PornHub is Jeffrey Epstein times a thousand". Called out Visa, Mastercard; they cut ties with site (plus Discover, PayPal), left with crypto/bank wires.
Panic: took down 80% website overnight (10 million videos, 30 million images) – biggest takedown in internet history (Financial Times). Lost advertisers, CEO/COO resigned, secret majority shareholder exposed, criminally charged by US gov for profiting from trafficking, 25 lawsuits (hundreds victims, class actions for tens of thousands child victims). Sold as distressed asset for $400 million (was multibillion). Now 91% content gone: from 56 million to 5.2 million pieces, mostly unverified (only uploader verified, not performers' age/consent).
Verified uploader Rocky Shea Franklin (Alabama): drugged/raped 12-year-old boy, uploaded 23 rape videos with child-indicating titles; police demanded removal multiple times, ignored 7 months, hundreds of thousands monetized views, profit-sharing with PornHub; sentenced 40 years.
4.6 billion ad impressions daily. ~20% uploaders pay-to-download (e.g., 15yo Florida girl, Rocky Shea). Most upload for views/clicks/shares (social currency). Illegal, often anonymous via VPN.
Serena Fleites (Bakersfield, CA, NYT feature): straight-A student, coerced by crush into nudes/videos at young teen age; shared, uploaded to PornHub (millions views); begged removal, hassled ("prove you're child/victim"), re-uploaded repeatedly ("immortalization of trauma"). Dropped out, bullied, drugs, multiple suicide attempts (50% suicidal ideation rate among victims), homeless in car. Suing PornHub, owners, Visa, hedge funds funding MindGeek (PornHub parent).
PornHub hid child abuse from authorities 13 years despite mandatory reporting (per Canada/US child protection heads).
Canadian company, Montreal HQ, 1,800 employees; only 1 person reviewing flagged videos (5 days/week), 30 moderators total (10/shift). Reviewed 1,200-2,000 videos per 8-hour shift; <700 reprimanded. Underage guessing game.
Multinational: Luxembourg (tax), offices Romania, Cyprus, Texas, LA, UK. Rolled up porn industry with $362 million loan: owned 80% popular porn sites/brands (PornHub, YouPorn, PornTube, Brazzers, ExtremeTube, GayTube, XTube, Playboy digital). Sold for $400 million distressed.
600 organizations, hundreds survivors, 70 Canadian MPs from 8 parties. Lawsuits under US statutes: knowingly/should-have-known benefiting from trafficking venture (owners, enablers like credit cards).
Owners hid with fake names/profiles, SEO fake pics. Secret majority shareholder exposed, sued by dozens victims (knowingly aware).
A man tricked, coerced, and blackmailed three young boys to come to his house, overpowered them, physically brutalized them causing brain bleeding, raped them, and uploaded videos of their rapes to Pornhub. He was sentenced last Friday to 23 years in prison.
Pornhub was infested with illegal, nonconsensual content including trafficking videos. Searches for "drugged," "drunk," "coerced," "rape," and "CP" in various languages led to a "black hole of rape" with obvious abuse. Videos showed unconscious women with masked rapists lifting eyelids and touching eyeballs to prove unconsciousness; these stayed on the site for years. The algorithm promoted more similar content. Teens, homeless teens crying, and brutal abuse were common with specific tags and titles. Legal discovery and court documents show executives knew profits from these tags, titles, and categories, including "teens," "very young." Executives refused to remove words like "childhood," "minor," "young girl."
Pornhub's complicity since 2007 has destroyed lives. The only justifiable response is to shut down Pornhub and imprison its executives. Victims need this for healing, as do former employees reviewing videos. Content moderators were instructed not to limit content but to let as much as possible through to drive Google search results for free porn tube sites. Moderators saw only headlines, not full videos. One moderator, a friend who was sexually abused as a child, came forward despite being part of the system because he couldn't stay silent.
Other free porn tube sites like xHamster (owned by Hammy Media), XVideos and XNXX (owned by WGCZ) operated without verifying age or consent. Nicholas Kristof exposed XVideos after Pornhub, as the same victims appeared there. Pornhub set the industry standard. Solution at scale: third-party age and consent verification for every person in every video on user-generated porn sites, implemented by governments and credit card companies like Visa to force compliance.
Victims face a sadistic game of whack-a-mole removing videos. The Take It Down Act proposes takedowns within 24-48 hours of victim reports. Existing laws prohibit distributing, possessing child sexual abuse material and knowingly benefiting from trafficking. USC 2257 requires ID verification for studio-produced porn; it applies to Pornhub despite their download button allowing possession and reuploads. Laws must evolve for internet porn companies. Sites should prevent screen recording like Netflix.
