"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP!

Summary

Podcast Summary: "PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP!

Podcast Information:

• Title: PBD Podcast
• Host: PBD Podcast
• Episode: "PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP!
• Release Date: November 29, 2024
• Description: The PBD Podcast delves into current events, trending topics, and politics as they intersect with life and business. This episode features a powerful exposé on PornHub's involvement in child abuse and human trafficking.

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Introduction

In this gripping episode of the PBD Podcast, host [B] engages in a profound conversation with activist and author Laila Mickelwait [A]. The discussion centers around the disturbing revelations of child abuse and human trafficking on PornHub, the platform's executive cover-ups, and the broader implications for the online pornography industry.

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Background: PornHub's Troubling History

Layla Mickelwait opens the discussion by recounting her interactions with PornHub's new owner, Solomon Friedman of Ethical Capital Partners. She highlights the alarming persistence of illegal content on the platform despite significant public outcry and legal actions.

Layla Mickelwait [00:29]: "Some of them were answered, some of them were not. It got to a lady named Layla Mickelwait who is the one that started trafficking Hub petition and got 2.33 million signatures to shut down PornHub."

Mickelwait emphasizes the scale of the issue, noting that PornHub has been a hub for not just adult content but also heinous crimes involving minors and human trafficking victims.

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Expose on Child Abuse and Trafficking

The conversation delves deep into specific cases that illustrate the extent of PornHub's negligence and complicity in facilitating child abuse.

Case Study: Serena Flakes

Mickelwait details the harrowing story of Serena Flakes, a 13-year-old from Bakersfield, California, whose abuse videos were uploaded to PornHub, leading to her disappearance and eventual rescue after her mother recognized her online.

Layla Mickelwait [02:48]: "She was missing for an entire year and was found in 58 videos on PornHub. Emails from the CEO show discussions about how to handle such content, revealing a blatant disregard for victims."

Corporate Malfeasance

Examining internal communications, Mickelwait exposes how PornHub executives downplayed the severity of the illegal content and failed to take timely action despite knowing the implications.

Layla Mickelwait [04:06]: "He lied to you when he said xyz. I want you to see this for yourself."

She highlights emails where executives debated whether to inform MasterCard about illegal content, ultimately choosing to prioritize corporate interests over victim protection.

Layla Mickelwait [03:08]: "They're communicating amongst each other as employees, saying, 'What should we do?'"

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Operational Failures and Lack of Enforcement

One of the core issues discussed is PornHub's ineffective content moderation policies. Despite massive user traffic and the prevalence of illegal content, the platform maintained minimal moderation efforts.

Layla Mickelwait [42:32]: "They employed only one person to review flagged videos, resulting in a backlog of 706,000 videos. This gross under-staffing facilitated the continued spread of abuse."

Mickelwait criticizes the platform's reliance on insufficient moderation staff and outdated verification systems that failed to prevent minors from uploading or appearing in videos.

Layla Mickelwait [20:06]: "They left it up under new ownership, allowing videos of minors to remain accessible because there was no enforcement."

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Financial Impact and Rebranding Attempts

PornHub's financial struggles became evident when major credit card companies like MasterCard, Visa, Discover, and PayPal severed ties due to the platform's inability to control illegal content.

Layla Mickelwait [53:03]: "When they announced cutting ties with MasterCard, they took down 80% of their content. However, they quickly pivoted to alternative revenue streams like cryptocurrency and ad-based models."

Despite attempts to rebrand and distance themselves from their tarnished reputation, Ethical Capital Partners faced significant backlash and ongoing legal challenges.

Layla Mickelwait [15:53]: "They rebranded multiple times but failed to address the root issues, continuing to host illegal content and exploit victims for profit."

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Legal Actions and Civil Litigation

Mickelwait underscores the importance of legal actions in holding PornHub accountable. Civil litigation has empowered victims to seek justice and push for systemic changes within the industry.

