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class="SplScreenContentHearTleBlock-sCMXE jActCi"><div data-ttid="ContentHearRubric"><div class="RubricWrapper-dKmCNX dZhWBL bric SplScreenContentHearRubric-cLHEJQ ildzkT"><a class="RubricLk-gRWSOU fgWnkQ briclk" href="/magaze/a-reporter-at-large"><span class="RubricName-fVtemz cLxcNi">A Reporter at Large</span></a></div></div><h1 data-ttid="ContentHearHed" class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ SplScreenContentHearHed-lcUSuI iUEiRd NbxED dfelga">The Fight to Hold Pornhub Acuntable</h1><div class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ SplScreenContentHearDek-emptdL iUEiRd wOnsu dJrDEb">For years, nonnsensual vios flourished on the Inter. How have adult s been reed ?</div><div data-ttid="BylWrapper" class="BylWrapper-KIudk irTIfE byl SplScreenContentHearByle-kvEhqE ejWxsm"><p class="ByleWrapper-jWHrLH ivtvgj byle bylbyle" data-ttid="ByleWrapper" emProp="thor" emType="><span emProp="name" class="ByleNamWrapper-jbHncj fuDQVo"><span data-ttid="ByleName" class="ByleName-kwmrLn cYaBaU bylename"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BylePreamble-iJolpQ iUEiRd jslZfG gnILss bylepreamble">By </span><a class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BaseLk-eNWuiM ByleLk-gEnFiw iUEiRd ggMZaT cXqSTL eErqIx bylename-lk button" href="/ntributors/sheelah-kolhatkar">Sheelah Kolhatkar</a></span></span></p></div><time data-ttid="ContentHearPublishDate" dateTime="2022-06-13T06:00:00-04:00" class="SplScreenContentHearPublishDate-bMGEVk gvRvVr">June 13, 2022</time><div class="SocialInsWrapper-hKMEXV ffgPVr social-ins social-ins--standard SplScreenContentHearSocialShare-gSVclr kUKgnn"><ul data-ttid="socialInslist" 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class="SocialInNetworkInComponent-cZaKGz dlOAhZ in in-bookmark" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" xmlns="><tle>Save Story</tle><path class="in-bookmark-fill" d="M20 23.9508L12.5 19.7312L5 23.9508V2.95081H14V3.93211H6V22.1845L12.5 18.5536L19 22.1845V8.83866H20V23.9508Z" fill="black"></path><path class="in-bookmark-stroke" d="M23 3H20V0H19V3H16V4H19V7H20V4H23V3Z" fill="black"></path></svg></div></a></li></ul></div></div></div><div class="GridItem-buujkM eHLzLy grid--em"><div class="SplScreenContentHearLeadWrapper-jYfGAC kBeEbL"><div data-ttid="ContentHearLeadAsset" class="SplScreenContentHearLeBlock-nUOA cwQiEB"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW jvZaPI rponsive-asset SplScreenContentHearLe-bGywFh gyNssY"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa SplScreenContentHearLe-bGywFh gyNssY rponsive-image"><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w, 960w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w, 960w, 1280w, 1600w, 1920w, 2240w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="Glchy llage of body parts" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-imageimage" src="></picture></span></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 SplScreenContentHearGrid-kFpOdh fLkIyA"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE iTuhkZ ptn SplScreenContentHearCaptn-iOfEOv ckLUKG"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnText-bHjzlu iUEiRd hWyo iXWezO ptntext">After graphic reports om women and girls who’d had vios of themselv posted onle whout their nsent, a mpaign targeted the owner of Pornhub and other s.</span><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnCred-ejegDm iUEiRd iicloT jbIJNS ptncred">Illtratn by Najeebah Al-Ghadban</span></div></div></div></hear></div><div data-attribute-verso-pattern="article-body" class="ArticlePageContentBackGround-cNiFNN kbAoLA article-bodyntent"><div class="ActnBarWrapperContent-lasBkU cAHp"><div 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bookmark mobile"><span class="ActnBarSendaryButtonPrimaryIn-isbvyN cAwccV bookmark-button-in"><svg class="in in-bookmark" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" xmlns="><tle>Save this story</tle><path class="in-bookmark-fill" d="M20 23.9508L12.5 19.7312L5 23.9508V2.95081H14V3.93211H6V22.1845L12.5 18.5536L19 22.1845V8.83866H20V23.9508Z"></path><path class="in-bookmark-fill" d="M23 3H20V0H19V3H16V4H19V7H20V4H23V3Z"></path></svg></span><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ ActnBarButtonText-bYXYuh iUEiRd bkefvo gkccfO">Save this story</span></button></div></div></div><div class="LightboxWrapper-dxsWBV hhylRt"><div class="ArticlePageChunksContent-etcMtP imbgVA"><div data-ttid="ArticlePageChunks" class="ArticlePageChunks-fLyCVG lmuXQm"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa bDyAMU body bodyntaer articlebody" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="bodyner-ntaer"><figure data-ttid="IameEmbed" class="IameEmbedWrapper-sc-dRedg cjyRVU iame-embed"><div data-ttid="IameEmbedContaer" class="IameEmbedContaer-hptgUZ fXVBaX"><div class="IameEmbedAspectRatWrapper-hFVJps BKpgQ"><iame class="IameEmbedContent-cMdiev csnuAY IameEmbedContent lazyload" height="90" width="100%" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-orig allow-popups" tle="Embedd Frame" data-src=" allowfullscreen="" allow="toplay ; encrypted-media ; clipboard-wre; toplay; fullscreen; picture--picture"></iame></div></div></figure><p class="has-dropp has-dropplead-standard-headg paywall">One night 2017, a fifteen-year-old girl named Rachel received a WhatsApp msage om a number she didn’t regnize. Rachel lived wh her mother, stepfather, and siblgs a midsize town the Uned Kgdom. She had jt returned home om a party and was her bedroom. “I had a really unstable home life, and I didn’t have good support around me,” Rachel told me recently, while stg on her bed a fluffy whe bathrobe. “I was a plete ms, I didn’t tst anyone, I was plete self-stct mo.”</p><p class="paywall">The man who sent the text forward a nu photograph of her, the source of which she uldn’t figure out. Then he sent a lk to her mother’s Facebook acunt and the nam of other fay members and school iends, threateng to forward the picture to them if she didn’t follow his stctns. Immediately, she relled an episo om a few years earlier, when classmat passed around a photo of her her unrwear, which precipated months of bullyg and a bout of prsn. Panicked, she plied wh his requts. He first stcted her to brighten the lightg her room, and to take photos of herself her unrwear. He then had her take more photos, this time naked, and take vios of herself strippg and masturbatg. The vios beme progrsively more explic, Rachel told me, until the man asked her to do somethg so revoltg that she refed. She cut off the rrponnce and sat on her bed “ a state of shock,” she said. Later, her mother me to say good night. Rachel pretend that everythg was fe.</p><div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--article-mid-ntent" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-unslot nsumer-marketg-unslot--article-mid-ntent nsumer-marketg-unslot---ntent"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></div><p class="paywall">The next day, Rachel (a psdonym) checked her social-media acunts every hour, wag for the pictur and vios to surface. Months went by and nothg happened. Then one day she was a taxi when a boy who lived near her sent a msage askg if she was all right. He clud a lk to a Tumblr page that ntaed dozens of folrs of pictur and vios of several girls, all siar pos, many of them cryg. One of the girls was Rachel. She asked the boy to report the acunt to Tumblr. Rachel told me that she thought about gog to another cy and killg herself. “I actually end up gettg on a tra, but my iends stopped me,” she said.</p><p class="paywall">The pictur and vios soon spread to Pornhub, one of the largt pornography s on the Inter. At one pot, Pornhub hosted some fourteen ln vios, cludg stud-produced adult films and er-generated ntent, and is one of the most vised Web s the world. Many of the vios of Rachel clud her real name, and ments ntaed lks to her social-media acunts and to those of her fay members. A snippet om one of the vios was posted to Snapchat and Instagram. Someone sent a vio to her father, and a stalker showed up at her hoe, textg her photos om outsi while she was babystg her younger brother. Rachel filed a plat wh the Child Exploatn and Onle Protectn Command, a divisn of the U.K.’s Natnal Crime Agency, but the anizatn was of ltle help, she said.</p><p class="paywall">Rachel stopped sleepg, and spent her days and nights searchg for the vios and fillg out dozens of removal-requt forms. “Hi, I’m unrage and had many vios and photos posted of me on here,” she wrote to Pornhub December, 2018. “They keep gettg rpload onto this se and I am only 15 them and I don’t have the lks. I don’t know what to do bee every time I get them removed you keep allowg them to be upload s g my life.” In rponse, Pornhub asked for a lk to each vio, the ername of the acunt ed to upload , the tle of the file, or screenshots of the page. Rachel sent the rmatn when she had , but the vios were often upload ty clips that she found impossible to track. Each time one was taken down, more appeared. Fally, she gave up. “I was spendg all my time reportg vios,” she said. “It was takg a lot out of me.”</p><p class="paywall">Rachel stopped leavg the hoe and eventually went on public assistance. In Febary, 2020, she saw an Instagram post about the work of an Amerin anti-sex-traffickg activist named Laila Mickelwa. She msaged Mickelwa, who referred her to servic that uld help wh the takedown requts, and nnected her wh lawyers om Brown Rudnick, a firm that was assemblg a lawsu agast MdGeek, the pany that owns Pornhub, on behalf of people who’d allegedly had vios of themselv posted to the se whout their nsent. After lawyers sent a cease-and-sist letter to MdGeek, the pany quickly removed vios of Rachel; then blocked them om beg upload aga. “Laila was so helpful,” Rachel told me. “She did more for me than any police or anyone the U.K. ever did.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-1 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">At the time, Mickelwa was workg for an anizatn lled Exod Cry, a fah-based group that seeks to “abolish mercial sexual exploatn,” along wh the unrlyg ndns that the group se as enablg . Mickelwa, who is thirty-ne, had worked at Exod Cry sce 2012, and her foc was on tryg to prevent adults and children om beg victims of erced prostutn and other forms of sexual abe. “I always felt a specific passn for preventn,” she told me. “It’s wonrful when you n take someone out of exploatn, but would be better if they were never there the first place.”</p><p class="paywall">Mickelwa had spent several years prentg “Nefar: Merchant of Souls,” an anti-traffickg documentary ma by Exod Cry, to ernments and public dienc around the world, and advotg for harsher penalti for traffickg nvictns. Increasgly, though, her work centered on women and children, many of them victims of traffickg, whose explic vios had end up on pornographic Web s such as Pornhub. MdGeek’s polici stated that vios on s se were vetted, to make sure that they didn’t feature mors, and were upload wh the nsent of the people who appeared them. But the pany had recently been the news after beg acced of failg to aquately screen s ntent. A thirty-year-old man had been arrted Florida for lewd and lasciv battery of a fifteen-year-old girl who had been missg for nearly a year; her fay had found approximately fifty-eight vios of her on Pornhub and other Web s. (The pany says that removed the material the day was notified.) Shortly after that, the <em>Sunday Tim</em> of London published an article about the rporatns that advertise on Pornhub, cludg Hez and Unilever, and noted that s reporters had found “dozens of exampl of illegal material on the webse wh mut.” (The pany replied that child-sexual-abe material ma up a ty proportn of ntent, and that the aim was to eradite .)</p><figure class="AssetEmbedWrapper-eVDQiB byBkf asset-embed"><div class="AssetEmbedAssetContaer-eJxoAx dBHGoQ asset-embedasset-ntaer"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kKwZhx rponsive-asset AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embedrponsive-asset"><div data-attr-viewport-monor="" class="RponsiveCartoonWrapper-iTMMjI eXTYsS rponsive-rtoon AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embedrponsive-asset viewport-monor-anchor"><a class="external-lk rponsive-rtoonimage-lk" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa 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class="ButtonInWrapper-gFdzAL bPDyTT buttonin-ntaer"><svg class="in in-pylk" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" xmlns="><tle>Copy lk to rtoon</tle><g clip-path="url(#clip0_3732_178637)"><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M16.3488 10.5017C16.2107 10.7357 16.2926 11.035 16.5318 11.17C16.7709 11.3052 17.0767 11.225 17.2148 10.991L18.4648 8.87225C19.5694 7.00002 18.9139 4.60601 17.0007 3.52508C15.0875 2.44415 12.6412 3.08562 11.5366 4.95785L9.53657 8.34782C8.432 10.22 9.08751 12.6141 11.0007 13.6949C11.1888 13.8012 11.382 13.8908 11.5785 13.9642C11.7819 14.0403 12.0058 13.9485 12.1147 13.764C12.2794 13.4849 12.1103 13.1276 11.8083 12.9992C11.7041 12.9549 11.6014 12.9044 11.5007 12.8475C10.0658 12.0368 9.57417 10.2413 10.4026 8.83712L12.4026 5.44715C13.2311 4.04298 15.0658 3.56187 16.5007 4.37257C17.9356 5.18327 18.4272 6.97878 17.5988 8.38295L16.3488 10.5017ZM7.6526 13.4983C7.79067 13.2643 7.70873 12.965 7.46959 12.8299C7.23044 12.6948 6.92464 12.775 6.78657 13.009L5.53657 15.1278C4.432 17 5.0875 19.394 7.00068 20.475C8.91385 21.5558 11.3602 20.9144 12.4648 19.0422L14.4648 15.6521C15.5694 13.78 14.9139 11.3859 13.0007 10.305C12.8127 10.1988 12.6195 10.1091 12.4229 10.0357C12.2195 9.95975 11.9956 10.0515 11.8867 10.236C11.7221 10.5151 11.8911 10.8724 12.1932 11.0008C12.2973 11.0451 12.4 11.0956 12.5007 11.1525C13.9356 11.9632 14.4272 13.7587 13.5988 15.1628L11.5988 18.5529C10.7704 19.957 8.93555 20.4382 7.50068 19.6274C6.0658 18.8167 5.57417 17.0212 6.4026 15.6171L7.6526 13.4983Z" fill="black"></path></g><fs><clipPath id="clip0_3732_178637"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath><clipPath id="clip1_3732_178637"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath></fs></svg></div></button><div class="AlertWrapper-gvFATk MdjE RponsiveCartoonLkAlertPopup-BPAXn kdMXRM shoppg-alert" role="dialog"><div aria-hidn="te" role="prentatn" class="AlertArrow-daOgye AlLda alert-arrow"></div><div class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd 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10.0365 18.4477 10.0365 19ZM11.0365 19C11.0365 20.1046 10.1411 21 9.03652 21C7.93195 21 7.03652 20.1046 7.03652 19C7.03652 17.8954 7.93195 17 9.03652 17C10.1411 17 11.0365 17.8954 11.0365 19ZM18.0365 19C18.0365 19.5523 17.5888 20 17.0365 20C16.4842 20 16.0365 19.5523 16.0365 19C16.0365 18.4477 16.4842 18 17.0365 18C17.5888 18 18.0365 18.4477 18.0365 19ZM19.0365 19C19.0365 20.1046 18.1411 21 17.0365 21C15.932 21 15.0365 20.1046 15.0365 19C15.0365 17.8954 15.932 17 17.0365 17C18.1411 17 19.0365 17.8954 19.0365 19Z" fill="black"></path></g><fs><clipPath id="clip0_3732_178638"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath><clipPath id="clip1_3732_178638"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath></fs></svg></div></button></div></div></div></span></div></figure><p class="paywall">Late one night early 2020, Mickelwa’s baby started cryg. Sce survivg a difficult birth three months earlier, he had been licky, often wailg nsolably for long stretch. “It was fely one of the harst perds of my life,” she told me recently. “I thought I was gog to die.” While tryg to rock the baby back to sleep, she cid to check MdGeek’s claims about vettg.