This Past Weekend - E559 Laila Mickelwait

Starting point is 00:00:00 Like so worried about my sister. You're engaged! You cannot marry a murderer! I was sick, but I am healing. Returning to W network and StacTV. The West Side Ripper is back! If you're not killing these people, then who is? That's what I want to know.

Starting point is 00:00:14 Starring Kaylee Cuoco and Chris Messina. The only investigating I'm doing these days is who shit their pants. Killer messaged you yesterday? This is so dangerous. I gotta get out of this. Based on a true story. New season Mondays at 9 Eastern and Pacific only on W stream on stack TV Today's guest is the co-founder and CEO of the Justice Defense Fund. She also founded the trafficking hub movement

Starting point is 00:00:37 She's been fighting against human trafficking for almost 20 years and she just wrote a new book called takedown Inside the fight to Shut Down Pornhub. We wanna let you know as well that this episode can be somewhat sexually explicit at times, so I want to give you that warning in advance. I'm very grateful for her time and her advocacy and her information. Today's guest is Lila Mickelweight. So, Take Down, Inside the Fight to Shut Down, Pornhub for Child Abuse, Rape and Sex Trafficking.

Starting point is 00:01:27 This is your book and I'm sitting here with Laila Mickleweight. Nice to be here. Is that the way to say it? You almost got it, Laila Mickleweight. Okay, so I didn't get it. Laila Mickleweight, how did your war against Pornhub start? Sure. I will tell you that story. Okay.

Starting point is 00:01:47 So in the context of years in the fight against sex trafficking, so I had been fighting sex trafficking when this began, this began at the start of 2020. This is February 2020 when the fight to hold Pornhub accountable for rape, sex trafficking, child abuse began. And that was in the context of over a decade in the fight against trafficking at that point. And I had been paying attention to the headlines, obviously, when sexual abuse stories, trafficking stories came up, you know, I was paying attention. And one of the stories that came up at late 2019 that really arrested my attention, it

Starting point is 00:02:23 was a story of a 15 year old girl and she was from Broward County, Florida, and she was missing for an entire year and she was finally found when her distraught mother was tipped off by a Pornhub user that he recognized her daughter on the site. And she was found in 58 videos being abused for profit. These are monetized videos,

Starting point is 00:02:43 police were dispatched and they actually rescued her out of his apartment. She had been impregnated. They got her out of that situation. But that was a story that had made some headlines and it was a horrifying story. At the same time, there was an investigation that was released by the Sunday Times, the London Sunday Times, and they had found dozens of illegal videos on Pornhub within minutes, even children as young as three. So these two particular stories were standing out. There was one other that was really horrifying at the time.

Starting point is 00:03:17 It was about an adult, a woman named Nicole Adamando. And she was from New York. And she was being abused by her partner. She was being raped and tortured. He was filming it and he was uploading it to Pornhub and then she ended up killing him in self-defense but she was sentenced to life in prison, separated from her two young children. And thankfully she had an amazing legal team and they fought that and they got it reduced to seven years and she's finally out today. But it was just a heartbreaking story.

Starting point is 00:03:47 And so I at the time, you know, I was really actually discouraged in my fight against trafficking. I had been doing it for a long time. I felt like we weren't making very much progress. But you know, it's not something that I can quit because I'm dedicated to this. But I was up late one night in early 2020, I think it was, let's see, January 31st, 2020, and I was consoling my own crying baby at that time, because he was born, he had a birth complication,

Starting point is 00:04:14 he was a very mad baby. And- What do you mean, oh, crying baby? Yeah, crying baby. Okay. Yeah, he was up, I was up at all hours of the night. I thought you said, crying baby. I was like, oh, what is a crying baby?

Starting point is 00:04:22 Crying baby. No, no, crying baby. Okay. Yeah, and so I was up late consoling him and thinking about that story of the 15 year old girl. And suddenly, you know, an idea came to mind. I just said, you know what, how are they vetting these videos?

Starting point is 00:04:40 How is this abuse ending up on Pornhub? And an idea just flashed into mind and said, I'm going to test the upload system for myself and I'm going to see what does it take to upload content to Pornhub. So, put the baby down, got out my phone, took a video of the computer screen and the rug in the dark room, and I uploaded it to Pornhub, and I found out what millions

Starting point is 00:05:05 of people already knew because at that time millions of videos were being uploaded every year. In fact, the amount of content that was being uploaded to Pornhub, if you put those videos back to back, just the amount of content they would upload in one year, it would take 169 years to watch if you put those videos back to back. That's how much content was being uploaded. Uploaded or had been uploaded total, you mean? No, per year. Wow.

Starting point is 00:05:29 Yes. That's not even counting the images. Unbelievable. So I tested it. I found out, like I said, what millions of people already knew and that was that all it took to upload was an email address. So in under 10 minutes, anybody with an iPhone, anywhere in the world, can upload a video and they were not checking age, they were not checking ID

Starting point is 00:05:50 to make sure that these are not children in the videos, they're not verifying consent to make sure that these are not rape or trafficking victims. And because of that, I quickly understood that Pornhub was not a porn site, it was a crime scene. Like it was infested with videos of real sexual crime. And so then the people would upload them and then make money what, off of advertising on them somehow?

Starting point is 00:06:12 Or who makes? Yes, yes. So the ones that were making money off of this content, because this is free porn, right? Right. Free porn's not free, right? It is heavily monetized with ads. So they were selling 4.6 billion ad impressions on Pornhub every single day.

Starting point is 00:06:30 So they were heavily monetizing this content. Now the people who were uploading were doing it mostly for free. Like 80% of people who were uploading were just doing it for social currency, like likes and clicks and comments and shares and all of that, the reason why people upload to social media. Right.

Starting point is 00:06:46 Some of them were doing pay to download content where they could actually do profit sharing with PornHub. That was happening as well. But most of the money made from free porn is actually made by the corporation running the site. Right. And just to give you a little bit of context for how big PornHub and its parent company are

Starting point is 00:07:07 who are making all of this money. So PornHub at the time, so by December of 2020, they had capitalized on coronavirus. So they had done crazy stunts like free premium to the whole entire world. Oh, I remember something like that. Yeah, they had done some crazy PR campaigns at the time. Cause they figured people are stuck at home,

Starting point is 00:07:31 they'll watch porn. Yeah, well it was that plus they were getting tons of bad press because trafficking hub movement had gone viral starting at the beginning of the year. And trafficking hub movement was what? So I'll go back to the story. So, well really quick, I wanna tell you kind of just so you know what we're dealing with,

Starting point is 00:07:47 like how big- Okay, yeah, how big PornHub is. PornHub is, okay? So by the end of December, 2020, so they had grown to be the fifth most visited website in the entire world. So not just PornSite, website. They had 170 million visits per day,

Starting point is 00:08:06 62 billion visits per year. And like I said, enough content uploaded every year would take 169 years to watch. So they had 56 million pieces of content on the site by the end of 2020. And this was the year that trafficking hub movement began. So go back to the story. So I made this discovery.

Starting point is 00:08:25 Oh my God, that's massive. I literally said, oh my God, this site is infested with videos of rape, trafficking, non-consensual content. We used to call it revenge porn, but we call it image-based sexual abuse. And I have to sound the alarm on this. I have to, you know, tell people what's going on.

Starting point is 00:08:49 And so I did, the only thing that I could do at the time was I took to my, it was Twitter, right, at the time, Twitter, and I started to share this information, share the stories, share what I discovered about the upload process. And in a burst of inspiration, I shared the hashtag trafficking hub. And the reason why I did that is because per definition, so by definition, any sex act that is commercialized

Starting point is 00:09:19 and it's involving a child or any sex act that's induced by force, fraud or coercion and it's commercialized, so it's for profit, like it's something of value is exchanged for that sex act. It is per definition an act of trafficking. So every child being abused on Pornhub, every adult who was non-consenting, who was raped and trafficked, those are instances of trafficking. I don't think people quite understand that, but that is per international definition and domestic definition. And so that's why I launched the trafficking hub hashtag.

Starting point is 00:09:54 And it slowly started to catch on. I had a few thousand followers on Twitter at the time, but people were horrified to find this out. Oh yeah, well, I think when you hear trafficking, you kind of think like, I mean, I picture literally like a train, like people commandeered from other countries or, you know, I guess younger people that have commandeered and kidnapped

Starting point is 00:10:15 in like a train car going across the country in the night or something. Like, I think of it as a more like people like being smuggled across the border or, you know, I don't think of it as, I guess the average person doesn't think of it in such a common kind of, I don't know if it's common is the word, I guess, yeah, the average person probably doesn't think of it that it's that expansive.

Starting point is 00:10:35 Right, yeah. Well, that's the way it's portrayed in Hollywood movies. And that's the way that it happens often, right, sometimes. But, you know, the amount of trafficking going on, if you think about non-consensual commercialized sex acts, this is massive. Wow. I can't. That's unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and so, sound the alarm, launch traffic on hashtag, that started to catch on. People started to message me.

Starting point is 00:11:05 Somebody said, hey, if you don't start a petition, oh, then I wrote an op-ed. So I said, okay, well, what else can I do besides just share this on social media? This has to get out to more people. So I wrote an op-ed about what I discovered. An op-ed means opinion. It's like an essay, yeah.

Starting point is 00:11:22 I just want our listeners to know. Most of our listeners are just like me, they don't know. Yeah, so op-ed means opinion. It's like an essay. Yeah. Right, I just want our listeners to know. Most of our listeners are just like me, they don't know. Yeah, so op-ed means an opinion editorial. So like something that your opinion, you'd write it into like a publication that'd be published in a newspaper or something like that. Yeah. Okay, great, just want our listeners

Starting point is 00:11:37 to always know what that is. Exactly what it is. And so I wrote that with kind of the findings, highlighting some of these stories that had just been in the news, making the connections, and that really caught on. People were sharing it, and somebody who read it messaged me and they said, hey, you need to start

Starting point is 00:11:52 a petition to shut down PornHub and hold its executives accountable, and if you don't do it, I will. I said, okay, well, I'll do that. So I just went on change.org, I started a petition, and instantly it started going viral. So on change.org, you started a petition. I started it there. Yeah, now it's at trafficking hub petition.com. And today we have 2.3 million

Starting point is 00:12:11 people who have signed the petition from every country in the world. Let's go. We're going to get more. That's we got to get more. It's trafficking hub petition.com. Yeah. And this has been powerful to have this because as this was going viral, victims were seeing it and then they were starting to reach out to me. Sometimes on a daily basis, victims that I was exploited on Pornhub as a child, as a teen, I was raped, I was unconscious and I was raped on Pornhub and I begged to get those videos down and I couldn't, you know, all these stories started to come forward. Not only that, but whistleblowers from inside the company started to reach out to me

Starting point is 00:12:47 and started to expose the inner workings of the company. Even the former owner of Pornhub actually reached out to me to say he wanted to help with all of this. He had his own motives. Right, probably trying to cover his own tracks. Well, yeah, he had, I discovered that he had some financial motivations for wanting to do that, but he did.

Starting point is 00:13:06 And one of the things that was so important at this outset was we felt like this company, trafficking is a transactional crime, all of this is being done for money. That's the only thing that these companies care about. And in order to make a difference here, we have to hit them where it hurts, we have to go after the money.

Starting point is 00:13:26 And so we said, we have to go after the credit cards to cut ties with PornHub. And when the owner reached out, he confirmed that. He said, listen, the only thing they care about is money. If you go after the credit cards, that's the Achilles heel of PornHub. So you're saying if Visa and Mastercard, if they will say, we will not allow our credit cards to be used. That would be the worst thing that could ever happen to PornHub. So you're saying if Visa and MasterCard, they will say, we will not allow our credit cards to be used?

