Laila Mickelwait
Appearances
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
A little over a month ago, I sat down with the new owner of Pornhub, Solomon Friedman and Ethical Capital Partners, and we had a conversation together. After the conversation, I asked a lot of questions, tough questions. Some of them were answered. Some of them were not.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Number one, that's the first thing you do.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Of course, yeah.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
When Elon Musk bought Twitter, let's just kind of use a case study. He bought Twitter at a time where Twitter was censoring, silencing, and doing all the things that America, even election was affected by some of the roles that Twitter played. And then we found out later on that the communication that we're having with the White House Elon buys it. They have 7,500 employees.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
The next day he fires 50%. They're down to 3,750. The next week, 1,250 quits. So in a week or two, he went from 7,500 employees to 2,250 employees. So first thing you got to do. So I asked the question, who was there? So what percentage of the old employees and executives and directors and VPs that were there prior to ethical partners buying them to now?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
It got to a lady named Layla Micklewaite, who is the one that started Trafficking Hub petition and got 2.33 million signatures to shut down Pornhub. She reached out, says Pat. A lot of things were said. A lot of things were missed. I want to come to your podcast and talk about it. Eventually, we were able to make it work. We had the conversation today. She comes with a folder this big.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Did you ever try to talk to those guys or no?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Can you read one of them, or is that something that can be read?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
I wouldn't mind reading one that says leave the ones under age on there. If you have any of it, I'd like to read it.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Okay.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Again, I want you to watch this for yourself and be the judge of whether this website should stay up or it should be taken down because that's what they're trying to do there. And I think you're going to see some insight. If you enjoyed the previous one that we did, I think you're going to love this one here today. Again, with Layla McElwain.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Is this public record?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Okay, fantastic. So we can show it. So the crew will come afterwards and get the B-roll and show it to the audience as well. Yes. Go for it.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Yeah.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Of what year?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Okay, so December 4th. So let's just say later. So it's seven months, six months.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Oh, they're communicating amongst each other as employees.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Okay, so let me ask you this question. So for the longest time, there was a basketball team, the Clippers. I don't know if you're familiar with the Clippers. They had an owner called Donald Sterling. And Donald Sterling, there was clips of him being racist, comments he made, dropping the N-word, I think. Rob, you know what I'm saying.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
You've seen the clips where he's saying words and he talked about them in a very disrespectful manner, many racist comments. And he was banned from the NBA for life and fined $2.5 million. So every time you thought about the Clippers, you thought about him. This is Donald Sterling. And nobody wanted to play for them. Black players who were there, they didn't want to play for them.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Oh, they're communicating amongst each other as employees.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
And they had a pretty good team. They didn't want to play for him. NBA forces him to sell. He sells, I think, for like $2 billion and a guy named Steve Ballmer. Steve Ballmer is the number five employee from Microsoft, worth $150 billion today. He comes and he buys the Clippers in 2014, 2015. Rob, I don't know what the year it is. He cleans house when he comes in. Now it's a great organization.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Things are great. Things are smooth. There's no issues. And Clippers make a comeback, and it's actually a fun team to watch. I don't know if they're no longer right now, but they made a good run at what they did. So the new buyers buy it in March of 2023, give or take. The dates, I have it somewhere around here. When they buy it, one of the things that I asked is,
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
So now you're saying 91% of videos are taken out from 56 million to 5.2 million. It's a big number to filter all that stuff out. And I ask, I say, so how do you know when somebody is uploading a video that the person is underage or not underage, right? And we look up.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
There's a software that I think they use called Yodi, and Yodi is a third-party service to prove age without giving up the identity to the company. So I can go on there and say, hi, I'm Patrick, but David, boom, you know how you do your Apple, whatever. Yeah, Patrick, but David, you're 46 years old. You're fine. You can put up your video. Great. Fantastic. No, you're 15 years old.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
You can't put up your video. It cannot be uploaded. Great. All right. So that is headed in the right direction if this thing is going to stay on. That's the progress. Question I ask is how do you go back?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
So for 18 months, they're not requiring age of people in videos.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
I got it. So that's September. So that's just two months ago.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
So Yodi, can you pull up when did Pornhub start using Yodi?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
And why are they not being held accountable?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
So prior to this... Who is approving that? Who? Who does that?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Yoti does that. Yes.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
There's four people in the video. I'm the one that's uploading the video. You only check me, but the three other people that are in the video, you're not verifying them, but the video gets thrown. It's on there.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
I don't get that, though. Who wouldn't enforce that law? It's kids.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Well, if you look at the estimated revenue, 2022 was $468 million. 2023 was around half a billion. 2024 could be between $450 to $550 million, according to some of the numbers that we see. Okay. So they started using Yodi of everybody in the video a month before they came on the podcast, because they came on October 4th. You're saying September 3rd?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Okay.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Is that an article, Rob, that shows what they're using? Is that the announces biometric technology to verify users?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
So for uploaders, they started in 2021, but for everybody in the video, they started at September 3rd of 2024.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Now, let me... So in your eyes, let me continue with this. Who right now, like who do you go to to report this and they get involved and say, whoa, this is, you know, we got to investigate this. Who is being helpful? Who is not? People you're reporting to.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
They are helpful. Yes. In what way?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
That's how you just tweeted that.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Go to Pornhub.com.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
You're going to be fine because I'm the one that's going to write you up.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Back up. Seriously, that's the homepage?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
I hear them laughing in the back. You see those guys in the back? So let me ask you, you're so funny, Humberto, I can hear you. So a child can go on without logging in? I don't understand that.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
So, okay. So you go in, anybody can go through any of the videos that are on there. But if I want to report something, I need to log in. I've already consumed the video. I've seen it. But if I want to report, I have to log in. Why do I have to log in to report?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Okay, so folks, a month ago or so, I interviewed the new owners of Pornhub, okay? Solomon Friedman, and he brought one of his associates, and we had a very good conversation together. It was to find out what's really going on, because the level of criticism that Pornhub's gotten over the years... And then while I'm doing that, one of the things we talked about was the petition.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
706,000 videos of 15 times being flagged?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Not 15 times, just flagged once.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Is this the old CEO or the new CEO?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
CPO is the chief product officer? Yes. Okay, who's the chief product officer? What's the name of the guy?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Karim Almarazi.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
No, he's giving you a suggestion right there. It says, do you mean, yeah, right there. Is this the guy?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Okay, so can we read his background? I want to know his background. Carmelo Barraza is currently chief product officer at MindGeek. Before joining MindGeek, he served president of TV and managed services at Playboy Plus Entertainment, okay, from August 2011 to July 16. Before their time at Playboy, Karim was the...
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
with Bell from June of 2002 to September of 2011, where they held the title of General Manager of Mobile Solutions, and this role, Karim, was responsible for business solutions and wireless professionals. Okay. So, all right. So he was at Playboy. From Playboy, he comes in here, Chief Product Officer, and the email he's saying, those that get flagged 15-plus times don't get that many views.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
The other 706,000 videos that got flagged do.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
The policy is the 15?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
What was the number they told me when I asked them? Do you remember that when I said how many moderators do you have?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
How many is actually doing it?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
The fact that Trafficking Hub petition has roughly, Rob, if you can show this, 2.33 million signatures worldwide. And I said, that's very interesting. After the interview was done with the new owner, I get a message from a Layla that says, Patrick, I'm the one that posted that trafficking petition, getting all the signatures. And she wrote a book called Takedown, which we'll put the link below.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
So you watch it on 2.0 speed.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
How many videos are uploaded per hour? They gave the number. Do you remember the video, Rob?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
To review every video. It doesn't work if it's only 30.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Is this their part, Rob?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Can I hear this?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Then I started looking into what she's done, the interviews she's done, and I have, again, more questions about Pornhub. I thought it was the right thing to do to bring her here to give us a different perspective, not from the owner's perspective, but from the other side saying we need to do something about Pornhub. So with that being said, it's great to have you on.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Okay, so that's when I said, aside from you, who is reacting to this? Oh, so many people. This is a movement. I get it's a movement, but now if you're in front of a court and... You got lawyers, I got lawyers representing them, Pornhub, and I got lawyers representing you and the victims, right? The lawyers representing them are going to say, your honor, we bought this company in March of 2023.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
We know these were the issues. Here's what we've done. We made the investment. We've gotten rid of this and we've gotten rid of that. And back in the days, this. 91% of it is gone. And we are following the guidelines and this because we want this thing to be extremely compliant and we want to follow the guidelines by every single state and da-da-da-da-da. And this is what we've done.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Of course. So tell me, when you watched it, what was it when you said, I'm going to reach out to Pat, I want to have a conversation? What part of the interview prompted you to want to do that?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
But how does it work?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Not if it's new ownership, though. Because if I buy a company...
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
I understand. But even with the law that comes after them, because your outcome is you want to shut down Pornhub. That's you. The 2.33 million signatures that you've collected, they're supporting you because they want to see Pornhub being shut down, not being moderated, not...
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Can they do anything where you will be in a position to say, guys, it's fine, it can stay on?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Why?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Well, in one article, it says Visa and MasterCard stopped doing business with Pornhub in December of 2020. But this is 2022. But no, no, no. So they got back on?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Whatever Visa does, MasterCard does. Whatever MasterCard does, Visa does.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
And I think Unilever and PayPal also stopped advertising and offering their services to them during that same time.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
So who is allowing them to accept payments today? Who do they still have?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
So if it's crypto only and wiring money, you can't make a half a billion dollars a year like that.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
There's no way it's a lot if it's only wiring money.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
So let's go back to this. So let's go back to – You know, you want them to shut down. Okay. Let's say they do. Pornhub is shut down. All right.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
You think there's not access to what are the other porn sites that are available or even the dark web or you don't think any of that exists and it's accessible to people? Like you accomplish, what did you accomplish? What's the accomplishment?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Fantastic. Now, for the audience to know the outcome of Traffic and Hub. So I went and read what the outcome is. Rob, if you can go up a little bit so we can read that.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
So this, even if you shut down Pornhub, It's not going away because the porn laws in America are not going to look. By the way, it's so interesting because in this election, porn was one of the issues in the election. I don't know if you saw the video or not. Did you see the ad the Democrats ran?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Watch this. One of the ads they ran, Rob, I think we texted it to you. Yeah, I saw it. Brandon, did you send it to Rob? Rob should have it if you have one of the clips. I think this is the one. Yeah, watch this. This is a commercial. If folks are watching this, this is not a spoof. This is a real commercial rant.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
showing the lawsuits they're going through, an email exchange of CEOs and executives of what's being said, of taking down videos of underage porn that was under while MasterCard or Visa is asking them, why is this video still on your website? She's sharing that exchange. Very weird. She's talking about Bill Ackman, a guy that's worth almost $10 billion, getting involved and making a phone call,
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
with budget of Kamala Harris to scare people who watch porn to not vote for Republican. This is maybe one of the weirdest commercials ads I've ever seen in my life. The only thing that was missing is Kamala Harris coming at the end of saying, hi, I'm Kamala Harris and I endorse this message. Go ahead and play this clip.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Traffic and Hub is a decentralized global movement of individual survivors, organizations, and advocates from across a broader spectrum of political faith and non-faith, economic and ideological background, all uniting together for the single purpose of shutting down Pornhub. So it's not... getting them to use better technology like Yodi.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Yeah. I mean, again, so what are the laws right now with porn? What are the laws right now with porn when it comes down to underage porn?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Why are there so many sites that have it?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
And why are they not being held accountable?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
I don't get that, though. I don't understand. I'm very confused with that part. So who wouldn't enforce that law? It's kids. You know, we had a guest on here a couple days ago where the interview went out and it was great. I wish she would mention more people that are alive instead of just mentioning people that are no longer here with us.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