</p></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="adslot adslot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="febc"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa bDyAMU body bodyntaer articlebody" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="bodyner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">Mickelwa pulled out her laptop, created a dummy e-mail acunt, and upload a vio of a darkened rner of her bedroom to Pornhub. It appeared to go live almost stantly. No one had verified who she was, her age, or what her vio ntaed. (MdGeek claims that, until review, the vio would have been available only to Mickelwa.) “I began to be hnted by the qutn of: Why are we assumg the are legal and nsensual vios?” Mickelwa said. The next day, she tweeted, “I uld’ve been a trafficked 12 yr old and no one would know. Pornhub enabl exploatn.”</p><div class="Contaer-bkChBi byNLHx"></div><p class="paywall">“It wasn’t new rmatn—lns of people already knew that,” Mickelwa said. “But for some reason people hadn’t been nnectg the dots as to what that means for what’s on the se. I felt like people need to know the most popular porn se the world was populated wh crime-scene vios.” Mickelwa wrote an opn piece, submtg to twelve publitns. The Washgton <em>Examer</em>, a nservative news outlet, agreed to publish . “At this very moment, there uld be hundreds, if not thoands, of vios of unrage sex traffickg victims on Pornhub,” she wrote. “It’s time to shut down super-predator se Pornhub and hold the executive megapimps behd acuntable.”</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropplead-standard-headg paywall">MdGeek is registered the tax haven of Luxembourg, but s ma office is Montreal. The pany employs around sixteen hundred people, and the onle platforms owns, which clu Pornhub, RedTube, YouPorn, and Brazzers, received approximately 4.5 billn viss each month 2020, acrdg to a pany spokperson—almost double Google and Facebook bed. MdGeek’s owners and vtors have taken pas to obscure their inti, but once Mickelwa began vtigatg the pany, she said, a former employee shared the nam of the top executiv: Feras Antoon, the chief executive officer; David Tassillo, the chief operatg officer; and Corey Urman, a vice-print, who ran Pornhub.</p><p class="paywall">Pornhub’s origs date back to 2007, when an entreprenr named Matt Keezer bought the doma for about three thoand dollars, after ld-llg s owner. Keezer joed wh several bs partners, cludg Stephane Manos and Ouissam Yosef, whom he had met through Foosball tournaments when they were all stunts at Conrdia Universy, Montreal. A few of the bs partners had recently started a paid porn se lled Brazzers. Foldg Brazzers and Pornhub to a new pany, the partners named Mansef, a batn of “Manos” and “Yosef.”</p><p class="paywall">Mansef me close to disaster soon after s foundg. In October, 2009, agents om the U.S. Secret Service Organized Frd Task Force obtaed warrants to seize more than six ln dollars om two acunts held by a Mansef-lked pany lled Premium Servic. The pany seemed to have no addrs asi om a rented mailbox Cummg, Geia, a town of five thoand people. But, two months, had received $9.4 ln and wired out four ln dollars. None of the money seemed to have been ed for payg salari or for other legimate expens. The ernment charged Premium Servic wh operatg an unlicensed money-transferrg bs. Mansef said that the payments were om third-party cred-rd procsors and to s U.S. venrs. In 2011, the ernment settled the se, agreeg to return $4.15 ln. The pany was saved. More signifint, the se was an ditn that the ernment had not ught up to the reali of the new bs of Inter pornography.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropplead-standard-headg paywall">In the wake of the sexual revolutn of the sixti and seventi, adult-vio studs sprouted up California’s San Fernando Valley—which me to be known as Porn Valley—and produced films that were distributed across the untry. In 1988, rpondg part to public outrage after Traci Lords appeared porn films when she was unrage, Congrs passed U.S. Co 2257, requirg producers to document that their performers were eighteen or olr.</p><p class="paywall">The lnch of YouTube, 2005, ma easy to upload vios that uld be viewed by anyone; soon afterward, entreprenrs started what me to be known as “tube s”—cludg RedTube and YouPorn—which allowed ers to upload and view pornographic vios for ee. Many were pirated pi of profsnal films, and the revenue that once flowed to the California movie studs was redirected to the operators of the tube s. The rultg pyright battl the porn dtry mirrored those tradnal entertament. In 2007, Via sued YouTube, accg of hostg pirated pi of “SpongeBob SquarePants” and “The Daily Show,” among other material, and asked for a billn dollars damag. That same year, a porn producer lled Vivid Entertament sued PornoTube, accg the se of hostg pirated pi of Vivid’s material. (Via settled, and Vivid’s se was dropped.)</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-2 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">The Inter ma possible for tube s to make money off vios created by others while bearg almost no rponsibily for what was them. Today, MdGeek reli on the same legal statute that Mark Zuckerberg c when fendg Facebook om charg that allows the proliferatn of disrmatn: Sectn 230 of the Communitns Decency Act of 1996, which stat that an “teractive puter service” nnot be treated as a publisher of rmatn provid by a third party. The provisn was nceived orr to allow the Inter to grow whout beg buried lawsus. But also means that, when tube s are nonted wh plats about vios pictg rape, sexual imag of children, revenge porn, and other ntent upload whout nsent, they n claim that they are not liable. Experts at the Natnal Center for Missg & Exploed Children, a nonprof anizatn that tracks child-sexual-abe material, told me that this has allowed the onle porn dtry to grow wh ltle acuntabily. “The liabily is low, the money is high,” Sta Shehan, the vice-print of the anizatn’s analytil-servic divisn, said. “That’s a bs mol that people are gog to get to.”</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropplead-standard-headg paywall">In 2009—months after the ernment seized Mansef’s bank acunt—a German Inter imprar named Fabian Thylmann bought the pany, changg the name to Manw. Thylmann, who was his early thirti, had prevly helped velop software that allowed adult Web s to track the succs of their ads and lks—an early versn of oki.</p><p class="paywall">Pornhub beme Manw’s flagship tube se. In the early years of onle pornography, the tube s were spised by many the porn dtry for givg away their ntent for ee, but Thylmann seemed to relish his image. “Fabian’s approach was: We’re a porn pany, we’re gog to flnt ,” a former senr manager at MdGeek told me. An onle dtry fom lled was filled wh sthg discsns about the piratg of ntent. “I jt went to , wh 1 click I found several scen of me that are there illegally,” a participant told “Nathan,” the psdonym Thylmann ed on the se. “By allowg uploads of full scen om anyone, you know om balls to bon you are vlatg pyright law and profg om stolen ntent.”</p><p class="paywall">Tradnal fancial firms are often reluctant to do bs wh pani that produce adult ntent. “They know you n make a lot of money,” a former MdGeek executive told me. “But this n backfire on you heavily if regular clients fd out your bank is alg wh a porn pany.” In April, 2011, Thylmann was able to secure a three-hundred-and-sixty-two-ln-dollar loan, arranged part by a New York hedge fund lled Colbeck Capal, at an exorbant tert rate. Thylmann quickly stck a al to n Playboy TV and acquired the pornography producer Digal Playground. He also purchased Webm s, where performers live-stream themselv to payg viewers. The German newspaper <em>Die</em> <em>Welt</em> pared him to the founrs of Facebook and Google.</p><p class="paywall">In 2012, Thylmann was arrted, Belgium, for tax evasn, and extraded to Germany. Alexanr Pschorr, the former C.E.O. of Manw Germany, told me that, after Thylmann was released, he boasted about how well he’d been treated jail. “Some guards told him, ‘Oh, you’re the owner of this and that?’ ” Pschorr said. “ ‘My girliend is an amatr performer. Do you have some tips about how she uld make some money?’ ” The former senr manager, who worked the pany’s office Montreal, told me that executiv there downplayed the arrt; was scribed as “jt tax.” Still, Manw’s German banker, Commerzbank, announced that would no longer do bs wh the pany, and soon afterward Feras Antoon took over Manw’s operatns. “It wasn’t even like a up,” the former manager relled. “Feras had always been the guy wh the most ternal visibily. He ma all the cisns.” (Thylmann later plead guilty to tax evasn.)</p><p class="paywall">Along wh David Tassillo, the pany’s chief operatg officer, and an Atrian vtor named Bernd Bergmair, Antoon bought the pany om Thylmann. Bergmair already owned a porn se lled RedTube, and the pani merged. Antoon beme the C.E.O. of the new pany. He renamed MdGeek and rtctured the ternatnal offic, firg staff Germany. A stockpile of Manw-brand water bottl and sweatshirts was thrown out.</p><figure class="AssetEmbedWrapper-eVDQiB byBkf asset-embed"><div class="AssetEmbedAssetContaer-eJxoAx dBHGoQ asset-embedasset-ntaer"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kKwZhx rponsive-asset AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embedrponsive-asset"><div data-attr-viewport-monor="" class="RponsiveCartoonWrapper-iTMMjI eXTYsS rponsive-rtoon AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embedrponsive-asset viewport-monor-anchor"><a class="external-lk rponsive-rtoonimage-lk" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa RponsiveCartoonImage-hzNqyc ikeCcH rponsive-rtoonimage rponsive-image"><noscript><img alt="Two dogs makg mic a rerdg stud" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-imageimage" src=" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w, 960w, 1280w, 1600w" siz="100vw"/></noscript></picture></a><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE gdZTpI ptn RponsiveCartoonCaptn-dokfdF hJgaLQ rponsive-rtoonptn"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnText-bHjzlu iUEiRd hWyo bsWloa ptntext">“More squeaky toy.”</span></div><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE iTuhkZ ptn RponsiveCartoonCred-bKlQqO faLAFb rponsive-rtooncred"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnCred-ejegDm iUEiRd iicloT bmQtfn ptncred">Cartoon by Jason Adam Katzenste</span></div><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTA-eiqqMB iDCQRs"><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTAWrapper-CYIqa iTbFtf"><div class="RponsiveCartoonLkButtonWrapper-hqDAJK eSEhbj"><button aria-label="Copy lk to rtoon" class="BaseButton-bLlsy ButtonWrapper-xCepQ bqVKKv YsOBB button button--primary-pair RponsiveCartoonInButton-hBCBMq lpsjql" data-event-click="{"element":"Button"}" data-ttid="Button" type="button"><span class="ButtonLabel-cjAuJN bBWXSg buttonlabel">Copy lk to rtoon</span><div class="ButtonInWrapper-gFdzAL bPDyTT buttonin-ntaer"><svg class="in in-pylk" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" xmlns="><tle>Copy lk to rtoon</tle><g clip-path="url(#clip0_3732_178637)"><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M16.3488 10.5017C16.2107 10.7357 16.2926 11.035 16.5318 11.17C16.7709 11.3052 17.0767 11.225 17.2148 10.991L18.4648 8.87225C19.5694 7.00002 18.9139 4.60601 17.0007 3.52508C15.0875 2.44415 12.6412 3.08562 11.5366 4.95785L9.53657 8.34782C8.432 10.22 9.08751 12.6141 11.0007 13.6949C11.1888 13.8012 11.382 13.8908 11.5785 13.9642C11.7819 14.0403 12.0058 13.9485 12.1147 13.764C12.2794 13.4849 12.1103 13.1276 11.8083 12.9992C11.7041 12.9549 11.6014 12.9044 11.5007 12.8475C10.0658 12.0368 9.57417 10.2413 10.4026 8.83712L12.4026 5.44715C13.2311 4.04298 15.0658 3.56187 16.5007 4.37257C17.9356 5.18327 18.4272 6.97878 17.5988 8.38295L16.3488 10.5017ZM7.6526 13.4983C7.79067 13.2643 7.70873 12.965 7.46959 12.8299C7.23044 12.6948 6.92464 12.775 6.78657 13.009L5.53657 15.1278C4.432 17 5.0875 19.394 7.00068 20.475C8.91385 21.5558 11.3602 20.9144 12.4648 19.0422L14.4648 15.6521C15.5694 13.78 14.9139 11.3859 13.0007 10.305C12.8127 10.1988 12.6195 10.1091 12.4229 10.0357C12.2195 9.95975 11.9956 10.0515 11.8867 10.236C11.7221 10.5151 11.8911 10.8724 12.1932 11.0008C12.2973 11.0451 12.4 11.0956 12.5007 11.1525C13.9356 11.9632 14.4272 13.7587 13.5988 15.1628L11.5988 18.5529C10.7704 19.957 8.93555 20.4382 7.50068 19.6274C6.0658 18.8167 5.57417 17.0212 6.4026 15.6171L7.6526 13.4983Z" fill="black"></path></g><fs><clipPath id="clip0_3732_178637"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath><clipPath id="clip1_3732_178637"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath></fs></svg></div></button><div class="AlertWrapper-gvFATk MdjE RponsiveCartoonLkAlertPopup-BPAXn kdMXRM shoppg-alert" role="dialog"><div aria-hidn="te" role="prentatn" class="AlertArrow-daOgye AlLda alert-arrow"></div><div class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ AlertMsage-jgAjgo