Starting point is 00:13:46 That would be the worst thing that could ever happen to PornHub. Yes, because they need those in order to sell ads, premium memberships, all of that. So reached out to credit card executives, did letters. Organizations were signing on. So all of this was building momentum. The petition was gaining steam. And that's why lots of media articles

Starting point is 00:14:09 started to be written about this. What were some of the crimes that you saw happening? What were some specific instances that you were like, oh my god, this is just? Yeah, I mean, OK. I mean, is it OK to share those? Yeah, of course. And I think it's important to share

Starting point is 00:14:25 because I think a lot of times people wanna just dismiss it and say, you know, what you saw was just consensual. You just didn't really understand that it was, you know, these were obvious crimes. Yeah, it's vague until you make it specific, I feel like, a lot of times. So for example, and I'll tell you some, I can tell you some victim stories.

Starting point is 00:14:47 I can tell you some of the things that I saw myself on the site. I mean, one of the worst things that I saw on the site was an instance where, it was a young Asian woman and she was drugged so completely that she was, her body was completely limp. She was unconscious. And there was a masked assailant who actually, to prove to the camera that she was unconscious, he was lifting her eyelids and touching her eyeballs to prove that she wasn't responsive, because, and then tickling her feet and doing things like that. And then the title was in Chinese. And so what I did was I took the title and I put it into Google Translate and the title was, um, dead pig unconscious after being drugged.

Starting point is 00:15:35 And it included eyes half open after being drugged. Like that was the actual title of the video. And then of course, because there's the algorithm, right? They have set up the algorithm to make sure if you see one video like that, they're gonna assume that you like that content. So then they're gonna take you on a crazy rabbit hole. I call it like, you know, just hell hole of rape.

Starting point is 00:16:00 Like that's what it was. And then you go and they'll show you more and more of the same kind of thing. You know, in my book, I do describe these videos. I don't really hold back because I want people to know what actually was taking place, what these victims were going through on the site. And one of the things that victims have shared that I think is also really important to know is that when those videos are uploaded, they had a download button so that anybody in the world

Starting point is 00:16:31 could actually download and possess that child abuse, the rape, all of that on their devices, and then re-upload it again and again and again and again. And so victims actually call this the immortalization of their trauma. So they say, you know, it's one thing to be raped, but then it's filmed and then it's uploaded and then it's monetized for profit and pleasure

Starting point is 00:16:54 and people are actually getting pleasure out of the worst moment of my life. And it'll never go away because once it's on the internet, it's out of control. And it's just like this whack-a-mole game where they're constantly just trying to find it and then beg for it to come down. And then even if they can, it just gets uploaded again. And one victim said, my abuser put me in a mental prison, but porn

Starting point is 00:17:20 hub gave me a life sentence. Wow. And that was a really powerful, but were all of these like for the foreign, were they domestic life sentence. Wow. And that was really powerful. Were all these like foreign, were they domestic? It was everywhere. It was everywhere. So here's one story that I'll share with you. Serena Flaitus.

Starting point is 00:17:35 So Serena Flaitus, she's from Bakersfield, California. She was an innocent 13 year old girl and she had a crush on a boy a year older than her. So she, you know, at the time, she'd never kissed a boy before. She was a straight-A student, and he convinced her to send him some nude images and videos of herself,

Starting point is 00:17:56 which she did because she wanted to impress him, right? This is like very common today, sexting, all that. And then he shared it with classmates, and then the classmates uploaded to Pornhub, where it began to get millions and millions of views. So she would then reach out to Pornhub and beg for them to take the videos down and they would often ignore her.

Starting point is 00:18:15 And she's an adolescent. Yes, she's a child. Like, she's a young teen, right? And then if they did answer, they would hassle her. Prove that you're a victim. Prove that you're underage in these videos. Now, remember, nobody had to prove age and consent to upload.

Starting point is 00:18:31 But if you wanna get it down, she's testifying, she's testified this before Canadian Parliament, she's suing PornHub right now, that she would be hassled to prove that she's victim. Then if she did get it down, then it would just get re-uploaded again, right? And so this sent her on a spiral of trauma and despair. She ended up dropping out of school

Starting point is 00:18:49 because she was being bullied. She got addicted to drugs to try to numb the pain. She tried to kill herself multiple times, and then she wound up homeless, living out of a car. And that was her story, right? And like that could happen to any young teen. Yeah, I could imagine that a lot of people in that instance, you almost end up wanting to take your life

Starting point is 00:19:11 or consider suicide because your life isn't even yours anymore. Yeah, because it's like that immortalization, the trauma. It's like, I'll never escape this because even if I can find healing, I can do whatever, I can go trauma therapy, but then it's like, it's almost like a wound and then a scab just gets peeled off again and peeled off again as those videos keep getting uploaded online. It's like hell, it's like something you would hear

Starting point is 00:19:33 about happening in hell. Yeah, and actually to your point, the stats on ideations of suicide for victims of this kind of abuse, I mean, it's 50% who have suicidal ideations after going through this. And not just child sexual abuse. I mean, that includes when videos are consensually recorded

Starting point is 00:19:53 but then non-consensually uploaded. And the shame and all of that that comes along with that, I mean, this is the stats for victims of this kind of abuse. And so... So obviously, once you start hearing these stories, the fuel has to really ignite you. I would imagine that at that point, you were just like, this has become like a life purpose almost.

Starting point is 00:20:16 Were you letting go of a day job? Were you like, did you... No, I mean, this was my... I've been in anti-trafficking just for years and years. So you're already in that world. And this is what I do, yeah. Okay. It is my world, but then it became that I realized,

Starting point is 00:20:31 okay, we're gonna go after a mega predator here. And to that point, how big are they? So it's not just Pornhub, right? Pornhub is owned by a parent company that all of this kind of, I learned over the last five years, so called MindGeek. Now MindGeek has a monopoly on the global big porn industry. So we call it big porn because there's big porn, just like there's big tobacco, there's big pharma,

Starting point is 00:20:57 there's big porn and it's dominated by one company. That company was called MindGeek, they rebranded to ILO to try to escape their reputation as peddlers of crime. But they, so with a $362 million loan from a hedge fund called Colbett Capital and 125 secret investors who were outed as including JP Morgan Chase and Cornell University, they had basically rolled up the entire global porn industry under one company. So they owned it, MindGeek.

Starting point is 00:21:30 Yeah, so they owned, they were managing Playboy, Digital Playground, Wicked Pictures, Brazzers, Reality Kings, Pace Sites, subscription sites, and then the Tube Sites. So Pornhub and its sister sites, and then the Tube site. So Pornhub and its sister site. So Pornhub, YouPorn, RedTube, Tube8, GayTube, XTube. You know, I could go on and on. They own the most popular Tube site.

Starting point is 00:21:57 Vegan Tube, is that one? That's no time for jokes. And who owns MindGeek? So MindGeek was owned by secret majority shareholders. So nobody knew who the owner of MindGeek was when all of this began. And were they in America? No, we found out, so we found them.

Starting point is 00:22:18 Through the course of this, there was an investigation called Hunt for the Porn King. So they're not an American company. So you start on the Hunt for the Porn King. So they're not an American company. So you start on the Hunt for the Porn King. Right. So we discovered who was the secret majority shareholder of the company. And his name was Bernd Bergmeyer. And he was in Austria and he lived part-time in Hong Kong. Bernd Bergmeyer? Let's bring a picture of him up.

Starting point is 00:22:36 Yeah, you can. I just want people to know who he is. Bernd Bergmeyer. And let's look at his Wikipedia. I just want to get a little... And let's look at his Wikipedia. I just wanna get a little. He grew up as a son of farmers in Ennsfelden, attended grammar school in Lenz,

Starting point is 00:22:50 transferred to, he studied at University of Lenz, wherever that is. He worked at Goldman Sachs in New York. He became the owner of porn site RedTube in 2013. He sold to the site Manwin, now known as Alio. He was a former majority owner of Pornhub and MindGeek. Okay. Yep.

Starting point is 00:23:09 Just wanted to make sure we see them. Yeah, he was the majority and then Feroz Antune and David DeSillo were the CEO and the COO and they were the minority shareholders and they had kind of hidden themselves from the public as well for a really long time. Okay. And are these guys all from Austria? Are they all from a specific place? No. So Canadian. So the company is an international corporation.

Starting point is 00:23:28 They are headquartered in Canada. So they have most of their employees in Canada, but they have offices in, now they have an office in Texas. They had one in LA, Cyprus, Romania, London. My and Geetha's offices everywhere? Everywhere, yeah. So they are a multinational corporation, huge corporation, hundreds of millions of dollars a year,

Starting point is 00:23:48 multi-billion dollar corporation, with a monopoly on the global big porn industry. And how much money was that bringing in a year? Yeah, they're estimated about half a billion per year. The value of the company is multiple billions of dollars. And Pornhub was the flagship site. So this was the cash cow of the company is multiple billions of dollars. And Pornhub was a flagship site. So this was the cash cow of the company. This is how, not only are they making money

Starting point is 00:24:10 on 4.6 billion ad impressions every day and all of the traffic they're getting, but they're advertising their pay sites on the free sites, right? So they kind of have this ecosystem where they advertise browsers on Pornhub and drive traffic to all of the other websites that they own. I thought it was brazzers, which is crazy, but also I don't care. I mean, either way, it's bad.

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Starting point is 00:26:55 Shopify.com slash T-H-E-O. So this is the company, this is the, this is who we're kind of coming up against, right? And so all of this started to take off and go viral and victims are coming forward, whistleblowers. I told you about the former owner who came forward, his name is Fabian Tillman, and he was called the Zuckerberg of porn. He's the one. Okay, let's bring him up.

Starting point is 00:27:20 I just wanna get a look. I wanna put a face to these guys. Fabian Tillman. He looks dangerous, huh? T-H-Y, yeah, there you go. Yep. Fabian Tillman. He's the one that put Pornhub on the map.

Starting point is 00:27:35 He kind of had this vision for... The German entrepreneur who once built the biggest adult entertainment company in the world. Let's see him. That's him. Fabian. Okay. So he is, he's one of the guys schlepping it. So he, yeah. So he's the one who actually revealed to me who the secret majority shareholder was that he sold the company to. So that's how we found out who he was. Okay, so the movement's getting bigger, right? So you have the traffic hub.

Starting point is 00:28:06 Yep, trafficking hub, it's taking off. So we're even out protesting on the streets outside of MyGeek headquarters in Montreal and London and LA, you know, sharing tons of viral victim stories are happening. And then one of the things that we're going up through, having all these meetings with the credit card companies, executives, trying to present evidence and evidence

Starting point is 00:28:28 and more evidence to them and saying, listen, you have to stop monetizing this content because actually it's even illegal to knowingly benefit from trafficking in the United States. Right, so at that point, if you put the knowledge on them that they're benefiting from it, then that becomes a crime against them. Then they're knowingly benefiting from trafficking and trying to bring this to them and saying,

Starting point is 00:28:48 listen, you have to stop. But they were resisting, right? Why? Because there's so much money, you think? I think there's multiple reasons. I think it's because they feel like this is a slippery slope. If we do this here, we might have to do it there. And they just don't want to take action unless they're forced to take action. So they're like, we're really concerned. This is so concerning. Thank you for bringing this to us. Give us more information, more information. I give more information. They want more information. Anyway, they're resisting, right? Then, so I reach out and get the attention of Nick Kristof from the New York Times.

Starting point is 00:29:25 So Nick Kristof has a history of really compassionate reporting for victims of human trafficking, sex trafficking specifically. So I was thinking if there's anybody in the world that could cover this story in a really meaningful way, it will be Nick Kristof. And so he got engaged and he started a six month investigation. Of course he found out exactly what we were saying was happening on the site.

Starting point is 00:29:51 I was connecting him with victims as they were coming forward so he could be speaking to victims and whistleblowers. And he ended up releasing this groundbreaking article called The Children of Pornhub. And it was featuring Serena Story, the girl I just told you about. Flaitis.

Starting point is 00:30:07 Flaitis. Flaitis. Yeah, Serena Flaitis. And many other victims like her who were children abused on the site. And had you been meeting, were more people coming forward at this point? Yeah, all the time.