Layla Mickelwait [62:16]: "Civil litigation puts the power into the hands of victims, allowing them to pursue justice and enabling criminal prosecutions based on discovered evidence."

She discusses ongoing lawsuits, including class actions on behalf of thousands of child victims, and highlights significant court decisions that have sided with plaintiffs, further isolating PornHub from mainstream financial services.

Layla Mickelwait [54:12]: "Serena sued Visa and PornHub, and the court sided with her, highlighting PornHub's intentional profit from child trafficking."

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Comparison with Other Platforms and Future Implications

The discussion extends to comparisons with platforms like OnlyFans, debating the effectiveness of subscription-based models in preventing illegal content compared to free user-generated sites like PornHub.

Layla Mickelwait [68:24]: "OnlyFans, being subscription-based, inherently verifies users through payment methods, reducing the risk of underage content. In contrast, PornHub's free model prioritizes ad revenue over safety."

Mickelwait envisions a future where stringent age and consent verification becomes standard across all platforms, ensuring that online pornography does not perpetuate abuse or trafficking.

Layla Mickelwait [58:51]: "Financial institutions like Visa and MasterCard must refuse service to platforms that don't verify age and consent rigorously. This financial pressure can transform the industry."

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Call to Action and Conclusion

As the episode concludes, Mickelwait urges listeners to support the movement against PornHub's exploitation by signing petitions, supporting legal actions, and advocating for comprehensive regulatory measures.

Layla Mickelwait [90:33]: "Education and zero tolerance are key. We must proactively prevent abuse and hold perpetrators accountable to ensure a safer internet for everyone."

The host reinforces the importance of collective action and the role individuals play in influencing change within the online pornography industry.

Host [91:05]: "Eliminating porn is going to be very difficult, but holding platforms like PornHub accountable sets a standard that can ripple through the entire industry."

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Notable Quotes with Attribution and Timestamps

• Layla Mickelwait [02:48]: "She was missing for an entire year and was found in 58 videos on PornHub."

• Layla Mickelwait [03:08]: "They're communicating amongst each other as employees, saying, 'What should we do?'"

• Layla Mickelwait [05:36]: "From the beginning, it was clear that you were going to ask really good questions."

• Layla Mickelwait [42:32]: "They employed only one person to review flagged videos, resulting in a backlog of 706,000 videos."

• Layla Mickelwait [53:03]: "When they announced cutting ties with MasterCard, they took down 80% of their content."

• Layla Mickelwait [62:16]: "Civil litigation puts the power into the hands of victims, allowing them to pursue justice."

• Layla Mickelwait [68:24]: "OnlyFans, being subscription-based, inherently verifies users through payment methods, reducing the risk of underage content."

• Layla Mickelwait [90:33]: "Education and zero tolerance are key. We must proactively prevent abuse and hold perpetrators accountable."

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Final Thoughts

This episode of the PBD Podcast brings to light the critical issues surrounding PornHub's role in facilitating child abuse and human trafficking. Through detailed analysis, firsthand accounts, and compelling evidence, Laila Mickelwait provides a sobering look at the dark underbelly of the online pornography industry. The discussion emphasizes the necessity for rigorous enforcement, financial accountability, and collective action to dismantle platforms that profit from human suffering. Listeners are left with a clear understanding of the challenges and the urgent need for systemic change to protect vulnerable individuals from exploitation.

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Support the Podcast and Laila Mickelwait:

• Support Link: Support the PBD Podcast
• Book Mentioned: "Takedown: Inside the Fight to Shut Down PornHub for Child Abuse, Rape, and Sex Trafficking" by Layla Mickelwait

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Note: This summary intentionally omits advertisements, intros, outros, and non-content sections to focus solely on the substantive discussion about PornHub's misconduct and efforts to hold it accountable.