bVCFRm ifgabc iOlxjf alert-msage"><p aria-hidn="te">Lk pied</p></div></div></div><button aria-label="Shop" class="BaseButton-bLlsy ButtonWrapper-xCepQ bqVKKv YsOBB button button--primary-pair RponsiveCartoonInButton-hBCBMq lpsjql" data-event-click="{"element":"Button"}" data-ttid="Button" type="button"><span class="ButtonLabel-cjAuJN bBWXSg buttonlabel">Shop</span><div class="ButtonInWrapper-gFdzAL bPDyTT buttonin-ntaer"><svg class="in in-rt" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" xmlns="><tle>Shop</tle><g clip-path="url(#clip0_3732_178638)"><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M4 3H2V4H4.23828L6.99617 15.2631C7.11483 15.6982 7.50998 16 7.96094 16H18.0365C18.4875 16 18.8826 15.6982 19.0013 15.2631L20.9648 7.26312C21.1383 6.62698 20.6594 6 20 6H10V7H20L18.0365 15H7.96094L5.03652 3H4.58055H4ZM10.0365 19C10.0365 19.5523 9.58881 20 9.03652 20C8.48424 20 8.03652 19.5523 8.03652 19C8.03652 18.4477 8.48424 18 9.03652 18C9.58881 18 10.0365 18.4477 10.0365 19ZM11.0365 19C11.0365 20.1046 10.1411 21 9.03652 21C7.93195 21 7.03652 20.1046 7.03652 19C7.03652 17.8954 7.93195 17 9.03652 17C10.1411 17 11.0365 17.8954 11.0365 19ZM18.0365 19C18.0365 19.5523 17.5888 20 17.0365 20C16.4842 20 16.0365 19.5523 16.0365 19C16.0365 18.4477 16.4842 18 17.0365 18C17.5888 18 18.0365 18.4477 18.0365 19ZM19.0365 19C19.0365 20.1046 18.1411 21 17.0365 21C15.932 21 15.0365 20.1046 15.0365 19C15.0365 17.8954 15.932 17 17.0365 17C18.1411 17 19.0365 17.8954 19.0365 19Z" fill="black"></path></g><fs><clipPath id="clip0_3732_178638"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath><clipPath id="clip1_3732_178638"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath></fs></svg></div></button></div></div></div></span></div></figure><p class="paywall">There was a fay element to the bs. Antoon’s brother, Mark, ran a vio-game divisn for the pany; his sister joed, for a time, as a travel ördator, and her hband oversaw the feteria. Antoon’s parents, who had immigrated to Canada om Syria, often vised the office. The former manager scribed Antoon as “a ridiculoly proud fay man,” and junr-level employe gmbled that there was no way to advance whout a personal nnectn. There were no women learship; acrdg to the former manager, Antoon and his puti ocsnally ma meang remarks about female employe when they left the room, mentg on their hair or clothg. “They were misogynistic,” the former manager said. “It was very old-school thkg, a very two-dimensnal view of women.” (The pany nied this, and said that had an clive workplace.)</p></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="adslot adslot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="2mdlqa"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa bDyAMU body bodyntaer articlebody" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="bodyner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">MdGeek’s rporate stcture is plited, wh dozens of subsidiari around the world whose nam n obscure their ownership. It matas offic Luxembourg, the U.K., and Romania; the office that handl MdGeek’s ntent is Cyps. The pany’s headquarters is an aquamare glass office buildg Montreal, where Antoon surrounds himself wh a tight group of nfidants that some employe referred to as the “bro club.” Antoon has a full face, small, bright ey, and a trim beard. He and the other executiv wear expensive sus and watch and gel their hair back. Antoon has spent lavishly on furnure and art work for the office, tryg to emulate the appearance of the tech firms of Silin Valley.</p><p class="paywall">Some executiv hid the fact that they worked the porn dtry, ocsnally g psdonyms. “They wanted to really e across as an engeerg firm,” the former manager told me. For years, Corey Urman, who ran Pornhub until September, 2021, intified himself the prs as Corey Price. Employe later said that ncealg their inti was a safety issue, bee they were harassed and threatened by anti-porn protters; the hundred-and-eighty-page document left by the racist mass shooter Buffalo clud a rant about the harms ed by pornography and a list of executiv at MdGeek and Pornhub terposed wh anti-Semic imagery. But the secrecy also served to protect employe’ reputatns. “This dtry is different,” the former executive told me. “When I met someone and they said, ‘I’m Tom,’ was absolutely clear that the guy was not lled Tom. In porn, as an executive, you jt don’t e your own name. One of the biggt assets is that you keep your personal life absolutely secret.”</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropplead-standard-headg paywall">Like other tech platforms, MdGeek has ltle centive to remove potentially profable ntent. The pany mak about half s revenue by sellg ads on s Web s. It also charg some ers fe for accs to s paid porn s, and enters prof-sharg agreements wh porn producers, takg a missn on the revenue that producers make postg their films on s s. Web traffic is central to all of this.</p><p class="paywall">A woman named Ta, a technology assistant and mother of three, told me that, 2019, an abive ex-boyiend posted explic vios of her on Pornhub whout her permissn. In addn to reportg the matter to the police, she said, she spent months fillg out takedown requts on the se, explag that the vios had been posted whout her nsent and ntaed her and her children’s real nam and home addrs. The rpons ually took several days, she said, and the pany repeatedly asked her for proof of her claims. When the vios were removed, she said, they might reappear hours later, like a replitg vis, sometim broken down to dozens of clips of a few sends each. (Her ex-boyiend was eventually arrted, and plead guilty to crimal ntempt, a mismeanor.) A spokperson for MdGeek said that, whout addnal rmatn about Ta, the pany uld not ment about what steps had taken.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-3 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">I heard siar stori om several other women, cludg a pregnant mother who was the Air Force when she disvered, 2018, that her ex-hband had secretly filmed them havg sex and posted the vios on Pornhub. She soon found out that he’d done the same thg to other women. After alertg the pany and askg to have her vios taken down, she said, she waed days for a rponse that was not tomated, and was asked repeatedly to prove that they were of her. “I n’t even tell you how many hundreds of hours I spent dog this,” she told me. “I wasn’t sleepg, I was cryg all the time. It was all I did, twenty-four hours a day.” (The spokperson said that the pany believed had disabled two vios the day the lks were submted, and another one a day after, upon nfirmg the inty of the woman the vio.)</p><p class="paywall">At the time, MdGeek had the technil abily to remove vios om s s while they were beg vtigated, a former employee told me, but didn’t always e those tools. “They will purposely lay,” the former employee said. “They’ll say, ‘We’ll get back to you two, three days once we do our review.’ ” By the time a review was plete, a vio uld have been up for several days, and ad space sold agast . “The er did not get punished,” the former employee went on. “MdGeek still ma money.”</p><p class="paywall">MdGeek’s polici forbid uploadg ntent that featur child sexual abe, that reveals personally intifiable rmatn such as nam and addrs, or that is obtaed whout nsent. Prr to 2020, the pany employed a handful of “ntent formatters” Montreal to review vios, along wh their tags and metadata, acrdg to a former employee who worked the partment. (The spokperson said that formatters ma up only a small part of the pany’s pliance efforts.) Acrdg to the former employee, many formatters, who were paid about thirty thoand dollars a year, were eply trmatized by what they saw. There were ocsnal vios pictg rape, child sexual abe, and the torture of animals. In obv s volvg mors, the vios were taken down, and the acunts of the ers who upload them were leted. But, acrdg to the former employee, the formatters did not notify law enforcement, ostensibly bee many uploars e virtual private works to disguise their inti and lotns, which uld e the police to target the wrong person. Formatters sometim suggted blockg the I.P. addrs of people who repeatedly vlated the polici, or requirg that uploars provi valid intifitn and e-mail addrs, the former employee said, but their supervisors said that this would disurage e of MdGeek’s s. “A er uld upload a hundred vios of someone gettg pated,” the former employee told me. “We’d jt close the vios, but not block their acunt. They uld jt upload them aga the next day.” (The pany ni this.) The job of screeng the vios was eventually moved to Cyps, where morators viewed hundreds of vios a day, often fast-forwardg through them wh the sound off to get through as many as possible. (The spokperson said that this was a “fundamental misunrstandg” of the procs, that formatters’ managers were rponsible for reportg spect material to law enforcement, and that blockg I.P. addrs would not have been effective, sce they are not always tied to dividual ers.) “Their objective was not necsarily to e harm,” the former employee said, of pany executiv. “Their objective was to make money.”</p><p class="paywall">Pschorr, the former C.E.O. of Manw Germany, told me that laws erng pornography are more strgent Germany than they are the U.S. Durg his time wh the pany, he said, employed twenty-four ctomer-support agents and ntent screeners to review all German ntent before went live. Pschorr was surprised by the lack of regulatn the U.S. “It was always tertg for me as a German to see that, the U.S., you’d get I.D.’d if you went to a bar, and if you’re not twenty-one you get big trouble,” he said. “But if you want to nsume porn all you have to do is click ‘Y, I’m 18,’ and you’re the realm of dirt.”</p></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="adslot adslot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="tvabj"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa bDyAMU body bodyntaer articlebody" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="bodyner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">MdGeek was alert to the ncerns of the cred-rd pani. Mike Stabile, the director of public affairs for an adult-entertament tra and advocy associatn lled the Free Speech Coaln, told me that answerg to fancial stutns was typil the porn bs. “Once everythg moved onle, shifted om ‘The ernment said you n’t do this’ to ‘The banks said you n’t do this,’ ” he said. “You were no longer argug wh a state attorney general or the F.B.I., you were argug wh a middle manager at a bank who was worried about the bank’s reputatn. And wh Visa and Masterrd you have a duopoly. If you lose eher of them or both of them, s your bs.” (Spokpeople for Visa and Masterrd said that as long as transactns are legal the pani don’t make judgments about what people are purchasg. They issue ethil guil that dictate what porn platforms n show.)</p><p class="paywall">In 2018, MdGeek refanced s loans, creasg s borrowg to nearly four hundred ln dollars, orr to ntue to expand, and ma another four hundred ln revenue. “They were after monopoly a hundred per cent,” the former senr manager said. “They wanted world domatn.” (The pany ni this.) Antoon began nstctn on a rince the Ahuntsic-Cartierville borough of Montreal, whose renrgs were remiscent of the grand tat of Europe. The hoe was signed wh eight bedrooms, a cema, a sports plex, and an fy pool surround by terraced walkways and manicured garns.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropplead-standard-headg paywall">On a recent vis to New York, Laila Mickelwa sat the lobby of a hotel near LaGuardia Airport, sippg tea. She has green ey and long blond hair and tends to drs black. She was raised Riversi, California, where her mother, a former teacher, stayed home wh Mickelwa and her two sisters. Her father, a vascular surgeon, had grown up Jordan durg the civil war. Mickelwa relled that he had a serns about him, and that he rarely watched televisn or movi for fun. He had a passn for social jtice, which he imparted to his children. Mickelwa began trag as an acrobat when she was eight, and as a teen-ager she was accepted to Cirque du Soleil. Her father wouldn’t let her go. She studied polil science at the Universy of California, Riversi, and got a graduate gree public diplomacy at the Universy of Southern California. In llege, while rearchg cludg global poverty and war crim, she me across the issue of sex traffickg, and was shocked by what she learned. “I jt felt like om an early age I had me to re about this,” she said.</p><p class="paywall">Mickelwa terned at the Uned Natns, workg on projects related to human traffickg. In 2006, she found a nonprof lled New Realy Internatnal that sought to provi health re and other servic to impoverished women and children around the world. In 2012, she joed Exod Cry, ocsnally attendg prayer meetgs at an evangelil mistry Kansas Cy, Missouri, lled the Internatnal Hoe of Prayer (<em class="small">IHOPKC</em>), which is known for mic, fastg, and a prayer room that operat twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Mickelwa’s work is partly a rponse to how easily children n accs even the most vlent pornography onle. In an terview wh Defend Young Mds, an anizatn that lobbi to keep porn away om kids, she said, “I ll this a form of sendhand sexual abe—for a child to be exposed to rape, for example, as their troductn to sex when they’re eight, ne, ten, eleven years old. But, also, there are children beg abed behd the screen. Those are the on beg ed the films. So there’s abe gog on on both sis.” Mickelwa told me that her tle at Exod Cry, Director of Aboln, was molled on figur such as William Wilberforce, who led the Brish movement to abolish the slave tra the neteenth century.