One minute is too long for videos to stay up; 170 million daily Pornhub visits mean rapid spread via screen recording. Preventing uploads is the biggest win.
Laila's dad, a general surgeon who grew up during civil war in Amman, Jordan, instilled a passion for justice, human rights, war, genocide, and slavery. In 2005, he showed her a documentary on child sex trafficking in Kolkata, India, inspiring her focus on prevention through laws and awareness since then.
- Create a shame-free zone with at least one trusted adult (parent, auntie, teacher) where kids can share anything without fear. Sextortion is common: predators pose as peers on apps/chat rooms, groom for nudes/videos, then blackmail with personal info, demanding more content or money; some kids attempt suicide. Thorn report: 1 in 7 children aged 9-12 have sent a nude image (survey of over 1,000 kids). Self-generated child sexual abuse material ends up on sites like Pornhub.
Emphasize truth-telling without punishment for honesty, even for bad actions, to guide them safely. Discipline when needed but ensure they feel safe sharing to avoid secrecy.
75% of kids exposed to online porn by age 15. Many report first exposure at 6, 8, 9, 10 via sites like Pornhub, leading to compulsive use. Content is hardcore, violent, criminal (rape, coercion), forming children's sexual templates. No age verification for viewers; no R-18 button initially (now on mobile, but easy clickthrough). Kids exploited both on-screen (behind camera) and in front (viewing as secondhand sexual abuse). Popular categories: teen, incest themes (some real abuse). 17 US states enacting viewer age verification; Pornhub shuts down in protest, sues Texas to avoid third-party costs, prioritizing traffic and ad revenue over child protection.
Pornhub and other free user-generated porn sites sued the state of Texas over age verification requirements. They lost the initial case, appealed, and it is now before the Supreme Court, which will decide by June whether states can implement age verification for these sites.
Porn sites oppose age verification because it is expensive. They frame opposition under free speech and privacy concerns, claiming they care about user privacy and do not want users handing over IDs. However, they face a class action lawsuit for exploiting user data and hosting non-consensual content. Users do not need to hand over IDs to Pornhub; facial scan technology using AI trained on thousands or millions of faces can verify age in one second with nearly 99% accuracy using pixels and numbers. The scan is not stored; instead, a token is created for use across multiple porn sites. For those under 21, accuracy decreases, so coupling with ID verification via a third party may be needed. Porn sites pretend implementation is hard to scare users into thinking they must hand IDs directly to them.
Porn addiction is debated, with some preferring terms like compulsive sexual behavior. Thousands of young men in forums report inability to control porn use and seek help. Whether called addiction or compulsion, those unable to control it and experiencing detrimental effects need assistance. Laila Mickelwait focuses on criminal content but recommends resources: book Your Brain on Porn, organization Reward Foundation, and neuroscientists studying implications.
Porn use causes depression, anxiety, and habituation or desensitization. Users start with one type of porn but need more novelty for the same dopamine hit, escalating to more violent or younger content. This can lead non-pedophiles to consume CSAM (child sexual abuse material) via teen categories progressing to extremes.
Many young men and women message that they cannot stop porn use despite wanting to. Knowing victims are on the other side provides motivation to quit. Those unable to stop despite recognizing harm need help. Helpers face attacks due to porn industry financial interests denying problems.
Host shares growing up in liberal Toronto with view of personal control and freedom. Stopped watching horror movies after obsession, becoming desensitized. After years away (post-baby or stopping antidepressants), gore shocked her again, illustrating desensitization reversal.
Neuroplasticity allows brain pathways to bend both ways. Stopping porn can retrain pathways to undo damage. Dr. Donald Hilton, a brain surgeon investigating porn addiction, discusses this. Host's horror movie break undid desensitization, making content shocking again.
University of New South Wales research by Dr. Michael Stalter summarizes connections: daily porn consumers with hypersexuality viewing teen, incest, or violent content show correlations to acting out on children and consuming real CSAM. Not everyone acts out, but problematic content poses risks for some.
- Takedownbook.com: Book Take Down; all author royalty proceeds fund Justice Defense Fund for victims' justice pursuit and preventive policies.
- Traffickinghubpetition.com: Sign petition for more support.
- Social media: @LailaMicklewait (posts updates; committed until movement goals met).
Host thanks her for tackling this issue and using platform to raise awareness, noting many remain unaware.
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