Starting point is 00:30:18 So many victims. And I personally engaged with so many victims of PornHub. And thankfully, attorneys were also coming forward saying, we want to help really amazing, hard-hitting, top-notch attorneys. One of the ones I speak about in my book, who he had done the biggest hedge fund insider trading case in history against SAC Capital and Stevie Cohen.

Starting point is 00:30:45 His name is Mike Bowie from Brown Retnik. And he cared about trafficking and he came forward. He became Serena's attorney and he started representing. Now he represents, I think, 200 victims. Let's bring that hero up. Bring a picture of him. Yeah, Mike Bowie. There he is.

Starting point is 00:31:00 Mike Bowie. Yep. Thank you, Mike. Son of a firefighter. Wanted to be a firefighter. Ended up being a... He's fighting huge fires. Thank you, Mike. Son of a firefighter, wanted to be a firefighter, ended up being a... He's fighting huge fires now. Yeah, right.

Starting point is 00:31:09 I mean, that's one of the biggest fires in the world. It sounds like human trafficking, taking advantage of people's sexuality. Yeah. So, back to the story. So, Nick Kristof does this investigate, he releases the Children of Pornhub. And one of the things he does in his article

Starting point is 00:31:24 is he calls out the credit card companies. And when this is released, I mean, I couldn't believe the impact that it had. It started to, like, thousands of follow-on articles. The pressure was on. Justin Trudeau in Canada was responding to the article saying how horrific what was going on was. Canadian Parliament was up in arms demanding an investigation. And the pressure was on the credit card companies and within days of that article being released Visa MasterCard and Discover joined PayPal in cutting all ties with Pornhub leaving them only with cryptocurrency as a payment option

Starting point is 00:31:57 Incredible this was the worst thing that could happen to Pornhub. Okay, right and so they must have Panic yeah in an absolute panic. This is the worst thing that could happen to them. So they did basically the unthinkable for their business model, which relies on massive amounts of content because content is king for the PornTube sites. You have to understand this,

Starting point is 00:32:19 that it's about getting unrestricted, massive amounts of content so that they could get picked up in Google search results so that they can drive massive amounts of traffic so they can sell all those ad impressions and make hundreds of millions of dollars a year on free porn, okay? Worst thing they could do is take content down

Starting point is 00:32:38 from the site, but they started to delete millions of videos, they deleted 10 million videos and over 30 million images, basically in 24 hours, and what Financial Times called probably the biggest takedown of content in internet history. They deleted all of their unverified videos because they had no idea who was a child,

Starting point is 00:32:59 and like who was 16 and who was 18, who was, what was rough sex and what was rape. They had no idea what was consensually recorded and non-consensually uploaded, right? And so they took down that much content. Because they're worried about the money. Yeah, they wanted to woo the credit card companies back as they said, okay, we have to do this.

Starting point is 00:33:21 They basically deleted their site. Well, 80% of it at the time. Sadly, I found out that, so then there's global headlines, right? Hundreds of headlines all over the world. Visa, MasterCard, the big take down. I found out an insider came to me months later and said, you don't know this, but two weeks after the credit card companies disengaged with Pornhub, they quietly snuck back to the advertising arm of Pornhub called Traffic Junkie,

Starting point is 00:33:52 because they have their own ad arm, right? And that's how they make most of their money. So business is going on as usual. And I said, oh my, it's like the worst thing that I could have ever, I can't believe that this is what happened. I said, what are we going to do now? Like how, how would in a CEO of VISA or one of these companies be like, yeah,

Starting point is 00:34:09 we're just not going to do this anymore. How would they, why wouldn't they just say we would stop this as bad? This isn't good. You know, is it at that point, is it because they're also worried about free speech and stuff like that? Do you think, or this is not about free speech. I mean, I think, I think it has to do with money as well, because one thing you have to know is,

Starting point is 00:34:28 these are high-risk transactions. They charge more per transaction for high-risk transactions, which are porn transactions. I see, so there's big money. So there's money, right? Big money. And they went back. And so it was another two-year battle

Starting point is 00:34:43 to try to get them to finally disengage which happened because Serena sued Pornhub not only Pornhub she sued its individual owners and its executives and she sued Visa For monetizing her abuse Wow, and she sued the hedge funds for funding the whole enterprise. Did she win? And so what happened was Visa lost their motion to dismiss the case, because they had filed a motion to dismiss, they lost it.

Starting point is 00:35:13 And at the same time, we were able to put the pressure on publicly. So Bill Ackman was one of the heroes in this story. I mean, he knew the CEO of MasterCard, and so he was making phone calls. Yeah. That's Bill Lackman right there? So he got him and I on CNBC Squawk Box,

Starting point is 00:35:31 and we called out Al Kelly, who was the CEO of Visa, for 17 minutes on the show, and this was right when Visa lost their motion to dismiss. So the pressure was on from multiple angles. And a motion to dismiss is what? So they say- Oh, they wanna say, could dismiss the case. Dismiss the case, we're not involved,

Starting point is 00:35:46 like this had nothing we could do about this, we're not part of this problem. And the court says, hold my gavel, brother. And in a damning decision. And it wasn't just a decision, it was like the judge actually said that Visa gave Pornhub the very tool through which to complete the crime

Starting point is 00:36:04 of benefiting from child trafficking. Like those were his words and his decision. And so the pressure was on. And then, so then Al Kelly said, he did kind of an unprecedented thing. He actually- Who is Al Kelly, let's just say. He's the CEO of Visa.

Starting point is 00:36:19 Okay, so the CEO of Visa, Al Kelly then. Then he says, okay, fine, we're gonna cut them off once and for all. And he made a personal statement. He said, I'm a father and I don't approve, blah, blah, blah. And so we're cutting off Pornhub. And then of course MasterCard quickly followed Discover. Now they've lost it totally.

Starting point is 00:36:39 And today, so we found out they kept deleting content. So today they have actually deleted 91% of the entire site. So they went from 56 million pieces of content in 2020 when this started to 5.2 million pieces of content today. And we're not done because they still have unverified content on the site. So yeah, it's not over yet. Congratulations.

Starting point is 00:37:02 That's fast, I mean, congratulations. Thank you. I mean, congratulations. Thank you. I mean, it's been not just, I have to pass that on, that congratulations to any victims who might be watching this because it's through their courageous testimony and them stepping forward amidst backlash and everybody who's been involved.

Starting point is 00:37:22 We had 600 organizations that were involved in this and the lawyers and the journalists and the whistleblowers and so many people came together to make this happen. Did you guys, what was the one, what was the CEO? What was that transaction that kind of occurred where he was like, where he reached out the previous CEO? No, he was the owner. Oh, he was a previous owner.

Starting point is 00:37:46 Fabian Thielman, the Zuckerberg of porn. Fabian Thielman. Yeah, he reached out in summer of 2020 to say he wanted to help. And so one of the things that he did was he exposed the secret majority shareholder's name. And he said, go after the credit card companies. As the former owner, he said,

Starting point is 00:38:04 if you want to make a difference here, you go after the credit card companies. As the former owner, he said, if you want to make a difference here, you go after the credit card companies to cut ties. And so that was, now, what I didn't realize at the time, I was suspicious, right? Why is he wanting to help? And I kind of later found out that he had intention to try to buy back the company. So he kind of wanted to make a killing again.

Starting point is 00:38:25 So I think he wanted to help take it down, buy it. And then find a way to do it back, probably with crypto or something on a different chain. I don't know what he was thinking, but he wanted to buy it back, which I found out later on. But the CEO and the CEO, COO and the CEO were forced to resign as well. And today they're being sued by nearly 300 victims

Starting point is 00:38:46 in 25 lawsuits, including multiple class actions on behalf of tens of thousands of child victims. And they're doing amazing in the courts. So much more evidence has been uncovered in legal discovery. So discovery is this amazing tool. When you engage in a civil lawsuit, the court gives you permission to get behind your opponents.

Starting point is 00:39:09 So you can get their text messages, you can get their emails, you can get, and so much has come out of the complicity. Like you just couldn't believe the things that we've found out just through legal discovery process. Like what are some of the things like just involved? Okay, so here's an example. We found out that they only had one person. So they had 1800 employees. They hired one person five days a week to be reviewing videos flagged by users as terms of

Starting point is 00:39:41 service violations, including rape and trafficking and child abuse. One person. They had a policy where they wouldn't even review a video unless it was flagged 15 times. Now think about this. You're a victim. Say there's a child victim like Serena. She would have to flag her video over 15 times because it had to be over 15 for it to be reviewed in order for that to even be put in queue for review. And they had a backlog of 706,000 videos. That were just waiting for this one person to review them? Yes, and they had, like we've discovered now

Starting point is 00:40:20 in a recent filing in December of 2024, we found out specific instances of prepubescent child victims who had their videos on there for years and they would have like 14 flags, 13 flags. And they just like, that was the policy. And then the CEO and the executives- All of this on Pornhub.

Starting point is 00:40:43 Yes, yes, on Pornhub, yes. And so I'm just so, I'm just grateful that we're having this conversation because I bet most of the people who are listening to your show had no idea that this was happening, that it's ever happened, that this is an issue on user generated free porn sites. And so is for it.

Starting point is 00:41:07 And they keep it up because it's content, right? Like you're saying the more content. Yes, content is king. They don't want to remove content because that's how they have inventory. So here's another like egregious example of how they did this was, so there's one case that I talk about

Starting point is 00:41:25 in my book where there was a case of a clearly prepubescent child who is being anally raped in a video and she is being tortured, the tags on the video, so the titles and tags were describing her abuse, that she was young, that she was being tortured, all of this. And we reported the video. We tried to get it down. Weeks go by. It's not coming down. Video view counts going up, up, up. We reach out

Starting point is 00:41:52 to the FBI. They demand that it comes down. So they connect with the National Center on Missing and Exploited Children, who confirms this is a child. So they demanded the video come down. Okay. And then what they did was they took the video down, but they left that black box up that said, removed at the request of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and they left the URL live, the tags, the titles, the views, all of that.

Starting point is 00:42:20 And they did that with so many videos. Why would they take the video down, but leave all of that up? And it's because it's inventory. It's the URL. It still shows like an ad company that they're going to sell to. It still says, well, we have this many videos.

Starting point is 00:42:37 So you could search that, right? We have the most videos. Yeah, the tags, the titles, like they'll still come up in Google search, then you'll get to the site. You won't find that particular video, but the algorithm will then direct you to others that are similar, and it will advertise to you, right? You'll get those ad views.

Starting point is 00:42:55 So that's why. Do you have any victims that showed up to thank you in person? Like you've had experiences like that kind of? Yeah, oh yeah. I mean, I'm still in touch with victims on a regular basis. They don't feel though, that like justice has fully been served yet. I mean, I'm still in touch with victims on a regular basis. They don't feel though that like justice has fully been served yet. I'm sure.

Starting point is 00:43:09 So PornHub was criminally charged by the US federal government in December 2023 for intentionally profiting from sex trafficking. But they're still allowed to stay open. But they were offered a deferred prosecution agreement, which is just unbelievable to me that that happened, where basically they said you pay $1.8 million in a settlement and you have a monitor over your company for three years and you can get out of going to trial. So that happened, but that was related to a case like a specific case of a 100 trafficking victims from California So they were part of the girls do porn trafficking operation the guy that was exploiting them. His name is Michael Pratt

Starting point is 00:43:53 He was on the FBI's most wanted list 10 most wanted list Michael Pratt, let's get a look at that. I just want to put faces to these people So that they're not just names that pass by Yeah, Michael Pratt like on my actually that pass by. You said Pratt, right? Yeah, Michael Pratt. On my, actually on my Twitter, I just posted about him. This is him.

Starting point is 00:44:11 Yeah, he's FBI's 10 most wanted, and he was running a trafficking operation, and over 100 victims were exploited by him. And let's look at Wiki. Where is he from, this guy? Who is this guy? Let me see. I think they have a from? This guy. Who is this guy? Okay. Friday's charged in a 19 count indictment with sex trafficking, production of child pornography. Unbelievable.