</p><p class="paywall">Exod Cry was found around 2008 by Benjam Nolot, a filmmaker and an activist who grew up Southern California and joed <em class="small">IHOPKC</em> his twenti. Exod Cry has taken aim not only at nonnsensual pornography but more broadly at what lls “porn culture,” which, argu, leads to the hypersexualizatn and objectifitn of women and mak sex traffickg and other crim more likely to occur. The group’s tax filgs state that is “mted to abolishg sex traffickg and the mercial sex dtry,” which would clu legal activi such as producg pornography and performg strip clubs. In 2017, Nolot released a documentary lled “Liberated: The New Sexual Revolutn,” about the relatnship between sprg-break partyg, hookup culture, and sexual vlence; more recently, he ma “Raised on Porn: The New Sex Ed,” which explor the effects on children of unfettered accs to onle porn. When I ntacted MdGeek, a spokman who go by Ian Andrews sent me a list of news articl about Exod Cry and <em class="small">IHOPKC</em> that he remend I read. One, om the Daily Beast, scribed Exod Cry as “a shady Evangelil group wh Tmp ti” and noted that <em class="small">IHOPKC</em>’s founr, Mike Bickle, preach that homosexualy is a s. Another Daily Beast story highlighted <em class="small">IHOPKC</em>’s role helpg lay the groundwork Uganda for the untry’s notor anti-gay legislatn, which punish homosexualy wh a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. (On <em class="small">IHOPKC</em>’s Web se, the anizatn ni supportg the bill.) A story the magaze <em>Reason</em> noted that Exod Cry often teams up wh the Natnal Center on Sexual Exploatn, a nonprof that was prevly known as Moraly Media, which beme famo the eighti and neti for promotg boytts of soap operas and MTV, and for mpaigng agast the Natnal Endowment for the Arts.</p><figure class="AssetEmbedWrapper-eVDQiB byBkf asset-embed"><div class="AssetEmbedAssetContaer-eJxoAx dBHGoQ asset-embedasset-ntaer"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kKwZhx rponsive-asset AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embedrponsive-asset"><div data-attr-viewport-monor="" class="RponsiveCartoonWrapper-iTMMjI eXTYsS rponsive-rtoon AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embedrponsive-asset viewport-monor-anchor"><a class="external-lk rponsive-rtoonimage-lk" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa RponsiveCartoonImage-hzNqyc ikeCcH rponsive-rtoonimage 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6H10V7H20L18.0365 15H7.96094L5.03652 3H4.58055H4ZM10.0365 19C10.0365 19.5523 9.58881 20 9.03652 20C8.48424 20 8.03652 19.5523 8.03652 19C8.03652 18.4477 8.48424 18 9.03652 18C9.58881 18 10.0365 18.4477 10.0365 19ZM11.0365 19C11.0365 20.1046 10.1411 21 9.03652 21C7.93195 21 7.03652 20.1046 7.03652 19C7.03652 17.8954 7.93195 17 9.03652 17C10.1411 17 11.0365 17.8954 11.0365 19ZM18.0365 19C18.0365 19.5523 17.5888 20 17.0365 20C16.4842 20 16.0365 19.5523 16.0365 19C16.0365 18.4477 16.4842 18 17.0365 18C17.5888 18 18.0365 18.4477 18.0365 19ZM19.0365 19C19.0365 20.1046 18.1411 21 17.0365 21C15.932 21 15.0365 20.1046 15.0365 19C15.0365 17.8954 15.932 17 17.0365 17C18.1411 17 19.0365 17.8954 19.0365 19Z" fill="black"></path></g><fs><clipPath id="clip0_3732_178638"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath><clipPath id="clip1_3732_178638"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath></fs></svg></div></button></div></div></div></span></div></figure><p class="paywall">When I reached Nolot, he told me that he knew nothg about <em class="small">IHOPKC</em>’s alleged role Uganda until he read about the prs, and said the ia that the church promoted anti-gay laws there “was utterly abhorrent.” The God he believ , he said, would never reject people for their life style or their beliefs. “I am very aware that there are margalized groups of people, whether by sexualy or by race or by genr or whatever,” he said. “I don’t want to be a part of anythg that would brg further nmnatn.” Nolot reerated that Exod Cry and <em class="small">IHOPKC</em> were not the same thg, and said that he eply regretted tweetg, 2013, that gay marriage was “an unspeakable offense to God.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-4 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">To Nolot, traffickg and pornography are extribly lked, and the creatn of porn is ercive by fn. Arguments like his were once ma by femists such as Andrea Dwork and Cathare MacKnon, the scholar who 1979 helped velop the legal theory that sexual harassment was a civil-rights vlatn. The Dwork-MacKnon factn saw pornography as a problem wh two ma ponents, both of which promoted misogyny and vlence agast women: onscreen, there were pictns of female subordatn and male-centric pleasure; behd the scen, women were exploed the productn of . In 1980, activists led protts agast the film “Deep Throat” after s star, Lda Lovelace, said that she had been raped and erced to makg . A so-lled sex-posive wg of femism, led by Ellen Willis and others, soon argued, however, that anti-porn femists were censors who ignored the plited realy of women’s sexual sir. Lda Hirshman, a cultural historian and the thor of several books about social movements, told me that not only did Dwork and MacKnon lose the bate but that they and their alli were attacked so harshly that silenced others. This left nservative Christian groups as among the most proment forc raisg ncerns about ab the porn dtry. “But the qutn you always want to ask the Christian anti-porn activists is: Where do you stand on abortn rights?” Hirshman said. “Where do you stand on birth ntrol? Where do you stand on equal pay? Otherwise, you get to the r wh the Christian right, and the next thg you know you’re Bluebeard’s stle.”</p><p class="paywall">Kate D’Adamo, an advote for sex workers’ rights at Reame Health and Jtice, told me that, bee Pornhub occupi a near-monopoly the dtry, many sex workers pend on to survive; if disappeared sudnly, would be fancially vastatg for people who are already a prer suatn. “There are people who work anti-traffickg who do talk to sex workers, and say, ‘If this is the legislative change, how would that impact you?’ ” D’Adamo said. “But if your argument is to shut down Pornhub then you don’t re about the people who work the dtry.” Mike Stabile, of the Free Speech Coaln, noted that the tools to screen er-generated pornography had taken years to evolve and bee more effective, and said that the fixatn on Pornhub suggted that the lears of the anti-traffickg movement were beg disgenuo about their goals. “This isn’t a Pornhub-specific problem or an issue where Pornhub is particularly negligent,” Stabile said. “If you look at the vast majory of child-sex-abe material beg shared, is not on porn s, ’s on s like Snapchat and Facebook. This is about stoppg pornography.”</p></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="adslot adslot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="vvwkbj"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa bDyAMU body bodyntaer articlebody" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="bodyner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">Mickelwa seems trated by the fact that MdGeek and other pani n flect attentn om cricism by qutng the motiv of anti-traffickg activists. MdGeek, she told me, “has engaged illegal nduct that has really shattered the liv of victims who never tend to be pornography, who did not sign up to be porn performers. The are people who were raped, or trafficked, or filmed whout their knowledge or nsent.” She add, “I believe all adults should have the eedom to do what they wish wh their own bodi so long as their actns are nsensual, lawful, and not harmg another person.” Last year, Mickelwa left Exod Cry to found her own nonprof, the Jtice Defense Fund, which focs exclively on sex traffickg, child sexual abe, and nonnsensual ntent onle. She would not tell me who the group’s funrs are, and said that has received ntributns om “hundreds of donors om around the world who participate wh the unrstandg that we mata their privacy.”</p><p class="paywall">Acrdg to Mickelwa, the only way to reform the porn dtry is to hold s lears acuntable for the ntent on their s. “This don’t mean an end to the porn dtry,” she said. “It means movg the dtry to operate legally.” She noted that some porn performers agreed wh her. One, Allie Eve Knox, told me that most porn performers were not eager to si wh the Christian right, but that nonnsensual ntent and child-sexual-abe material on Pornhub ma the dtry ls safe for them. “We need to have an outcry. We need to hold people acuntable,” she said. “This stuff should not be allowed to happen. It’s a fuckg travty to our bs.”</p><p class="paywall">Mickelwa’s op-ed the Washgton <em>Examer</em> was shared extensively on Twter, and she and other activists started g the hashtag #Traffickghub; a Twter er signed a logo to go wh , the black, whe, and yellow that Pornhub s brandg. Mickelwa pied her op-ed to a petn that quickly amassed thoands of signatur. (It’s now hosted on a different Web se, which dit that has been signed by more than two ln people.)</p><p class="paywall">The publicy me at a st. Anonymo posters published rmatn about where Mickelwa and her fay members lived; some relativ had their onle acunts hacked. Law enforcement received a phone ll falsely accg Mickelwa of “repeatedly postg child pornography on her personal Twter acunt,” acrdg to the police report.</p><p class="paywall">In March, 2020, members of the Canadian Parliament asked the ernment, a letter to Prime Mister Jt T, to vtigate MdGeek, and then lnched a parliamentary vtigatn. That month, MdGeek registered for the first time wh the Natnal Center for Missg & Exploed Children, and turned over more than thirteen thoand vios of spected child-sexual-abe material. (Most major tech platforms are already registered wh the N.C.M.E.C.; Facebook ma more than twenty ln reports to the agency 2020.) MdGeek hired the law firm Kaplan, Hecker & Fk to nduct a review so that the pany uld build a strgent ntent-pliance program.</p><p class="paywall">That December, the <em>Tim</em> lumnist Nicholas Kristof wrote an exposé lled “The Children of Pornhub,” allegg that the se was “fted wh rape vios.” He ced Mickelwa’s petn. After Kristof’s piece was published, a former employee told me, MdGeek management sent a pany-wi e-mail nyg the allegatns, and argug that the pany’s filterg and moratn polici were effective. “It was plete B.S.,” the former employee said. Six days later, Visa and Masterrd announced that they would no longer procs payments for Pornhub. This sent a strong msage, but, Knox told me, the people who suffered the most were profsnal porn creators, who uld no longer llect payments. Some she knew had been driven to ls safe work, such as rtg.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-5 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">On December 14th, MdGeek announced that would require ers to verify their inti through a third-party Web se before they upload vios, and that would disable lns of vios om unregistered ers. In a blog post, the pany argued that s polici were now more strgent than those of all s peers, cludg Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube. “It is clear that Pornhub is beg targeted not bee of our polici and how we pare to our peers, but bee we are an adult ntent platform,” the post read. It said that the pany was beg attacked by Exod Cry and the Natnal Center on Sexual Exploatn: “The are anizatns dited to abolishg pornography, banng material they claim is obscene, and shuttg down mercial sex work.” Months later, one of MdGeek’s dors, Grant Thornton, end s relatnship wh the pany.</p><p class="paywall">The Canadian parliamentary mtee vtigatg MdGeek schled heargs for Febary, 2021. MdGeek sent a letter to the mtee, outlg s new ntent polici and promisg even more rigoro on the future. Only verified ers, whose nam and ag had been nfirmed through ernment-issued intifitn, would be allowed to upload ntent to the pany’s Web s. Digal-fgerprtg software was beg applied all spected s of child-sexual-abe and nonnsensual vios, which would prevent them om beg re-upload the future. The pany also said that had been velopg software to intify and remove nonnsensual vios, which planned to make available to other onle platforms.</p><p class="paywall">At the heargs, Serena Fle, a young woman om California, ttified that, seventh gra, a boy she liked had badgered her to sendg him a vio of herself undrsg. The vio had been posted to Pornhub wh the ptn “13 year-old bte shows off for the mera.” As the clip began to circulate among her classmat, she started skippg class, and eventually dropped out. She said that she ma many attempts to get Pornhub to take the vio down—even sendg e-mails that she claimed were om her mother. Her attorney, Michael Bowe, of Brown Rudnick, tried to distance her se om the relig anti-traffickg groups, tellg the mtee, “This is about rape, not porn. It’s about traffickg, not nsensual adult performance or entertament. ”</p></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="adslot adslot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="alekay"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa bDyAMU body bodyntaer articlebody" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="bodyner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">Four days later, MdGeek’s top executiv ttified. It seemed as if they hadn’t prepared for even the most elementary qutns. Antoon was unable to say how much money the pany ma, how many plats received about nonnsensual vios, or why hadn’t ma any substantive policy chang until Visa and Masterrd pulled their bs. When an M.P. named Shannon Stubbs asked whether MdGeek “had ever moized child sexual abe and nonnsensual material,” Antoon refed to answer directly, and stated that such ntent was harmful to the pany’s brand. He said that Pornhub was “among the top five most vised Web s on the Inter.” But later, when Tassillo, MdGeek’s C.O.O., was asked why the pany had waed until 2020 to refer plats to the N.C.M.E.C., he said, “We are a startup and are still growg.”</p><figure class="AssetEmbedWrapper-eVDQiB byBkf asset-embed"><div class="AssetEmbedAssetContaer-eJxoAx dBHGoQ asset-embedasset-ntaer"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kKwZhx rponsive-asset AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embedrponsive-asset"><div data-attr-viewport-monor="" class="RponsiveCartoonWrapper-iTMMjI eXTYsS rponsive-rtoon AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embedrponsive-asset viewport-monor-anchor"><a class="external-lk rponsive-rtoonimage-lk" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa RponsiveCartoonImage-hzNqyc ikeCcH rponsive-rtoonimage rponsive-image"><noscript><img alt="People holdg fted sheet style of Henri Matiss “Dance .”" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-imageimage" src=" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w, 960w, 1280w, 1600w" siz="100vw"/></noscript></picture></a><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE iTuhkZ ptn RponsiveCartoonCred-bKlQqO faLAFb rponsive-rtooncred"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnCred-ejegDm iUEiRd iicloT bmQtfn ptncred">Cartoon by Anjali Chandrashekar</span></div><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTA-eiqqMB iDCQRs"><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTAWrapper-CYIqa iTbFtf"><div class="RponsiveCartoonLkButtonWrapper-hqDAJK eSEhbj"><button aria-label="Copy lk to rtoon" class="BaseButton-bLlsy ButtonWrapper-xCepQ bqVKKv YsOBB button button--primary-pair RponsiveCartoonInButton-hBCBMq lpsjql" data-event-click="{"element":"Button"}" data-ttid="Button" type="button"><span class="ButtonLabel-cjAuJN bBWXSg buttonlabel">Copy lk to rtoon</span><div class="ButtonInWrapper-gFdzAL bPDyTT buttonin-ntaer"><svg class="in in-pylk" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" xmlns="><tle>Copy lk to rtoon