Transcript

[A]

Move your career further faster in just two days with a Harvard Professional and Executive Development program. Advance your leadership skills, craft smarter business strategies, build your network and transform how you work and think to keep your career moving forward. You'll earn a certificate and can add Harvard to your resume with Harvard Professional and Executive Development. Learn more at professional dce harvard.edu. spotify.

[B]

A little over a month ago, I sat down with the new owner of pornhub, Solomon Friedman and Ethical Capital Partners, and we had a conversation together. After the conversation asked a lot of questions, tough questions. Some of them were answered, some of them were not. It it got to a lady named Layla Micklewait who is the one that started trafficking Hub petition and got 2.33 million signatures to shut down Pornhub. She reached out, says Pat. A lot of things were said, a lot of things were missed. I want to come to your podcast and talk about it. Eventually we were able to make it work. We had the conversation today. She comes with a folder this big showing the lawsuits they're going through, an email exchange of CEOs and executives of what's being said of taking down videos of underage porn that was under Wild mastercard or Visas, asking them, why is this video still on your website? She's sharing that exchange. Very weird. She's talking about Bill Ackman, a guy that's worth almost $10 billion, getting involved and making a phone call to CEO of MasterCard or, you know, CEO of MasterCard or Visa, who was a former colleague that they play tennis together, saying, hey, did you know about this? And then all of a sudden those guys took action. The amount of things that she shared with me and said, Pat Solomon lied to you. This is her words. He lied to you when he said xyz, I want you to see this for yourself. If you know me as a family guy, I got four kids, not a fan of this stuff that's out there, especially underage stuff and anything having to do with human trafficking. Many times when we think about child trafficking, we forget the fact that there's human trafficking above 18 years old or revenge porn. A lot of that stuff that's going on right now as well. Leila broken down in ways that I had no idea. This is what she does 24 7. Following these stories, even to the point that the previous owner of pornhub that ended up having tax issues reached out to her to tell her issues that's really going on on pornhub. Again, I want you to watch this for yourself and be the judge of whether this website should stay up or it should take. It should be taken down, because that's what they're trying to do there. And I think you're going to see some insight. If you enjoyed the previous one that we did, I think you're going to love this one here today again with Laila Micklewaite.

[A]

She was from Broward County, Florida. She was missing for an entire year. And she was finally found when her distraught mother was tipped off by a pornhub user that he recognized her daughter on the site. She was found in 58 videos on Pornhub. So this is us. Emails from the CEO. Can we tell Mastercard that it just slipped through the cracks? They want to know what we do.

[B]

They're communicating amongst each other as employees.

[A]

They're saying, what should we do? She couldn't be older than 13 or 14. And the video was obvious. And they left it up under new.

[B]

Ownership or old ownership.

[A]

That was. This was the old ownership. But old ownership is the same VPs and executives that are there today. Right? But there's not enforcement.

[B]

Why are they not being held accountable?

[A]

There's not enforcement.

[B]

I don't get that, though. Who wouldn't enforce that law? It's kids.

[A]

I want to address something that Solomon and his partner said on this show. I mean, you could play what he actually said. It's a complete lie. They exploit and they harvest the data of every single user that visits their site. They're currently being sued in a class action. And I think we will see full criminal prosecution of the owners of pornhub. And I hope that we do.

[B]

Why would you bet on Goliath when.

[A]

We got bet, David?

[B]

Valuetainment giving values contagious this world of entrepreneurs we can no value to haters.

[A]

How they run homie look what I become I'm the one.

[B]

Okay, so folks, a month ago or so, I interviewed the new owners of pornhub, okay? Solomon Friedman. And he brought one of his associates and we had a very good conversation together. It was to find out what's really going on. Because the level of criticism that pornhub's gotten over the years. And then while I'm doing that, one of the things we talked about was the petition. The fact that trafficking cup petition has roughly Rob, if you can show this 2.33 million signatures worldwide. And I said, that's very interesting. After the interview was done with the new owner, I get a message from a Leila that says, patrick, I'm the one that posted that traffic in hot petition getting all the signatures. And she wrote a book called Takedown, which we'll put the link below. Then I started looking into what she's done, the interview she's done. And I have again more questions about Porn Up. I thought it was the right thing to do to bring her here, to give us a different perspective, not from the owner's perspective, but from the other side, saying, we need to do something about PornUp. So with that being said, it's great to have you on.

