Choose a Girl

This is not just about the odd video depicting a criminal act that sneaks in among the many millions of videos hosted on such sites. Pornhub is the tenth most visited website in the world and operates in plain sight. Its free content — which makes up the vast majority of the videos available — is a smokescreen for its pay-to-download content. It hosted countless images of child abuse, rape and sadistic sexual violence — the largest collection in the world. The author’s portrayal of those responsible for such crimes — the rapists, traffickers and sadists — is all the more terrifying when you realize that these are just regular, everyday men. Operators of that now-defunct adult film production company were charged and eventually convicted of a range of sex trafficking crimes, including coercing young women into engaging in sexual acts on camera that were then posted on Pornhub and other adult sites without their consent.

Kristy Althaus allegedly raped, coerced into making porn film for now-dismantled GirlsDoPorn.com

If MindGeek did not know GirlsDoPorn was a sex trafficking venture before October 2019, it should have known for a great number of reasons, the most notable of which is that GirlsDoPorn’s victims sent MindGeek complaints detailing the fraud and coercion they were subjected to by GirlsDoPorn. Because of this knowledge, MindGeek is, at minimum, civilly liable to Plaintiffs under Section 1595 for damages and attorney fees. GirlsDoPorn was using fraud, intimidation, and coercion are part of its regular business practices until the criminal charges were filed in October 2019, MindGeek’s ignorance of the sex trafficking is a direct result of its own negligence, which still triggers Section 1595 liability. Pornhub has faced increasing problems amid allegations that it hosted content featuring child sexual exploitation, nonconsensual violence, rape, and other illegal material.

News

• Only after the victims responded to the advertisements would Garcia and Pratt disclose that they were actually seeking women for pornographic video shoots.
• It’s alleged that all 40 victims named in the suit became suicidal over the harassment they received from their videos being spread online without their consent.
• Its free content — which makes up the vast majority of the videos available — is a smokescreen for its pay-to-download content.
• In 2020, 40 women — victims of the « Girls Do Porn » sex-trafficking operation — sued Pornhub in federal court in California, alleging the company knowingly profited from illegal videos of their abuse.

And when the victim finally agreed, they were told that the videos would not end up online without their permission, which turned out not to be true. Over 100 victims have been identified in this case, and it doesn’t stop at studios. Another case involved a 15-year-old girl who was kidnapped forced to be in a video. Authorities found a receipt for an abortion in the traffickers apartment. Because of these events, Pornhub deleted 75 percent of its videos online that weren’t verified by them, since the company was summoned to court and have said they took measures to ensure videos like these don’t end up on their website. If the company really cared about stopping trafficking, then why were they aware of this for years?

• Business Insider has found lawsuits on behalf of nearly 300 plaintiffs who allege that back before the 2020 purge, videos of their abuse were uploaded to Pornhub without their consent and remained on the site for weeks or months after they were flagged.
• The original lawsuit against MindGeek was filed in December last year, on behalf of 40 women plaintiffs.
• This is not just about the odd video depicting a criminal act that sneaks in among the many millions of videos hosted on such sites.
• Recent evidence has revealed that Pornhub is willing to host and profit from videos depicting just about anything.

women sue PornHub’s parent company for allegedly hosting videos posted by San Diego’s GirlsDoPorn

She is the founder and CEO of the Justice Defense Fund and the founder of the Traffickinghub movement — but she is no ideologue. Indeed, she is keen to specify that what she seeks to abolish is illegal trafficking, not the legal pornography industry. Her view is that as long as it is “lawful and not harming another person,” what happens between consenting adults is their business. She points out that she herself has “hardly lived the life of a prude or an enemy of the entertainment business,” and has been known to spend New Year’s Eve at a Playboy mansion party. Last year 22 women testified to being defrauded into producing internet pornography for the mainstream porn site, Girls Do Porn.

MindGeek’s defense against the lawsuit could cite Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which gives legal immunity to online platforms that host user-submitted content. But the lawsuit argues that the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) enacted in 2018 would override a Section 230 defense. The lawsuit was filed against Pornhub and Pornhub owner MindGeek in US District Court for the Southern District of California.

And as Kristoff cites, there’s a horrific case where a woman found her missing, trafficked 15-year-old daughter in 58 explicit videos from a verified account. One of the world’s biggest porn sites, Pornhub, just got a whole lot smaller. The site has temporarily suspended all user-uploaded content, after an explosive story from the New York Times detailed the site’s failure to moderate child pornography and non-consensual videos. But legal repercussions from those pre-purge days — including federal monitoring and an ever-growing number of lawsuits — are still rippling through Pornhub and its network of user-generated porn sites.

He allegedly did so by telling the women and girls that they would be paid $3,000 to $5,000 for a one-day pornographic video shoot. In some instances, however, Pratt and his assistants allegedly locked women in rooms until the explicit videos were filmed and forced some women to commit sex acts that they initially declined to do, according to the FBI. From approximately 2013 to 2017, Garcia worked as a recruiter, producer, and actor for the GDP and GDT websites, which grossed millions of dollars during this time. Garcia knew the videos were being posted on the fee-based websites, GDP and GDT, and excerpts were posted on free pornographic sites such as Pornhub.com, one of the most frequently viewed websites in the world receiving millions of views, to drive paying viewers to GDP and GDT.

Pratt is charged with multiple counts of conspiracy and sex trafficking, as well as one count of producing child pornography in connection with the scheme, from which he and his team made millions, court records show. Victims of a sex-trafficking operation hit embattled adult entertainment site Pornhub and its parent company Mindgeek with a multi-million dollar lawsuit for hosting non-consenting content and refusing to remove it even after repeated requests. The women filed the suit on Tuesday against MindGeek, Pornhub’s parent company, alleging that it hosted Girls Do Porn videos in the knowledge of the company’s illegal practices. Buzzfeed News reports that the men behind GirlsDoPorn still face federal charges of sex trafficking and producing child porn, since some of the exploited individuals were 17 at the time of filming. The survivors also say that MindGeek maintained its business relationship with GirlsDoPorn even after years of reports of nonconsensual content and videos of coerced and trafficked individuals being featured in uploaded videos by the porn company.

This means that every adult on that set was complicit in the crimes perpetrated against me. I was trafficked in porn a few decades ago, long before anyone heard the term sex trafficking. Everyone thought that the porn life was the Playboy mansion and that the prostitution life was Pretty Woman.