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SplScreenContentHearMa-fNigKG daohZh"><div class="GridItem-buujkM eHLzLy grid--em"><div class="SplScreenContentHearTleBlock-sCMXE jActCi"><div data-ttid="ContentHearRubric"><div class="RubricWrapper-dKmCNX dZhWBL bric SplScreenContentHearRubric-cLHEJQ ildzkT"><a class="RubricLk-gRWSOU fgWnkQ bric__lk" href="/magaze/a-reporter-at-large"><span class="RubricName-fVtemz cLxcNi">A Reporter at Large</span></a></div></div><h1 data-ttid="ContentHearHed" class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ SplScreenContentHearHed-lcUSuI iUEiRd NbxED dfelga">The Fight to Hold Pornhub Acuntable</h1><div class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ SplScreenContentHearDek-emptdL iUEiRd wOnsu dJrDEb">For years, nonnsensual vios flourished on the Inter. How have adult s been reed ?</div><div data-ttid="BylWrapper" class="BylWrapper-KIudk irTIfE byl SplScreenContentHearByle-kvEhqE ejWxsm"><p class="ByleWrapper-jWHrLH ivtvgj byle byl__byle" data-ttid="ByleWrapper" emProp="thor" emType="><span emProp="name" class="ByleNamWrapper-jbHncj fuDQVo"><span data-ttid="ByleName" class="ByleName-kwmrLn cYaBaU byle__name"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BylePreamble-iJolpQ iUEiRd jslZfG gnILss byle__preamble">By </span><a class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BaseLk-eNWuiM ByleLk-gEnFiw iUEiRd ggMZaT cXqSTL eErqIx byle__name-lk button" href="/ntributors/sheelah-kolhatkar">Sheelah Kolhatkar</a></span></span></p></div><time data-ttid="ContentHearPublishDate" dateTime="2022-06-13T06:00:00-04:00" class="SplScreenContentHearPublishDate-bMGEVk gvRvVr">June 13, 2022</time><div class="SocialInsWrapper-hKMEXV ffgPVr social-ins social-ins--standard SplScreenContentHearSocialShare-gSVclr kUKgnn"><ul data-ttid="socialInslist" 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1600w, 1920w, 2240w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="Glchy llage of body parts" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src="></picture></span></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 SplScreenContentHearGrid-kFpOdh fLkIyA"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE iTuhkZ ptn SplScreenContentHearCaptn-iOfEOv ckLUKG"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnText-bHjzlu iUEiRd hWyo iXWezO ptn__text">After graphic reports om women and girls who’d had vios of themselv posted onle whout their nsent, a mpaign targeted the owner of Pornhub and other s.</span><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnCred-ejegDm iUEiRd iicloT jbIJNS ptn__cred">Illtratn by Najeebah Al-Ghadban</span></div></div></div></hear></div><div data-attribute-verso-pattern="article-body" class="ArticlePageContentBackGround-cNiFNN kbAoLA article-body__ntent"><div class="ActnBarWrapperContent-lasBkU 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cjjxgx bookmark mobile"><span class="ActnBarSendaryButtonPrimaryIn-isbvyN cAwccV bookmark-button-in"><svg class="in in-bookmark" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" xmlns="><tle>Save this story</tle><path class="in-bookmark-fill" d="M20 23.9508L12.5 19.7312L5 23.9508V2.95081H14V3.93211H6V22.1845L12.5 18.5536L19 22.1845V8.83866H20V23.9508Z"></path><path class="in-bookmark-fill" d="M23 3H20V0H19V3H16V4H19V7H20V4H23V3Z"></path></svg></span><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ ActnBarButtonText-bYXYuh iUEiRd bkefvo gkccfO">Save this story</span></button></div></div></div><div class="LightboxWrapper-dxsWBV hhylRt"><div class="ArticlePageChunksContent-etcMtP imbgVA"><div data-ttid="ArticlePageChunks" class="ArticlePageChunks-fLyCVG lmuXQm"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa bDyAMU body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><figure data-ttid="IameEmbed" class="IameEmbedWrapper-sc-dRedg cjyRVU iame-embed"><div data-ttid="IameEmbedContaer" class="IameEmbedContaer-hptgUZ fXVBaX"><div class="IameEmbedAspectRatWrapper-hFVJps BKpgQ"><iame class="IameEmbedContent-cMdiev csnuAY IameEmbedContent lazyload" height="90" width="100%" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-orig allow-popups" tle="Embedd Frame" data-src=" allowfullscreen="" allow="toplay *; encrypted-media *; clipboard-wre; toplay; fullscreen; picture--picture"></iame></div></div></figure><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">One night 2017, a fifteen-year-old girl named Rachel received a WhatsApp msage om a number she didn’t regnize. Rachel lived wh her mother, stepfather, and siblgs a midsize town the Uned Kgdom. She had jt returned home om a party and was her bedroom. “I had a really unstable home life, and I didn’t have good support around me,” Rachel told me recently, while stg on her bed a fluffy whe bathrobe. “I was a plete ms, I didn’t tst anyone, I was plete self-stct mo.”</p><p class="paywall">The man who sent the text forward a nu photograph of her, the source of which she uldn’t figure out. Then he sent a lk to her mother’s Facebook acunt and the nam of other fay members and school iends, threateng to forward the picture to them if she didn’t follow his stctns. Immediately, she relled an episo om a few years earlier, when classmat passed around a photo of her her unrwear, which precipated months of bullyg and a bout of prsn. Panicked, she plied wh his requts. He first stcted her to brighten the lightg her room, and to take photos of herself her unrwear. He then had her take more photos, this time naked, and take vios of herself strippg and masturbatg. The vios beme progrsively more explic, Rachel told me, until the man asked her to do somethg so revoltg that she refed. She cut off the rrponnce and sat on her bed “ a state of shock,” she said. Later, her mother me to say good night. Rachel pretend that everythg was fe.</p><div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--article-mid-ntent" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--article-mid-ntent nsumer-marketg-un__slot---ntent"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></div><p class="paywall">The next day, Rachel (a psdonym) checked her social-media acunts every hour, wag for the pictur and vios to surface. Months went by and nothg happened. Then one day she was a taxi when a boy who lived near her sent a msage askg if she was all right. He clud a lk to a Tumblr page that ntaed dozens of folrs of pictur and vios of several girls, all siar pos, many of them cryg. One of the girls was Rachel. She asked the boy to report the acunt to Tumblr. Rachel told me that she thought about gog to another cy and killg herself. “I actually end up gettg on a tra, but my iends stopped me,” she said.</p><p class="paywall">The pictur and vios soon spread to Pornhub, one of the largt pornography s on the Inter. At one pot, Pornhub hosted some fourteen ln vios, cludg stud-produced adult films and er-generated ntent, and is one of the most vised Web s the world. Many of the vios of Rachel clud her real name, and ments ntaed lks to her social-media acunts and to those of her fay members. A snippet om one of the vios was posted to Snapchat and Instagram. Someone sent a vio to her father, and a stalker showed up at her hoe, textg her photos om outsi while she was babystg her younger brother. Rachel filed a plat wh the Child Exploatn and Onle Protectn Command, a divisn of the U.K.’s Natnal Crime Agency, but the anizatn was of ltle help, she said.</p><p class="paywall">Rachel stopped sleepg, and spent her days and nights searchg for the vios and fillg out dozens of removal-requt forms. “Hi, I’m unrage and had many vios and photos posted of me on here,” she wrote to Pornhub December, 2018. “They keep gettg rpload onto this se and I am only 15 them and I don’t have the lks. I don’t know what to do bee every time I get them removed you keep allowg them to be upload s g my life.” In rponse, Pornhub asked for a lk to each vio, the ername of the acunt ed to upload , the tle of the file, or screenshots of the page. Rachel sent the rmatn when she had , but the vios were often upload ty clips that she found impossible to track. Each time one was taken down, more appeared. Fally, she gave up. “I was spendg all my time reportg vios,” she said. “It was takg a lot out of me.”</p><p class="paywall">Rachel stopped leavg the hoe and eventually went on public assistance. In Febary, 2020, she saw an Instagram post about the work of an Amerin anti-sex-traffickg activist named Laila Mickelwa. She msaged Mickelwa, who referred her to servic that uld help wh the takedown requts, and nnected her wh lawyers om Brown Rudnick, a firm that was assemblg a lawsu agast MdGeek, the pany that owns Pornhub, on behalf of people who’d allegedly had vios of themselv posted to the se whout their nsent. After lawyers sent a cease-and-sist letter to MdGeek, the pany quickly removed vios of Rachel; then blocked them om beg upload aga. “Laila was so helpful,” Rachel told me. “She did more for me than any police or anyone the U.K. ever did.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-1 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">At the time, Mickelwa was workg for an anizatn lled Exod Cry, a fah-based group that seeks to “abolish mercial sexual exploatn,” along wh the unrlyg ndns that the group se as enablg . Mickelwa, who is thirty-ne, had worked at Exod Cry sce 2012, and her foc was on tryg to prevent adults and children om beg victims of erced prostutn and other forms of sexual abe. “I always felt a specific passn for preventn,” she told me. “It’s wonrful when you n take someone out of exploatn, but would be better if they were never there the first place.”</p><p class="paywall">Mickelwa had spent several years prentg “Nefar: Merchant of Souls,” an anti-traffickg documentary ma by Exod Cry, to ernments and public dienc around the world, and advotg for harsher penalti for traffickg nvictns. Increasgly, though, her work centered on women and children, many of them victims of traffickg, whose explic vios had end up on pornographic Web s such as Pornhub. MdGeek’s polici stated that vios on s se were vetted, to make sure that they didn’t feature mors, and were upload wh the nsent of the people who appeared them. But the pany had recently been the news after beg acced of failg to aquately screen s ntent. A thirty-year-old man had been arrted Florida for lewd and lasciv battery of a fifteen-year-old girl who had been missg for nearly a year; her fay had found approximately fifty-eight vios of her on Pornhub and other Web s. (The pany says that removed the material the day was notified.) Shortly after that, the <em>Sunday Tim</em> of London published an article about the rporatns that advertise on Pornhub, cludg Hez and Unilever, and noted that s reporters had found “dozens of exampl of illegal material on the webse wh mut.” (The pany replied that child-sexual-abe material ma up a ty proportn of ntent, and that the aim was to eradite .)</p><figure class="AssetEmbedWrapper-eVDQiB byBkf asset-embed"><div class="AssetEmbedAssetContaer-eJxoAx dBHGoQ asset-embed__asset-ntaer"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kKwZhx rponsive-asset AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset"><div data-attr-viewport-monor="" class="RponsiveCartoonWrapper-iTMMjI eXTYsS rponsive-rtoon AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset viewport-monor-anchor"><a class="external-lk rponsive-rtoon__image-lk" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa RponsiveCartoonImage-hzNqyc ikeCcH rponsive-rtoon__image rponsive-image"><noscript><img alt="Ten passiveaggrsive statements on a tablet" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src=" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w, 960w, 1280w, 1600w" siz="100vw"/></noscript></picture></a><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE iTuhkZ ptn RponsiveCartoonCred-bKlQqO faLAFb rponsive-rtoon__cred"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnCred-ejegDm iUEiRd iicloT bmQtfn ptn__cred">Cartoon by Roz Chast</span></div><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTA-eiqqMB iDCQRs"><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTAWrapper-CYIqa iTbFtf"><div class="RponsiveCartoonLkButtonWrapper-hqDAJK eSEhbj"><button aria-label="Copy lk to rtoon" class="BaseButton-bLlsy ButtonWrapper-xCepQ bqVKKv YsOBB button button--primary-pair RponsiveCartoonInButton-hBCBMq lpsjql" data-event-click="{"element":"Button"}" data-ttid="Button" type="button"><span class="ButtonLabel-cjAuJN bBWXSg button__label">Copy lk to rtoon</span><div class="ButtonInWrapper-gFdzAL bPDyTT button__in-ntaer"><svg class="in in-pylk" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" xmlns="><tle>Copy lk to rtoon</tle><g clip-path="url(#clip0_3732_178637)"><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M16.3488 10.5017C16.2107 10.7357 16.2926 11.035 16.5318 11.17C16.7709 11.3052 17.0767 11.225 17.2148 10.991L18.4648 8.87225C19.5694 7.00002 18.9139 4.60601 17.0007 3.52508C15.0875 2.44415 12.6412 3.08562 11.5366 4.95785L9.53657 8.34782C8.432 10.22 9.08751 12.6141 11.0007 13.6949C11.1888 13.8012 11.382 13.8908 11.5785 13.9642C11.7819 14.0403 12.0058 13.9485 12.1147 13.764C12.2794 13.4849 12.1103 13.1276 11.8083 12.9992C11.7041 12.9549 11.6014 12.9044 11.5007 12.8475C10.0658 12.0368 9.57417 10.2413 10.4026 8.83712L12.4026 5.44715C13.2311 4.04298 15.0658 3.56187 16.5007 4.37257C17.9356 5.18327 18.4272 6.97878 17.5988 8.38295L16.3488 10.5017ZM7.6526 13.4983C7.79067 13.2643 7.70873 12.965 