Starting point is 00:44:32 And he had, so Girls Do Porn was one of the most popular partner channels on Pornhub. So they had over 760,000 subscribers and they had over 600 million views on the videos of these women's trafficking. And most of them were trafficked, you think? Yeah. Oh, it's not, I think. I mean, they've been convicted. Like his accomplices are in prison.

Starting point is 00:44:54 And this was in Spain. It says it was happening. Well, he ran away. So he was a fugitive. So he was doing this in San Diego. This is where it all happened, was in San Diego. Uh, 62 of those women have recently filed lawsuits. 50 of them filed lawsuits and settled those lawsuits.

Starting point is 00:45:10 But they, so this channel was one of the most popular in Pornhub and that was what this criminal prosecution was related to. It was about these specific, you know, over a hundred victims of this particular crime ring. But there's so many others out there. But he's not in jail, this guy. Well, they captured him.

Starting point is 00:45:28 It's in process. Like they're working on his prosecution right now. Okay. Yeah. But his accomplices, the others that were involved with him are already prosecuted. It was just that they have more recently found him. And so he's going through the process of being convicted. Understood.

Starting point is 00:45:44 Is pornography causing a problem in your life? Do you find yourself watching porno for longer periods of time and having trouble stopping? Is porn affecting your relationship or dating life? Well, you're certainly not alone. Watching pornography has become so commonplace today. And oftentimes oftentimes men use porn to numb the pain of loneliness, boredom, anxiety, and depression. Shame and

Starting point is 00:46:13 stigma prevent men from talking about these issues and getting help for them. I want to introduce you to my friend Steve. Steve is the founder of Valor Recovery, a program to help men overcome porn abuse and sexual compulsivity. Steve is a long-term sexual recovery member and has personally overcame the emotional and spiritual despair of abusing pornography and has dedicated his life to empowering men to do the same. Steve is an amazing person and he is a close friend of mine. I mean that. Valor Recovery helps men to develop the tools necessary to have a healthier sex life. Their coaches are in long-term recovery and will be your partner, mentor, and spiritual

Starting point is 00:46:56 guide to transcend these problematic behaviors. To learn more about Valor Recovery, please visit them at www.ValerRecoveryCoaching.com or email them at admin at ValorRecoveryCoaching.com. Thank you. This show is sponsored by Better Help. Better Help is the group that's encouraged a lot of people to check on their mental health, especially when it comes to their relationships and their life. And just examining those relationships, looking for green flags and red flags and learning how to operate within those relationships, whether you're dating, married, building a friendship, or just working on yourself,

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Starting point is 00:48:11 Discover your relationship green flags with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash THEO to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterH-E-L-P's better help.com slash Theo. Victims are so grateful for all that's happened so far and they've been a big part of it. You know I remember when the big takedown happened and the most meaningful thing that happened was that victims were calling and they were crying tears of joy because for the first time, their rape and trafficking was finally off of Pornhub after fighting for so long.

Starting point is 00:48:49 But they just feel like justice hasn't been fully served yet because they're still waiting for restitution. The site is still online. It's been purchased now. They're trying to do this whole rebrand. So it was sold as a distressed asset to a company that they created themselves to buy PornHub. And they are called Ethical Capital Partners.

Starting point is 00:49:12 Wow, what a name. Ethical Capital Partners. And who are the main bigwigs in that company, do we know? Yes, we do. They have themselves online. The guy that's out there trying to do this whole rebrand of PornHub, we're Ethical capital partners, his name is Solomon Friedman and he is a criminal defense attorney. Is he really? A Jewish guy from where? Where is he from? Canada. He's from Canada.

Starting point is 00:49:37 Yeah. So he wants to rebrand it and just make it more ethical? Well, I mean, that's what they're saying, right? They're saying they call themselves ethical capital, yet at the same time, the videos that are on Pornhub right now are still unverified, mostly unverified. So that 5.2 million left, they had verified the uploaders, right? But not the individuals in the videos.

Starting point is 00:50:02 So that doesn't work because often the abuser is the uploader. And I'll give you an example. So there's a man named Rocky Shay Franklin out of Alabama and he drugged and he overpowered and he raped a 12 year old boy and he filmed those assaults and he uploaded 23 of those videos

Starting point is 00:50:21 to Pornhub with titles that indicated this was abuse. Like young, it said like uncle secret. I mean, I won't say the worst things, but it was clear, right? He was put in prison for 40 years for what he did. Police reached out multiple times to Pornhub to try to get those videos down. They were ignored for seven months. Those videos stayed online getting hundreds of thousands of views. That boy is suing Pornhub today. So he's one of those many victims suing Pornhub. But Rocky was a verified uploader.

Starting point is 00:50:54 He had shown his ID and he- They know who he is. They know who he is, but they didn't verify clearly, right? Like who's in the video, right? So even today, you know, as of 2024, PornHub had to produce a report. They sent it into the European, there's a European law called the Digital Services Act.

Starting point is 00:51:13 And in 2024, in four and a half months, they had to take down 3,770 child sexual abuse videos from the site and over 8,000 non-consensual and rape videos from the site. Okay. So they're having to be legally asked to do this, right? Yeah. Well, to disclose what they're doing. So that's all under ethical capital partners, right? Okay. Okay. So that's, you know, they do- So ethical capital partners, there's still, there's still stuff out there that's not supposed to be there. Yes. They still haven't actually

Starting point is 00:51:44 implemented the preventative policies. So what's ethical about it? It's just a farce. I mean, it's just, you know, and that's why I think it's so important to sound the alarm on this rebrand because from a victim's perspective, like this is also a miscarriage of justice for them to go out there and try to resuscitate Pornhub's brand, say, oh, we're ethical capital. Listen, the same men who made all those decisions that the one person that was verifying videos, they had 30 moderators, 30 moderators, moderating the millions of videos on Pornhub. Now compare that with Facebook's 15,000 moderators and they still don't have enough. These moderators, they were viewing

Starting point is 00:52:26 between 802,000 videos per shift, clicking through those videos with the sound off, just clicking through them, guessing. Like I call it the underage guessing game. Like this is a game of rush and roulette with people's lives. They're trying to guess who's 15 and who's 18, who's 16 and who's 19. Like nobody can do that on a,

Starting point is 00:52:44 like even a pediatrician can't do that. Yeah, and what happens to your brain at a certain point after seeing so much traumatic stuff that you were even, like that should be a crime and putting an employee through that. Well, I, and I've spoken to those and some of those employees I call friends today because they-

Starting point is 00:53:01 Really? Have they said that they've seen some, it's been really intense? Their conscience was pricked. Oh, I'm sure. And they came forward and I've spent hours and hours in person and, you know, online and on the phone speaking to them, trying to understand how all of this worked. And one of them is especially dear to me. And he told me that it was so hard on him to do this job, but he needed the money. And he was abused as a child.

Starting point is 00:53:26 He was sexually abused as a child. So it was especially hard for him to do this. But I think that's why- I just wonder why he went and did it. It's like, you could find something else to do probably. Not calling him out, but it's like maybe there's some weird thing that's created there too that like, you know.

Starting point is 00:53:41 I don't know, but I appreciate what he did in coming forward. But to say like the executive, so back to ethical capital, it's like the men who made that decision to have 30 moderators just guessing what's rough sex and rape, guessing, and they guess wrong all the time. They were skipping through 2000, you know, thousands of videos per shift. And they're still running Pornhub today. So they're still on the sixth floor, Aquamarine Montreal Tower of that corporation, running Pornhub today. So they're still on the sixth floor, Aquamarine Montreal Tower of that corporation,

Starting point is 00:54:08 running Pornhub today. Yes, the CEO and the COO were forced to resign, but they have the same CFO, they have the same CLO. Who's the CFO, let's see. Eddie DeSanto. Eddie DeSanto, bring him up. I don't know if you'll find him. They try to.

Starting point is 00:54:21 They try to hide his face? They try to, but some of them, I mean you can find Ryan Hogan, Matt Calici. So you can look up Kareem Al-Morazi. He is the CPO and he's running it today. Kareem Al-Morazi. So that's him. There he is.

Starting point is 00:54:36 And so he's there today, right? Yep, about him from Canada. As an integral part of the mobile broadband team. Telecommunication engineering. went to University of Montreal. So they're still running, they're just trying to rebuild this company and still make money. Well, so I mean, what I'm saying is like ethical capital,

Starting point is 00:54:57 right, if they were coming in and saying like, we're gonna rebrand, we're gonna do this new thing, why would you still have the same men responsible for the decisions that destroy the lives of countless victims just running the site today? That's why it's like, it's just a farce. It's not real. And even if it was real, it doesn't mean that they escape justice being fully served because what's important is victims receive the justice they need for healing and to be a deterrent to future abusers.

Starting point is 00:55:29 One of the most important things in the fight against trafficking is not just to rescue victims and to rehabilitate them. That's important, but to prevent it from happening in the future. And how do you prevent it? You have to increase risk and eliminate profitability. You have to make the risk of continued exploitation greater than the benefit that these executives get by maintaining the status quo. And then when you do that and you end impunity

Starting point is 00:55:53 for these abusers, you become a deterrent to future abusers because other. Explain that little part to me again. So you want to hold these companies fully accountable to the full extent of the law. To me, that means PornHub gets shut down. So you want to hold these companies fully accountable to the full extent of the law. To me, that means PornHub gets shut down. Like we go from 91% to 100%.

Starting point is 00:56:11 They do not exist anymore because they have been destroying the lives of countless victims since 2007 when they came online. And when that happens, other websites owned by other executives will say, we don't wanna end up in that position. So let's just clean ourselves up. Because we can make a lot of money on legal content.

Starting point is 00:56:29 We don't have to monetize illegal content. We can do this in a way where we're not distributing sexual crime and they'll do that. Because they want to avoid losing the credit card companies. They want to avoid litigation. They want to avoid criminal prosecution. Just greed at a certain point is some type of obviously sick. It's risk benefit, right?

Starting point is 00:56:46 But a sickness too, to think that you would be able to know that that's happening, right? Right. And keep going. That's insane. It's like what type of sickness exists, you know? I mean, it's almost like a slave trader of people's like solitude and peace, you know? But no, you know, I don't know. I just can't, I can't even, I can't imagine that. I can't fathom that someone would be like, yeah, this is okay. I'm not going to, that's not going to be the first thing I'm going

Starting point is 00:57:21 to worry about with my company, right? Yeah. So just, I'm just fine tuning into my view here. So a lot of your combativeness is not against pornography, it's against the sex trafficking, the like people illegally filming people, filming drugs people, no verification of age, all of these crimes basically. Yeah, sexual crime being distributed online. In fact, some of the most helpful allies in this fight have been those in the porn industry. Like at one point, you know, I had those who were

Starting point is 00:57:58 producing their own porn on Pornhub and they were doing this in a professional sense and they were reaching out to me because they said, listen, we need to take this company down because I'm sick and tired of spending two hours a day scouring PornHub and its sister tube sites trying to get my own stolen illegal content off the site. Because they were not only rape and trafficking, right? This is copyright infringement content.

Starting point is 00:58:21 Like taking- There's no protection for that either. No, they're just uploading. They're just pirating and uploading all of this content. So, so those in the porn industry kind of hated MindGeek already because the free porn tube sites were exploiting the legally produced content of these those in the industry. Yeah, because even with YouTube, there's like there's like metadata and stuff that they could if they want to they can make sure that someone can't do it

Starting point is 00:58:45 without it being claimed or known, you know? Right, and so, well, they could do these DMCA takedowns. So that's what they would do. So she was spending hours a day, multiple of them, doing that, but as she was doing that, she was coming across child abuse, rape, trafficking, and then they were sending the links. And that was one of the things that was crazy

Starting point is 00:59:03 that was happening is that as this was all going viral and there's all these stories, people around the world who are on Pornhub who would find an illegal video would be sending it to me. And so I was in, and so it was just kind of a really intense situation. Right, because then you're looking at it and seeing what's going on.