One of the conversations was around the fact that according to the FBI, 2022 data, 359,000 children are missing. I mean, I had a dog missing for nine days, Jimbo, and we were devastated as a family. Parents missing a child? Are you kidding me? The pain? What policy is above that? I don't know what policy is above that.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Yeah. Do you remember the part when I asked him a question? I said, so is your goal as in Pornhub to help people go out of the porn industry? Oh, no. A lot of people are very happy with their jobs. And I said, so what are you talking about? How the hell does somebody become a porn star at 18 years old? They consumed. underage to be inspired to do that, right?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
And you go through these data and you talk to other people and say, so what is the profile of somebody that becomes a baseball player? What is the profile of somebody that becomes a lawyer? What is the profile of somebody that becomes a dentist? What is the profile of somebody that becomes a realtor, an actor, an athlete? What is the profile of somebody that becomes a porn star?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
What is that profile? What percentage of that is broken homes? where kids are forced to find a way, and you go look up some of the statistics on percentages on what kids are going through, on how they get introduced to this business.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
As you're going through this search and the 2.33 million people that are messaging you, how many people have reached out to you that are former porn stars or former abusers that are saying, hey, my clips are still out there? How many of those people are reaching out to you?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Did you say Vic Lagina? Vic Lagina. You're not joking.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Uh, Trump would love that name. The way he uses China.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
What do you see as the pattern of people who get into the porn industry? Do you see, Rob, can you actually ask this question? Let's do this. Let's ask Chad GBT and let's see what it says. If you go on Chad GBT and ask the question, what causes someone to get into the porn industry? I'm actually curious to know what the answer is going to be. So financial motivation, okay, I see that everywhere.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Personal choice and agency, sexual freedom and empowerment, right. Influence of environment, makes sense. Psychological, emotional factors, self-esteem of being validated. Trauma, vulnerability in certain cases of individuals that have history of abuse. Trauma might be susceptible to entertaining industry. Coping, exploitation, rebellion and escapism, okay. Recruitment and opportunity, right.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Socio-economic and educational barriers make sense. Online accessibility. All right. So question. What is your view on the difference between OnlyFans and Pornhub?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
I don't think it's 50%. I think they'd lose 90%. I think if right up front, if the website verified, 90% is gone. 90% will be gone in no time.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
For sure.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
It's going to be the traffic that goes to it. So if you have to do that, the cost... And the traffic. And you have to be able to show. Like when you do a sponsorship with somebody, when we used to entertain a few sponsorships two years ago, it was, so how many views you get? We get this. Okay, we pay this per this. Okay, cool. No. All right, we'll pay this. All right, sounds good. Boom.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Here's how much you want. We're going to find $100,000. Great. But if you don't have viewership, advertisers are not going to pay you big dollars. You have to get the eyeballs. They don't want to not give up the eyeballs.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
No, they don't want to lose traffic.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Yeah, I mean, when I'm looking at this website, Rob, the Free Speech Coalition, nonprofit, what a great name, though, Free Speech Coalition. Honestly, it's a great name, FSC.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
The adult entertainment industry in the U.S., founded in 1990, what opposes the passage of an enforcement of obscenity laws and many censorship laws, that lady to the right, Nina Hartley, if you want to go to her, Nina Hartley is from the industry herself, right? By 2017, she had expressed... She's an American porn star and sex educator. By 2017, she had appeared in more than 1,000 adult films.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
She had been described by Las Vegas Weekly as an outspoken feminist, an advocate for sexual freedom, and by CNBC as a legend in the adult world.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
She's not?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
What is that, Rob?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Is that Dylan Mulvaney or is that actually – no, I'm actually asking – so that's not Dylan Mulvaney?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Oh, I'm sorry. I thought – it looks like him.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
But by the way, what is the position legally against AI porn that they can do? What is legal or illegal with that? Is there laws against it? Like if CGI and they can, the direction chat GBTs go and the technology that they're going to be creating, what if they use AI to create porn? Is there any laws against it?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Yeah. I'm curious to know what happens and what happens afterwards. Like what is, Once something happens with them, let's just say if it does, then what?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
So how did they attack you? Did they at all attack you? I think one article I saw is they attacked you for you being a Christian or something like that. What was that article about?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Inside Exodus, the shady and bad group of Trump ties waging war on a porn hub. Is this it?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
So who wrote this, by the way? What site is this? Daily Beast.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
But they don't have the same credibility. I mean, I don't know if they've had it. They just don't. Oh, that's four years ago. The picketing and launching hotline, anti-trafficking campaigns against porn.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
So, you know, you say that, and, you know, you obviously know I pushed them very hard when they were here, and for me it was like, what makes somebody want to be a porn star?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Rob, is this when he says that or is this when I ask, are you a man of faith? This is when you ask. Are you a man of faith? Yes. Go ahead and play the clip. Go back a little bit. I am a man of faith.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
There are certain things to it, even to the point that, you know, I'm sitting here watching a documentary called After Porn Ends, the story of porn stars, what their life is like after they're out of the porn industry, and how do you go back to a normal life from that space? But there's a few things, Rob. Can you pull up the story of New York Times? The 2020 article, right? I think it is.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Where did he say that?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
And he was a criminal. MT congratulates Weinstein defend illegal computer search by Ottawa police sinks child porn case Ottawa citizen.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
So what's this here? This is illegal computer search by auto police. Sinks child porn case. Judge commits. Acquits man found with 7,730 explicit images on flash drives. This is the man that got... He was representing him?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Exactly. Yeah. So this is the article that is disturbing to read, but I want to read it to you because I think it's stuff that we need to... I got four kids, and I openly talk to my kids about this kind of stuff to prepare them for them because they're 12, 10, specifically to the 12 and 11-year-old, but the 8 and 3, soon I'll be talking to them as well. I want to read this to you.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Yeah, I mean, look, a story came out, Rob. I don't know if you have it or not. The story about this guy who was allowing people election betting side. Is this the one?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
FBI raids apartment of an election betting side polymarket CEO and sees a cell phone. Sources say the FBI raided Shane Copeland's home after the website elections betting market controversially predicted Donald Trump's win. And the FBI went after this guy. It's just a website that, you know, can you go a little low, Rob?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
FBI sees a cell phone, an electronic device, a betting site, a polymarket CEO in a raid on his New York City apartment Wednesday. The company's market wagered correctly and controversially in Donald Trump's favor and bets who would win the presidential election. Even though opinion polls showed a tight race, this is ridiculous. You lost seven states, battleground states. Newfound, who's this?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
The point of the story is this. If they're willing to investigate a person like this, who accurately got it right on how bettors were betting, They can investigate other people if they choose to, but it's not a priority.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Pam?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
So if you can zoom in, Rob, and we can read through this article together... So this is an article that they wrote. Exact date, Rob, if you can go a little bit higher.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Yeah, look, to me, I ran an insurance company for 15 years. I've been in insurance since the day before 9-11. And I've been in that space, and I'm around a lot of sales guys. We're in 50 states. We license 60,000 insurance agents and a lot of young men. We were half 54% women, 46% men. A lot of husbands and wives got married.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
And one of the common challenges while you're sitting there mentoring a young guy or you're in a sales office walking around, can't tell you how many times I walked in on people watching porn, okay? And look, it's the direction we're going. It's going to be there. AI is going to take you to a different level. Virtual reality is going to take you to a different level.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Okay. So Pornhub prides itself on being the cheery, winking face of naughty. The website billboard a time score and provides snow plows to... Boston, okay, great. Next, the supposedly wholesome Pornhub attracts 3.5 billion visits a month, more than Netflix, Yahoo, or Amazon. This is when Yahoo was relevant that you would even mention it.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Relationships with AI where, you know, people look at the number of birth rates going lower. We're having fewer kids because we have more TV time, more ways of not having the people are on their phones more than they're talking to their girl or their wife or their husband. They're just like stuck like this. Normally, if that wasn't there, they'd be spending time together. So.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
This eliminating porn is going to be very difficult to do. My biggest challenge with this space is going to be underage. Yeah, of course. I have zero. I have zero. Zero tolerance. I don't have any tolerance for it. Good. Zero tolerance when it comes down to that. Zero. My entire conversation with them was, okay, so now you run one of the bigger sites.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
if you're running one of the bigger sites, that traffic comes through you, what if laws can force you to do the right thing? Because if they don't go to Pornhub, that traffic's going somewhere. It's going to go somewhere. What if that becomes a standard and enforcing all the other companies that are benefiting from it to say, here's the guidelines you have to follow. Yes.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Because you can take this guy down who's selling cocaine to everybody in the community. Somebody else is going to go sell that cocaine. It's going to go, something's going to happen versus getting to the bottom of it and seeing where's the cocaine coming in from. Yeah. Where's the fentanyl coming in from? Where are we selling this stuff? What do we do with the damages that this is taking place?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
I posted something the other day, which obviously is not, you know, constitutionally it's illegal. I said, you know, this whole illegal immigration stuff, if somebody commits a crime in America and you're a U.S. citizen, You know, whatever the laws, you get the crime.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
But if you commit a crime in America, and if you want to pull it up, Rob, in one of my tweets, and you're an illegal immigrant, I think the punishment should be five to ten times. And if it has to do with anything to do with kids, rape, anything you go to jail for the rest of your life, zero tolerance. Come do that on our homeland. You get death penalty, done. Don't touch our kids.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Don't touch our women. Don't mess with them. You're going straight to jail. And even at the highest level, death penalty. And obviously that's a little extreme for some people. It's my position. I think there needs to be some kind of a punishment if you mess with this great country that we're living in right now. Yeah, this is the one. Well, I appreciate your passion for justice.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
I think I can see that. No, I'm not okay with that. I'm not okay with that. And the other part is educating. Like when I joined the Army, I'll never forget when I joined the Army, our drill sergeant taught us. I was 18 years old. We're at a unit. And they said, hey, guys. Before you have sex with a girl, ID them. Can you imagine how weird of a thing that is to say? Like, what do you mean?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
He says, before you're going to go, because you're going to go out. You're going to have a lot of interaction with girls. They like guys in uniform. ID them. Don't do anything. That's kind of weird. Why? Everybody's asking why, why. If they tell you they're 18, don't believe it until you see the ID.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
And you see a couple guys, that fear they put in the young men, it was like, dude, you know, some of us are like that.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
You know, it forced some of us to go 30 and up. We're like, look, I'm just going to be like, you're going to look over 30. I'm playing the other game to be a little bit safer so I don't have to worry about it. Now, this is 18. We live in a different kind of a life. But some guys are like, no, it's going to be all right. It's going to be all right. Boom. Guy got arrested, went to military jail.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Let me tell you, that scared the crap out of a lot of people very quickly. But you also need to shape the mindset of young kids of what's possible, right? My son right now is learning how to fight, and he's a very good fighter right now. It annoys me because he kicks me. So when I'm—he's 12 years old. He still thinks he can beat Daddy.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
I would whoop his tail right now still, but I think he's got two more years before it's going to be dangerous for me to threaten him if we fight. But I had a talk with him last night. I said, listen, bro, just because I'm having you train with these UFC guys and you're getting very good, you mess around anything in school, you do something. There is not suspension.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Pornhub rakes in money from almost 3 billion ad impressions a day. One ranking lists Pornhub as the 10th most visited website in the world. And then as you go lower, you'll see this. Yet another side of the company, its site is infested with rape videos.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
You're getting kicked out of school. You can't be using this weapon that you're learning here. This is not a joke what you're learning. You can really hurt somebody. He said, no, I get it, Dad. I said, listen, you just got to realize, we'll make the investment, but make sure this is to prevent fights, not to have fights. So someone needs to coach these young men. Someone needs to...
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
It's preventative, right? It's as much preventative as it is, you know, because we have to be proactive. Like a lot of parents I talk to, I'm afraid to talk to my kids about sex. Well, you better do because somebody else will. I'm afraid to talk to my kids about drugs. You better talk to them before somebody else does. Well, I'm just worried about it. It's embarrassing. It's uncomfortable.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
No, you got to do it. So I think it's both preventative. I think it's both proactive. And then at the same time, making sure the punishment for underage is so high that scares the crap out of companies.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
If you're saying revenge porn and stuff like that, of course.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
No, to me it's underage dad, but rape is rape across the board. It doesn't matter how old you are, young, old. Human trafficking is human trafficking. For anybody that's doing any of that, that to me is the highest level. underage when some of these guys are doing that to make the money.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Well, let me give this data. Let me give this data. Let me give this data because you just said that. I was going to wrap up, but I'll give you this data. So you ready? So as of 2023, global U.S. sex and trafficking statistics, approximately 49.6 million individuals are estimated to be in modern slavery worldwide, encompassing forced labor and sex trafficking, of which...