[A]

Thank you so much for having me.

[B]

Of course. So tell me, when you watched it, like, what was it when you said, I'm going to reach out to Pat, I want to have a conversation. What part of the interview prompted you to want to do that?

[A]

From the beginning, I mean, from the beginning it was clear that you were going to ask really good questions. And I want to give you credit for what you did as an outsider looking at the situation and being able to go deep into the important questions. But what I realized is that you weren't getting the answers, that there was deflection, that there was lies. And I said, look, we have to set the record straight because there's nothing more important than the truth. The truth is what is really going to set people free. It's what's going to bring change in the situation. It's what's going to bring justice. And I said, look, we need to actually tell the truth. And so that's why I reached out.

[B]

Fantastic. Now for the audience to know the outcome of Traffic and Hub. So I went and read what the outcome is. Rob, if you can go up a little bit so we can read that. Traffic and Hub is a decentralized global movement of individual survivors, organizations and advocates from across a broader spectrum of political faith and non faith, economic and ideological background, all uniting together for the single purpose of shutting down pornhub. So it's not getting them to use better technology like Yodi. It's not getting them to use better methods of, you know, filtering things out. It's actually to shut down pornhub and holding its executives accountable for enabling, distributing and profiting from rape, child abuse, sex trafficking and criminal image based sexual abuse. So Your outcome with Pornhub is to shut the, shut the website down 100%.

[A]

It's not to shut down the entire porn industry, it's to shut down a corporate trafficker, pornhub, because like you just said, they have globally distributed and profited from the trauma of countless victims since 2007. And what justice looks like in this situation is not a Slap on the wrist. A slap on the wrist does not deter future abusers. A slap on the wrist does not bring healing and closure to victims. So from day one when we realized that pornhub was not a porn site, it was a crime scene infested with videos of real sexual crime. And the crime that gets distributed, you know, it's one thing for a victim to be raped, but when that's filmed and then uploaded and then distributed for profit and pleasure to millions of users per day, they call it the immortalization of their trauma where they'll never be able to get over that because it's going to get just like the sadistic game of whack a mole. They just have to keep finding and begging and trying to take it down and again and again. And victims of this kind of abuse, you know, they. We call it image based sexual abuse all the way from child rape to adult rape and trafficking and what we used to call revenge porn, you know, they have a 50% ideation rate for suicide. So this is really a life and death issue. And so we felt from the beginning that the call to action here was to shut down pornhub because we felt like that was, you know, severe harm demands severe consequence.

[B]

So, you know, you say that and you know, you obviously know I pushed them very hard when they were here. And I, for me it was like, what makes somebody want to be a porn star? There's certain things to it, even to the point that, you know, I'm sitting here watching a documentary called After Porn Ends. The Story of Porn Stars. What their life is like after they're out of the porn industry. And how do you go back to a normal life from that space? But there's a few things. Rob, can you pull up the story of New York Times, the 2020 article? Right.

[A]

I think it is Children of Pornhub.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So this is the article that is disturbing to read, but I want to read it to you because I think it's stuff that we need to. I got four kids and I openly talk to my kids about this kind of stuff to prepare them for them because they're 12, 10 specifically to the 12 and 11 year old, but the 8 and 3, soon I'll be talking to them as well. I want to read this to you. So if you can zoom in, Rob, and we can read through this article together. So this is an article that they wrote, exact date. Rob, if you can go a little bit higher. December.

[A]

December 4, 2020.

