Pornhub facilitates the abuse of underage girls
Pornhub doesn’t properly vet porn posted to its platform, resulting in videos of underage girls being sexually assaulted posted to the site.
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Pornhub doesn’t properly vet porn posted to its platform, resulting in videos of underage girls being sexually assaulted posted to the site.
PornHub, owned by Canadian media conglomerate MindGeek, has a massive social media presence aimed at youth. Its viral advertisements champion the company’s humanitarianism, environmental consciousness, and just seem to press all the right buttons for the millennial and zoomer audience it tries to corral to its website.
But what are they seeing once they arrive?
Activist Laila Mickelwait, Director of Abolition at Exodus Cry, has been documenting illegal, violent, and dehumanizing content on PornHub, and believes PornHub is complicit in “sex trafficking.” She’s so convinced of it, she’s launched a petition calling on the Department of Justice to hold PornHub’s executives accountable for it.
As of the publication of this article, over 110,000 people have signed their agreement.
“The content contained in the videos it streams are mostly aggressive, violent, degrading, abusive sex acts. In fact peer reviewed research found that 88% of mainstream internet porn features aggression.” Mickelwait told The Post Millennial.
On Feb. 10, Mickelwait exposed PornHub for “verifying” a 15-year old girl found to have been the victim of kidnapping, more than 50 videos of her being sexually assaulted uploaded. The girl was identified after the videos were found by her own mother.
PornHub is currently in an apparent scramble to scrub the evidence which suggests they would have had knowledge of the girl’s existence on their platform.
Pornhub’s official Twitter account admitted that they “verified” the 15yr old girl who was trafficked and raped in 58 videos that were uploaded to the site. Shortly after realizing they admitted complicity, they deleted the tweet but it was already cached elsewhere. This is it. pic.twitter.com/Rz9aFJPfrD
— Laila Mickelwait (@LailaMickelwait)
On Feb.16, Mickelwait called to attention the harrowing story of another woman whose sexual assault also ended up on PornHub’s platform. Rose Kalemba alleges she was 14 years old when videos of her being sexually assaulted were posted to PornHub, and that emails to the site begging for their removal went unanswered.
At 14yrs old Rose says she emailed Pornhub many times over a period of six months to ask for the videos of her rape to be taken down.
"I sent begging emails. I pleaded with them. I wrote, 'Please, I'm a minor, this was assault, please take it down.” https://t.co/hf8bjbQZXF
— Laila Mickelwait (@LailaMickelwait)
Kalemba’s account is similar to that of Nicole Addimando, who was recently sentenced to 19 years in prison for shooting her ex-boyfriend, a desperate action she claimed came after years of abuse and torment. Some of Addimando’s sexual abuse had been uploaded to the PornHub platform. Her sentencing has caused a shockwave of outrage across the country.
These shocking revelations come just months after PornHub was lambasted for partnering with Girls Do Porn, a production company which was found to be manipulating, exploiting, and abusing dozens of women. Even after women came forward and recounted horrific ordeals of over 100 actresses, PornHub only removed certain videos belonging to the production company, continuing to profit off of their content.
It wasn’t until the US Government indicted the producers of Girls Do Porn on sex trafficking charges that PornHub finally deleted the content in full. One of the owners was also indicted on child pornography charges in relation to actresses used for Girls Do Porn.
Through her activism, Laila Mickelwait has discovered that PornHub does not have any preventative measures in place to ensure the porn published on its platform is not utilizing minors or individuals who are not consenting or being trafficked. With just an email address and a photo–anyone can get “verified” by PornHub.
“Pornhub allows anyone to upload porn with just an email address, they do not require age or consent verification, therefore there is no way to know if what is being seen on the site are instances of rape, trafficking and exploitation of minors.” Mickelwait says.
This extreme depravity is not uniquely limited to PornHub. It appears to be inherent in the genre itself.
In November of 2019, XVideos, the 2nd largest pornography website on the internet and 67th most visited website in the world, hosted a video depicting the rape and murder of Dr. Priyanka Reddy, a 29 year-old veterinarian from the Hyderabad province of India.
Reddy was sexually assaulted by multiple men as she left work, doused in gasoline, and burned alive. The video of her ordeal was trending on XVideos for weeks, prompting outrage and a petition to ban pornography in India.
Wanna know how sick some People are? Priyanka Reddy was gang raped, then suffocated to death and then burned few days ago and now her name is most searched on Indian porn sites just to see if any of her rape videos were uploaded. Fucked up to another level? pic.twitter.com/RazkzXqo5T
— Deep Jersey da (@BigBoiDeep1)
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XVideos did not release a statement on Reddy’s death, and has not rescinded the profit earned through the viewing of Reddy’s rape and murder on their platform.
Neither PornHub nor XVideos responded to requests for comment by the time of publication.