7.46959 12.8299C7.23044 12.6948 6.92464 12.775 6.78657 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BaseText-ewhhUZ AlertMsage-jgAjgo bVCFRm ifgabc iOlxjf alert-msage"><p aria-hidn="te">Lk pied</p></div></div></div><button aria-label="Shop" class="BaseButton-bLlsy ButtonWrapper-xCepQ bqVKKv YsOBB button button--primary-pair RponsiveCartoonInButton-hBCBMq lpsjql" data-event-click="{"element":"Button"}" data-ttid="Button" type="button"><span class="ButtonLabel-cjAuJN bBWXSg button__label">Shop</span><div class="ButtonInWrapper-gFdzAL bPDyTT button__in-ntaer"><svg class="in in-rt" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" xmlns="><tle>Shop</tle><g clip-path="url(#clip0_3732_178638)"><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M4 3H2V4H4.23828L6.99617 15.2631C7.11483 15.6982 7.50998 16 7.96094 16H18.0365C18.4875 16 18.8826 15.6982 19.0013 15.2631L20.9648 7.26312C21.1383 6.62698 20.6594 6 20 6H10V7H20L18.0365 15H7.96094L5.03652 3H4.58055H4ZM10.0365 19C10.0365 19.5523 9.58881 20 9.03652 20C8.48424 20 8.03652 19.5523 8.03652 19C8.03652 18.4477 8.48424 18 9.03652 18C9.58881 18 10.0365 18.4477 10.0365 19ZM11.0365 19C11.0365 20.1046 10.1411 21 9.03652 21C7.93195 21 7.03652 20.1046 7.03652 19C7.03652 17.8954 7.93195 17 9.03652 17C10.1411 17 11.0365 17.8954 11.0365 19ZM18.0365 19C18.0365 19.5523 17.5888 20 17.0365 20C16.4842 20 16.0365 19.5523 16.0365 19C16.0365 18.4477 16.4842 18 17.0365 18C17.5888 18 18.0365 18.4477 18.0365 19ZM19.0365 19C19.0365 20.1046 18.1411 21 17.0365 21C15.932 21 15.0365 20.1046 15.0365 19C15.0365 17.8954 15.932 17 17.0365 17C18.1411 17 19.0365 17.8954 19.0365 19Z" fill="black"></path></g><fs><clipPath id="clip0_3732_178638"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath><clipPath id="clip1_3732_178638"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath></fs></svg></div></button></div></div></div></span></div></figure><p class="paywall">Late one night early 2020, Mickelwa’s baby started cryg. Sce survivg a difficult birth three months earlier, he had been licky, often wailg nsolably for long stretch. “It was fely one of the harst perds of my life,” she told me recently. “I thought I was gog to die.” While tryg to rock the baby back to sleep, she cid to check MdGeek’s claims about vettg.</p></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="febc"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa bDyAMU body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">Mickelwa pulled out her laptop, created a dummy e-mail acunt, and upload a vio of a darkened rner of her bedroom to Pornhub. It appeared to go live almost stantly. No one had verified who she was, her age, or what her vio ntaed. (MdGeek claims that, until review, the vio would have been available only to Mickelwa.) “I began to be hnted by the qutn of: Why are we assumg the are legal and nsensual vios?” Mickelwa said. The next day, she tweeted, “I uld’ve been a trafficked 12 yr old and no one would know. Pornhub enabl exploatn.”</p><div class="Contaer-bkChBi byNLHx"></div><p class="paywall">“It wasn’t new rmatn—lns of people already knew that,” Mickelwa said. “But for some reason people hadn’t been nnectg the dots as to what that means for what’s on the se. I felt like people need to know the most popular porn se the world was populated wh crime-scene vios.” Mickelwa wrote an opn piece, submtg to twelve publitns. The Washgton <em>Examer</em>, a nservative news outlet, agreed to publish . “At this very moment, there uld be hundreds, if not thoands, of vios of unrage sex traffickg victims on Pornhub,” she wrote. “It’s time to shut down super-predator se Pornhub and hold the executive megapimps behd acuntable.”</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">MdGeek is registered the tax haven of Luxembourg, but s ma office is Montreal. The pany employs around sixteen hundred people, and the onle platforms owns, which clu Pornhub, RedTube, YouPorn, and Brazzers, received approximately 4.5 billn viss each month 2020, acrdg to a pany spokperson—almost double Google and Facebook bed. MdGeek’s owners and vtors have taken pas to obscure their inti, but once Mickelwa began vtigatg the pany, she said, a former employee shared the nam of the top executiv: Feras Antoon, the chief executive officer; David Tassillo, the chief operatg officer; and Corey Urman, a vice-print, who ran Pornhub.</p><p class="paywall">Pornhub’s origs date back to 2007, when an entreprenr named Matt Keezer bought the doma for about three thoand dollars, after ld-llg s owner. Keezer joed wh several bs partners, cludg Stephane Manos and Ouissam Yosef, whom he had met through Foosball tournaments when they were all stunts at Conrdia Universy, Montreal. A few of the bs partners had recently started a paid porn se lled Brazzers. Foldg Brazzers and Pornhub to a new pany, the partners named Mansef, a batn of “Manos” and “Yosef.”</p><p class="paywall">Mansef me close to disaster soon after s foundg. In October, 2009, agents om the U.S. Secret Service Organized Frd Task Force obtaed warrants to seize more than six ln dollars om two acunts held by a Mansef-lked pany lled Premium Servic. The pany seemed to have no addrs asi om a rented mailbox Cummg, Geia, a town of five thoand people. But, two months, had received $9.4 ln and wired out four ln dollars. None of the money seemed to have been ed for payg salari or for other legimate expens. The ernment charged Premium Servic wh operatg an unlicensed money-transferrg bs. Mansef said that the payments were om third-party cred-rd procsors and to s U.S. venrs. In 2011, the ernment settled the se, agreeg to return $4.15 ln. The pany was saved. More signifint, the se was an ditn that the ernment had not ught up to the reali of the new bs of Inter pornography.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">In the wake of the sexual revolutn of the sixti and seventi, adult-vio studs sprouted up California’s San Fernando Valley—which me to be known as Porn Valley—and produced films that were distributed across the untry. In 1988, rpondg part to public outrage after Traci Lords appeared porn films when she was unrage, Congrs passed U.S. Co 2257, requirg producers to document that their performers were eighteen or olr.</p><p class="paywall">The lnch of YouTube, 2005, ma easy to upload vios that uld be viewed by anyone; soon afterward, entreprenrs started what me to be known as “tube s”—cludg RedTube and YouPorn—which allowed ers to upload and view pornographic vios for ee. Many were pirated pi of profsnal films, and the revenue that once flowed to the California movie studs was redirected to the operators of the tube s. The rultg pyright battl the porn dtry mirrored those tradnal entertament. In 2007, Via sued YouTube, accg of hostg pirated pi of “SpongeBob SquarePants” and “The Daily Show,” among other material, and asked for a billn dollars damag. That same year, a porn producer lled Vivid Entertament sued PornoTube, accg the se of hostg pirated pi of Vivid’s material. (Via settled, and Vivid’s se was dropped.)</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-2 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">The Inter ma possible for tube s to make money off vios created by others while bearg almost no rponsibily for what was them. Today, MdGeek reli on the same legal statute that Mark Zuckerberg c when fendg Facebook om charg that allows the proliferatn of disrmatn: Sectn 230 of the Communitns Decency Act of 1996, which stat that an “teractive puter service” nnot be treated as a publisher of rmatn provid by a third party. The provisn was nceived orr to allow the Inter to grow whout beg buried lawsus. But also means that, when tube s are nonted wh plats about vios pictg rape, sexual imag of children, revenge porn, and other ntent upload whout nsent, they n claim that they are not liable. Experts at the Natnal Center for Missg & Exploed Children, a nonprof anizatn that tracks child-sexual-abe material, told me that this has allowed the onle porn dtry to grow wh ltle acuntabily. “The liabily is low, the money is high,” Sta Shehan, the vice-print of the anizatn’s analytil-servic divisn, said. “That’s a bs mol that people are gog to get to.”</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">In 2009—months after the ernment seized Mansef’s bank acunt—a German Inter imprar named Fabian Thylmann bought the pany, changg the name to Manw. Thylmann, who was his early thirti, had prevly helped velop software that allowed adult Web s to track the succs of their ads and lks—an early versn of oki.</p><p class="paywall">Pornhub beme Manw’s flagship tube se. In the early years of onle pornography, the tube s were spised by many the porn dtry for givg away their ntent for ee, but Thylmann seemed to relish his image. “Fabian’s approach was: We’re a porn pany, we’re gog to flnt ,” a former senr manager at MdGeek told me. An onle dtry fom lled was filled wh sthg discsns about the piratg of ntent. “I jt went to , wh 1 click I found several scen of me that are there illegally,” a participant told “Nathan,” the psdonym Thylmann ed on the se. “By allowg uploads of full scen om anyone, you know om balls to bon you are vlatg pyright law and profg om stolen ntent.”</p><p class="paywall">Tradnal fancial firms are often reluctant to do bs wh pani that produce adult ntent. “They know you n make a lot of money,” a former MdGeek executive told me. “But this n backfire on you heavily if regular clients fd out your bank is alg wh a porn pany.” In April, 2011, Thylmann was able to secure a three-hundred-and-sixty-two-ln-dollar loan, arranged part by a New York hedge fund lled Colbeck Capal, at an exorbant tert rate. Thylmann quickly stck a al to n Playboy TV and acquired the pornography producer Digal Playground. He also purchased Webm s, where performers live-stream themselv to payg viewers. The German newspaper <em>Die</em> <em>Welt</em> pared him to the founrs of Facebook and Google.</p><p class="paywall">In 2012, Thylmann was arrted, Belgium, for tax evasn, and extraded to Germany. Alexanr Pschorr, the former C.E.O. of Manw Germany, told me that, after Thylmann was released, he boasted about how well he’d been treated jail. “Some guards told him, ‘Oh, you’re the owner of this and that?’ ” Pschorr said. “ ‘My girliend is an amatr performer. Do you have some tips about how she uld make some money?’ ” The former senr manager, who worked the pany’s office Montreal, told me that executiv there downplayed the arrt; was scribed as “jt tax.” Still, Manw’s German banker, Commerzbank, announced that would no longer do bs wh the pany, and soon afterward Feras Antoon took over Manw’s operatns. “It wasn’t even like a up,” the former manager relled. “Feras had always been the guy wh the most ternal visibily. He ma all the cisns.” (Thylmann later plead guilty to tax evasn.)</p><p class="paywall">Along wh David Tassillo, the pany’s chief operatg officer, and an Atrian vtor named Bernd Bergmair, Antoon bought the pany om Thylmann. Bergmair already owned a porn se lled RedTube, and the pani merged. Antoon beme the C.E.O. of the new pany. He renamed MdGeek and rtctured the ternatnal offic, firg staff Germany. A stockpile of Manw-brand water bottl and sweatshirts was thrown out.</p><figure class="AssetEmbedWrapper-eVDQiB byBkf asset-embed"><div class="AssetEmbedAssetContaer-eJxoAx dBHGoQ asset-embed__asset-ntaer"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kKwZhx rponsive-asset AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset"><div data-attr-viewport-monor="" class="RponsiveCartoonWrapper-iTMMjI eXTYsS rponsive-rtoon AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset viewport-monor-anchor"><a class="external-lk rponsive-rtoon__image-lk" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa RponsiveCartoonImage-hzNqyc ikeCcH rponsive-rtoon__image rponsive-image"><noscript><img alt="Two dogs makg mic a rerdg stud" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src=" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w, 960w, 1280w, 1600w" siz="100vw"/></noscript></picture></a><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE gdZTpI ptn RponsiveCartoonCaptn-dokfdF hJgaLQ rponsive-rtoon__ptn"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnText-bHjzlu iUEiRd hWyo bsWloa ptn__text">“More squeaky toy.”