Starting point is 00:59:21 You're like, well, what am I supposed to do here? And then I have the responsibility to report it, to take care of, you know, witnessing what's happening and then trying to help the justice of the victims. How tremendous, I mean, insane, huh? And it's real, I mean, yeah, it's real. So this is all real vile, real stuff that was happening and being uploaded.

Starting point is 00:59:41 Yeah, real, real sexual crime. So what do you think kind of like the solution is at scale, you know, when you think about that, Lila? Yeah. Well, so yes, it's one thing to hold one particular company accountable and that's important, but the question then becomes because PornHub is not alone, right? I want everybody to understand that it's not like you go, okay, well, X videos must be fine.

Starting point is 01:00:04 They're a free user generated porn site that was operating in a similar way of not verifying agent consent. And there's, Nick Kristoff did an investigation and found, you know, reported on the victims who were on X videos and there's X hamster and there's all of these X and XX, right? And there's others that operate in a similar way.

Starting point is 01:00:21 And so the question is, well, how do we stop this across all of these sites? And that goes back to the source of the problem, is not verifying agent consent. We have to demand third party agent consent verification for every single person in every single video that is uploaded to a user generated porn site. And when that happens, we're going to make a huge

Starting point is 01:00:46 difference in stopping that illegal content from being uploaded. But that's a huge task, right? So it's not just governments who have to do this because this is an international problem. These sites operate internationally. So if the US does that, well, they're still in Canada and they're in every country in the world. So the solution at scale becomes the credit card companies implementing that policy. Because we and they're in every country in the world. So the solution at scale becomes the credit card companies

Starting point is 01:01:06 implementing that policy. Because we know they're highly motivated by money. And if Visa says, we don't do business with user generated porn sites that don't verify the agent consent of every person, every video, well, all of these companies are going to comply. And they're going to do it quickly. So that's the solution. So how do we get, because you would think at this point,

Starting point is 01:01:26 they would just go on ahead and say that, because it's like, it's obviously the next right thing to do. And as in a moral sense, it would feel like. Well, a lot of companies don't operate from- Right, business doesn't have emotions. Well, yeah, and it comes from pressure, right? And so that's where I see the litigation being important, where these survivors, dozens of survivors

Starting point is 01:01:50 have sued the credit card companies, right? So now they're facing some of it, right? So they're feeling that pressure. And at some point, they go, listen, it's better business to just implement this policy. Just like we have anti-money laundering policy, we're going to have anti-ononey laundering policy, we're gonna have anti-online sexual exploitation policy, and we just don't do business with user-generated porn

Starting point is 01:02:10 sites that don't verify agent consent because it's too risky for us, right? Right, because then it hits their wallet without any... Exactly. It's like big pharma. It's like litigation made a huge difference in reform in the pharmaceutical industry. We saw it in the hedge fund insider trading cases when they had big litigation and criminal prosecution and it forced those changes to happen. So I think that could be a- That's where we're hoping to get to next.

Starting point is 01:02:36 Yeah, that's where we need to go. And who supports, legally supports you guys's, like the legal costs? Yeah, well, that's where, I mean, these firms, a lot of them are working on a contingency basis where they're working with victims. Some do pro bono. They have like different kinds of arrangements. And then we support victims as well

Starting point is 01:02:54 at the Justice Defense Fund to help them get connected to lawyers, to support them along that journey. It's a hard thing to do, to take on an abuser. It's a hard thing to do to take on an abuser. It's a hard thing to go into litigation and they need therapy, advocacy, all the ways that they need to be supported. And so, yeah, that's our mission is to support survivors, to pursue justice in court, to get that healing and to implement those preventative policies to make sure it doesn't happen again. Now MasterCard has come a little ways. So they implemented a policy where they say,

Starting point is 01:03:30 you have to verify uploaders, but that's not far enough. Like you have to verify those in the videos. Yeah. So yeah. And do you think there's like backroom dealings between these companies and the like credit card companies where they're sending them extra cash or meet, they just know each other, the owners know each other and it's like,

Starting point is 01:03:50 we'll let you stay open, that type of thing. I haven't seen that. I don't think that's going to happen. I haven't seen that happen. I don't get that sense. I think that this is just one of many industries that they can make money on and they will maintain that position. Yeah, I was wondering if there's lobbying by the actual owners of the companies

Starting point is 01:04:09 towards the towards the credit card companies, other banks. Possible. Yeah, you start to figure that that's where a lot of things really kind of happen. Yeah. And then it bubbles up to the surface of what we can follow the money, what we can see. Yeah. What what state? Because I've noticed like, you know, I've watched pornography before,

Starting point is 01:04:29 I've had issues with pornography addiction kind of, I use it as an escape, especially in my 20s. Like, you know, I found pornography when I was, you know, at a age where I was probably maybe 13 or 14. And so then I would use it to make me feel good. It was like one of the only ways I felt like when I was young that I could feel good. You know, I had really low self-worth. And so once I realized pornography and porno and everything, I was like, oh, dang, I can control,

Starting point is 01:04:58 I have a control, basically lever on my body as to when I can feel okay, right? And so it was magazines and then I guess as, you know, then it became like video online, stuff like that, you know, over time. But it certainly has been something where it's like, I don't feel good about myself, I feel down about myself. What's the one way I know to feel good? And it would be to watch pornography, you know,

Starting point is 01:05:23 or use it to masturbate, you know, things like that to make myself, and then you get a hit of dopamine crazily. And so then you, part of you feels good for a while, you know? So that's been, you know, that was kind of my story with it, except it got to like, I would notice instead of going and meeting girls or trying to like, well, part of my spirit started to suffer because I was taking out like an important part of like my soul and my physiology by ejaculating or like just like abusing that part of me. And then I didn't have, you know, I think that part of you is supposed to kind of build up inside of you and help you have like some, it pushes you to talk to women and to

Starting point is 01:06:05 want to go on dates and things like that. And so for me, I think it started to weaken some of that over time. It was like, well, why go meet a girl or ask a girl out when I could just masturbate? You know, that was some of, that was kind of what happened, I guess, in my head at some times. Yeah. Yeah. And I've been in like recovery groups to talk about that. I'm in recovery groups where there's like multiple things that people have dealt with. A lot of, for me, it's just been like intimacy stuff, because if you're looking at pornography,

Starting point is 01:06:33 it skews the way you look at intimacy, because you start to think of like sexual activity just in like frames and certain, you don't really think of connection because you don't see a lot of connection in porn, you know, it's not like you watch a 45 minute porn and it's people, two people getting to know each other, you know, at a park or something, you know, so, or splitting a diet soda or something. So it's like, you know, that part is all, you know, things get super, I think things get kind of convoluted in your psyche sometimes.

Starting point is 01:07:06 Well, yeah, and it's driven by an algorithm now. It's like, you know, it's people's sexual preferences and their sexuality in today, you know, this internet porn saturated world that's driven by an algorithm, the algorithm is driven by executives who want to get as many views and clicks the algorithms driven by executives who want to get as many views and clicks and add impressions as possible. And then, you know, that's kind of shaping the content that's being seen on the sites. And what's especially alarming to me, and you know, it's what you experienced, right? Because you, when you were 13 years old, when you were first when you were 13 years old, when you were first exposed to porn, is that children, you know, are just en masse being exposed to not Playboy, right? Not the centerfold that used to be, but the free porn tube sites, because, you know, it's free.

Starting point is 01:08:00 Do you guys know that children are accessing those? Is there statistics behind it? Oh yeah, I mean, I think one study from 2022 was saying that 75% of 13 to 17 year olds have viewed internet porn. I mean, I think it would probably be more than that. Every kid has a device. There's five year olds that could click through. The internet filters are not doing a good job, and parents who may not even know how to implement internet filters for their kids, and even if they do, they can't control all the time, so they can't be at school and other places

Starting point is 01:08:36 when they go to their friend's house, whatever, it's just everywhere. What filters are they using? Are they the ones that you suggest, kind of, that people use? I don't have any particular brands that I would suggest, but there's so many different apps that people can install. You can get routers that could actually block the content

Starting point is 01:08:53 at the router level. Oh, that's awesome. I didn't know that. Yeah. And so there's stuff like that out there. I know states are stopping people from, like a lot of states are pro, you have to upload an ID now.

Starting point is 01:09:04 Well, there's this whole movement in the United States right now that is saying, look, we understand that kids are accessing this content and we want to protect kids from viewing. And I call it a form of secondhand sexual abuse, right? For kids to be witnessing this kind of content. And from my perspective, I know how much of this content isn't just hardcore, right? It's actually criminal. Where they could be watching a real rape as their sex education as an eight-year-old child.

Starting point is 01:09:37 And they call it the creation of a sexual template, right? So it becomes like, what is your sexuality about and what is arousing to you? And if they grow up on this kind of content, I mean, it could do so much damage to an entire generation. Well, especially, I think a lot of that's already happened. I think you've seen a lot of the effects of pornography on marriages, like people get addicted to porn and then they're no longer

Starting point is 01:10:08 expressing attraction to their spouse because it's being hijacked basically by this algorithm, by the websites, by this addiction. And then marriages fall apart and then families fall apart. Yeah. And another implication of this is actually children who are acting out on other children. So we've seen, so I was just reading the amicus, should call it amicus briefs. So these are briefs that were submitted to the Supreme Court. So as these states across America are implementing age verification to protect kids from viewing porn online,

Starting point is 01:10:39 the porn sites are not happy about this. So Pornhub and its sites are not happy about this. So Pornhub and its partners are suing those states. So for example, they sued the state of Texas to not have to abide by this age verification law. And it's gone now. They've appealed it. They lost. They appealed. Now it's at the Supreme Court. And on January 15, the justice has actually heard oral arguments for whether or not we can have states enacting age verification to keep kids off porn sites. So they're going to have a decision by June. But some of the briefs submitted are so

Starting point is 01:11:17 compelling. And one of them was this nurse, Heidi Olson, and she's a sexual assault, she's a pediatric sexual assault nurse and she was talking about her experience with over 1,500 cases of sexual assault that she had to document and assess and she saw that 50% of those cases were children who were assaulting other children and the number one, the perpetrators in that group were 14 year old males who were then assaulting. Females?

Starting point is 01:11:50 Other females, yeah, children. And you're saying that a lot, you think that- And they're citing pornography as- Being the influence. The reason why they're acting out, right? Because you just, that's how, that's human nature, like especially with kids. Oh yeah, you see something, you mimic it or you sign up. Yeah, I mean like my son, he's like, you know, watch Spider how, that's human nature, especially with kids. Oh yeah, you see something, you mimic it, or you try to.

Starting point is 01:12:05 Yeah, I mean like my son, he's like, watch Spider-Man or something, and he's like jumping off the walls and pretending that he's Spider-Man. They're acting out what they see, right? And so if they're watching porn and they're watching, potentially actually watching sexual crime on these free porn tip sites,

Starting point is 01:12:22 and they're kind of acting out what they see. And so it's not surprising that that's happening, right? It's sick. It's literally being in a spiral of sickness, kind of. I mean, it's almost like what you would feel like people would describe as like some sort of a hell, you know? One of the wildest things that happens on porn sites is how they... I don't know if this is targeted or what the goal is, but you talk about it ruining families, some of the videos are like stepson, mom, dad, son's girlfriend.