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
12 million are children, of which 54% of those are women, girls, in modern slavery. It's a $150 billion a year industry. And then it breaks down to, say, in America, the states, number one is California, number two is Texas, number three is Florida. Each state I've lived in a minimum of four years. But as you go a little bit deeper, you see it's also happening on adults.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
The percentage of what's going on with adults, because typically you think about human trafficking, you think underage. There's a lot that's above 18 years old that this is happening to as well. This is a real issue. I would be very curious to know whether it's Pam Mundy, Trump, any of those guys. I think Musk is not one that's a fan of this at all. Neither is Vivek, neither is Trump.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
It monetizes child rape, revenge pornography, spy cam videos of women showering, racist and misogynist content, footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags, a search for girls under 18, no space, or 14YO, no space. leads in each case to more than 100,000 videos. Most aren't of children assaulted, but too many are.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
It would be very interesting to see how the current administration attacks this issue That is an epidemic that very few people have the courage to talk about. And even when we do these types of podcasts, right, people say, they'll message me, Pat, get off this topic. It's painful to watch. You got to watch it. It's real. But go back to the business stuff and all this other stuff.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Look, I'm doing it because I want parents to be aware that this is out there and we have to get more educated.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
No, for sure. Again, share this with everybody and folks. Click on the link below, go order the book, take down, and support Layla. Because, you know, Layla's got her own set of things that she has to deal with. Family, you talked about, you know, kids and all the things that you're doing. To dedicate your time to something like this,
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
and get to the bottom of it and having some powerful people that are coming after you and targeting you, it's not easy to do. So if you want to support her, please go order a book that just came out a few months ago, Support Takedown, Inside the Fight to Shut Down Pornhub for Child Abuse, Rape, and Sex Trafficking.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Leila, I'm glad I responded, and I'm glad you reached out for us to sit down and have this conversation. You're amazing. Keep at it.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Anytime. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye, bye-bye. You're going to think I'm crazy when I tell you this, but the last 13 and a half years, I've been working on my first fiction book to write ever. Fiction book to write.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
And while I finished this book a year ago, I got the strangest phone call about one of the characters in a book where the guy wanted to meet with me and he read the book and afterwards was like, wait a minute, am I the villain in the book? This is a story about a character named Asher who is half Armenian, half Assyrian, whose father was involved
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
in the Iranian revolution linked to Savak working with the Shah that they escape and he gets recruited to a secret society. Well, when you go to the secret society, it's been around for a couple thousand years, they've developed some of the craziest leaders of all time and they test you. There's unique tests that they have at the society where they test to see your emotional mental toughness.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
to CEO of MasterCard or Visa, who was a former colleague that they played tennis together, saying, hey, did you know about this? And then all of a sudden, those guys took action. The amount of things that she shared with me and said, Pat, Solomon lied to you. This is her words. He lied to you when he said X, Y, Z. I want you to see this for yourself.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
One of the tests that they have is very rigorous. It's purely mental. Of course, there's a physical one, but one is mental and emotional. If you're Armenian, if you're Syrian, if you're Persian, this is a book you're gonna be reading and saying, holy moly, this is the kind of stuff you talk about in here? Yes. If you're somebody that's fascinated by history, this is a book for you.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Characters, there's a technology that this society, secret society builds, where you go into a vault, I won't spoil it for you, when you go down, They have a technology where you get to sit down and watch and have a three, four hour conversation with Tupac. You can set up a debate between Karl Marx and Ayn Rand. Karl Marx is in the book who wrote Communist Manifesto.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Ayn Rand who wrote Atlas Shrugged is in the book. Marilyn Monroe explains the concept of seduction and sex in the book. When you read the book, It's about development of the next leaders in the world and how they do it and how they've been doing it for many years. And it's also about how to prevent the end of civilization and how this organization goes about doing it.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
So I've never written a parenting book before, but if I ever wrote a parenting book, this is the closest thing to it because it's all mindset. A lot of crazy stories. Again, 13 and a half years. Trust me, I told myself I will not publish this book. until I sell my insurance company and I'm fully disconnected from it, where it's no longer my responsibility 100%.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
After a 15-year-old girl went missing in Florida, her mother found her on Pornhub and 58 sex videos, sexual assaults on a 14-year-old California girl were posted on Pornhub and were reported to authorities. I can go on and on and on reading this entire article. It's very disturbing. When this came out,
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
When you read this, if you're a creative person, if you like fiction books, if you... enjoyed Atlas Shrugged or if you enjoy Divergent, if you like books like that, I think you can enjoy reading this book. It's the creative side. Business books is very easy. Here's how you do it. Here's how this works. This is very creative.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
If you haven't placed your order yet, now you can order it on Simon & Schuster, Amazon. I'm going to put the link up below somewhere here, maybe even in my profile. Go order the book. and read it. I sincerely, I've never written a book where I can't wait to read your reviews to see what you think about this book. So I'm going on this wild journey and we have some plans with this book here.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Uh, if you support the things that I work on, I would appreciate you going to reading the book, order the book on Amazon and then post a review.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
There's a story that came out on how Pornhub reacted to this, which if I'm not mistaken, they took down 10 million videos.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
At the time it was 80%, the one that I read. Yes, correct. That they take down. So let's go with that. Let's continue with that. So 56 million to 5.2 million. So their argument may be Solomon Friedman, they bought it in March of 2023. Okay. So when I'm asking them, when you bought the company, there was a part when I said, okay, you bought the company.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Of the things that you said the company has changed, oh, we no longer do that, oh, we no longer do this, oh, we no longer do that, great. How many of the old executives and management team that was there when this was happening are no longer there, that you came in, you cleaned house, you fired them, and they're still there? What do you know about the old executive team versus the new one?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Back in the day, so was MindGeek prior to ethical...
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Mansef, Manwin, MindGeek.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
If you know me as a family guy, I got four kids. Not a fan of this stuff that's out there, especially underage stuff and anything having to do with human trafficking. Many times when we think about child trafficking, we forget the fact that there's human trafficking above 18 years old or revenge porn, a lot of that stuff that's going on right now as well.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Fabian Thillman? Fabian, exactly. Okay, please continue. I'll follow. Man Wynn.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
KY Jelly will not advertise on porn.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
When you say that, what is the pattern? The pattern is who the buyers are or the pattern is the new people come in and they're turned on by how much traffic these guys are getting and they try to clean it up and nobody can. What is the pattern?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Why were they? Just because when a new company... Well, because of everything.
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
What is the background with Ferris, Antone, and David Tassillo?
PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Layla broken down in ways that I had no idea. This is what she does 24-7 following these stories, even to the point that the previous owner of Pornhub that ended up having tax issues reached out to her to tell her issues that's really going on on Pornhub.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Although there are many, many, you know, it's increasing in the number of girls.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
No, I don't know that exact proportion. I do know it's still boys primarily that are primarily being exposed, but girls as well are consuming this kind of content at very young ages as well.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Sure, absolutely. Well, you know, they're distributing, like I said, criminal content. These are crime scenes. These are not consenting adults that I'm talking about. That's not The focus of my work is underage victims, victims of rape, sex trafficking, non-consensual and misused abuse that are proliferating on these sites. They have made intentional policy decisions.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Let's just take MindGeek and PornHub. I want to give you some of that factual background so you can understand, first of all, the complicity of this company, but then we can zoom back from PornHub to speak about the industry of user-generated porn as a whole and how We can also hold all of these companies accountable and not just Pornhub.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
But I've gone on a journey of discovery over the last four years, kind of like peeling back the onion layers of this corporation and understanding how it works and what I call the deep complicity of Pornhub. I'll give you an example. Pornhub owns most of the world's most popular tube sites. I told you how many videos are uploaded to Pornhub every year.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
They made a decision to only hire 30 moderators at their office in Cyprus to be reviewing this content, 10 moderators working at a time. They were reprimanded if they viewed less than 700 videos. per eight-hour shift. Some of them were watching up to 2,000 videos per eight-hour shift, just clicking through those videos with the sound off. All the while, they knew they weren't verifying ID or age.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
And this was a guessing game. They were playing Russian roulette with real people's lives, with victims' lives. And that wasn't just for Pornhub. So that was all of the PornTube sites. They had 10. moderating. Compare that to Facebook's 15,000. They still don't have enough moderators even at Facebook. But make that comparison. That was an intentional decision.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
And those moderators, I spoke to them for dozens of hours. I consider some of them friends at this point because we've spent so much time together discussing how this worked. And they said that their job was more to allow as much content to go through as possible. So Content is king for the porn tube sites.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
They have to have massive amounts of content in order to drive those Google searches, in order to drive the traffic and sell the advertising.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Well, it's the advertising. So mostly, you know, they're making money off of premium subscriptions so that you could buy, you know, so you can pay $9.99 or $19.99 a month and you can watch porn or you can watch the real rape ad-free. They were selling pay-to-download content, which was a small portion of the content on Pornhub.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
But there's many examples of victims even in that pay-to-download content. There was a 12-year-old boy in Alabama, and he was drugged, and he was overpowered, and he was raped in 23 videos by a man named Rocky Shea Franklin. and that was pay to download content where he entered into a profit-sharing relationship with Pornhub to split that 35%, 65% for Rocky, 35% for Pornhub.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
They were selling those videos Police reached out multiple times to Pornhub demanding those videos be removed, and they were ignored. They stayed on the site for seven months, hundreds of thousands of views. They put an intentional download button on every single piece of content on Pornhub. Again, an intentional policy decision to place that.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
And that's not like a YouTube download where you can just access it when you're off of the internet. This was a possession of that content. It was a transfer from 1,700 servers that Pornhub has. a transfer of that illegal criminal content onto the devices of potentially 5 million users an hour so that that child's trauma could then be immortalized.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
And these victims, they call it the immortalization of their trauma, where they say, you know, it was one thing when I was raped, but to have that filmed and then uploaded, monetized for profit and pleasure and globally distributed so that it will be downloaded and uploaded for the rest of my life.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Yeah, for victims, exactly. And it's a sadistic game of whack-a-mole for them where they would beg Pornhub to get these videos down. I mean, the testimony of so many of these victims was they would beg for these videos. I saw the emails, the begging emails, and they would be hassled by Pornhub. They would make them prove, this is the testimony of these victims.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
They would have to prove that they were underage or they would have to prove that they were victims. in order to get a video down if they even had an answer at all. Because we also have uncovered that Pornhub had 1,800 employees, okay? They're making hundreds of millions of dollars a year. They employed one person five days a week
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
to be reviewing videos flagged by users for violating terms of service, including child sexual abuse, rape, and trafficking. And they had a policy where you had to flag a video 15 times in order for it to be put in queue for review, and they had a backlog of 706,000 flagged videos. And that means a victim could flag their video 15 times. It wouldn't even have been put in line for review.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
These are those intentional policy decisions that I'm talking about. And so these victims, they would beg for them to come down. They would be hassled. But even if they did get it down, it would just get re-uploaded again and again and again and again. And at some point, they just give up. Some of them become suicidal. We know now that this is actually a life and death issue for victims.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
The stakes are so high. Of course. Because, you know, surveys are showing that 50% of these victims of this kind of distribution of these non-consensual sexual images, child sexual abuse, they have suicidal ideations. Many of them consider suicide. Some of them actually attempt it. Many of them do. And that's what happens to these victims. And so, I mean, it's just...
