503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait
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What is the main topic of this episode?
So I had the great privilege today of doing a live discussion with Lila Micklewaite, who is one of the most compelling and the bravest people I've ever met. And I don't say that lightly. Lila has been waging a one-woman war against I would say, although she has plenty of allies now, against the Machiavellian, narcissistic, psychopathic, and sadistic purveyors of online porn, particularly at the site known as the Pornhub community. I'm not a big fan of pornography in general, and certainly not a fan of Pornhub, and I've been sharing Lila's tweets in particular for years, for about as long as she's been making them, I believe, about four years. Anyways, she's mounted a very effective campaign. And so we took a little voyage to the heart of darkness today, partly sociologically, and technologically investigating the rampant spread of the pornography that's perhaps destroying our culture. That might be the case.
Certainly the facilitation of the behavior of the psychopathic criminals who generate and distribute that content is a civilization-threatening phenomenon. occurrence and enterprise. We also talked a lot personally because I was very curious about why Lila became interested in this and why she decided to devote herself to it so effectively. And that part of the conversation was also extremely interesting. She was tangled up and attracted by the Hollywood fame machine and came to understand its essential soul-devouring shallowness, that pursuit of narcissistic self-gratification. And we talked about how her personal experiences tied into her sociological and political pursuits. It was a very interesting live conversation up here in Fairview, Alberta, my hometown. So join us for a voyage to the heart of darkness. Laila, nice to meet you. I've been following your work online for quite a while. My wife has been following you as well, and I believe my daughter, and we understand what you're up to, at least to some degree.
You've taken on the biggest porn network in the world, the so-called... Pornhub community, it's all sweetness and light on the Pornhub community. There's people sharing their hobbies and interests, I suppose. And so why don't you explain to everybody just exactly what you're doing, I guess how long you've been doing it, why you're doing it, and what exactly is transpiring?
How has Laila Mickelwait been combating Pornhub?
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. 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.
What are the statistics and impact of Pornhub?
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. 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. 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.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the main topic of this episode?
0:16–3:13
2
How has Laila Mickelwait been combating Pornhub?
3:13–4:05
3
What are the statistics and impact of Pornhub?
4:05–9:05
4
What are the policies of Pornhub regarding moderating content?
9:05–18:11
5
How are victims of sexual abuse affected by Pornhub's policies?
18:11–22:11
6
What actions have been taken against Pornhub and its executives?
22:11–28:31
7
How does anonymity contribute to online exploitation?
28:31–1:12:47