[B]

2020. Okay. So, you know, so Pornheit Pornhub prides itself on being the cheery winking face of Naughty. The website billboard a Times Square and provides snow plows to Boston. Okay, great. Next. The supposedly wholesome pornhub attracts three and a half billion visits a month, more than Netflix, Yahoo or Amazon. This is when Yahoo was relevant that you would even mention it. Pornhub rakes in money from almost 3 billion ad impressions a day. One ranking list Pornhub as the 10th most visited website in the world. And then as you go lower, you'll see this yet another side of the company. Its site is infested with rape videos. It monetizes child rape, revenge pornography, spy cam videos of women showering racist and misogynist content. Footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags. A search for girls under 18. No space or 14yo no space. Leads in each case to more than 100,000 videos. Most aren't of children assaulted, but too many are. After a 15 year old girl went missing in Florida, her mother found her on Pornhub and 58 sex videos, sexual assaults on a 14 year old California girl were posted on Pornhub and were reported to authorities. I can go on and on and on reading this entire article. It's very disturbing. When this came out. There's a story that came out on how pornhub reacted to this, which if I'm not mistaken, they took down 10 million videos.

[A]

They took down. They took down now, today. So if we. I want to update those stats for you because by the end of 2020. So trafficking hubs started in February of 2020. By the end of 2020 they had capitalized on Coronavirus. So they had done some crazy PR stunts which they're really good at doing, offering free premium to the entire world. Their views and their traffic skyrocketed. So by the end of 2020, they were actually, according to the CEO, the fifth most trafficked website in the world. They had 170 million visits a day, 62 billion visits per year, and they had enough content being uploaded that it would take 169 years to watch if you put those videos back to back. Now, they had 56 million pieces of content on Pornhub at the end of 2020. Today, the story that's told here in this book today, they have been forced to take down 91% of the entire site. They went from 56 million pieces of content in 2020 to 5.2 million pieces of content today. In what Financial Times has called probably the biggest takedown of content in Internet history.

[B]

That's insane. So now it's 90%. Because the article.

[A]

91%.

[B]

91%. At the time it was 81. 80%. The one that I correct. That they take down. So let's. Let's go with that. Let's continue with that. So 56 million to 5.2 million. So their argument maybe Solomon Friedman, they bought it in March of 2023. Okay, so when I'm asking them when you bought the company, there was a part when I said, okay, you bought the company of the things that you said. The company has changed. Oh, we no longer do that. Oh, we no longer do this. Oh, we no longer do that. Great. How many of the old executives and management team that was there when this was happening are no longer there? That you came in, you clean house, you fired them, and they're still there. What do you know about the old executive team versus a new one?

[A]

I thought that was a brilliant question. Because when they purchase a hastily concocted pop up private equity firm that called themselves Ethical Capital Partners purchase a distressed asset in March of 2023.

[B]

Right.

[A]

That was Pornhub and all of its parent, you know, sister site. Sorry. I want to first of all tell you that pornhub is owned by a parent company that used to be called mindgeek. They recently renamed it to ILO because they're trying to distance themselves from their toxic reputation as peddlers of crime back in the day.

[B]

So was Mind Geek. So pre. Prior to Ethical.

[A]

Yes. Then they renamed it. But this is a history. This is the. This is the trajectory of pornhub from the beginning. So they started out as mansef. When their owners got in trouble, they, you know, it was six. It was over $6 million massive.

[B]

Man win. Mine, Geek.

[A]

Yes. Then they got in trouble with the law. Then they had to sell it. They sold it to a German entrepreneur named Fabian Tullman, who actually is, you know, one of the people that came forward to help hold pornhub accountable.

[B]

Former owner of pornhub.

[A]

Former owner of pornhub. Fabian Tillman. He's called the Zuckerberg of porn. So he purchased pornhub, a distressed. Sorry, man Seth. And then he purchased it. And his vision was to dominate the global porn industry. So what he did, he got a $362 million loan from Colbeck Capital and he rolled up the entire porn industry under one company that he called Man Win. Man Win dominated the global corn industry.