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Tragic what's allowed to happen and intentionally done and going to holding them accountable. We can hold them accountable. We are holding them accountable thanks to the help of many people. We're not there yet, but Pornhub was forced to take down 91% of their content. From when this began to today, we now have numbers.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
I just kind of got new numbers yesterday that they have been forced to take down 91% of that website. They went from 56%. million pieces of content down to 5.2 million. They've lost Visa, MasterCard, and Discover, have cut them off completely after a huge multi-year battle for that to happen.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
So the credit card companies were the ones that were enabling them to monetize this illegal content, including trafficking and child sexual abuse, and they were getting a cut of each transaction.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Well, it was the doing of many people who've joined together. I mean, we've had 600 organizations participate in what's called trafficking hub movement. Lawyers, journalists, most of all survivors who've come forward to courageously tell their stories.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Well, it was a huge battle. I mean, some of these conversations, behind the scenes conversations with the credit card executives are verbatim recounted in my book, Takedown. And you can kind of go on that journey of having to
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
battle with them to show them evidence after evidence after evidence that they were actually, in the words of a federal judge, so Visa is currently being sued by these survivors for their relationship with Pornhub. A federal judge in California, Cormac Carmi, he said, Visa gave Pornhub the very tool through which to complete the crime of knowingly benefiting from child trafficking.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Finally, the New York Times did an explosive article at the end of 2020 two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Nicholas Kristof, that kind of sent shockwaves around the world. The pressure was on, and they actually ended up announcing they were cutting ties with Pornhub at that point.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
But we found out that they actually snuck back two weeks later to the advertising arm behind the scenes to continue monetizing this content with Pornhub, and it was another two-year battle to finally get them to cut off Pornhub once and for all. And that's kind of how it happened. Thanks to lawsuits, thanks to public pressure. And Bill Ackman actually was a huge help.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
I mean, he knew the CEO of MasterCard and he, you know, was moved by that article in the New York Times. And he actually contacted Ajay Banga and said, you need to do the right thing here. And he helped, you know, at that point all the way for the next two years. You know, he actually got him and I onto Squawk Box on CNBC to call out Al Kelly by name.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
And, you know, say, why are you—you have to stop and actually— What was the rationale from Visa and the credit card companies for participating in this? Well, they kind of had this attitude of, we're very, very concerned. Yeah. You know, we're—we hate trafficking as much as you do. Blah, blah, blah.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
But, you know, it was just always kind of an excuse. Well, you know, we'll— we'll just keep sending us more information, keep sending us more information. We're very concerned, keep sending us more information. And Visa actually sent a letter that said they weren't gonna do anything because they're not in the business of policing legal and consensual material.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
When they had evidence that this was not legal and consensual material, that so much of it, the site was actually infested with videos of real sexual crime and they were earning a cut of each of those videos and they're currently being sued by dozens of child victims. in lawsuits in California, and they lost their motion to dismiss. They said, we're gonna dismiss this case.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Sure, absolutely. Well, I've been combating the injustice of sex trafficking now for the last 18 years, and about A little over 10 years ago, I began investigating the intersection between the big porn industry and sex trafficking and other forms of criminal sexual abuse like child sexual exploitation. And there is a big porn industry, just like there's big tobacco, there's big pharma.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
We are not responsible here. They lost their motion to dismiss. And that was in 2022. That was the moment that really helped tip the scale. So it was a combination of Visa losing their motion to dismiss,
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
You know, Bill Ackman coming in and helping us put on the pressure, you know, from a public pressure perspective, calling out the CEO like that, combined with the litigation, I think was the combination that finally forced Visa to announce that they were going to cut off Pornhub once and for all and then MasterCard and Discover.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Cryptocurrency and bank wires is kind of how they're currently monetizing that content, but holding them accountable. That's one way. Victims are suing. So courageous victims are suing almost 300 victims in 25 lawsuits across the US, Canada, and the UK. Multiple are class action lawsuits on behalf of tens of thousands of child victims. So they're holding them accountable that way. But
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
This is all for profit, especially when you consider it at a corporate level. These are just calculations, risk benefit. And the only way that we're gonna stop this across the internet is to make the risk too high. It's to increase the risk sufficiently and eliminate the profitability.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Well, yes. Okay, let's name them. Well, first of all, I would just say it's not just my organization. I want to say that again. So the secret shareholder Pornhub was exposed because the former owner of Pornhub actually came forward to me to help
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Well, he had ulterior motives. At first, he approached to say he wanted to help. He was called the Zuckerberg of porn, so he's the one that kind of put Pornhub on the map almost a decade or more ago. And he kind of exploded this idea of free porn onto the global scene, and he made Pornhub famous.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
this kind of household brand where people are joking about it on Saturday Night Live and wearing their apparel proudly in public. They had pop-up shops in New York Fashion Week and Doing these campaigns around the world, they spent millions of dollars promoting this image of themselves as this mainstream, legit brand.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
They had an arm of the company called Pornhub Cares, where they would do these philanthropic efforts to save the bees and save the oceans and donate to breast cancer research and All of these things that they would do and they would make massive PR campaigns. So he was kind of behind that. But he came forward and he revealed that the man he sold the company to, he said his name is Bernd Bergmaier.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
And he was found. He was an Austrian. He was living in half-time in London, half-time in Hong Kong. And so we found out his name. But then a journalist from the U.K. went on this hunt for the porn king. And he found him. And now he's being sued personally. So it's not just the company that's being sued.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
There's big porn, and it's dominated by one company primarily. It's a Canadian company, isn't it? Well, their headquarters is in Canada, in Montreal, actually. And this company is called, or was called until last year, MindGeek. And now we named themselves ILO in an attempt to rebrand. But they own a virtual monopoly on the global porn industry. Their most popular porn site is Pornhub.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
And he's personally being sued. The CEO and the COO, who are also minority shareholders, are also personally being sued because they've been unmasked. And that was a part of this journey.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
But they should be. And not just in the U.S. Like here in Canada. Right. Section 631.1 of the Criminal Code in Canada makes it illegal to transmit, possess, advertise child pornography, child sexual abuse material. An aggravating factor in that is if it's monetized, if it's for profit. I mean, this carries serious sentences. And there is no question. Yeah, but it's not being enforced.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
It's not being enforced. And that's the question, is why? Why? Why can't we enforce this?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
It's not going to come voluntarily. And I guess that's a lesson that we kind of learned over the last four years, battling the credit card companies, even what's happened with Pornhub and having to take down the content they've had to take down and whatnot. It's not going to come.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
And most people would have heard that name before because You know, when in 2020, when this movement to hold Pornhub accountable for globally distributing and monetizing countless videos of child sexual abuse, rape, sex trafficking, and other forms of non-consensual violence. criminal image-based sexual abuse.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Well, that's where the solution is. You actually, I think, just nailed it on the head, because how are we going to make sure this doesn't happen again? And it's verification. That's exactly where it's removing the anonymity from those who are uploading, and it's also removing that from those who are in the videos.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
For porn, if you're going, I'm not talking about talking on the internet.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
We're talking about uploading real sex videos. Yeah. How would you verify?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
We have companies, one of them is called Yoti. We have the technology, Yoti, for example. We have the technology readily available to be able to verify an ID, match it with a face, do a biometric scan. I mean, they're already doing it. And then delete that information immediately once they're age verified, right? And so ID verified, age verified.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
And that also takes care of some of the consent issue because if you're presenting an ID, if you're ID and you're going through that process of putting your face on the camera and doing a biometric scan where you're matching your ID, right?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
When this began in 2020, Pornhub was the largest and most popular porn site in the world. They had, at the height of 2020 and December, this was kind of the height of this website, they had 170 million visits per day. They had 62 billion visits to that site that year. And they had enough videos being uploaded, 6.8 million videos uploaded to the site.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
The people who upload and every single individual. This is not a novel idea. We've had a law called USC 2257 in the United States since 1988.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
And that is because we understood, anybody with common sense, anybody with half a brain understands that if you don't verify the age of those who are in the videos, the industry will be awash with videos of criminal content, of children, of teens, of underage teens.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
And this is also, so we've had this since 1988, USC 2257, and the traditional brick and mortar porn industry has complied with this requirement for many. It's a criminal offense enforceable by the Department of Justice not to do this for every single individual in every single studio-produced pornographic video.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
For some reason, with the advent of the internet and this idea of user-generated pornography, It has not translated. So what we need to do is take that law and apply it now to this digital age.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
They're just not being enforced. They're not being enforced because the incentive of these companies is to not want to put any restrictions on, they don't want friction in uploading because they're going to get less content. Less content means less Google searches.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Well, yes, but they're heavily resistant, and that's why it has to be government legislation that requires that.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
I mean, it's been challenging, for sure. Yeah, I bet. It's been challenging. Yeah, it's been difficult for myself and my family. So why do you do it? It's pain that has a purpose. It's pain and discomfort and all of those things in the midst of seeing progress that makes it totally... Worth it.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Sex trafficking. Sex trafficking.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Yeah, so, yeah, it was... let's see in 2006 i was influenced by my father so you're 26 at that point about 25 26 is that right do the math in 41 yeah that's 15 so i was at a time when i was kind of searching for my vocation um my dad was a huge influence on me just from a very young age i mean he was a man that um He was just so attuned to suffering. He cared about... What did your dad do?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
He was a vascular and general surgeon. So he grew up in Jordan and Amman, and he... came to the United States. He went to England, India, and then here, and he became a surgeon. But, you know, he was not the kind of man that would watch entertainment. Like, you just don't see that with my father. He was watching the History Channel. He was watching the news.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
He was, you know, very focused on human rights issues, and that's how we bonded most when I was young, is to kind of discuss these things. And so he kind of instilled that in me and my sisters from a young age, and I kind of went off... In search of, you know, many different things, I kind of went off, I guess you'd say, went off track in my life for a while, but came back around to this.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Well, you know, I thought that I wanted to pursue kind of very selfish ambitions. I kind of got involved in the Hollywood scene for a while.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
I kind of got to a real low point. I thought I wanted to be an entertainment contract attorney, drive a BMW from Malibu to Hollywood every day and, you know, live this glamorous, star-studded life was kind of, this dream I had for a few years. And I got involved in that scene, and I ended up finding it very hollow.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
I, you know, was partying, and I mean, I even found myself at the Playboy Mansion, I mean, with Bill Maher and Andy Dick, and Hugh Hefner's birthday party, and different, you know, parties in Hollywood.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
That would take 169 years to watch if you put those videos back to back. So researchers in 2020 named Pornhub the third most influential tech company on global society, just behind Facebook and Google. And it was the fifth most, according to the CEO of Pornhub. In December of 2020, it was the fifth most trafficked website in the world. Not just porn site, website.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
I mean, at the time, it was... Honestly, at the time, I thought it was cool. Like, I thought it was... and I didn't think much of it. How old were you? Gosh, I think I was, was it 19, maybe 20, 21? Oh yeah, so pretty young. Yeah.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
So I kind of hit a real low point in my life. Why? Kind of a crash and burn.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Yeah. Well, I kind of came to The end of myself, I was partying and, you know, I was even, you know, doing drugs. I ended up being groped and found myself, you know, on the floor of a room, a dirty carpet that smelled like vomit.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Not really knowing even what happened the night before.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
And it was just like I hit a real low point in my life.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Yeah. At the same time, I suffered a devastating romantic heartbreak. I got in a bad car accident. It was kind of like all of these things were happening at once, and I just kind of hit that low breaking point in my life. And at that time, I was searching. I was very depressed.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
I mean, it was kind of around the same time in my life. Still pretty young. Yeah, these early 20s, right? Yeah, okay. And you were in L.A.? I grew up in Southern California, so I was about an hour and a half from L.A., so I would drive to L.A. and come back. And I hit, yeah, a rock bottom, right? And it was at that point that I was crying one night. I had drawn a picture of how I felt.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
I'll describe it to you. But I was at a point where I had to either take sleeping pills or narcotics to numb the pain. And I just felt very depressed. And I was totally lost and not knowing where or what I was going to do with my life. And I drew a picture that night. It was a flower in a deep pit. And there was rain that was pouring down and there was water that was filling up the pit.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
And it was going to threaten to drown the flower. And at that moment, I felt inspired to grab my childhood Bible from the dresser there that was next to my bed. I opened it up and the first thing I read was a description of my picture. Oh, yeah. And it was a psalm.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
And I can't remember the exact words of the psalm right now, but it was describing, it was like, do not let the floodwaters overwhelm me or the deep waters of the piss swallow me up. And it was an actual description of the picture that I just drew.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Threatening to drown the flower, yeah.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Yes, meaning visits.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Yeah, and then I read this verse that was a description.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Yeah, I mean, I grew up in my, you know, again, the example of my father, you know, he's a, I grew up in a Christian home where, you know, this was kind of in my background. I had, you know, definitely gone away from that for a time, but it was kind of, that was my impulse was to do that. And when I read that, I felt this, you know, overwhelming sense of there's someone here, there's, there's,
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
And so this is a massive website, but it's one of many websites. So MindGeek owns, they estimate, about 80% of the world's most popular porn sites and brands, including most of the world's most popular tube sites. And to understand this— Tube sites. Tube sites. So these are the YouTubes of porn.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Something bigger than me that's right here in my darkest moment with me that knows what's happening.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
It's so much better where I'm at today because, you know, after that moment, I began to read more. I began to, I mean, there was one book that was really influential in my life called Inspiration by Dr. Wayne Dyer.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
It really opened my eyes. It It helped me kind of develop spiritually. I began to understand where true happiness was going to come from. Yeah.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
That it was in service. It stopped looking inward with your selfish ambitions and all of those things that you want to do.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
So Pornhub is the YouTube of porn, meaning this is user-generated content where anybody can become a pornographer. If you have an iPhone, if you have a camera in the back of a car, in a hotel room, in a park, wherever, you can film a sex act and you can upload it to YouTube. the porn tube sites, Pornhub being the most popular.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
I think it's when you're kind of articulating what I haven't articulated about that moment in my life and that
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
kind of season of time but yeah i realized that when did you get married kind of oriented uh when i was let's see uh 27 i believe i was 27 and how many children do you have i have two i have a son and a daughter a four-year-old and a seven-year-old right that makes you smile yes that's good yeah they are just the best thing i've ever done in my life i mean um
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
He had a huge influence on my life.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
No, I had no idea.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
I was so blessed. I mean, he was just, and he passed suddenly in 2014. But, you know, it was him who, you know, it was during this season of time when I was searching and I was realizing that where I was going to find real happiness in life and purpose was to start looking outward and seeking to where I can invest myself, right? And it was at this time when my dad showed me a documentary.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
He called me into the living room and showed me a documentary that he was watching about child sex trafficking in Calcutta, India. And I was so horrified by what I saw. I was so impacted by what I saw that I began to research and I began to investigate this particular crime. It wasn't that many people were talking about it at the time.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
It's a really good question. Why did that particularly arrest my attention? I think it was a combination of kind of the innocence. It was about child sex trafficking and how I felt like it was almost the...
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
...thing that you could do.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
That's the worst possible crime. I think it was a combination of understanding the innocence and then the the devastation of that innocence through this particular means of something that I didn't know existed, right? Was this modern day slavery, right? We thought this was gone and it was at a time, most people are familiar with this now, right?
