Laila Mickelwait

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585 appearances 3 recordings 3 series first heard Nov 2024 last heard Apr 2025

Laila Mickelwait’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast · 503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait · 2 Dec 2024 podcast

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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,

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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