</span></div><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE iTuhkZ ptn RponsiveCartoonCred-bKlQqO faLAFb rponsive-rtoon__cred"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnCred-ejegDm iUEiRd iicloT bmQtfn ptn__cred">Cartoon by Jason Adam Katzenste</span></div><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTA-eiqqMB iDCQRs"><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTAWrapper-CYIqa iTbFtf"><div class="RponsiveCartoonLkButtonWrapper-hqDAJK eSEhbj"><button aria-label="Copy lk to rtoon" class="BaseButton-bLlsy ButtonWrapper-xCepQ bqVKKv YsOBB button button--primary-pair RponsiveCartoonInButton-hBCBMq lpsjql" data-event-click="{"element":"Button"}" data-ttid="Button" type="button"><span class="ButtonLabel-cjAuJN bBWXSg button__label">Copy lk to rtoon</span><div class="ButtonInWrapper-gFdzAL bPDyTT button__in-ntaer"><svg class="in in-pylk" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" xmlns="><tle>Copy lk to rtoon</tle><g clip-path="url(#clip0_3732_178637)"><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M16.3488 10.5017C16.2107 10.7357 16.2926 11.035 16.5318 11.17C16.7709 11.3052 17.0767 11.225 17.2148 10.991L18.4648 8.87225C19.5694 7.00002 18.9139 4.60601 17.0007 3.52508C15.0875 2.44415 12.6412 3.08562 11.5366 4.95785L9.53657 8.34782C8.432 10.22 9.08751 12.6141 11.0007 13.6949C11.1888 13.8012 11.382 13.8908 11.5785 13.9642C11.7819 14.0403 12.0058 13.9485 12.1147 13.764C12.2794 13.4849 12.1103 13.1276 11.8083 12.9992C11.7041 12.9549 11.6014 12.9044 11.5007 12.8475C10.0658 12.0368 9.57417 10.2413 10.4026 8.83712L12.4026 5.44715C13.2311 4.04298 15.0658 3.56187 16.5007 4.37257C17.9356 5.18327 18.4272 6.97878 17.5988 8.38295L16.3488 10.5017ZM7.6526 13.4983C7.79067 13.2643 7.70873 12.965 7.46959 12.8299C7.23044 12.6948 6.92464 12.775 6.78657 13.009L5.53657 15.1278C4.432 17 5.0875 19.394 7.00068 20.475C8.91385 21.5558 11.3602 20.9144 12.4648 19.0422L14.4648 15.6521C15.5694 13.78 14.9139 11.3859 13.0007 10.305C12.8127 10.1988 12.6195 10.1091 12.4229 10.0357C12.2195 9.95975 11.9956 10.0515 11.8867 10.236C11.7221 10.5151 11.8911 10.8724 12.1932 11.0008C12.2973 11.0451 12.4 11.0956 12.5007 11.1525C13.9356 11.9632 14.4272 13.7587 13.5988 15.1628L11.5988 18.5529C10.7704 19.957 8.93555 20.4382 7.50068 19.6274C6.0658 18.8167 5.57417 17.0212 6.4026 15.6171L7.6526 13.4983Z" fill="black"></path></g><fs><clipPath id="clip0_3732_178637"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath><clipPath id="clip1_3732_178637"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath></fs></svg></div></button><div class="AlertWrapper-gvFATk MdjE RponsiveCartoonLkAlertPopup-BPAXn kdMXRM shoppg-alert" role="dialog"><div aria-hidn="te" role="prentatn" class="AlertArrow-daOgye AlLda alert-arrow"></div><div class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ AlertMsage-jgAjgo bVCFRm ifgabc iOlxjf alert-msage"><p aria-hidn="te">Lk pied</p></div></div></div><button aria-label="Shop" class="BaseButton-bLlsy ButtonWrapper-xCepQ bqVKKv YsOBB button button--primary-pair RponsiveCartoonInButton-hBCBMq lpsjql" data-event-click="{"element":"Button"}" data-ttid="Button" type="button"><span class="ButtonLabel-cjAuJN bBWXSg button__label">Shop</span><div class="ButtonInWrapper-gFdzAL bPDyTT button__in-ntaer"><svg class="in in-rt" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" xmlns="><tle>Shop</tle><g clip-path="url(#clip0_3732_178638)"><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M4 3H2V4H4.23828L6.99617 15.2631C7.11483 15.6982 7.50998 16 7.96094 16H18.0365C18.4875 16 18.8826 15.6982 19.0013 15.2631L20.9648 7.26312C21.1383 6.62698 20.6594 6 20 6H10V7H20L18.0365 15H7.96094L5.03652 3H4.58055H4ZM10.0365 19C10.0365 19.5523 9.58881 20 9.03652 20C8.48424 20 8.03652 19.5523 8.03652 19C8.03652 18.4477 8.48424 18 9.03652 18C9.58881 18 10.0365 18.4477 10.0365 19ZM11.0365 19C11.0365 20.1046 10.1411 21 9.03652 21C7.93195 21 7.03652 20.1046 7.03652 19C7.03652 17.8954 7.93195 17 9.03652 17C10.1411 17 11.0365 17.8954 11.0365 19ZM18.0365 19C18.0365 19.5523 17.5888 20 17.0365 20C16.4842 20 16.0365 19.5523 16.0365 19C16.0365 18.4477 16.4842 18 17.0365 18C17.5888 18 18.0365 18.4477 18.0365 19ZM19.0365 19C19.0365 20.1046 18.1411 21 17.0365 21C15.932 21 15.0365 20.1046 15.0365 19C15.0365 17.8954 15.932 17 17.0365 17C18.1411 17 19.0365 17.8954 19.0365 19Z" fill="black"></path></g><fs><clipPath id="clip0_3732_178638"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath><clipPath id="clip1_3732_178638"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath></fs></svg></div></button></div></div></div></span></div></figure><p class="paywall">There was a fay element to the bs. Antoon’s brother, Mark, ran a vio-game divisn for the pany; his sister joed, for a time, as a travel ördator, and her hband oversaw the feteria. Antoon’s parents, who had immigrated to Canada om Syria, often vised the office. The former manager scribed Antoon as “a ridiculoly proud fay man,” and junr-level employe gmbled that there was no way to advance whout a personal nnectn. There were no women learship; acrdg to the former manager, Antoon and his puti ocsnally ma meang remarks about female employe when they left the room, mentg on their hair or clothg. “They were misogynistic,” the former manager said. “It was very old-school thkg, a very two-dimensnal view of women.” (The pany nied this, and said that had an clive workplace.)</p></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="2mdlqa"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa bDyAMU body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">MdGeek’s rporate stcture is plited, wh dozens of subsidiari around the world whose nam n obscure their ownership. It matas offic Luxembourg, the U.K., and Romania; the office that handl MdGeek’s ntent is Cyps. The pany’s headquarters is an aquamare glass office buildg Montreal, where Antoon surrounds himself wh a tight group of nfidants that some employe referred to as the “bro club.” Antoon has a full face, small, bright ey, and a trim beard. He and the other executiv wear expensive sus and watch and gel their hair back. Antoon has spent lavishly on furnure and art work for the office, tryg to emulate the appearance of the tech firms of Silin Valley.</p><p class="paywall">Some executiv hid the fact that they worked the porn dtry, ocsnally g psdonyms. “They wanted to really e across as an engeerg firm,” the former manager told me. For years, Corey Urman, who ran Pornhub until September, 2021, intified himself the prs as Corey Price. Employe later said that ncealg their inti was a safety issue, bee they were harassed and threatened by anti-porn protters; the hundred-and-eighty-page document left by the racist mass shooter Buffalo clud a rant about the harms ed by pornography and a list of executiv at MdGeek and Pornhub terposed wh anti-Semic imagery. But the secrecy also served to protect employe’ reputatns. “This dtry is different,” the former executive told me. “When I met someone and they said, ‘I’m Tom,’ was absolutely clear that the guy was not lled Tom. In porn, as an executive, you jt don’t e your own name. One of the biggt assets is that you keep your personal life absolutely secret.”</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">Like other tech platforms, MdGeek has ltle centive to remove potentially profable ntent. The pany mak about half s revenue by sellg ads on s Web s. It also charg some ers fe for accs to s paid porn s, and enters prof-sharg agreements wh porn producers, takg a missn on the revenue that producers make postg their films on s s. Web traffic is central to all of this.</p><p class="paywall">A woman named Ta, a technology assistant and mother of three, told me that, 2019, an abive ex-boyiend posted explic vios of her on Pornhub whout her permissn. In addn to reportg the matter to the police, she said, she spent months fillg out takedown requts on the se, explag that the vios had been posted whout her nsent and ntaed her and her children’s real nam and home addrs. The rpons ually took several days, she said, and the pany repeatedly asked her for proof of her claims. When the vios were removed, she said, they might reappear hours later, like a replitg vis, sometim broken down to dozens of clips of a few sends each. (Her ex-boyiend was eventually arrted, and plead guilty to crimal ntempt, a mismeanor.) A spokperson for MdGeek said that, whout addnal rmatn about Ta, the pany uld not ment about what steps had taken.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-3 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">I heard siar stori om several other women, cludg a pregnant mother who was the Air Force when she disvered, 2018, that her ex-hband had secretly filmed them havg sex and posted the vios on Pornhub. She soon found out that he’d done the same thg to other women. After alertg the pany and askg to have her vios taken down, she said, she waed days for a rponse that was not tomated, and was asked repeatedly to prove that they were of her. “I n’t even tell you how many hundreds of hours I spent dog this,” she told me. “I wasn’t sleepg, I was cryg all the time. It was all I did, twenty-four hours a day.” (The spokperson said that the pany believed had disabled two vios the day the lks were submted, and another one a day after, upon nfirmg the inty of the woman the vio.)</p><p class="paywall">At the time, MdGeek had the technil abily to remove vios om s s while they were beg vtigated, a former employee told me, but didn’t always e those tools. “They will purposely lay,” the former employee said. “They’ll say, ‘We’ll get back to you two, three days once we do our review.’ ” By the time a review was plete, a vio uld have been up for several days, and ad space sold agast . “The er did not get punished,” the former employee went on. “MdGeek still ma money.”</p><p class="paywall">MdGeek’s polici forbid uploadg ntent that featur child sexual abe, that reveals personally intifiable rmatn such as nam and addrs, or that is obtaed whout nsent. Prr to 2020, the pany employed a handful of “ntent formatters” Montreal to review vios, along wh their tags and metadata, acrdg to a former employee who worked the partment. (The spokperson said that formatters ma up only a small part of the pany’s pliance efforts.) Acrdg to the former employee, many formatters, who were paid about thirty thoand dollars a year, were eply trmatized by what they saw. There were ocsnal vios pictg rape, child sexual abe, and the torture of animals. In obv s volvg mors, the vios were taken down, and the acunts of the ers who upload them were leted. But, acrdg to the former employee, the formatters did not notify law enforcement, ostensibly bee many uploars e virtual private works to disguise their inti and lotns, which uld e the police to target the wrong person. Formatters sometim suggted blockg the I.P. addrs of people who repeatedly vlated the polici, or requirg that uploars provi valid intifitn and e-mail addrs, the former employee said, but their supervisors said that this would disurage e of MdGeek’s s. “A er uld upload a hundred vios of someone gettg pated,” the former employee told me. “We’d jt close the vios, but not block their acunt. They uld jt upload them aga the next day.” (The pany ni this.) The job of screeng the vios was eventually moved to Cyps, where morators viewed hundreds of vios a day, often fast-forwardg through them wh the sound off to get through as many as possible. (The spokperson said that this was a “fundamental misunrstandg” of the procs, that formatters’ managers were rponsible for reportg spect material to law enforcement, and that blockg I.P. addrs would not have been effective, sce they are not always tied to dividual ers.) “Their objective was not necsarily to e harm,” the former employee said, of pany executiv. “Their objective was to make money.”</p><p class="paywall">Pschorr, the former C.E.O. of Manw Germany, told me that laws erng pornography are more strgent Germany than they are the U.S. Durg his time wh the pany, he said, employed twenty-four ctomer-support agents and ntent screeners to review all German ntent before went live. Pschorr was surprised by the lack of regulatn the U.S. “It was always tertg for me as a German to see that, the U.S., you’d get I.D.’d if you went to a bar, and if you’re not twenty-one you get big trouble,” he said. “But if you want to nsume porn all you have to do is click ‘Y, I’m 18,’ and you’re the realm of dirt.”</p></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="tvabj"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa bDyAMU body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">MdGeek was alert to the ncerns of the cred-rd pani. Mike Stabile, the director of public affairs for an adult-entertament tra and advocy associatn lled the Free Speech Coaln, told me that answerg to fancial stutns was typil the porn bs. “Once everythg moved onle, shifted om ‘The ernment said you n’t do this’ to ‘The banks said you n’t do this,’ ” he said. “You were no longer argug wh a state attorney general or the F.B.I., you were argug wh a middle manager at a bank who was worried about the bank’s reputatn. And wh Visa and Masterrd you have a duopoly. If you lose eher of them or both of them, s your bs.” (Spokpeople for Visa and Masterrd said that as long as transactns are legal the pani don’t make judgments about what people are purchasg. They issue ethil guil that dictate what porn platforms n show.)</p><p class="paywall">In 2018, MdGeek refanced s loans, creasg s borrowg to nearly four hundred ln dollars, orr to ntue to expand, and ma another four hundred ln revenue. “They were after monopoly a hundred per cent,” the former senr manager said. “They wanted world domatn.” (The pany ni this.) Antoon began nstctn on a rince the Ahuntsic-Cartierville borough of Montreal, whose renrgs were remiscent of the grand tat of Europe. The hoe was signed wh eight bedrooms, a cema, a sports plex, and an fy pool surround by terraced walkways and manicured garns.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">On a recent vis to New York, Laila Mickelwa sat the lobby of a hotel near LaGuardia Airport, sippg tea. She has green ey and long blond hair and tends to drs black. She was raised Riversi, California, where her mother, a former teacher, stayed home wh Mickelwa and her two sisters. Her father, a vascular surgeon, had grown up Jordan durg the civil war. Mickelwa relled that he had a serns about him, and that he rarely watched televisn or movi for fun. He had a passn for social jtice, which he imparted to his children. Mickelwa began trag as an acrobat when she was eight, and as a teen-ager she was accepted to Cirque du Soleil. Her father wouldn’t let her go. She studied polil science at the Universy of California, Riversi, and got a graduate gree public diplomacy at the Universy of Southern California. In llege, while rearchg cludg global poverty and war crim, she me across the issue of sex traffickg, and was shocked by what she learned. “I jt felt like om an early age I had me to re about this,” she said.</p><p class="paywall">Mickelwa terned at the Uned Natns, workg on projects related to human traffickg. In 2006, she found a nonprof lled New Realy Internatnal that sought to provi health re and other servic to impoverished women and children around the world. In 2012, she joed Exod Cry, ocsnally attendg prayer meetgs at an evangelil mistry Kansas Cy, Missouri, lled the Internatnal Hoe of Prayer (<em class="small">IHOPKC</em>), which is known for mic, fastg, and a prayer room that operat twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Mickelwa’s work is partly a rponse to how easily children n accs even the most vlent pornography onle. In an terview wh Defend Young Mds, an anizatn that lobbi to keep porn away om kids, she said, “I ll this a form of sendhand sexual abe—for a child to be exposed to rape, for example, as their troductn to sex when they’re eight, ne, ten, eleven years old. But, also, there are children beg abed behd the screen. Those are the on beg ed the films. So there’s abe gog on on both sis.” Mickelwa told me that her tle at Exod Cry, Director of Aboln, was molled on figur such as William Wilberforce, who led the Brish movement to abolish the slave tra the neteenth century.