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
And human trafficking, most people know this, but at that time it was not very common to speak about. And so it was shocking, but it was the combination of the innocence. And then it was this, you know, I, It was this combination of horror at what was going on, and I felt drawn to investigate it, to learn. I began reading, you know, a book by Kevin Bell.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
So what happened was, I had been investigating this, my antennas were up, I was paying attention to this intersection between the pornography industry, sex trafficking, and child sexual abuse. At the end of 2019, I began to hear some stories in the media that were very concerning, that really arrested my attention.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
I mean, I kind of came into it. I was an acrobat when I was, you know, from the time I was eight years old. And I was an accomplished acrobat. And I had actually was accepted to Cirque du Soleil in Montreal. My dad wouldn't let me join the circus. Surprise, surprise. But I had gotten involved with a local acrobatic group. And part of the group was this friend that I made that was a pole dancer.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
So she was an amazing acrobat. She was amazing at the ribbon. And she invited me to jump on the trampoline in Jimmy Kimmel's Man Show. So I... went for a few hundred dollars and I started to jump on the trampoline in a bikini for a few hundred dollars on Jimmy Kimmel's band show and that's kind of where I kind of just started to meet different people and ended up
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Well, I mean, for an acrobat at the time, Cirque du Soleil was kind of like the Olympics. Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, they actually didn't have acrobatics in the Olympics at the time. So, like, the best thing you could do as an acrobat was to try out for and get accepted to Cirque du Soleil. Yeah, right.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
It is. It's beautiful. Yeah, yeah, definitely. So, anyway, that was the trajectory into Hollywood. Right, right. Yeah, and so that's exactly how it happened.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
There was also at the same time an investigation done by the London Sunday Times that really caught my attention. And they found dozens of videos, illegal videos, dozens of illegal videos on the site within minutes, even children as young as three years old.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Good questions. I don't think the law needs to be altered. I think it's sufficient with regard to child exploitation. We have very clear laws prohibiting that. We need to enforce that law. We even have a very powerful, underutilized sex trafficking statutes in the United States and Canada that need to be enforced. In the case of Pornhub and MindGeek, you know,
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
in Canada, in the United States, it's illegal to knowingly benefit from a sex trafficking venture. This is a sex trafficking venture. They need to be criminally held accountable.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Yes. And as far as new laws to address this, I mean, we have issues with non-consensual image-based abuse. So, you know, revenge porn laws, you know, those could be strengthened, I think. You know, we now have the emergence of AI now and user, you know, sorry, you know… pornography that is AI-generated.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
That could include children or deepfakes where you're superimposing somebody's face onto a pornographic image. But these, I think, in large part, could still be solved by the same solution of mandatory third-party age and consent verification for every single individual and every single user-generated pornography
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
image or video on every website that per terms of service enables the distribution of user-generated porn. If we did that, we could make a huge dent in solving this problem across the internet, making the internet a safer place. But it not only has to come from the government, because these are international corporations. So if you have this in Canada, well, they're also in the United States.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
They're all over the world. So yeah, we need that. But Here's the thing.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
If we get the financial institutions to implement this policy, just like they have anti-money laundering policy, they need to have anti-online sexual exploitation policy, where Visa and MasterCard and PayPal and all of these financial corporations say, we do not do business with websites that distribute per terms of service, user-generated porn that don't verify the agent consent policy.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
They had noted that they had found that there was over 100 instances that were cited in this particular investigation of category A level child sexual abuse. So category A level is not just children playing in a bathtub as bad as that would be on a porn site. But these are sadistic acts of harm to children meant to induce terror and pain. And I was just thinking about these cases.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
of every individual and every single video. And when they do that, it takes place instantly. It takes place globally. And these companies are highly motivated to comply because at the end of the day, every decision they make is driven by what will make us the most money. If they thought they were going to lose Visa and MasterCard, they're going to jump through hoops.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
It was because Visa and MasterCard disengaged from Pornhub that they deleted 91%. They weren't going to do that for any other reason, but fearful and terrified that they lost the credit card companies and wanting to do anything.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
I mean, this was the worst thing that they could have done based on their business model because it's the content that was driving traffic that was enabling them to sell almost five billion ad impressions on Pornhub every day. the worst thing they could do was delete content. They deleted 91 percent of the site because they were afraid of permanently losing the credit card companies.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
So, when the credit card companies, the financial institutions, the payment processors implement that policy, we will see a transformation of this issue across the globe on all websites that distribute this content for profit and monetize it in any way.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Well, specifically, I mean, they can follow what's going on. What's your handle on Twitter? Lila McElwain.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
L-A-I-L-A-M-I-C-K-E-L-W-A-I-T. And I want to thank you, Dr. Peterson, because you have been an important part of the story, whether you realize it or not. that when somebody on social media shares a post, it may feel like a minor thing to do, or maybe it feel like an insignificant thing to do. But that is so precious to me, and I've seen the impact of that.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
When you have shared my posts, some of those posts have gone viral. In one season, we had like 100 million views It was in large part where I was sharing victim stories. I was doing this truth campaign and you were sharing them. Yes, it was getting more awareness, but also victims were coming forward who are now pursuing litigation.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Whistleblowers from the company came forward with such important information that's now enabling us to hold them accountable. So there's real tangible impact. So as minors, it may seem for people to just like and share something. Like that's meaningful. You can sign the petition. People can sign the petition. Join 2.3 million other people from every country in the world.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
traffickinghubpetition.com. And this petition has been so powerful. It has generated media. It has generated pressure. And they can join. People are signing and sharing this petition every single day. They can follow other amazing organizations like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. They can read the book, Takedown.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Takedown is the most comprehensive indictment of this company ever. in existence currently. I mean, it is packed full of evidence. When they read that, it's a story.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
You go on a journey with me from that night in 2020, and it's told in first person, present tense, and you go with me on this journey of discovery where you meet victims, you meet the whistleblowers, you uncover the layers of complicity. And when you end up at the end of this book, my hope is that you will feel as passionately about this as I do and
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
And so you will be informed, you'll be activated, you'll be inspired. 100% of all proceeds from the sale of that book go to support the cause, go directly to the Justice Defense Fund. You can join Team Takedown. So if you go to takedownbook.com, you can join Team Takedown. And what that means is it's a group of individuals who are committing to
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
yes, we're going to take down Pornhub once and for all. We're going to hold this company accountable together, but we're going to work to take down and prevent illegal content across the internet. And so you can sign up to join Team Takedown there and Those are some actual steps.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
And I was up late one night. taking care of my very fussy crying baby. And I was thinking about the question that was haunting me at the time. My dad was really wise and he said, assumption is the mother of all screw ups. We're assuming that this is all vetted content, but I had that question haunting me. And so I had an idea.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
I said, I'm gonna test the upload system and see what it takes for myself to upload content to this site. And when I did that, I put my baby to bed, took out my laptop and my phone and tested the upload system. And I found out what millions of people already knew in under 10 minutes, That video was live on the site. It was a video of the rug and the keyboard.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
And at that moment, everything made sense. And I realized that the site was infested with videos of real sexual crime and that Pornhub was not a porn site. It was actually a crime scene. And that's kind of how... Is there a difference? There is legal material. I mean, legal... Pornography is legal under the laws of the United States of Canada.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
But when it's a child or when it's a non-consenting adult or when it's even filmed consensually and uploaded non-consensually, there's a spectrum of abuse. This was the business model. They were selling 4.6 billion ad impressions on Pornhub every day. And that was how they were generating their traffic.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Yeah. I mean, hundreds of millions of dollars a year is generated for MindGeek, ILO. How do you spell ILO? A-Y-L-O.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
That's the rebrand. Right. And so intentional decision. And I mean, over the course of the last four years, you know, as this kind of started to go viral on social media, a petition that I started in early 2020 to shut down Pornhub and hold its executives accountable. And today we have two point three million people. Signatures from every country in the world.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
And as this was spreading, victims were coming forward and whistleblowers and insiders from the company were coming forward. And they taught me not just how this content was getting uploaded, but why it was getting uploaded. And again, it's the business model of free user-generated porn. Yeah.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Okay, so now... But we can hold those who are distributing it accountable.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
Can we? Yes, we absolutely can. Who are these people? Well, first I want to kind of just, you know, basically acknowledge what you just said is absolutely true, is that today, on these free porn tube sites, Again, free. There wasn't even an RU18 click-through button at the beginning of 2020 where any seven-year-old could just click right through.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
End up on the homepage of Pornhub or Xvideos for free. And what they're seeing on the homepage is not your father's Playboy, right? It's not the images that you were describing. Yeah. It is, you know, there was a study done that was published in the British Journal of Criminology, and they analyzed the homepages of these sites.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
And when you get onto Pornhub, there's about 50 videos that you will see that they, if you scroll over, they autoplay. And these are these homemade, user-generated videos. And they found that one in eight of those videos was displaying sexual violence. You know, videos that would include non-consent, incest. And I think that is just so alarming that that is the reality that we're living in today.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
I thought you were going to say per year or something. Per day.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Exactly. That was how they were making most of their money on free porn. So free porn is not free. Yes, it's heavily monetized. It has a high human cost, clearly. But 20% of that would be pay-to-download content where you could enter into this profit-sharing relationship with Pornhub where you could put the content behind a paywall. You have to pay to download that content.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And in one horrific case, there was a 12-year-old boy from Alabama and he was drugged and he was overpowered and he was raped by a man named Rocky Shea Franklin who had one of those profit-sharing pay-to-download relationships with Pornhub. And he filmed the assaults and he uploaded 23 of those videos to Pornhub. with titles indicating that they were abused.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And this is important when we talk about complicity, because Pornhub in its defense made a huge mistake.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They had 10 people working per eight-hour shift, but they do say, we had somebody viewing, manually proving every single video before it went live on the site. That's not true. But if it was true... That means that they were approving videos with a 12-year-old drug boy with titles such as Uncle Secret, Young Ass is Best, things that would clearly say this is a child.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And then once it was discovered, he was a verified uploader in this pay-to-download relationship. And then police found out they reached out multiple times to Pornhub demanding the videos come down. They were ignored multiple times. It stayed up for seven months, getting hundreds of thousands of views.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
All monetized. So he was arrested and now he's sentenced to 40 years in prison and the boy is suing Pornhub.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Oh, this poor kid. Well, originally he stood with his mom, and then he became old enough to just do it on his own.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
When they say, we viewed and approved, that means that complicity— was even deeper if they're trying to say that. Why would they say that?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
We know it wasn't true because moderators through the course of this came forward to me and to investigators and to the attorneys and all of that and produced documents and schedules showing that they had 10 or under moderators per shift working not only on Pornhub because Pornhub was owned by a parent company. MindGeek. MindGeek, who had...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
earned virtually a monopoly on the mainstream, most popular global porn sites and industry.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So with a $362 million loan from Colbeck Capital, the previous owner of Pornhub rolled up the industry buying most of the most popular porn sites and brands and pay sites and tube sites. Pornhub was the flagship site. So it had Pornhub in its sister site. So it would be YouPorn, TubeAid, GayTube, Extreme Tomb, on and on.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And these moderators were not just moderating the millions of videos on Pornhub. They were in charge of all... the porn tube site.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Exactly. They were reprimanded if they were watching less than 700 per eight hour shift videos, videos, just skipping through them. They were incentivized to be just, they put it this way. Our job was to allow as much content to go through as possible because the free user generated business model porn relies on massive amounts of content to
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
to be picked up in the Google search results, to drive massive amounts of traffic to the site to sell those 4.6 billion ad impressions. They were incentivized to just get as much through. Some of them were watching the more experienced ones, were watching even up to 2,000 videos per eight-hour shift just clicking through.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
It was. It really was. And one of the moderators, and he gave me permission to share this, was especially hard for him because he was sexually abused as a child himself. And so it was especially traumatizing for him. And I think that was one of the reasons why, you know, when he heard the stories about what was happening on Pornhub, he wanted to come forward. and reveal what he knew.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah. It was ridiculous because when I discovered all this, I started the hashtag trafficking hub. Just to reiterate what we just said about trafficking, the reason why I did that was because any underage victim and anyone forced fraud or coercion on the site is a victim of trafficking per our statutes because these are heavily monetized videos.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So they're using the trafficking statutes now to sue. They can be held criminally responsible for all of that. Some people might say, well, how is that trafficking? It's because it was monetized. Yes.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Thank you. Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
I agree with you a thousand percent. And one of the senior employees said Google is where Pornhub lives or dies. Of course.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Exactly. And Google has the power to suppress. So they are just not – innocent bystanders and all this because Nick Kristof, when he did his article, Children of Pornhub, yeah, he's the two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist from the New York Times that took this. He heard about this. Just to give people a recap of what happened. So the Trafficking Hub campaign went viral.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
I started a petition. I wrote an op-ed about this, an essay. got a lot of traction. The petition went viral, 2.3 million signatures today from every country in the world. Lots of media articles were written about this. And then Nick Kristof did this huge investigation. One of the things that he pointed out was Google's power over all of this. And I look at this and I see there are enablers.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah. I mean, it wasn't something that 10 years ago I thought in 2025, this is what I'm going to be doing. But at the same time, I had been preparing for it my whole life. So in the context of over 15 years in the fight against sex trafficking, I was paying attention to the headlines and I was noticing that there was a trend that it wasn't just happening offline. It was being filmed.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
There is the bad actors and then there are enablers who allow them to do this, who help them who in fact benefit from their business and doing so knowingly. So that would include the credit card companies, the financial institutions, and Google. And so I think Google, they don't let you surface results for how do you kill yourself.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They took that ability away from people to search that and find a result that would teach them that. This is what he wrote in his article. I haven't actually tried it for myself.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