[B]

Fabian Thillman.

[A]

Fabian.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

Please continue. I'll follow. So Man Win.

[A]

Yeah, so man went Then he got in trouble. He got arrested for tax evasion, and then he had to sell the company again. So you see a pattern here. So he sold it to CEO and COO for Asantun and David Ticello and a man who was the secret majority shareholder that purchased 61% of the site. He was unknown to anybody. He kept his identity hidden for years. We finally exposed him and found him in the midst of, you know, the trafficking movement to hold them accountable. His name was burned. Berg Mayor. And so then he sold it to them, and then it became Mind Geek. And then years later, they're in legal trouble. They've been charged by the federal government for knowingly and intentionally benefiting from sex trafficking. You know, they lost Visa, MasterCard, Discover, PayPal, all cut ties with the site because they confirmed it was infested with videos of real sexual crime. They lost all mainstream advertisers and partners. Even Ky Jelly and Weed Maps will not advertise on pornhub anymore. They were. They will not. No, they will not. Because of what happened. Because of the exposure that happened. Okay. And then they got sold again to Ethical Capital Partners, who has now renamed mindgeek Alo. So you could see a pattern. This is kind of what has happened over the years with pornhub. As they get in trouble, they try to rebrand. They get in trouble, they try to rebrand. And now this is the latest iteration.

[B]

But when you say that, what is the pattern? The pattern is who the buyers are, or the pattern is the new people come in and they're turned on by how much traffic these guys are getting, and they try to clean it up and nobody can. What is the.

[A]

Not that they can't. They don't want to because of the business model. But I do want to go back to your question, because the question was, whose heads rolled? Who actually got fired from the company? Who left the company? And it was the CEO and the CEO who are the minority shareholders. David Tillo and Faras Anton. Again, two men that had hidden themselves from the public for so many years until they were finally exposed and had to face the public in a parliamentary inquiry in 2021. But they were forced to leave the company, and they're the only ones.

[B]

Why were they just. Because when a new.

[A]

Well, because of everything. It was a disaster for them.

[B]

What is the background with Ferris Anton and David?

[A]

So he was there from the beginning. They were both there from the beginning, when it was mansef. So they were. They were, you know, originals. Right. From. From the. From the inception when Pornhub was purchased for $2,000 in 2007 by a man named Matt Keezer, who was part of this original MANSF group. And so they were there from the beginning and they've stayed with the company. They were forced to resign just because there was a tsunami of bad headlines one after another. It wasn't just the New York Times. Thousands of media articles have been written exposing them. And then it was after the New Yorker did an 8,000 word expose on them that it was the final straw and they had to depart the company. And then that's when Ethical Capital came in. But let's ask a question. I mean, you're a businessman, right? So if you're coming in and you're saying, okay, we're going to call ourselves Ethical Capital, we're going to try to rebrand pornhub and kind of try to kind of resuscitate the brand, what would be the first thing that you would do to be able to legitimately say that you are actually a new company, fresh start. Wouldn't you get rid of all of the people who were complicit in these crimes against children, number one?

[B]

That's the first thing you do.

[A]

Clean house, right? Of course.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay, they do.

[B]

When Elon Musk bought Twitter, let's just kind of use a case study. He bought Twitter at a time where Twitter was censoring, silencing and you know, doing all the things that America even election was affected by some of the roles that Twitter played. And then we found out later on that the communication they were having with the White House, Elon buys it. They have 7500 employees. The next day he fires 50%. They're down to 3750 the next week, 1250 quid. So in a week or two, he went from 7,500 employees to 20. 250 employees. So first thing you got to do. So I asked the question, who was there? So what percentage of the old employees and executives and directors, MVPs that were there prior to Ethical Partners buying them.

[A]

To now, most of them are still. The only ones I'm aware of that are gone are Frost and Tune CEO, the CEO David Tillo, and then Frank Mancina, who was the cfo.