Starting point is 01:12:55 Like shit that's like, you're putting things into people's, just even to put that seed into somebody's psyche, people don't realize, or we don't realize that when we're watching something, that we become, we're a sponge, right? We might say, oh, I'm not really, I'm watching this, but I'm not, it's just, I'm watching it for a brief second, I'm using it, right? But it's also, whatever it is, it's also using you, right? It's, everything is a, it's a back and forth relationship. Yeah. So- And teen was, I mean, one of the most popular categories on Pornhub was teen. And teen, right, like teen could be 18 and 19,

Starting point is 01:13:31 but it also is 13 and 14 and 15 and 16. And so many of that, those videos are, you know, where they could be someone who's of age, but they're intentionally made to look underage with the pigtails and the flat chest and the braces They could be someone who's of age, but they're intentionally made to look underage with the pigtails and the flat chest and the braces and the no makeup and all of that. And they're mixed in with videos of real teenagers

Starting point is 01:13:54 who are being abused. And then this is being pushed, right? It's one of the, they were, you know, PornHub was tracking down to the dollar, how much they would make monthly on those teen categories on their site. And it was one of the most popular that they had. And so whatever is making the most money,

Starting point is 01:14:12 you push that forward, right? And so maybe it's they're getting more clicks because people are like horrified by it. Or maybe, I don't know exactly what is happening there, but whatever it is that gets the most clicks and views, they'll push the algorithm, right? We'll push that forward. But it's like, why, I wonder how that even starts

Starting point is 01:14:32 if they say like mom, son, porn, you know what I'm saying? Like where does something like that idea even start? Well, I think it's, so I've spoken to some porn producers who've talked to me about this and the way that there's been like a trajectory from like Playboy into more and more kind of extreme forms of porn in different situations. And they're saying like, they're just told

Starting point is 01:14:58 to create the most extreme thing you can think of because you need more shock value. There's this idea of kind of desensitization for people where they want to kind of, in order to get the same dopamine hit with porn, it's not necessarily that you need more, it's that you need different. And you need something, yeah, more extreme to kind of get that same dopamine hit.

Starting point is 01:15:25 What does porn do to our brains? Do you have anything on that? Trying to see just the psychological effects. New research sheds light on the global impact of problematic pornography use. Okay, I'll look at this a little bit, but after this I want something more about the actual effects on our brain.

Starting point is 01:15:40 A comprehensive international study involving tens of thousands of participants from dozens of countries suggest that problematic pornography use might have a prevalence rate as high as 16.6%. So that's saying that 16.6% of people per this study have problematic pornography use. Problematic pornography use refers to a condition where individuals experience an uncontrollable urge to consume pornography, leading to significant distress or impairment in their daily functioning. First, most people use pornography, but only a small group of them develop problems with it. So we wanted to see how many people may experience such problems worldwide and whether there are any country, gender, or sexual orientation-based differences, as most previous studies focused

Starting point is 01:16:24 on really specific populations, i.e. men from the United States. I think one of the most important takeaway messages from our study is that problematic pornography use seems to be as common as other mental health issues, i.e. depression, so we need to better understand this problem and provide appropriate care for people experiencing this issue.

Starting point is 01:16:44 Probably the most surprising finding of the study is that only 4 to 10 percent of individuals with problematic pornography sought help for this issue with an additional 20 to 40 percent wanting to, but did not do so for various help reasons. Well, part of that is shame, right? Oh, for sure. And that's why I am so grateful. I'm sure so many of your listeners are grateful that you talk about it. Oh, well, I'll say this exactly and specifically.

Starting point is 01:17:09 When I, you know, we actually, a friend of mine started a program called Valor Recovery, and it's for porn addiction. And I know, I met this guy in different recovery meetings and he's a friend of mine. And so I'll go to the meetings and I'm excited to go to the meetings and we're helping kind of work to try

Starting point is 01:17:32 and make this thing bigger, right? To make it bigger. And one of the things I noticed when I took, when I had the most time I ever had off of pornography, the shame I had disappeared. There was still some shame at certain moments, but I was able to finally notice it because before I'd just been in this circle of shame because I would masturbate, I would feel ashamed of myself, I would start to feel a little bit better, but I would be like had some, but then when

Starting point is 01:18:02 I needed to feel okay, if I started to feel a little shakier when I needed to feel okay, when if I started to feel a little shaky or needed to feel okay again, I would be right back to the pornography and then the shame of it. Like a cycle. Yeah. It was, and I didn't realize,

Starting point is 01:18:14 I was stuck in it probably for a decade. I was still going on dates and being in relationship stuff, but it ruined a lot of those. Are you like free today from that? I wouldn't say I'm free, but I'm definitely on parole. Yeah. You know say I'm free, but I'm definitely on parole. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Like it's a different, I have tools and stuff now in place

Starting point is 01:18:32 to like battle against it. And so. What helped you the most to? Going to meetings, recovery, 12 step recovery. Community. Community, yeah. Getting in groups and you'll start to see in groups, I've been in groups where men at first came,

Starting point is 01:18:47 were scared to even talk in the groups, and then three months later you see that their wife has moved back in, they're spending time with their kids, they're not watching pornography, they're not acting out in these certain ways with escorts and prostitutes and all of that. But the biggest thing I noticed for myself was shame.

Starting point is 01:19:04 I just noticed that it started to disappear because I'd always had this heavy shame. And I'd never really noticed that it could have had to do with really the masturbation, just the part of like, I'll probably need to make myself feel good then I'll use masturbation, you know? Do you think that there's, I mean, could be like two sides to shame, right?

Starting point is 01:19:22 Shame could be really destructive and unhealthy because it causes you not to seek help or get community or be able to talk about it. And so then you push the problem down and then it becomes worse, right? Because then you're trying to alleviate that pain. Okay, say it one more time for me, start over again. Could the shame have two sides to it

Starting point is 01:19:42 where there's kind of like a healthy shame, where it's pricking your conscience and saying like, this is not who I am, I can do better than this, and it inspires you to overcome, but then there's the other side of shame, which keeps people kind of hiding it, pushing it down, not being able to get community, not being able to talk about it, which then could cause the problem to be worse, right? For me, yeah, I agree.

Starting point is 01:20:08 Both of those things can happen. I think some of them kind of happen at certain moments for me, but I think overall it was just, I didn't want to be doing it anymore, and I kept doing it. And so for then it was just constant, like I don't have any willpower. And so that made me ashamed of myself. It wasn't, sometimes the act itself would,

Starting point is 01:20:28 definitely I would watch pornography on the computers or something and I would immediately close it. Did you ever feel like you were encountering potentially non-consensual content? I never felt like I was watching, I never felt like I saw anything like that. But I do think that, this is how I've long thought this. I believe, because sometimes you see a lot of people

Starting point is 01:20:50 get compromised, right? It seems like a lot of times in our society that freedom seekers or people that wanna change the status quo, that wanna rise up and do something different, and at some point, some of them get, it feels like maybe they get compromised in their, I don't know if money hits them or there's some opportunity that's presented to them.

Starting point is 01:21:10 This is all, this is a lot of conspiracy, Tim Foole has stuff. But, and then they change their tune or their tune weekends or their goal, their agenda, like kind of curbs a little bit. And you think, oh, somebody got to them. I think that a lot of these sites record somehow, secretly these days, can record the user watching porn.

Starting point is 01:21:31 And so then that they are able to use that against users, like say, like, because I think everybody's probably watched some type of pornography, maybe, I don't know. Everybody that I know has watched it. But I would guess anyway, like if you had a tickle and them be like, tell me if you watched it, they would do it, I don't know. Everybody that I know has watched it. But I would guess anyway, like if you had a tickle and I'm gonna be like, tell me if you watched it, they would do it, they would admit it.

Starting point is 01:21:50 But that's what I've always thought, I'm like, man, I bet some people it's like they use that. That's something like, because you always wonder what's that tool that like, once people get like, some power or something, what's the tool that they use to keep them down? And it would either be like, well, we're going to assassinate you or we have this video of you masturbating them.

Starting point is 01:22:09 That would be like, oh, it's too much shame for me to handle, you know? So even if it doesn't actually happen, the fear of that, right? Yeah. That'd be a risky card to say, you know what, I'm not going to call your bluff. That'd be crazy, you know? Well, there is where some of the opposition to user age verifications coming from, probably, from users who are afraid that they are going to have to identify themselves

Starting point is 01:22:33 when they're going to those sites. But I would assure people, like, that is actually not a real fear in this situation because we have ways now with technology and there's third party companies. So I would never want anybody to actually have to give their ID to Pornhub because I would never trust them in a million years with that content.

Starting point is 01:22:54 Cause they exploit data, like they're being sued right now in a class action for data exploitation. You know, they gather so much information already. And then they sell it to people? They sell it to advertisers. So like when you go to Pornhub, you think that it's all private, right? But they're gathering like the IP address,

Starting point is 01:23:10 they can find out your zip code, from your zip code, they can probably find your income level, they're looking at your sexual preferences, they're determining if you're a male or a female, you know, what language you speak, what browser you use. I mean, they're gathering so much information about everybody.

Starting point is 01:23:28 And so there's that. But there's third party companies that can verify age safely, effectively with respecting privacy. In fact, they don't even have to actually take your image. So it's biometric scanning. So there's a company called YOT where they actually will in one second, they can determine your age over 99% accuracy

Starting point is 01:23:51 with a facial scan, using AI that's trained on thousands or millions of images. And so, and they just look at pixels and numbers. They don't actually even store the actual image of your face. And then they erase that. So that's how they can verify. So anybody who wants to oppose age verification

Starting point is 01:24:11 for the reason of privacy concerns, which is what PornHub is shutting itself down in states across the United States right now, they're shutting themselves down in opposition to age verification. Right. OK, so they're saying themselves down in opposition to age verification. Right. Okay. So they're saying instead of having people verify their age to watch, we would rather shut ourselves down? Yes, because it costs them money. And we have their senior-

Starting point is 01:24:34 Oh, because they have to hire a third party company to verify. Exactly. They're not allowed to age verify. Well, I mean, it's not that they're not allowed to. They won't. I don't think that they can. And I don't think anybody would ever want to like hand their ID over to Pornhub. So there's this third party sites that have that technology that can at scale, you know, verify.

Starting point is 01:24:54 So they're used by Meta, TikTok, you know, other companies who do this. But they're saying, oh, it's too much. It's not cost effective anymore. They're saying like Pornhub is out there and the media saying media saying we're protesting, we're shutting ourselves down because we care about user privacy because we don't want people handing over their personal That's a lie. If they care about user privacy then they would care about protecting people who were un- a non-consenting right? Yeah. That's the most privacy, it's the most But not only that it's like the same company also runs pay sites that are collecting

Starting point is 01:25:26 credit card information, right? With your name, when you put in your billing address, your credit card details. So it's all a facade. It's all just a facade. And so that's why I think it's important for people to know the truth about what is the opposition to age verification, what's really going on

Starting point is 01:25:43 behind the scenes here, and it's really about money. And we even have their senior community manager who publicly admitted in a Reddit thread, she was having a conversation, and she says, age verification would basically devastate their traffic. And it costs us money to verify, and that's why it would be a disaster for them, is because it costs them money.

Starting point is 01:26:03 And so that's really what this is about, it's about money. Yeah, when people say that, like, how do you respond to that argument that's why it would be a disaster for them is because it costs them money. And so that's really what this is about. It's about money. Yeah, when people say that, like how do you respond to that argument that people say like, oh, we are this, that you're limiting freedom of speech, right? Yeah, well, I mean, I would just, well, from the- Or responsibility of the person, right?