But he said, likewise, they could suppress user-generated porn sites known to be infested in trafficking and not allow that traffic to go. And I have dozens of examples of Google search results that are confirmed. If that link was clicked on Google, it would go to a confirmed case of child abuse on Pornhub. And I've shown those to Google.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Is exactly right. And right now, Pornhub and MindGeek, they're losing their motions to dismiss based on Section 230 because they helped curate. They helped tag, title, surface. They created thumbnails.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah, and then knowingly benefiting. So in the US, not only is it illegal to engage directly in trafficking, but knowingly benefiting from a trafficking venture where you knew or you should have known that this was happening, you can be held liable for that. So I think there should be a lawsuit against Google.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Let's work on that next. Yeah, you're working on that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
The uploaders? Yeah. So that was that 20%. So the 20% of content on Pornhub where it was the pay to download content, they would identify themselves. They have to. So Rocky Shea Franklin was one of those uploaders. Now, the problem was they were identifying the uploader. They weren't identifying the individuals in the videos.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So we have numerous cases of victims who are currently suing Pornhub who were part of those pay-to-download. They called it the Model Hub program where they were, quote, unquote, Pornhub models.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
It was being monetized online. And so there was this intersection between what I call the big porn industry, and we can talk about that, and child sexual abuse and trafficking. And at the end of 2019, I started to notice some really concerning headlines. One story that I kind of credit to the launch of the trafficking hub movement was a story that
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
that had these verified accounts where they would show an ID, they would show where to get paid, but they wouldn't be verifying the individuals in the videos. Yeah, but 80% of the content on Pornhub or more was just the free content. It was anonymous.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Okay, they upload free stuff the same reason why they upload it to Facebook. Clout? It's clicks, it's views, shares, comments.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Because they're not going to prison because they could use a VPN to upload and use an anonymous email address.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So nobody could ever know.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
There was no risk whatsoever.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
The scary thing is that because of the scale of these sites and because they're not the dark web, right? These are the mainstream sites and these are people... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. those videos on their devices all over the world and re-upload them again and again. A rape that might be uploaded. So yes, that initial upload happened from that perpetrator. But then...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Millions of people a day would have the opportunity to then download it and then they are the re-uploader. So they then redistribute it again and again.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
I asked that question exactly right. They want it because to them, it didn't really matter what was in the video as long as it was inventory.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Just as long as it has different tags, as long as it has a different title, it's more content. And so it was incentivizing people. They wanted people to do compilations. They wanted people to download and re-upload.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Exactly. That is exactly why they had a download button. But at the same time, understanding that they had a site that was infested with videos of real sexual crime.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
I think that they had an arrogance. Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
No, they had a I mean, they have a chief legal officer who was there from 10 years ago who's still there today.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
There was an arrogance to all that was going on. I think that they thought they were just too popular, maybe too big. That's a question that I sometimes wonder. What were you thinking? You would never get caught?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
This was the plan. It was how can we make as much money as we can as fast as we can. This was the business model that they set up to the point where in the discovery process with the litigation now, we've even discovered more than what's in my book. So we recently found out things like the executives had emails and documents that they were sharing with each other.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
about a 15-year-old girl from Broward County, Florida, and she had been missing for an entire year, and she was finally found when her distraught mother was tipped off by a Pornhub user that he recognized her daughter on the site. Oh, gosh.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So it would be recommended we need to suppress on our red words list words like childhood, minor, And they wouldn't. And that they were tracking to the dollar how much money they were making every month on categories and titles that contained child sexual abuse material, like the teen categories, because those were some of the most popular categories on the site.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They knew.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They knew to the dollar. They were tracking how much money they were getting on these various categories. Now, obviously, all of the videos in those categories would not be illegal, right? In a teen or a very young or young age. old, young, small tits, things like this, it's not all going to be illegal.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
A lot of it is 18-year-olds who look underage, but a lot of it was actual teens that were in these videos and tweens.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah, I think that I have just been so immersed in all of this that it just doesn't really, I don't want to say it's like that I'm detached or that it's like a critical thing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And she was found in 58 videos being raped on Pornhub, and police actually were able to locate her, and they recognized the guy's face from the assaults in the video, and she was rescued from his apartment. She had been impregnated. It was like this horror story.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
But see, this is the thing is that maybe at first it was uncomfortable for me to talk about it, but I forced myself because the thing is that I think people have to hear it. I don't want to talk in vague terms too much. And I was really trying to balance because I undershared. You may feel like this is so graphic and descriptive.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah, I just got a Ukrainian translation book. offer. So we'll see how that goes. But I thought that it was important not to be vague, to be specific, because I think that a lot of people want to just disregard this as you're just oversensitive about this is really consensual content. You just don't understand. You don't know consensual.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah, I would just say that, you know, one instance like the 15-year-old girl from Florida who's missing for a year and found in 58 videos on the site, that would be too much. But we know that the site was actually infested with videos of real sexual crime. That would be the spectrum of abuse. And this is not exaggerated.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Like most of the content on the site was legal and consensual, but too much of it was illegal. And that they were profiting from all of it and it was knowing. And so I guess that's just whataboutism too, because a lot of people say, what about this site? And what about that site? And say, okay, well, let's hold them accountable too. I'm focusing on this one predator.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
We don't do that with individuals. Like when we see Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, we don't say, we're not going to hold Jeffrey Epstein accountable because Harvey Weinstein was doing it too. Or Bill Cosby was also raping
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
It's like we hold them all accountable.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
That's the way the law works. That's the way it is in this case.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
I get that all the time. So you're making this up. Well, that was their kind of ammunition to try to quiet this, to try to de-platform or discredit. Of course, the most obvious. This is a religious moral crusade, right wing to shut down all sex on the internet. And at the same time, you have porn performers who are some of my greatest allies in the fight.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
No, she had been missing. So I think she might have ran away. Nobody could find her for a year. And this is how she was found, that her mom was notified that her daughter was on Pornhub. And she was actually in videos that were being paid to download. So it was a profit-sharing relationship with Pornhub, and they were splitting the profit from the sale of her rape videos.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And sometimes they had to be quiet about it because of the MindGeek monopoly. And they would get blacklisted if they would speak publicly because although they hated Pornhub because the free porn tube sites- To your point, what you just said was they destroyed the legal studio produced porn industry by allowing obviously they allowed the rape and the child abuse and all that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
But they were just allowing pirated copyrighted content all the time. So we had porn performers who were complaining, just saying, shut this down, because I'm spending two hours a day scouring my geek's porn tube sites trying to get my own stolen content off the site. So they hated it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So that was really concerning. I had read that story a few days after my second child was born.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
It is true. And there is this distinct difference between the porn valley. It almost feels historical now because everything has migrated to mostly the free user generated porn sites. But it still exists like the studio produced content where they have to abide by. This is really important. USC 2257. This is a law that we've had since 1988 in the United States that
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
that requires age and consent verification. It came about when there was an underage victim, Tracy Lords, who was underage and she was being used in these porn videos.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah, like you would have heard her name. Any thinking person understands that if you don't verify for age and consent, In porn, you're going to have illegal content proliferating in the industry. And this has been something that they accept in the studio produced professional porn industry. And they abide by that for the most part. And if you don't abide by that, it's a criminal offense.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
The DOJ has a right to inspect those records at any time. And if you don't have them, you can go to prison.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So they take it seriously. However, the problem is it just didn't translate into the internet age. And that is one of the things that we're fighting hard for is to create those standards, those standards where you have an intro and an outro in a lot of those videos where you say, hi, my name is da-da-da. I'm here. I consent to this. They do a post-shoot interview as well.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They can have those standards. Now, you're not going to get as much traffic. You're not going to get as much content uploaded, but that's the price to pay to have a legal operating industry.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah. I cared about this for so many years. But then when I have my own children, emotionally, it hits you in a different way to a deeper place.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yes, the devil's in the details of all of this. Exactly the fact that, yeah, so they would have, this is f***ing rape, would be the comment. And they would censor rape. And this would happen, and it was confirmed by the moderators. It's exactly what they were doing. I saw this enough times and said, what is going on here? Yeah, they are censoring those words.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And when they got in trouble for the stuff like the unconscious, the drugged, so then they started to take out the word drugged from a title, but leave the video up. And so you could see the title, it would be like, you could tell that it would have said that, but just that one word would be taken out. The video is still there, or they would swap it out.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Things like that, instead of actually acknowledging the inherent, deeply flawed business model that they set up, they had to do stuff like this. And it even goes down to things that we discovered, like the fact that they intentionally hired one person out of 1800 employees, one person to work five days a week
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
to review videos flagged by users as terms of service violations, including rape and trafficking. And what they did was they had a policy, and their emails actually uncovered in Discovery where the CEO is discussing with his VPs these policies and talking about them, and he calls it good and reasonable.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They had a policy where a video had to be flagged 15 times in order for it to be put in queue for review. So a victim could have their video on Pornhub and then flag it 14 times. They could even flag it 15 times because it had to be over 15 times. And they had a backlog of 706,000 videos.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
You just can't. It's just this whole other level of emotional connection, empathy, and all of you can imagine yourself in the position of that mother. All of that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And we have evidence now of specific cases of prepubescent children who had videos on the site for years with 13 flags, 14 flags. And here you have the CEOs and the VPs discussing this policy, saying it was fine.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
I mean, this is publicly available information that is in court documents. Of course. And we can see that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
I appreciate you saying that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
I kind of labored over it. I'm sure you did.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They did want me to tone it down. And I did. I did. But also I just said, look, at the same time, it has to bring true. I didn't want to traumatize people. So I'm so glad that you said that. I did want people to experience it the way that I experienced it. They could feel how I felt.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
It's a very complicated ownership structure that we still don't fully understand even today. But they were based in Luxembourg for tax purposes. They had offices or moderation offices in Cyprus. They had offices in Romania, in London, British Virgin Islands. They had their headquarters in Canada. So that's where they had most of their employees and they were operating.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So that was their headquarters. They had offices in L.A. Today they have offices in Texas as well. They were all over the world. And so in that way, they did that on purpose in a way to avoid responsibility in any one place.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
I would say, so on Pornhub, we have a percentage of them that we know 20% of the content was from people who considered themselves in the kind of professional model category, although we know that there was criminals infested in there as well. And 80% of that site was user-generated, not verifying agent consent.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They were hiding. And not only hiding money, they were hiding themselves. They were hiding their own identities from the public for years.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They had, I mean, it was like 200 sister companies, related sides, PO boxes, bank accounts, companies that would appear and then disappear and appear and disappear and interrelated and. It's just very complicated. That was probably the part of all of this that I understood the least. That was the most difficult for me to wrap my head around.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Forensic accountants and lawyers. And they did that. And the lawyers that are suing Pornhub today, they took two years of jurisdictional discovery. They went in and they've tried to understand all this. And in doing that, they actually were able to now rope in the hedge funds to the lawsuits.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
The victims are suing, and they're not only suing Pornhub and its individual owners, they're suing the hedge funds, they're suing Visa, and trying to hold everybody accountable for all of this. Good. Oh, Visa?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
No, it was for even the ads. For buying the ads, for selling the premium memberships, for the pay to download content, all of that was being monetized by the credit card companies. And PayPal, PayPal actually disengaged with them. When that London Sunday Times story came out, I told you about, PayPal was like, we're out.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Well, they said they were. They said they were so concerned and we were against this kind of content. But it was a lot of talk. It was really hard.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah, they were charging a lot, you know, because these are high risk transactions. So they get to charge more per transaction on porn transactions.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
I've heard certain cards or different financial transactions are even more than that. So significantly more. And what was interesting about all this, you know, at first we said, okay, looking at this, how do we move them? How do we go after this? And yes, of course it was like public shaming, but one of the things that was early on we understood was it was the credit card companies.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So I would say on these sites, the possibility that this could be illegal, if there's a site that's not verifying agent consent, is probably over 80%. Not to say that that is the percentage. The possibility is that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And we knew this because there was a site called Backpage.com a number of years ago. It was kind of like Craigslist where they were selling kids. And one of the things that was really effective was going after the credit card company. So we had that. But then the former owner of Pornhub came forward and
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Fabian Tillman, the guy that had that $362 million loan to roll up the porn industry, and he's the one who put Pornhub on the map. And he had sold the company, I think, six or seven years before all this started. And he came forward to me in the summer of 2020 to say he wanted to help. And one of the things that he said was, go after the credit card companies.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
The only thing they care about is the credit card companies. That was a confirmation.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah. Especially if that's their motivating factor. That's all they care about. That's the reason why we saw the payoffs that we did later on in the book with them taking down content.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So I learned a lot about Firas through dozens of hours of conversations with company insiders from the company experiencing him as an employee, but also people who were close to the family. But I learned a lot about his personality, and it was interesting. I tried to be as detailed and honest as I could about him to describe his character, who he was.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