[B]

Did you ever try to talk to those guys or no?

[A]

I mean, if you read this, they, they attacked hard. They were not interested in Congress. They did not want to solve the problem.

[B]

Tell us about it.

[A]

They wanted to attack those who were raising the problem. Not only me. In what way, but victims. Well, really quick, I Just want to finish that point about the executives, because I think it's really important to know that today the same men, I mean, the cpo, Kareem El Morazi. So he was there from the beginning. He was there. He was promoted by Faras himself to his position. Matt Kalichi, where we have emails here that were uncovered in legal discovery talking about the way that Matt was discouraging taking down illegal content from the site when they were discovering it.

[B]

Can I have. Can you read one of them? Or is that something that can be read 100%?

[A]

I mean, it might take time for me to open these up and get those.

[B]

I wouldn't mind reading one that says leave the ones underage under. If you have any of it. I'd like.

[A]

So here we go. This is what I want to show you. So this is us emails from the CEO.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Okay. So this was uncovered in legal discovery. So let's go here. Okay, here's one. So these are. This is an email exchange between the VPs who are still there.

[B]

Is this public record?

[A]

This is public record.

[B]

Okay, fantastic. So we can show. So the crew will come afterwards and get the B roll and show to the audience as well, so forth.

[A]

Here's this one example.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So Serena, the girl that you showed in the New York Times piece. Let me talk about her. So Serena, she was 13 years old when she was sexually abused by being convinced by an older. This is Serena Flakes. Yes. She's from Bakersfield, California. So as an innocent young teen, she had a crush on a boy older than her. She was a straight A student. She had never kissed a boy before, and he convinced her to send him some nude images and videos of herself. And she wanted to impress him, so she did. Those videos were shared with classmates and soon they were uploaded to pornhub, where they were getting millions and millions of views. She would beg for those videos to come down, and either she would be ignored or when they would respond, they would say, prove that you're underage. Prove that you're a victim in this video. And if she did get it down, it would just get reuploaded because one of the things that they did was they placed a download button on every single video on pornhub. So, and this is not a download button like on YouTube, where you kind of can watch it later, but you don't possess it. It's a download button where actually you can own on your device. 170 million visitors per day had an opportunity to download and possess her trauma and then re upload it again and again and again and again. And this sent her on a spiral of despair. She ended up dropping out of school because of being bullied. She got addicted to drugs to try to numb the pain. She tried to kill herself multiple times. It's just amazing that she's even alive today. And then she wound up homeless, living out of a car. Okay, that's Serena. Thankfully, today she's actually suing the literal hell out of pornhub. She's suing the owners by name. She's suing the company. She is suing Visa for monetizing her abuse on the site, and she's suing the hedge funds that funded this whole operation. We could talk about that later, but Serena. So this is Serena's abuse video. I came across her abuse in 2020 on Pornhub. It was clear it was abuse. This was one of several videos. The comments indicated that it was abuse. She clearly looked like she was. She couldn't be older than 13 or 14. And the video was obvious at the time. I was in touch with MasterCard's VPs because I was trying hard to get them to demonetize pornhub because I knew that's the Achilles heel of pornhub was credit card companies. I sent the VP her link to her video. Move your career further, faster. In just two days with a Harvard Professional and Executive Development program. Advance your leadership skills, craft smarter business strategies, build your network, and transform how you work and think to keep your career moving forward. You'll earn a certificate and can add Harvard to your resume with Harvard Professional and Executive Development. Learn more at Professional to Visa, to MasterCard.

[B]

To MasterCard. Okay.

[A]

They sent it to Pornhub and said, what is this? They actually said, we received. So the VPs and the CO. Or in an email exchange, we received the below referral as suspected child porn located on pornhub with the URL to the video. They clicked on that video. They saw that video, and you know what they did? They debated whether or not they should. What will make us look worse to MasterCard if we take it down or if we leave it up? It wasn't automatically, let's take that down. And they left it up. They left the video up for how long in the litigation? So in Serena's lawsuit, it says that they left it up, that it didn't come down until the big purge in 2020, that her abuse videos didn't come down until the Purge of 2020.