Starting point is 01:26:17 So both of those things, maybe. Well, there's two sides. So there's, you know, so we're talking about those who are in the videos, and then we're talking about who's viewing the videos. And I would just, you know, over and over, and this has been judges have said this too. It's like, you know, child sexual abuse is not an expression. It's not an idea. Like rape's not an idea. Like these are actual crimes as contraband being distributed. And so anybody that's saying that, fuck them really, basically, to be honest,

Starting point is 01:26:42 because it's just a mess. It's like, what are you saying here? You're saying that, fuck them really. Basically. To be honest, cause it's just a mess. It's like, what are you saying here? You're saying that, because if you know that these sites are doing that now, and then you can't really argue freedom of speech for them because they're not- It's not speech. Right, it's not speech. Right. In fact, it's the fact that somebody can't speak up

Starting point is 01:26:57 for themselves. Right. And even when people do, they have to be, videos have to be flagged so many times, or they don't have proper people in place to help those people who are trying to speak up for themselves. Right. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:27:09 So that, so there's that on that side, but then on the other side, you know, they're trying to argue this is limiting free speech, right, for us to implement age verification. And again, it's like, no, you know, this is not limiting anybody's ability to access this content or anybody's ability to access this content or anybody's ability to express themselves on these sites. It's simply like a one second age verification biometric scan using the safest privacy protection that you can. And it's no different than if you go into a physical store and they're selling alcohol, or right,

Starting point is 01:27:46 and then the bartender would do like, look at you and determine, do I think that they're of age or not? Let me see your ID, take a moment, make sure you're an adult, and on your way. Like that doesn't restrict somebody's ability to get what they want. They still can go in the bar and they can get the alcohol. Anybody can still go to a porn site and access porn if they want to. They just have to take these

Starting point is 01:28:09 few steps in between. And it helps keep it out of the hands of children. If a kid gets on there, also too, a lot of times the fear of something you get on something like 18 or older, you have to verify yourself as a kid. I remember you, if you even would have clicked something like that, and then it opens to another page, you get so scared. Sometimes you close it down. You know, you'd be like, Oh my God, they're gonna know, my dad's gonna, you know, there was a lot of that kind of fear. But now there's just like the RU18 click through button.

Starting point is 01:28:32 They didn't even have that in 2020. Finally, now if you're like on a mobile device, it'll be like, RU18, and then you could just click yes. But some of them now have a thing where you have to have identification. What state level government are doing the best to help support the battle against, I guess, porn or dirty porn, you know, or.

Starting point is 01:28:56 Like illegal content. Illegal content. Like the illegal. And then porn in general. Yeah. Because at some point it becomes also, it can be a moral or ethical, I don't know if ethical, it could be a moral choice for a population at a certain point. Do we want to continue to consume

Starting point is 01:29:09 this? Yeah, I mean, from my perspective, you know, I think that we could come into agreement about children. Like I think that that could be pretty easy. Yeah, I think that's easily done. I think that's true. It's just obviously some people don't care. So yeah, the states that are doing the best to protect kids from access, I would probably say, I mean, the one that's just kind of taking up the fight is Texas. Like they have, they're going, they're in the ring, right? They're at the Supreme Court trying to battle this out

Starting point is 01:29:36 with the big porn companies to implement age verification. So I think, you know, but there's multiple other studies and I would just say like this is bipartisan. So there's people from both parties that are in agreement that kids should not be accessing online porn. Right. That's true. And then on the other side of the screen, you know,

Starting point is 01:29:56 I mean, we've had several bills that have been introduced in the United States since 2020 that would require age and consent verification. But they didn't pass. There's efforts in the United States since 2020. That would require agent consent verification. But they didn't pass. There's efforts in the UK, there's efforts in Canada, because this isn't just a US issue, right? But why aren't they passing? More than a dozen states have passed new laws

Starting point is 01:30:16 that led to restrictions on pornography. Now the Supreme Court will weigh in, right? Yeah. Yeah, you mentioned that, right? This is, but what's- Yeah, but we need the other side too. Like we need our government, not just to implement age verification for users,

Starting point is 01:30:29 but also for those who were in the videos. Right. And that just, but here's the thing- But has that bill gone to them before and they didn't pass it? It just didn't, it kind of, you know- It was attached to other stuff. It was at the end of, it was like at the end of a session

Starting point is 01:30:40 and then it kind of died and then you have to reintroduce it. But here's the thing, we don't really have to enact that law in order to reign in these big porn companies because we have laws that govern studio produced porn, like the brick and mortar porn valley, you know, pornography has always been highly regulated and they've abided by those regulations. Like one of them is called USC 2257. And that's been in place since 1988. It's a law?

Starting point is 01:31:11 It's a law in the US. It's a crime to distribute or to produce porn if you don't verify the age and consent of those who are in the videos. And that has been in place for decades. And it has been complied with. The only problem is in the videos and that has been in place for decades and it has been complied with. The only problem is in the internet age, when it became user generated content,

Starting point is 01:31:30 then these sites say, well, we get a pass because guess what, we're not the ones that are producing the porn. We're just hosting it. We're just hosting it, we're just, but in the case of PornHub, they've tried to make that argument. It doesn't really hold because not only is

Starting point is 01:31:45 it about producing, it's also about distributing. It's transferring. And they had that download button on every video where from their servers, they were transferring this content to the devices of millions of people around the world. And that's illegal. I mean, isn't it true if somebody, if they find child pornography on someone that they can go to jail? Just to possess it. I mean, victims couldn't even possess their own videos of abuse. I had to be meticulously careful. But then these sites can transfer so much.

Starting point is 01:32:15 Possessing it on their servers is actually legal. And we now in these recent litigation, there's employees who are going back and forth in their messages going, I just had to download one of the worst child abuse videos that I've ever witnessed. I need to see a therapist for what I just witnessed. Uh-oh, I forgot to delete it. Am I going to get it? I could go away for a long time for this. Like these are the conversations that are turning up from PornHub employees in discovery

Starting point is 01:32:43 that they are doing this. So you're concerned, right, if they're concerned at that level. Yeah, so there's laws, like we already have laws that can be implemented to, like, you can't distribute child pornography, USD 2257, it's just they have to be modernized and applied today over the modern way

Starting point is 01:33:01 that we distribute porn on the internet. It's funny, sometimes it seems like our government is kind of the lat, like once something has come through and made all of its money and ruined so many lives, then they'll help with it. Yeah. That's why I'm always like, how complicit is our own government sometimes in a lot of these things? Because that's what it feels like.

Starting point is 01:33:18 It's like, oh, after this wave of, has ruined the lives of a million people and made half a billion dollars, then we'll shut it down. Yeah. But it's like, not if everybody's had their grift or their hand in it. Yeah, that's why I'm really hopeful about the route of strategic civil litigation

Starting point is 01:33:35 empowering survivors in that way to hold the financial institutions accountable. Right. Because I think that could go way faster. TD Direct Investing offers live support. So whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. That could go way faster. Which credit companies are still accepting payments for pornography websites? None. Oh, pornography websites. Well, all of them except American Express.

Starting point is 01:34:08 Okay, so American Express is the only... They've never been involved in online or like pornography at all. So American Express is the only credit card company that doesn't, will not allow its information to be used on pornography websites. Yeah, period. Yeah. And I'm not suggesting that that has to be the position of like the other credit card companies. No, but if they're not going to say that we're not going to verify things. Yeah. That, well, that's the easy route here is for them to just say, like we have anti-money laundering policy, we have this anti-exploitation policy,

Starting point is 01:34:47 and you have to verify agent consent if you wanna do business with Visa. That's it. And that will take place instantly and globally. It'll apply everywhere. So what can we say then to the companies? If we were to put out a clip that's like, hey, this is what, right now,

Starting point is 01:35:02 credit card companies are allowing transactions on pornography websites. That are not verifying the age and consent. That are not verifying the age and consent of. Every individual in every single video. Every individual in every single video. And they need to stop that. And they need to stop that right now.

Starting point is 01:35:21 The only one who doesn't do it is American Express. Right, because they just have this blanket policy against all of it. Because they have a blanket policy. But the other ones, so hypothetically, someone could be watching a pornography video on a website that the user is being coerced or trafficked under the influence.

Starting point is 01:35:43 A child, minor. Or a child or a minor. And the websites are not verifying that that isn't the case. There's no verification. At the point of upload. So like what they try to say is, okay, let anybody upload, right? And then later on, you know, if somebody complains,

Starting point is 01:36:03 we'll try to take it down quickly. And sometimes, you know, they didn't used to even take it down quickly, right? Or our moderators review it. But no, before, so this is like prevention because there's that immortalization of trauma, right? One hour is too long on a site that's getting 170 million views per day.

Starting point is 01:36:21 You know, and even if they can't download, you can screen record. Got it. You can. So any minute is too long. We have to stop it before it gets uploaded. And the only way to do that is to agent consent verify before it's uploaded.

Starting point is 01:36:36 And because of the technology that we have, they can do that at scale. They can do that on a massive. But they don't because. But they don't because money. Because. Cost money. Friction, because when you introduce friction to uploading,

Starting point is 01:36:49 you get less uploading, right? You get less people who will do it. And so that goes against the whole big porn, free porn business model, because they need massive amounts of content. So anything that you would do that would diminish the amount of content on these sites, they don't want to do. They have to be forced to do it. And actually, as of September of 2024, Pornhub, after being criminally charged, right, and having to have this monitor over their site,

Starting point is 01:37:15 they're finally saying that we're going to start verifying the age and consent of those who are in the videos as of September of 2024. However, they still have millions of videos that were uploaded prior to that time. That we don't know. That they don't know. Yeah. And Visa and MasterCard, are those companies still accepting payments on those sites? Well, no, not on Pornhub.

Starting point is 01:37:37 Oh, not on Pornhub. Not on Pornhub or any of the MindGeek, ILO-owned tube sites. Okay. They will not. So on those, they're not? So they are done, yeah. And that's for the consent of the people in the videos too? Yes, so they need to verify age and consent of those.

Starting point is 01:37:52 But what I'm saying is, is Pornhub currently accepting Visa and MasterCard payments at all? No. They can't. They would, they would like to, but they can't. They can't? No, they've been cut off from that. But Pornhub is still not, as of

Starting point is 01:38:07 September 2024, they said they were going to start verifying the age of consent of those individuals from then on, but not prior. We don't know yet. No, for sure they're not. They haven't deleted the content that was uploaded prior to that, where it's only the uploader that was verified, right? And it's not just like Rocky Shay Franklin. I mean, there's multiple other victims who are currently suing Pornhub because they had verified uploaders uploading their trafficking, their rape and abuse. So that's the lay of the land. That's the solution going forward. And it's a matter of public pressure. So I believe this conversation is so valuable to this fight because we're introducing not only the problem to so many people who probably never heard that this was an

Starting point is 01:38:54 issue before but also the solution so that we can pressure those in positions of power to implement the solutions to make the internet a safer place. Right so who do we pressure though? Like who do I when if I have them in here, who do I ask and what do I ask them? Okay. So if you have like the CEO visa or MasterCard or the VPs there, why do you not have this policy in place and what will it take to get you there? Because the policy of age and consent verification for every single person and every single video on a user-generated porn site.

Starting point is 01:39:30 Like that, it's not gonna stop it 100%, but it's gonna stop it a lot. It's gonna really just help make, like I said, like the internet, an actual safer place. Oh, I wish that 15 years ago I would open it up and be like, fuck, I can't even get in this thing, I can't even do it, fuck it. I'm gonna go outside, I'm gonna go take a walk

Starting point is 01:39:48 or I'm gonna go do something. I'm gonna respond to one of my buddy's text messages that was asking me to go do something, I'm gonna go do something positive, more positive for myself. I did a lot of positive things. I'm not saying, like, woe is me or anything like that. But when it came to a lot of, like,

Starting point is 01:40:03 relationships and intimacy type shit, I was more like, it was just uncomfortable. And so using pornography was easier. But then that started to kind of fray the part of me, I think, that even cared about building a relationship because I didn't nurture that part of me at all. Sometimes it didn't even grow. How would it grow if I'm not sitting there,

Starting point is 01:40:27 you know, nurturing it or paying attention to it? Yeah. You know, the only part of just that dopamine fricking, you know, my dopamine thing was just leaking or whatever, you know, cause I'm just sitting there, just watching all this slurp lord stuff on there. It's just trash. But anyway, whatever, do your God.

Starting point is 01:40:43 Well, one of the things that's also happening is not just like intimacy and relational issues because that happens, right? Oh yeah, dude. But it's also young men are having kind of an epidemic of what they call porn induced erectile dysfunction. Oh yeah. P.I.E.D.

