The Fight Against Trafficking on PornHub: A Deep Dive into the Start of the Movement and its Devastating Details
0:00:03 Origin of the Fight: The fight against PornHub's role in facilitating sex trafficking, rape, and child abuse began in February 2020.
0:00:35 Triggering Incidents: Several horrifying stories catalyzed the movement, including a 15-year-old girl rescued from abuse after being recognized on PornHub and an investigation revealing illegal videos of children as young as three on the site.
0:02:53 Testing PornHub's Upload System: The speaker decided to test PornHub's video upload system and found how easy it was to upload content without any age or consent verification.
0:04:18 PornHub as a Crime Scene: The speaker describes PornHub as more of a "crime scene" filled with videos of real sexual crimes.
0:04:50 Graphic Examples of Abuse: The speaker shares a specific example of a drugged and unconscious young Asian woman being abused on the site, with the video titled "dead pig unconscious after being drugged."
0:06:20 Monetization of Abuse: PornHub monetized this content through advertisements, selling 4.6 billion ad impressions daily. Though most uploaders did it for social currency, the corporation made substantial revenue.
0:07:18 Scale of the Problem: By the end of December 2020, PornHub had become the fifth most visited website globally, with 170 million visits per day and enough content uploaded annually to take 169 years to watch.
0:07:45 Launching the Trafficking Hub Movement: Inspired by the discovery, the speaker took to Twitter and launched the #TraffickingHub hashtag to raise awareness.
0:08:38 Trafficking Defined: She highlights the international and domestic definition of trafficking, which includes any commercialized sex act involving a child or induced by force, fraud, or coercion.
0:10:18 Inadequate Content Moderation: PornHub had only one person reviewing flagged videos five days a week, with a backlog of 76,000 videos and a policy requiring 15 flags before review, highlighting their disregard for victims.
0:12:12 Egregious Example of Negligence: The speaker recounts a case where a video of a prepubescent child being anally raped and tortured was reported, but only removed after FBI intervention, with PornHub leaving the URL, tags, and titles live.
0:13:41 Verification Loopholes: Even with verified uploaders, abusers can exploit victims by uploading content without verifying the individuals in the video. The speaker gives an example of Rocky Shay Franklin, who abused a 12-year-old boy and uploaded videos to PornHub, despite being a verified uploader.
0:15:01 Recent Legal Actions: In 2024, PornHub was legally required to remove 3,770 child sexual abuse videos and over 8,000 non-consensual and rape videos from the site.
0:15:30 Content Removal: Since the start of the movement, PornHub has deleted 91% of its content, going from 56 million pieces of content in 2020 to 5.2 million today.
0:15:54 The Need for Justice: The speaker emphasizes the importance of justice for victims and deterrence of future abusers by increasing risk and eliminating profitability for exploitation.
0:16:34 Goal to Shut Down PornHub: The speaker advocates for the full accountability of PornHub, calling for its complete shutdown to deter other websites from distributing sexual crime.
0:17:58 Recent Changes at PornHub: As of September 2024, PornHub is implementing age and consent verification for new content, but millions of older videos remain unverified.