He was actually very dedicated to his family at the same time.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Willing to completely exploit other children and other people.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah. I hope that people really do get to know as much as you can because they did hide themselves.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So one of the things I really wanted to do as much as humanly possible was let the world know who are these people, what are they like, and truly expose them because at the same time that they were exposing for profit the bodies of unwilling victims since 2007 and profiting from that, they were hiding themselves. So they were using fake names like VP of Pornhub.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Now, we actually have some concrete numbers to show that at one point, Pornhub was admitting in the height of all of this happening, they said 1%, they did like an audit of themselves and they said, we think that 1% of our content is child sexual abuse material. And that would be confirmed, known, hashed, previously uploaded child sexual abuse material.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Corey Ehrman was using pseudonyms all the time in hundreds of media articles. And the former majority shareholder of the company was completely unknown to the world. And he had hidden his identity for so many years. And actually, Fabian, the former owner, is the one who told me his name for the first time. And we were able to expose him, burned Bergmayer.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And he was the majority shareholder, living part-time in Hong Kong and London and He was from Austria. But these men tried to hide themselves. So one of the things was, let's actually show the world who they are and hold them accountable.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah, exactly.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah, definitely. That has been part of the whole process. Yeah, I've experienced a lot. Death threats, rape threats, family, doxing, hacking, being falsely reported for possession of child pornography, which never happened. Of course.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah, that's happened. And yeah, there's been kind of a lot of stress on my family through all of this as well. But it doesn't even compare to some of the stuff that the victims themselves have been attacked and had happened to them. And what they've had to go through in identifying themselves and speaking out has been so much worse.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah, it was at the same time within days of each other in different parts of the world. There were separate victims who had come forward publicly. A lot of the victims were coming forward anonymously and being connected to attorneys. I mean, at the time I had victims coming forward anonymously.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
As the petition was going viral and all the news stories and everything, almost on a daily basis, victims were coming forward. But some of them said, I'm going to put my name out there. I'm going to speak publicly about this. And it was three of them. And they were in different parts of the world. Within days of each other, each one of them was physically attacked. And they were just roughed up.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
It was an intimidation thing. One of them sent pictures of notes that she was getting on her windshield after work that were talking about her sexual abuse and things like that. And it was frightening.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah. And that's the thing is that you think that how could this happen? How could this be a coincidence? But at the same time, you can't prove that it wasn't a coincidence. So you feel like in the sense I felt like I was going crazy. What is happening here is how could this be real? But it was like this was actually happening.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
That means that it was one in 100 videos, child sexual abuse.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah. I, you know, reflecting back on that, there are some stories people say, like, why did you do this and how did you stick with it? And some of that I think back on my history. And sometimes I think certain personality traits are just genetic, like just in you. Yeah, I've had experiences over the years where a crooked plumber takes advantage of my husband.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So he's a builder and he takes all the money for a job he never does. Find out that he had actually done that to many other people looking on the Internet. They're complaining about the same guy texting him saying, hey, listen, you give that money back or you're going to regret it. He didn't listen.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Themselves.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And I ended up connecting with the victims throughout the county who all shared the same story, connected with the police, actually connected with an ex-girlfriend of his I found on social media.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And she told me a lot of interesting details and found out that he was going to try to take off to Hawaii with all this money that he'd taken from all these victims and actually found out the airline, the flight. And I told the police and he was arrested and he was sentenced. And now he's paid everybody back with interest.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Right.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Amazing. Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Think about that. People are browsing a lot of videos per session on those sites.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
It started with somebody that I care deeply for. And then this was so wrong. I just had to go after it. And then a used car salesman has sold my sister a lemon of a junkyard engine and failing transmission. And She drove it off the lot. The check engine light goes on. She begs him to take it back. He won't. I go over there. Listen, this is wrong. You sold her a lemon. Give it back. He wouldn't.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
I just stood out there protesting. I got a permit, stood outside of his little car dealership for days in the rain, protesting, telling every single person that they sold a lemon and he lost all his business. And anyway, he finally did it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
The news didn't cover it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
There was no news. It was just me with a sign saying, turn around. He sold us a lemon failing engine. And day after day, he came out gun threats, yelling his partner quit. I just said, I'm not leaving until you give it back. And I was serious. And then he finally did.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Hit him where it hurts, right? Like he was losing his revenue. Nobody would buy a car from him.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
We know the stats of child sexual abuse material online, but specific to the adult sites, we don't really have those numbers. NCMEC has had over 100 million reports of child sexual abuse in one year.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Well, good for you. I mean, you have the heart for justice. Yeah. Being an attorney also in your past and knowing that they're doing that to other people.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
It was like intimidation tactics. It's so dumb, though. It's so juvenile. Right? Yeah. I currently have a situation right now, and it's not as nefarious as this, but just an AI thing saying that I'm a porn star using an interview and describing this particular scene that I was in and whatnot. But yeah, all of these things that were happening, they were intimidation, harassment.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Some of them I can tie directly back to the company. Some of them are just people who are financially incentivized, who support the company, who don't want to see revenue disturbed or angry that this is happening.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah, random people. doing this kind of thing. Yeah. But that was certainly happening. But I always had this feeling of this may be uncomfortable. This may be painful. But when you're going through, it's like when there's purpose to it, it's so much easier to go through. And when you're seeing progress, fine, go for it. We're making progress.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
That was hard. We argued and I brought the evidence to the VPs of Visa and MasterCard. It wasn't until Nick Kristof released his groundbreaking article called The Children of Pornhub. He ends that article with these words. Pornhub is Jeffrey Epstein times a thousand. And he specifically called out the credit card companies in his article.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Why are you still doing business with a company that distributes rape videos to the world? And at that point, there were thousands of follow on articles to that. And the pressure was on. There was journalists calling Visa and asked, why are you still doing it? Bill Ackman, who is a billionaire hedge fund manager, and he read The Children of Pornhub. He was incensed. He has daughters of his own.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And he reached out and I got connected with him and he learned the story. And not only did he just go on Twitter to express his dismay and call out Visa MasterCard, he knew the CEO of MasterCard from the tennis circuit. And he made a phone call. He sent some texts. He said, this is trafficking going on. Are you going to do the right thing?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And Ajay Banga, who was the CEO of MasterCard at the time, said, I'm on it. And he was on it. And he actually, at that point, cut off the credit card companies and then Visa followed, Discover followed. However, this was the time when they then, in a panic, because this was the worst thing that could happen to Pornhub, they took down 80% of the entire website overnight. It was gone.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah. So the London Sunday Times, which is a very credible investigative newspaper in London, they had done an investigation at that time and they had found dozens of illegal videos on Pornhub within minutes, even children as young as three.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Over 10 million videos, over 30 million images disappeared. in what Financial Times called probably the biggest takedown of content in internet history. And that was 24 hours, all their unverified content was gone because they wanted to try to woo back the credit card companies.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Right, although they actually didn't. But however, so this all happened and made huge headlines, but I found out that two weeks later, The credit card companies quietly snuck back to the advertising arm of Pornhub. So it was kind of behind the scenes because people don't see those transactions.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Owned by Pornhub, owned by MindGeek. And then it was round two. It was two more years of fighting. And it was only until Bill Ackman got involved again. We went on SquawkBox, calling out CEO Al Kelly of Visa. After Visa was not let out of their motion to dismiss in the case where Serena, Serena was a young teen. She was exploited on the site. Her videos were uploaded again and again.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Millions of views. She would beg for the videos to come down. She'd be hassled. They would say, prove that you're underage in the video. Prove that you're a victim. She didn't have to prove that when it was being uploaded. And it sent her on a spiral of despair. She dropped out of school. She was a straight-A student before all this happened. Never kissed a boy before.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
She dropped out of school from bullying. She got addicted to drugs to try to numb the pain. She tried to kill herself multiple times.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
She wound up homeless living out of a car. But she sued Pornhub. And not only did she sue Pornhub, she sued its individual owners, the hedge funds, and Visa. And Visa lost their motion to dismiss her case. And that is when everything...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
It's still ongoing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
But they lost the motion. And that was when the pressure was on. So then we publicly were calling out Al Kelly. Her lawyer was on Squawk Box as well. And finally, he made a personal statement. And he said, I'm a father. And we're finally, you know, cutting off Pornhub once and for all.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
gross and creepy it was shocking to read that and they were calling out particular advertisers in this investigation London Sunday Times they called them out for that immediately they were shamed they apologized they pulled the ads But it was a big deal, at least in the anti-trafficking space. We were paying attention to what was happening.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
But then it happened and that got demonetized by the credit card companies, lost all mainstream advertisers. All of that happened.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And there was a woman named Nicole Adamando from New York. She had been abused by her partner. He had filmed the abuse and he was uploading the videos to Pornhub and she killed him. Oh, my God. She ended up getting sentenced to life in prison. At the time, she had a legal team and they were able to reduce her sentence to seven years.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah. Today they have bank wires that they can pay in crypto is the way that they are monetizing the sites. But enablers is the key word. There are the bad actors and then there are the enablers, those who allow them to continue
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And so as much as it's important to hold what I call corporate traffickers, mega pimps accountable for the exploitation, criminal exploitation happening, you also have to hold accountable their enablers.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Judge Cormac Carney in California in a case that is suing Visa and Pornhub for monetizing child sexual abuse, what he said, Visa gave Pornhub the very tool through which to complete the crime of knowingly benefiting from child trafficking. I think he said it very well.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yes, exactly.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
He called him like, what it was is co-conspiracy.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
That's the key to this is holding the bad actors and their enablers. And the enablers have the power to stop this.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
That's the price to pay. Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah. And they had hundreds of thousands, if not millions of views and had been on the site for years. Yeah. These videos. One of the things that happens is this dark kind of spiral where I hear this a lot from people who come forward and say, hey, I was addicted to this since I was eight years old and 10 and 11.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
It was a very dramatic case. And the pictures of her, she had two young children and her being taken off to prison. It was just a horrific story. And then there was about 100 victims in California and San Diego that were part of this trafficking operation called Girls Do Porn. It was run by a guy named Michael Pratt. who ended up on the FBI's 10 most wanted list. I saw that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
But obviously there's the psychopaths and the people who are just instantly drawn to that kind of content. But sometimes people go down a road, they don't even realize they're going down.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So with porn, the dopamine hit, you don't necessarily need more porn, but you need different porn to get that same hit. And so what happens is you go more extreme and more extreme. Some people don't, but then it can lead to where you're watching things that you never would have imagined that you would have started with in the beginning.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Oh, they do. So that's how I ended up seeing so much of this illegal content because people all over the world, when they would come in contact with an illegal video on Pornhub, they would search around the internet and then they would send it to me. So I would get the link. And if I clicked on the link, then the algorithm springs into action. So if you see one
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
horrific rape video of an unconscious woman, then it thinks, okay, I'm going to push more of that. Then you get more and more. And so you go down that, I call it the hell hole of rape on Pornhub.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Oh, that has definitely happened to me. But to the point of ads, one of the things that was horrific to me to realize but not surprising was I actually got to investigate Traffic Junkie, which was their ad arm. And the way that they would target advertisements, so they would sell ads. First of all, they gather so much data about people.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So people think they're going to a free tube site anonymously if you don't use a VPN IP address and income and all this stuff. But anyway, they would sell ads to advertisers targeting specific content. So they would suggest things like you could find rape in Chinese or not 18 or very young teen or screaming teen, all of these different things. And then they could advertise on a particular video.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
to people who they understood would be interested in their product. So on a child sexual abuse video, I would see an ad that would say, delete your history after clicking here. And it was targeted to pedophiles so that they, oh, okay, let me click on that ad.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Exactly.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
The scary thing, too, is that kids have free access to this site.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
The worst things I would never wish on my worst enemy to see that I have personally been traumatized by witnessing on Pornhub, any child— You have 10-year-olds now seeing that. Somebody messaged me two days ago that said, I got addicted to the free porn tube sites when I was six. And it took me on a dark path. And knowing that they're not only seeing—
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
the hardcore content and the porn content, but actually they could be witnessing real sexual crime as their sex education, creating their sexual template, creating their sexual desires and what they understand about sex from such a young age.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So he was found two Christmas Eves ago in Spain. He had become a fugitive because he was wanted.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So Pornhub was criminally charged by the U.S. government for knowingly profiting from the trafficking of over 100 women in a particular sex trafficking operation in San Diego. And instead of full prosecution, they were offered a deferred prosecution agreement.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They were told to pay $1.8 million, which is nothing to a company like this, and have a government monitor over their site for three years. And I think the way that they're failing in a situation like that is a slap on the wrist or nothing at all.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Or we don't see them putting the resources, the time, and the attention necessary to actually create a big enough risk for these kinds of abusers to face serious consequences.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
