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/

archive: https://archive.ph/zQWt3#selection-593.0-609.599

  • LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 year ago

    Its not impossible to research the porn you consume to ensure that you’re not getting off to someone being sexually abused or raped.

    My cell phone is something I require to access society. I cannot work without one, I cannot be a functional adult in society without one. I go every day without masturbating to women being sexually abused, and there is no reason whatsoever someone has to do that. It’s not the same at all, and its telling that men see “Please stop masturbating knowingly to women being raped” and immediately compare doing that with unethical consumption in general. It’s not comparable. I’m sorry, there really is nothing comparable to sexually pleasing yourself to a video of a woman being sexually abused. It makes me literally sick to my stomach that so many men are clearly totally fine with doing that.

    • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      And your cell phone was, at least assuming you live in a developed country, most likely replaced before it was necessary. You, and I, and every other consumer, caused that cobalt mine to have to produce a little more, which caused another chain of human suffering. Now do something about it. Oh, you can’t because you’re one powerless voice going against some of the wealthiest corporations in the world. Make friends, fight together, and collectively something may change.

      • LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 year ago

        Thats all fine and well, but you don’t have to masturbate to women being sexually abused. At the very least you can vet the content you’re consuming to be as sure as you possibly can be that you’re not doing that. Otherwise, as I stated in another comment, you see masturbating to women being sexually abused as an acceptable consequence of consuming pornography.

        • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          What happens when the producers actively deceive people? You can vet all you want, these companies -gasp- lie so that they can make more money

          • LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            1 year ago

            Right, so then you inadvertently masturbating to a woman being raped is an acceptable consequence so that you can consume porn? If it wasn’t an acceptable consequence you would stop watching porn.

            • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              I didn’t say it was acceptable. Frankly it’s abhorrent, but it’s the nature of consuming to do abhorrent things for short term personal gain. Do your best to consume ethically, knowing you WILL fail, and fight it as beat as you can.

              You keep saying masturbating to women being raped, and that it’s not the same as using a cellphone 1. That’s not what people are doing, but nuance is hard.

              1. It actually is the exact same quandary. You “need” a cell phone as much as the average person “needs” porn. It makes life easier, but isn’t technically a necessity. Especially not a new, fancy name brand phone. Both are horribly unethically made, but here we are!

              Answer this question directly please. Is a child dying an acceptable outcome of owning a phone?

              • LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                1 year ago

                Or don’t consume, which is also an option.

                No I need a cell phone to get a home, to get a job, to work a job, and therefore to survive. No one needs porn to survive.

                And no a child dying isn’t an acceptable outcome of owning a phone, but me surviving is. I’m not going to become homeless in the name of ethical consumption. It wouldn’t change anything if I did, and I’d be able to do less to advocate for workers rights if I did so.

                However, masturbating to women being sexually abused is not necessary for survival. You don’t have to do that. And me using a cell phone is, again, not the same as watching women being raped for sexual pleasure. The fact that you see it as the same is telling of how you see women.

                To reiterate, you know that you’re watching a woman being raped and deriving sexual pleasure from that. You see this as acceptable, because otherwise you wouldn’t be able to watch porn. If you didn’t see that as acceptable you wouldn’t watch porn. Which, again, is a thing you do not need to do.

                • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
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                  1 year ago

                  We can keep doing the shit slinging all day my friend. It gets no one anywhere. Or you can have an actual conversation without trying to accuse people who are trying their best. Your choice.

                  • LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                    1 year ago

                    I dont agree that you’re trying your best. So long as you’re coming to the table saying “I need to watch porn, and if I get off to a women being sexually abused then whatever it happens” I can’t agree that you’re making what I would consider to be a reasonable effort. The least you could do is, like I said before, make every effort possible to vet whatever pornographic content you consume. So that you are as certain as you possibly can be that what you’re watching isn’t sexual abuse.

                • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
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                  1 year ago

                  Libraries exist mate. They have all the stuff you need to get a home and job publicly available.

                  Your convenience is worth more than a kids life, got it.

                  • LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                    1 year ago

                    My job required me to have a cell phone, as did nearly every one I applied for. My apartment is paid for out of my bank account, which has no physical location and requires usage of an app to do so. So yeah, I do have to have one.

                    Is your sexual pleasure from watching porn worth it even if you are masturbating to women being raped?

    • Hylactor@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      Again, the porn is not the problem. There is nothing inherently wrong with making or watching porn. The predators are the problem.

      Two things to consider:

      One, I guarantee you have watched and will watch again, a major Hollywood movie featuring victims of abuse by directors, producers, other actors. Even child victims. Hollywood is widely recognized for being a dark and evil place with imbalances of power and open secrets about exploitation. But watching movies is not inherently evil. The best you can do is be deliberate in your choices and try your best to not support the bad guys.

      Two, where does the moral imperative end? Ok, so you’ve decided that entertainment in the form a sexual performance is fundamentally different than movies/tv/theater/music. You abstain from participating because you believe it is unethical. Do you then believe in censorship? Surely if it is categorically wrong it should be made illegal? Better safe than sorry. But who gets to control the terms of censorship? What about the woman of color who is making enough doing porn to empower themselves in a society that is essentially constructed to deprive them of power? Is it right to take away that power due, ironically, to the actions of the same type of bad guy that limits their power in the first place?

      Prohibition does not work. Not for drugs, not for alcohol, not for porn, and of the three I listed it is arguably the healthiest pastime. The solution is openness and oversight. Stop forcing porn talent to exist in some walled off dim corner of the internet. Eliminate the stigma. Give me that new Netflix Original porn with credits and funding. But it still wont be perfect. But that still doesn’t make it fundamentally wrong.

      • LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 year ago

        Some regulation for the porn industry would be nice, how about auditors and some method of government vetting to ensure the rights of sex workers in general.

        I will not consume it for many reasons, I’m a woman and porn is written and filmed to be exploitative of bodies like mine. Thats not and never is going to appeal to me. Erotica exists, drawings exist, forms of ethical sexuality exist from which I can consume.

        Note that porn itself is not some godly byproduct of open-minded sexual liberation. A large portion of it is sadistic fantasy of abusing women, and I strongly question the long term impact of exposing teenage boys to content depicting women being victimized - even in a consensual context. What are the long term ramifications of hyper sexualizing women in pornography? What is the effect with regards to perception of women, with regards to the proliferation of misogyny?

        And why is porn so infantile, so pseudo-pedophilic? Why all the teen shit? Why all the jailbait shit, the barely legal and so on. Am I supposed to ignore this, and pretend that the existence of this industry has no tangible impact on my life? Am I supposed to believe that the porn industry played no part in creating my rapist, in creating a culture whereby raping women is seen as desirable by men who do not empathize with women?

        I think banning ogranized commercial pornography and instituting universal basic income would pretty readily solve this problem, even for the sex workers who can now choose to produce their own pornography for non-financial non-survival reasons if they want to. Anything less than that doesn’t adequately address the way this industry exploits women, both within the industry and outside of it.

    • PurplePropagule@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Its not impossible to research the porn you consume to ensure that you’re not getting off to someone being sexually abused or raped.

      You do understand that abusers can lie about what they’re doing, right? And that victims of abuse will often not come out in fear of retaliation from the abuser. You’re saying that the viewer should be required to prove that something doesn’t exist. It’s an impossible task.

      • LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 year ago

        You can do the best you can, check actresses pages check out studios research film crew. You can do a lot to try and determine whether the content you’re consuming was consensually filmed or not.

        Can you ever be 100% sure? No, you can’t. And that’s why I do not watch it and never will.