Starting point is 01:41:02 Yeah, P.I.E.D. So there was a study in Canada and it was the Journal of Sexual Medicine, and they had found a third of young men between 16 and 21 had issues with porn-induced erectile dysfunction. Oh yeah, buddy. And they're young. Yeah, well, it's heartbreaking. And then here's that creates a ton of shame, and a lot of that's just nervous energy. And then here's the thing. If you get used to watching porn,

Starting point is 01:41:27 then you finally are in an instance with a woman or there is some sexual activity or whatever. It's so foreign to whatever. The part of your brain that watches a screen and the part of your brain that engages with someone are two, I don't know this for a fact, but to me it feels like two totally different parts. One of them is very active and feels very visceral and real, and one of them feels very passive and

Starting point is 01:42:02 transactional almost, in a way. Like I'm going to give this my attention, I'm going to get some reward out of it. But that's all this is. Whereas over here, this is a field of communication and connection. Right. So, so yeah, I wanted to watch this right here. Watching pornography, this is from neuroscience news. Watching pornography rewires the brain to a more juvenile state.

Starting point is 01:42:21 That's interesting. Pornography has existed throughout recorded history. I'd love to get someone to come in and talk about just the whole history of it. At the bottom here, we have the impact. Okay. In the long term, pornography seems to create sexual dysfunctions, especially the inability to achieve erection or orgasm with a real life partner. Marital quality and commitment to one's romantic partner also appear to be compromised. To try to explain these effects,

Starting point is 01:42:48 some scientists have drawn parallels between porn consumption and substance abuse. Through evolutionary design, the brain is wired to respond to sexual stimulation with surges of dopamine. So if you get sexually stimulated, your brain gives dopamine. And that makes sense because we're creatures that are supposed to reproduce, right? And have attraction. So this neurotransmitter, most often associated with reward anticipation,

Starting point is 01:43:15 also acts to program memories and information into the brain. This adaption means that when the body requires something like food or sex, the brain remembers where to return to experience the same pleasure. Instead of turning to a romantic partner for sexual gratification or fulfillment, habituated porn users instinctively reach for their phones and laptops when desire comes calling. Furthermore, unnaturally strong explosions of reward and pleasure evoke unnaturally strong degrees

Starting point is 01:43:40 of habituation in the brain. Dang. That's wild. I could definitely see that. Yeah, and then it's like, and then you feel ashamed, you know? Like what parent wants to go and talk to their son and wish him good night if he's been master?

Starting point is 01:43:55 I'm sure that's a weird thing. You know what I'm saying? Like, I don't know what that's like, but I'm sure that there's some shame there. It's like. Well, that's where I think that one of the important things that we can do is create like actually shame free zones where kids like the kitchen or whatever. I don't know. I mean like your household right like oh

Starting point is 01:44:14 You know like where you can feel like you're in a relationship That is safe to talk about the things that you would feel ashamed talking about Yeah, you know because then you don't just stuff it down. Well, that's what recovery meetings, that's one thing that's why I think 12-step meetings are great, because it's like, and if people are wondering, well, how do I get into those meetings?

Starting point is 01:44:32 There's slaa.org, I think it's called, if you want to look at that up, Nick, and see. But yeah, but you can also look up SLAA online, and that's just, you can find meetings. And then once you get into a meeting, you can talk to people,, you can find meetings. And then once you get into a meeting, you can talk to people. Now you're not a weirdo. Now you get in a program,

Starting point is 01:44:48 you kind of get some things organized. You create a basically a set of principles for yourself. And then you have a new kind of design for living. I wonder too though, like in all of this, in the recovery and all of the ways that you can help yourself and people who are struggling with this, does hearing this truth about the victims who are on the other side of the screen, I've had numerous people and men and women

Starting point is 01:45:15 who have struggled with compulsive porn addiction that they didn't want, but they couldn't like kick it. They just really struggled with it. And when they heard about the victims who could be behind that screen on these sites, which is the primary way that porn is distributed today, they felt like it finally gave them the like fortitude or the motivation to just be like,

Starting point is 01:45:42 I don't want to participate in somebody else's trauma. Like I don't want to participate in their suffering. I don't want to participate in somebody else's trauma. Like I don't want to participate in their suffering. I don't want to give money. I don't want to give clicks and views to a big porn corporation who's making a living off of the devastation of real victims' lives. And that is actually what gave them the, I guess like the ammunition to just finally be like,

Starting point is 01:46:07 no, I'm not gonna do that. Yeah, well I certainly think you're right though. It's like I have some friends that work in porn and that sort of thing and it's not like, I don't think what they're doing is bad. I don't think that, for me, porn isn't good, right? It's not a good, it hasn't been a tool that I used properly or whatever and I don't think it's good for me, right?

Starting point is 01:46:27 It may be good for some people, it might be good for them, but I'm not damning the people that work in it or anything like that. No, and neither am I. I mean, to each his own. For sure. But the kids should be able to access it, I don't think it's good. No. Kids is where you draw the line. I think it's really alarming. Because they can't choose. Like they need to be able to get to adulthood before they decide where they can make that decision.

Starting point is 01:46:53 And also it's that prefrontal cortex of the brain where it's like that decision-making center of the brain is not even developed. So they can't like reason, like should, is this going to be good for me? Or do I want to do this? Or what are the consequences of me? And they just don't have that yet.

Starting point is 01:47:09 And so they definitely need to be protected. But once you're an adult, you can make decisions. You should have the freedom to make whatever decisions you want. And I take the position of, if it's consenting adult, that's their business, right? And so, but- Yep, I agree, but we also have this,

Starting point is 01:47:27 imagine if you opened your door and there was just a bunch of porn there, that's really what it's like. It's like, I mean, the internet's just our front porch now. It's like, so you open your door and everything is there. Everything is there. And so if you as a parent or as a country kind of can't decide maybe what should

Starting point is 01:47:42 and shouldn't be there, sort of, and at a certain point you see enough proof. Well, 90% of this many, this much percentage of people maybe get addicted to this. It ruins this many marriages, hypothetical. Like at a certain point you might think this isn't for our society. This just doesn't help society that much overall. I'm not saying that. I don't know if that's true. But at least we can all, I mean, everybody can agree that like, step one, let's just keep kids away from accessing it.

Starting point is 01:48:12 And then, you know, because they will get that compulsive point of use when they are young. Oh yeah, no doubt about that. I think we get it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's, yeah, I think there's no doubt about it. It would be hard to hear, listen to anyone's argument against that. Well, it's, I mean, they're not arguing that kids shouldn't watch porn, but they're arguing against the ways that we can prevent them from doing it.

Starting point is 01:48:34 Which is kind of the same thing, isn't it? I mean, it's just a different, yeah, I guess it's a different way to say it, but yeah. And who are the people that are arguing against it? The point, the people who profit from it, right? Which is the big porn industry. That's crazy. If you had a politician sitting in front of you,

Starting point is 01:48:53 I think probably you could just ask them, look, we need to introduce preventative laws to help keep victims from being abused on these sites across the internet. And that is,, age and consent verification for every individual. And I don't think there would be resistance to that. Like I don't even think that the porn industry itself

Starting point is 01:49:12 has a real legitimate way to resist that, or they would because they have been complying with USC 2257 for so long. Like since 1988, that standard has been like brick and mortar, studio porn. But they've been doing it, so the internet just hasn't. Yeah, so it's just evolving with the internet.

Starting point is 01:49:30 And so we just need. And the government's always behind the times. Yeah, so they just need to get up with the times. It's the gap in between when the government is behind the times and when you. When people get hurt. Right, oh yeah. Just like this recurring, it's this recurring market

Starting point is 01:49:44 that continues to happen, just the this recurring market that continues to happen. Just the gravity is different. The source of the gravity is different. We certainly appreciate your work and appreciate you coming through here to share about this journey and what it's like to take on something like Pornhub. Well, thank you for shining a light on this.

Starting point is 01:50:06 Thank you for caring about it. Thank you for talking about it. Thank you for being vulnerable about your own journey. Oh yeah, I think, I mean, what I am is just a fucking mule for my own bullshit at this point, or mule for my own problems. I mean, I think it's so valuable, because I think that it helps like normalize

Starting point is 01:50:24 that conversation so that people can actually Feel like they can talk about it and get help if they want to get help I think well, I've been in a relationship one time I was just like I've watched pornography instead of hook up with my girlfriend or have some sort of intimacy with my girlfriend And I yeah, man, I feel horrible about that years later, you know, I just didn't have I Didn't know how to do it there, you know, I just was't have, I didn't know how to do it. You know, I just was kind of, I don't know.

Starting point is 01:50:49 I think I was, I didn't, I was, I didn't want to talk to her about stuff. And so I just, it was easier to do that. Yeah. Than like engage with her and, you know, but it just, you know, just all comes at a cost. At the time, I didn't think that it was, you know, I don't know what I thought.

Starting point is 01:51:04 I don't think I was thinking. I think just, I didn't think that it was, I don't know what I thought. I don't think I was thinking. I think just, I was like, oh, this is the easy way. And I wasn't kind of brave enough to take the tougher, the tougher route of like, let's lay here and talk and see what's going on and then maybe build up some intimacy. But even to just recognize that is like so awesome.

Starting point is 01:51:21 I was outsourcing a lot of my intimacy, just to this screen that didn't care about me really. Yeah. And then to potentially the people on the other side of the screen, you're saying they don't even know, you know, it's like, it's really pretty twisted, you know, both sides. If you say it like there's somebody who's masturbating to a video of something that they, the person didn't want to be in it, right? They're being exploited.

Starting point is 01:51:40 This person is doing it just because out of addiction or shame, you know, or addiction, they're stuck in this cycle that this is how they do to make themselves feel okay. Then you basically have this exploitation cycle. Yeah, neither one wants to be doing anything that they're doing. And it's just this magnet. Lack of freedom here and lack of freedom here because they're doing what they don't want to do and they're being forced to do, you know, they're being exploited here. Their freedom is being taken away. And it's like, we need freedom, freedom on both sides, right? Yeah, it's an array.

Starting point is 01:52:08 I mean, being alive is a, it's an it's a journey. Um, but yeah, thanks for coming in and sharing some of that information with us. Thank you. Yeah. And also just to not also if you like pornography and you can use it in a way that's okay for you, then that's your world too. I don't want everything to be a Debbie Downer that everything is horrible and this and that.

Starting point is 01:52:28 We're not looking at that. If you can casually jerk off or whatever, touch your body or whatever, then that's good for you. But I think this is when it maybe gets out of control. And then at certain ages, people look at pornography differently too, I think. I think when you're 17 or something, you're like just, you know, you're just fricking rabbit and around the town, you know, you can, you know,

Starting point is 01:52:52 you're not even thinking about a bigger picture of things. Literally not thinking because they don't have that reasoning center developed till you're like mid 20s. Oh, you're just fricking serving jerk chicken all around town anyway. But yeah, what can people do to help support? Yeah, well, so easy thing they could do is sign the petition, right? Which is trafficking competition.com. They can read the book, take down a hundred percent of all proceeds from

Starting point is 01:53:20 author proceeds from that are donated to the justice defense fund to support victims and their pursuit of justice and healing. And the book, it will, it's written in first person, present tense, where you go on a journey of discovery with me, where you go from that night I described in early 2020 all the way through this fight, you meet the victims, you meet the whistleblowers, you go through this day to day with me, and so at the end of it, you really would feel like you are immersed in it.

Starting point is 01:53:49 You understand it really deeply at like a heart level. You know, that was my goal for writing that book was that it wouldn't just be like information that people get, but they would go on this journey and they would come out of it feeling inspired and activated to take action. And on that note, like they and activated to take action. And on that note, like they could join Team Takedown. We've created Team Takedown. And so you can go to takedownbook.com and you can join there and all of that.

Starting point is 01:54:14 So yeah, we're gonna just keep at it until justice fully prevails. Yeah. Yeah, and it's like, yeah, once you start to put the light on something, it grows, you know? And that's such a nice gift that you gave us here. The truth is like a lion, let it loose. It will defend itself. St. Augustine. That's really cool. Take down inside the fight to shut down Pornhub. Thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it.

Starting point is 01:54:39 Thank you so much for having me. It was really an honor.

This Past Weekend - E559 Laila Mickelwait

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