</p><p class="paywall">Exod Cry was found around 2008 by Benjam Nolot, a filmmaker and an activist who grew up Southern California and joed <em class="small">IHOPKC</em> his twenti. Exod Cry has taken aim not only at nonnsensual pornography but more broadly at what lls “porn culture,” which, argu, leads to the hypersexualizatn and objectifitn of women and mak sex traffickg and other crim more likely to occur. The group’s tax filgs state that is “mted to abolishg sex traffickg and the mercial sex dtry,” which would clu legal activi such as producg pornography and performg strip clubs. In 2017, Nolot released a documentary lled “Liberated: The New Sexual Revolutn,” about the relatnship between sprg-break partyg, hookup culture, and sexual vlence; more recently, he ma “Raised on Porn: The New Sex Ed,” which explor the effects on children of unfettered accs to onle porn. When I ntacted MdGeek, a spokman who go by Ian Andrews sent me a list of news articl about Exod Cry and <em class="small">IHOPKC</em> that he remend I read. One, om the Daily Beast, scribed Exod Cry as “a shady Evangelil group wh Tmp ti” and noted that <em class="small">IHOPKC</em>’s founr, Mike Bickle, preach that homosexualy is a s. Another Daily Beast story highlighted <em class="small">IHOPKC</em>’s role helpg lay the groundwork Uganda for the untry’s notor anti-gay legislatn, which punish homosexualy wh a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. (On <em class="small">IHOPKC</em>’s Web se, the anizatn ni supportg the bill.) A story the magaze <em>Reason</em> noted that Exod Cry often teams up wh the Natnal Center on Sexual Exploatn, a nonprof that was prevly known as Moraly Media, which beme famo the eighti and neti for promotg boytts of soap operas and MTV, and for mpaigng agast the Natnal Endowment for the Arts.</p><figure class="AssetEmbedWrapper-eVDQiB byBkf asset-embed"><div class="AssetEmbedAssetContaer-eJxoAx dBHGoQ asset-embed__asset-ntaer"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kKwZhx rponsive-asset AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset"><div data-attr-viewport-monor="" class="RponsiveCartoonWrapper-iTMMjI eXTYsS rponsive-rtoon AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset viewport-monor-anchor"><a class="external-lk rponsive-rtoon__image-lk" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa RponsiveCartoonImage-hzNqyc ikeCcH rponsive-rtoon__image 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class="paywall">When I reached Nolot, he told me that he knew nothg about <em class="small">IHOPKC</em>’s alleged role Uganda until he read about the prs, and said the ia that the church promoted anti-gay laws there “was utterly abhorrent.” The God he believ , he said, would never reject people for their life style or their beliefs. “I am very aware that there are margalized groups of people, whether by sexualy or by race or by genr or whatever,” he said. “I don’t want to be a part of anythg that would brg further nmnatn.” Nolot reerated that Exod Cry and <em class="small">IHOPKC</em> were not the same thg, and said that he eply regretted tweetg, 2013, that gay marriage was “an unspeakable offense to God.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-4 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">To Nolot, traffickg and pornography are extribly lked, and the creatn of porn is ercive by fn. Arguments like his were once ma by femists such as Andrea Dwork and Cathare MacKnon, the scholar who 1979 helped velop the legal theory that sexual harassment was a civil-rights vlatn. The Dwork-MacKnon factn saw pornography as a problem wh two ma ponents, both of which promoted misogyny and vlence agast women: onscreen, there were pictns of female subordatn and male-centric pleasure; behd the scen, women were exploed the productn of . In 1980, activists led protts agast the film “Deep Throat” after s star, Lda Lovelace, said that she had been raped and erced to makg . A so-lled sex-posive wg of femism, led by Ellen Willis and others, soon argued, however, that anti-porn femists were censors who ignored the plited realy of women’s sexual sir. Lda Hirshman, a cultural historian and the thor of several books about social movements, told me that not only did Dwork and MacKnon lose the bate but that they and their alli were attacked so harshly that silenced others. This left nservative Christian groups as among the most proment forc raisg ncerns about ab the porn dtry. “But the qutn you always want to ask the Christian anti-porn activists is: Where do you stand on abortn rights?” Hirshman said. “Where do you stand on birth ntrol? Where do you stand on equal pay? Otherwise, you get to the r wh the Christian right, and the next thg you know you’re Bluebeard’s stle.”</p><p class="paywall">Kate D’Adamo, an advote for sex workers’ rights at Reame Health and Jtice, told me that, bee Pornhub occupi a near-monopoly the dtry, many sex workers pend on to survive; if disappeared sudnly, would be fancially vastatg for people who are already a prer suatn. “There are people who work anti-traffickg who do talk to sex workers, and say, ‘If this is the legislative change, how would that impact you?’ ” D’Adamo said. “But if your argument is to shut down Pornhub then you don’t re about the people who work the dtry.” Mike Stabile, of the Free Speech Coaln, noted that the tools to screen er-generated pornography had taken years to evolve and bee more effective, and said that the fixatn on Pornhub suggted that the lears of the anti-traffickg movement were beg disgenuo about their goals. “This isn’t a Pornhub-specific problem or an issue where Pornhub is particularly negligent,” Stabile said. “If you look at the vast majory of child-sex-abe material beg shared, is not on porn s, ’s on s like Snapchat and Facebook. This is about stoppg pornography.”</p></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="vvwkbj"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa bDyAMU body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">Mickelwa seems trated by the fact that MdGeek and other pani n flect attentn om cricism by qutng the motiv of anti-traffickg activists. MdGeek, she told me, “has engaged illegal nduct that has really shattered the liv of victims who never tend to be pornography, who did not sign up to be porn performers. The are people who were raped, or trafficked, or filmed whout their knowledge or nsent.” She add, “I believe all adults should have the eedom to do what they wish wh their own bodi so long as their actns are nsensual, lawful, and not harmg another person.” Last year, Mickelwa left Exod Cry to found her own nonprof, the Jtice Defense Fund, which focs exclively on sex traffickg, child sexual abe, and nonnsensual ntent onle. She would not tell me who the group’s funrs are, and said that has received ntributns om “hundreds of donors om around the world who participate wh the unrstandg that we mata their privacy.”</p><p class="paywall">Acrdg to Mickelwa, the only way to reform the porn dtry is to hold s lears acuntable for the ntent on their s. “This don’t mean an end to the porn dtry,” she said. “It means movg the dtry to operate legally.” She noted that some porn performers agreed wh her. One, Allie Eve Knox, told me that most porn performers were not eager to si wh the Christian right, but that nonnsensual ntent and child-sexual-abe material on Pornhub ma the dtry ls safe for them. “We need to have an outcry. We need to hold people acuntable,” she said. “This stuff should not be allowed to happen. It’s a fuckg travty to our bs.”</p><p class="paywall">Mickelwa’s op-ed the Washgton <em>Examer</em> was shared extensively on Twter, and she and other activists started g the hashtag #Traffickghub; a Twter er signed a logo to go wh , the black, whe, and yellow that Pornhub s brandg. Mickelwa pied her op-ed to a petn that quickly amassed thoands of signatur. (It’s now hosted on a different Web se, which dit that has been signed by more than two ln people.)</p><p class="paywall">The publicy me at a st. Anonymo posters published rmatn about where Mickelwa and her fay members lived; some relativ had their onle acunts hacked. Law enforcement received a phone ll falsely accg Mickelwa of “repeatedly postg child pornography on her personal Twter acunt,” acrdg to the police report.</p><p class="paywall">In March, 2020, members of the Canadian Parliament asked the ernment, a letter to Prime Mister Jt T, to vtigate MdGeek, and then lnched a parliamentary vtigatn. That month, MdGeek registered for the first time wh the Natnal Center for Missg & Exploed Children, and turned over more than thirteen thoand vios of spected child-sexual-abe material. (Most major tech platforms are already registered wh the N.C.M.E.C.; Facebook ma more than twenty ln reports to the agency 2020.) MdGeek hired the law firm Kaplan, Hecker & Fk to nduct a review so that the pany uld build a strgent ntent-pliance program.</p><p class="paywall">That December, the <em>Tim</em> lumnist Nicholas Kristof wrote an exposé lled “The Children of Pornhub,” allegg that the se was “fted wh rape vios.” He ced Mickelwa’s petn. After Kristof’s piece was published, a former employee told me, MdGeek management sent a pany-wi e-mail nyg the allegatns, and argug that the pany’s filterg and moratn polici were effective. “It was plete B.S.,” the former employee said. Six days later, Visa and Masterrd announced that they would no longer procs payments for Pornhub. This sent a strong msage, but, Knox told me, the people who suffered the most were profsnal porn creators, who uld no longer llect payments. Some she knew had been driven to ls safe work, such as rtg.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-5 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">On December 14th, MdGeek announced that would require ers to verify their inti through a third-party Web se before they upload vios, and that would disable lns of vios om unregistered ers. In a blog post, the pany argued that s polici were now more strgent than those of all s peers, cludg Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube. “It is clear that Pornhub is beg targeted not bee of our polici and how we pare to our peers, but bee we are an adult ntent platform,” the post read. It said that the pany was beg attacked by Exod Cry and the Natnal Center on Sexual Exploatn: “The are anizatns dited to abolishg pornography, banng material they claim is obscene, and shuttg down mercial sex work.” Months later, one of MdGeek’s dors, Grant Thornton, end s relatnship wh the pany.</p><p class="paywall">The Canadian parliamentary mtee vtigatg MdGeek schled heargs for Febary, 2021. MdGeek sent a letter to the mtee, outlg s new ntent polici and promisg even more rigoro on the future. Only verified ers, whose nam and ag had been nfirmed through ernment-issued intifitn, would be allowed to upload ntent to the pany’s Web s. Digal-fgerprtg software was beg applied all spected s of child-sexual-abe and nonnsensual vios, which would prevent them om beg re-upload the future. The pany also said that had been velopg software to intify and remove nonnsensual vios, which planned to make available to other onle platforms.</p><p class="paywall">At the heargs, Serena Fle, a young woman om California, ttified that, seventh gra, a boy she liked had badgered her to sendg him a vio of herself undrsg. The vio had been posted to Pornhub wh the ptn “13 year-old bte shows off for the mera.” As the clip began to circulate among her classmat, she started skippg class, and eventually dropped out. She said that she ma many attempts to get Pornhub to take the vio down—even sendg e-mails that she claimed were om her mother. Her attorney, Michael Bowe, of Brown Rudnick, tried to distance her se om the relig anti-traffickg groups, tellg the mtee, “This is about rape, not porn. It’s about traffickg, not nsensual adult performance or entertament. ”</p></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="alekay"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa bDyAMU body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">Four days later, MdGeek’s top executiv ttified. It seemed as if they hadn’t prepared for even the most elementary qutns. Antoon was unable to say how much money the pany ma, how many plats received about nonnsensual vios, or why hadn’t ma any substantive policy chang until Visa and Masterrd pulled their bs. When an M.P. named Shannon Stubbs asked whether MdGeek “had ever moized child sexual abe and nonnsensual material,” Antoon refed to answer directly, and stated that such ntent was harmful to the pany’s brand. He said that Pornhub was “among the top five most vised Web s on the Inter.” But later, when Tassillo, MdGeek’s C.O.O., was asked why the pany had waed until 2020 to refer plats to the N.C.M.E.C., he said, “We are a startup and are still growg.”</p><figure class="AssetEmbedWrapper-eVDQiB byBkf asset-embed"><div class="AssetEmbedAssetContaer-eJxoAx dBHGoQ asset-embed__asset-ntaer"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kKwZhx rponsive-asset AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset"><div data-attr-viewport-monor="" class="RponsiveCartoonWrapper-iTMMjI eXTYsS rponsive-rtoon AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset viewport-monor-anchor"><a class="external-lk rponsive-rtoon__image-lk" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa RponsiveCartoonImage-hzNqyc ikeCcH rponsive-rtoon__image rponsive-image"><noscript><img alt="People holdg fted sheet style of Henri Matiss “Dance .”" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src=" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w, 960w, 1280w, 1600w" siz="100vw"/></noscript></picture></a><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE iTuhkZ ptn RponsiveCartoonCred-bKlQqO faLAFb rponsive-rtoon__cred"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnCred-ejegDm iUEiRd iicloT bmQtfn ptn__cred">Cartoon by Anjali Chandrashekar</span></div><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTA-eiqqMB iDCQRs"><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTAWrapper-CYIqa iTbFtf"><div class="RponsiveCartoonLkButtonWrapper-hqDAJK eSEhbj"><button aria-label="Copy lk to rtoon" class="BaseButton-bLlsy ButtonWrapper-xCepQ bqVKKv YsOBB button button--primary-pair RponsiveCartoonInButton-hBCBMq lpsjql" data-event-click="{"element":"Button"}" data-ttid="Button" type="button"><span class="ButtonLabel-cjAuJN bBWXSg button__label">Copy lk to rtoon</span><div class="ButtonInWrapper-gFdzAL bPDyTT button__in-ntaer"><svg class="in in-pylk" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" xmlns="><tle>Copy lk to rtoon.

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