It becomes exactly. All right, whatever. That is the cost of doing business. And that is not serious enough for them to actually stop engaging in that kind of conduct.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And that's why I'm really hopeful with regard to the civil litigation side of things, because it doesn't rely on anybody with the will of the victims and their amazing attorneys. And today, since 2020, we've had almost 300 victims sue in 25 lawsuits, including class actions on behalf of tens of thousands of child victims. And they're doing well. Those class actions are certified.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah, he was finally found, and all his co-conspirators are in prison already, and now he's in the process of finally being held accountable. But he was running a partner channel on Pornhub that was one of their most popular partner channels on the site.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They lost their motions for summary judgment. They're going to trial like they are doing well. And so I see I actually have more hope in the civil justice system to hit these companies where it hurts than even the criminal justice system does. to actually hold them accountable.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah, it is. The wheels of justice turn slowly. That is absolutely true.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yes, but they turn.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah. That was pretty incredible what happened. So they deleted all of that content, but immediately they started getting phone calls. They were getting dropped on a personal level from their insurances for their many rental properties that they had luxury rental properties all over Quebec. And suddenly their lenders are dropping them, their insurances.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Suddenly they couldn't drive their Lamborghinis and their Maseratis and all the kind of luxury cars they had because they were being dropped from their car insurances. They were blacklisted in Canada as a moral risk.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
I didn't know that that was even possible.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah. But in their case, I was glad that they were getting payback for us. It was just sick. He's a CEO and minority shareholder because they had been exposed and they were getting held accountable.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
This is your fault. I mean, that was happening. They were losing mainstream business partners. All the mainstream advertisers were canceling. And the CEO and the COO were finally forced to resign. And the company was sold as a distressed asset.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
One of the things that was just reward in that moment of the big takedown that happened was the fact that I was getting calls from so many victims who were just crying out. With joy and relief that for the first time in years, their rape videos were finally off of Pornhub.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And it was like they could finally breathe because they had been fighting for so long for these to come down and finally they were gone. And that was probably the most meaningful thing in all of this when that happened. But at the same time, we're still fighting. We still feel like justice hasn't been fully served, but we're glad for the things that have happened.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So the victim sued him, the FBI, the criminal accountability for girls do porn. But the way that they had distributed their content and made it very popular was through Pornhub. So they had one of the most popular partner channels. I think it was over 600 million views and 800,000 subscribers online. And they're each paying like five bucks a month or whatever?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
There's been some good like compilations, everything that they say, the way they answer. And it's very rewarding to finally see them being grilled and failing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
13 years.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Hiding all of the child sexual abuse. So in that parliamentary hearing, the heads of the leading child protection agencies in the U.S. and Canada, that they would have to report those videos, child sexual abuse to them. It was mandatory reporting in Canada. And they testified that they had not gotten a single report of child sexual abuse for 13 years.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And the serious consequences that is, is I think. Yeah. Oh, man, that's disturbing to think about.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Oh, they were just jumping ship. Hundreds of employees.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They will take it off LinkedIn. They don't want to have my geek on there at all.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
After the New York Times piece, so many employees were jumping ship, just quitting. Entire departments were gone. Like the HR department was gone. My God.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
We don't know who did it. Unfortunately, they were trying to kind of turn the fingers at me and the trafficking movement for motivating X, Y, and Z. But clearly, it was a professional job. It was done by somebody who knew exactly what they were doing. They raised that entire multi tens of millions of dollars of a mansion to the ground without even touching the neighbors. And it was in hours.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
It was a huge fire. It was insane. That happened. Thankfully, they actually weren't in the house because they were building the house. They were at the last stage of construction. So as much as I hate anybody and want to see people face justice, I don't want to see them. Yeah. But that did happen. And we don't know even to this day. Was it somebody with an industry?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Was it an angry majority shareholder who was angry? They lived in this place called Mafia Row in Montreal.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And there's hints that it could have been their neighbors because their neighbors were so mad that they had reporters knocking on the doors of the neighbors' houses, the cameras in the neighborhood all of the time. And then they found out that he had done all of this. They had been hurting children.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And before that, they already hated him because he had cleared, like, hundreds of trees to build his monstrosity of a mansion without a permit and all of this. And they were angry at him anyway. So...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Well, so you subscribe to the channel and then they give you clips and they advertise and then they drive you to pay for more content.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
The neighbors. Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Oh, yes. That definitely happened. And I wrote a chapter called Before You Break. And it was because so much was piling on at once. And my uncle, who I consider my brother, was dying of cancer. And I was seeing him through the stages of death. At the same time, all of this was so intense. And I was so conflicted, too, because I have two young kids and I'm spending so much time on this.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And it was just hard. And there were times that I just, I don't want to do this anymore. But I felt like it is an honor and a privilege of a lifetime to have the opportunity to be able to lead something like this. And sorry, I'm getting emotional about it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah, I... I just couldn't. As much as I really wanted to, I really didn't want to because I wanted to see this through to the end and I wanted to see justice fully served and I still do.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yes. And they were splitting again. This is a profit sharing relationship with Pornhub and they were splitting the profits. And Pornhub was aware because victims were reaching out and begging them to take these videos down because it was destroying their life.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
My dad taught me a lesson. He was a man of integrity. And growing up, if he said something, he meant it. You knew that he was going to, at least as much as he possibly could, try to do what he said he was going to do. And I feel that way. It wasn't a light thing when we started this to say the petition is called Shut Down Pornhub and Hold Its Executives Accountable.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
So since the book was written, more has come down. And we found out that they have gone from 56 million pieces of content to 5.2 million today.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yes. And so they're 91 percent. And the rest of the content that's on there, most of that was only verified uploaders. And we know the problem with that. The individuals in the videos were not verified.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah. So they need to take down the rest of that content. It's not important just to see justice served to get vengeance for victims. And that's important. That's important for their healing. Because they can say, yes, the wrong was recognized, right, and paid for what happened. And that's an important journey on their healing process.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
However, it's also important to be a deterrent to future abusers. Because this is a risk-benefit calculation. And until we make the risk greater than the benefits that these companies get by maintaining the status quo, they will continue.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And so we have to make an example out of Pornhub to say, and we're seeing this already, like the other Porn 2 types are already trying to clean themselves up, to get rid of illegal content, to change their upload. They don't want to end up like Pornhub.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Exactly. And that's why when we're fighting trafficking, we have to increase risk and we have to eliminate profitability. But we also want to see policy put in place to make sure this doesn't happen again. So really the solution at scale for this is, is to mandatory third-party age and consent verification for every single person in every video.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Oh, I would never want anybody to give their ID to Pornhub. Not a million years.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They're facing a class action right now for data exploitation as well. Yes. User data exploitation. So they were without consent, gathering user data and help monetizing it and whatnot with advertisers and Google and all of that. So they're facing that. So I would never want that. But there are reliable, privacy respecting third party companies that can agent consent verify.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Oh, they were trafficked. And so there's no question. And that's part of the definition, of course, of trafficking is force, fraud, coercion. If you're under the age of 18 and you're using a commercial sex act. So if you're making money on that sex act that was induced by force or fraud or coercion, or if anybody's under the age of 18, you don't even need to prove any of that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And that has to be done and it has to be done at scale. And so what I think is really key here is, yes, governments have to do this. But the credit card companies have to do this.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Because when Visa says, we do not do business with user-generated porn sites that don't verify agent consent, immediately, quickly, internationally, all of these porn companies that are highly motivated by profit will quickly fall in line.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They will immediately figure it out.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
the financial transactions, they will comply.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And that's why they want to resist it, right? Because they don't want to pay. Right.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They don't want to pay, but that's why these things have to come by force. They have to come through continued public pressure coupled with strategic civil litigation that puts enough pressure on the right pressure points, financial and the public perception, to force those changes to get Visa to do this, MasterCard, governments.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And then I think we're going to have a safer internet for our kids for generations to come.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Well, thanks to all the people. I have to pass that on. Yeah. I had the honor of a lifetime leading this movement, but I'm an activist and I was able to help activate people. And it was this amazing team from journalists and lawyers and law enforcement, victims, most importantly, who came together.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Yeah. Some victims like 100 percent. They feel justified. They feel like that. Yeah. Then there's others. And maybe it's that DNA thing. Maybe it's like it's in them. They have this fire like they want to sound the alarm. And they're really motivated, too, by I don't want anyone else to have to go through what I went through.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
It is shocking to me that after five years of this viral campaign, of all the thousands of media articles that have been written, the lawsuits, everything that's happened, most of the time, most people say, I had no idea that it's happening. That's a problem. And I think it's just because we just haven't reached saturation point where we've talked about it enough for it to be common knowledge.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And so that's why I'm so grateful for conversations like this. And I think it's because people are uncomfortable. They're afraid to talk about it. It's one of those things that it's affecting everybody in some way. We're all in contact with this free user generated porn industry, but nobody wants to talk about it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
That is a thing. It's even with the release of the book and there's whatever shows you can go on as an author when you release a book. And a lot of them that reach a huge audience are like, it's too heavy. It's too dark. Good morning America might be like. And so people want to a lot of times kind of shy away from these uncomfortable and dark topics.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
It's just automatically trafficking. So anyway, they were held accountable. But this was in the news at the time as well. And so all of this began to raise the question, how in the world was this happening on Pornhub? Because at the time, Pornhub was a cultural icon. It was all over the place.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
I appreciate the fact that this obviously is not the first time you've been covering this issue of sex trafficking. I know I've heard other episodes that you've had on this, and you definitely don't shy away from the hard topics.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
I would just say you are knowingly benefiting from the exploitation of countless victims and you actually have the power to stop it now because the porn sites are highly motivated by the credit card companies and they absolutely had the power to stop it. And we did say that, but they didn't want to until they were forced to.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Thank you for having me.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Exactly.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Walking New York Fashion Week. People are wearing their apparel. Jokes on Saturday Night Live, like faux commercials on Saturday Night Live. All of that. Mainstream brand. Not to mention that at the time, so by the end of 2020, they had capitalized on coronavirus. And they had actually become the fifth most visited website across the entire internet.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They made traffic soar. They had also done some crazy PR stunts. Like they offered Pornhub Premium for free to the entire world. So that instead of paying $9.99 for ad-free Pornhub, so you could watch porn or you could watch real rape or child abuse ad-free on Pornhub. They were just giving it for free. So their traffic was better than ever. They were making more money than ever.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They had more visits than Netflix and Amazon. They had 170 million visits a day, 62 billion visits a year that year. Jeez. And by the end of 2020, they had 56 million pieces of content on the site. So every year they were having enough content uploaded. It would take 169 years to watch if you put those videos back to back. Oh, my God.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Oh, in the case of Pornhub, we know they knew. We know. We have evidence. We have conversations. We have email exchanges. We have documents. We have policies. We have so much evidence. that this was something they knew about. They hid from authorities because of profit, because they wanted to maximize profit. They allowed to continue for years since 2007.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And so 100% responsibility because they have the ability to stop it. They had the ability in 2007 to to age verify, to make sure that somebody had to show an ID, to show their face, to consent verify before they could upload, and they chose not to.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
There are some where it's obvious, right, that this is nonconsensual, this could be prepubescent, and you could see that, right? Or there's violence or tags, titles indicating young or pain, things like that. However, sometimes these are videos that were consensually recorded and then nonconsensually uploaded. So then in that case, you have no idea, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
People are uncomfortable. They're afraid to talk about it. It's one of those things that it's affecting everybody in some way. We're all in contact with this free user-generated porn industry, but nobody wants to talk about it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
whether they consented to having that video on Pornhub. And victims of this kind of, they call it image-based sexual abuse, that's all the way from child abuse to what we used to call revenge porn. And they face serious amounts of trauma as well. The suicide ideation rate for these victims is about 50%. And so the harm is from the revenge porn side all the way to the child sexual.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
It's all serious. And when you're on a site that doesn't verify agent consent, not only of the uploader, but every single video and every single person, every single video, you have to be suspect of everything that you're watching.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Just under everybody's noses, millions of people a day. A phrase my dad always used to say, he was just a very wise man, and he always used to say, assumption is the mother of all screw-ups. And thinking about that, the idea that we're all assuming that this is legal, vetted, consensual material, because that was their tagline. That was what they presented to the world.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
And they spent millions of dollars on their PR campaigns to save the oceans. And they had this whole arm of Pornhub called Pornhub Cares.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Save the bees and all this stuff. And so I said, well, let me just test the upload system. I put the baby down after he went back to sleep, got the camera out, took the video of the keyboard and the rug and then uploaded and found out what millions of the point of hidden in plain sight.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Millions of people already knew because they were uploading to Pornhub every day that there was no requirement for ID or consent form. Anybody anonymously with a VPN and under 10 minutes using an email address, just a random email address could upload a sex video to Pornhub. And there you go. That's how the site became infested with videos of real sexual crime.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
They didn't even necessarily need to know that there was going to be money or not. They could have deceived, defrauded, coerced, and we're talking about adults, because when they're under 18, it just doesn't matter what happened. If they have a video on the site.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Now, the monetization piece, I think, is really important when we're talking about the definition of trafficking, because a lot of people don't realize that what constitutes trafficking is that commercialization. When something of value is exchanged for the coerced sex act or the underage sex.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1143: Laila Mickelwait | Exposing Pornhub's Dark Trafficking Empire
Now, with regard to the websites, we call it tech-facilitated trafficking because this might be free porn. 80% of the content on Pornhub was free, but it was heavily monetized. So the ones that were benefiting from it are the executives of Pornhub who are selling 4.6 billion ad impressions on Pornhub every single day.