A lawsuit filed by more victims of the sex trafficking operation claims that Pornhub’s moderation staff ignored reports of their abuse videos.
Sixty-one additional women are suing Pornhub’s parent company, claiming that the company failed to take down videos of their abuse as part of the sex trafficking operation Girls Do Porn. They’re suing the company and its sites for sex trafficking, racketeering, conspiracy to commit racketeering, and human trafficking.
The complaint, filed on Tuesday, includes what it claims are internal emails obtained by the plaintiffs, represented by Holm Law Group, between Pornhub moderation staff. The emails allegedly show that Pornhub had only one moderator to review 700,000 potentially abusive videos, and that the company intentionally ignored repeated reports from victims in those videos.
The damages and restitution they seek amounts to more than $311,100,000. They demand a jury trial, and seek damages of $5 million per plaintiff, as well as restitution for all the money Aylo, the new name for Pornhub’s parent company, earned “marketing, selling and exploiting Plaintiffs’ videos in an amount that exceeds one hundred thousand dollars for each plaintiff.”
The plaintiffs are 61 more unnamed “Jane Doe” victims of Girls Do Porn, adding to the 60 that sued Pornhub in 2020 for similar claims.
Girls Do Porn was a federally-convicted sex trafficking ring that coerced young women into filming pornographic videos under the pretense of “modeling” gigs. In some cases, the women were violently abused. The operators told them that the videos would never appear online, so that their home communities wouldn’t find out, but they uploaded the footage to sites like Pornhub, where the videos went viral—and in many instances, destroyed their lives. Girls Do Porn was an official Pornhub content partner, with its videos frequently appearing on the front page, where they gathered millions of views.
read more: https://www.404media.co/girls-do-porn-victims-sue-pornhub-for-300-million/
Given their videos were so highly ranked, the prevalence of coercion in the industry, and the fact that it's often impossible to tell if someone's been threatened behind the scenes, it's highly likely that most people reading this who have watched porn online have also watched plenty of videos of actual rapes.
This is a simple fact, but one which a lot of people would rather deny, rather than admit their part in perpetuating it, while wondering why watching porn makes them sad. Partly, I suspect, because deep down they know the truth of it.
I wonder how many products you've bought in your life were made by child labor.
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism
Which is why I dislike people who attack those critical of capitalism's excesses for being hypocrites.
In the real world, most of us are hypocrites and part of the problem. That doesn't mean we can't try to be better or be critical of things that are bad about society.
Complaining about a system you’re stuck in doesn’t make you a hypocrite for being stuck in it
I'll eat meat that comes from large scale animal torture, my taxes have paid for bombs to kill civilians, I've spent money on countless products that exploit an untold amount of people. My country is one that benefits from resource extraction of the third world.
I get to live in relative opulence while billions have a fraction of the quality of life I do.
At the end of the day, I just accept these things and continue to live my life.
I've always seen myself as a good person. But I figured I can't be a good person and do all that. That mismatch in identity caused me to re-evaluate my position. Turns out I'm not actually willing to give up anything from above. So I'm probably a bad person.
That way there's no hypocrisy.
The Bible actually brings this up in an interesting way. Rich man goes up to Jesus and asks how to get into Heaven. Jesus says sell all your belongings and give the proceeds to charity. Then follow me. Rich man cried.
We're all going to hell.
We have likely bought many, often after lying to ourselves about it.
Do two wrongs make a right?
Also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque
Of course two wrongs don't make a right, but get off the high horse and join your fellow man against the proper targets instead of fighting people who should be allies. That's the point they're making with their tu quo que.
I guess it would depend on if the person wears clothing or not
I avoid this by not watching porn that makes me sad. There's plenty of consensual, happy, joyful sex-positive porn out there.
While your point is valid about this particular situation (which is horrible and criminal on multiple levels), your overbroad generalization of porn and the implied assumption of guilt in the viewers is what's led folks to react negatively to your statement.
On a larger level, this kind of statement plays into the puritanical doctrines towards sex that paint it as a negative force, and subsequently leads to the twisting of a positive, creative act into a negative expression of power and rape in those that accept those doctrines.
Porn is not at fault here, nor are its viewers. Those at fault in this crime are the producers and publishers, who were well aware of the abuses happening under their watch, and deceived their viewers into believing they were observing consensual performance acts. I hope that these women get every cent and more, and it would be excellent to see a class action suit from Pornhub's subscribers arise in tandem to and in support of their complaint.
Exactly, it's not too hard to find videos where you can see by their faces and sounds that they're having a good time. If they're not then it's a turn off
This is why I stick to hentai. No traficking or coercion or questionable consent there, just a bunch of nerds doing what they love.
Sure there's content out there that depicts nasty abuse. But if it's animated, then it's fiction.
I feel like whether the content is enjoyable/good is a personal opinion and the fact that anyone thinks it's wholesome enough or not is irrelevant.
There's a ton of wholesome consensual adult-angled 2D stuff out there. Like a ton. The concept of hentai as all underage rape fantasy is a myth. Plus if I stumble across some unmoderated creepy stuff when I'm browsing new, I can just close it and move on without the burden of knowing I saw a real thing that happened to a real person.
But what is the prevalence of coercion in the industry? Is that known? Can it be known?
Most people I’ve heard speak about their experiences in the porn industry say this type of coercion is rare. GDP was a unique situation. Virtually everyone knew (or should have known) they were bad news for years before law enforcement got involved. I remember arguing with people about this. And actually one of the things people said was “who cares, this kind of thing is everywhere in the industry, they know what they’re getting into.” So I actually think that not only is there no evidence to support that, but this idea can even be harmful by painting the better behaved studios with a broad stroke, and giving the fewer bad actors cover to keep operating.
I think the best way to help sex workers, if this is something that concerns you, is to treat them with respect, call out the hateful stigma against their work, and support efforts to organize for worker protections. Despite the fact that most studios are not out there raping people left and right, like most industries, there is often a power imbalance between workers and owners and this sometimes leads to exploitation.
I am a regular consumer of online porn. And I'll admit, I loved their videos. Now knowing what was going on, that's on me to do some thinking, i have probably watched a rape and helped the perpetrator make money from that act. That's hard on the conscience. I don't know what to think about it.
Hate their videos, most of the girls always look bored or not into it, which is now clear why. That's why there's a rise in homemade, Indy models and couples putting up the best videos recently, cause you can tell the people involved are actually into it and enjoying it.
I think the bigger problem is, you as a consumer have no way of knowing. And it's SO prevalent, that yeah, you almost certainly have. But I can't really know, or do much as a consumer. Don't make it like the people just watching are the ones perpetuating the problem instead of the ones who are producing this shit.