[B]

How long is that?

[A]

So that would be. So let's see. This happened in May of what year? Of 2020.

[B]

Okay, so December 4th. So let's just say later. So seven months, six months.

[A]

So they're here saying, can we say it slipped through? Can we? So they're saying, can we say it slipped through? The CEO is saying, can we tell mastercard that it just slipped through the cracks? They want to know what we do.

[B]

No, they're communicating amongst each other as employees.

[A]

They're saying, what should we do? We're in trouble with MasterCard. They even say, who's sending these videos? The CEO says, I know it's Lila who's doing this. The question from MasterCard is, what did you do to verify her age? And they're talking in these email exchanges saying, we don't do anything to verify age. Because this is the whole way that this started. Since 2007, Pornhub became the YouTube of porn, where anybody anywhere in the world could become a pornographer and upload sex videos to the site. And they were not verifying. So I tested this upload process in February 1st of 2020 after I heard the story in the news of that 15 year old girl. She was from Broward County, Florida. She was missing for an entire year. And she was finally found when her distraught mother was tipped off by a pornhub user that he recognized her daughter on the site. She was found in 58 videos being raped and trafficked on Pornhub. Okay, I was haunted by that story. I was haunted by another story at the same time where the Sunday Times did an investigation. They found dozens of illegal videos on the site within minutes. Even children as young as three years old on pornhub. And I was up late one night, and this is in the context of 15 years in the fight against trafficking. And I'm up late, you know, consoling my own newborn who was crying in the middle of the night. And I was thinking about these stories, and I was haunted with a question. How in the world did that abuse end up on pornhub? And I tested the upload system that night, and I found out what millions of people already knew. And that was the crux of the problem. They did not verify in under 10 minutes, anybody with an email address could anonymously upload content to the site. They were not checking ID to make sure these are not children. They were not checking consent to make sure these are not rape or trafficking victims. And because of that, the site became infested with videos of real sexual crime, including Serena's abuse, including so many victim stories I could tell you.

[B]

Okay, so let me ask you this question. So for the longest time there was a basketball team, the Clippers. I don't know if you're familiar with the Clippers. They had an owner called Donald Sterling. And Donald Sterling, there was clips of him being racist comments he made, dropping the N word. I think, I think I Rob, you know what I'm saying? You've seen the clips where he's saying words and he talked about them in a very disrespectful manner. Many racist comments. And he was banned from the NBA for life and fined two and a half million dollars. So every time you thought about the Clippers, you thought about him. This is Donald Sterling. And nobody wanted to play for them. Black players who were there, they didn't want to play for them. And they had a pretty good team. They didn't want to play for him. NBA forces him to sell. He sells it, I think for like $2 billion. And a guy named Steve Ballmer. Steve Ballmer is the number five employee from Microsoft worth $150 billion. Today. He comes and he buys the Clippers in 2014, 2015. Rob, I don't know what the year it is. He cleans house when he comes in now. It's a great organization. Things are great, things are smooth, there's no issues. And Clippers make a comeback and it's actually a fun team to watch. I don't know if they're not no longer right now, but they made a good run at what they did. Okay, so the new buyers Biden March of 2023. Okay. Give or take the dates. I have it somewhere around here when they buy it. One of the things that come that, that I asked is. So now you're saying 91% of videos are taken out from 56 million to 5.2 million. It's a big number to filter all that stuff out. And I ask, I say, so how do you know when somebody is uploading a video that the person is underage or not underage? Right. And we look up, there's a software that I think they use called Yodi. And Yodi is a third party service to prove age without giving up the identity to the company. So I can go on there and say, hi, I'm Patrick by David. Boom. You know how you do your app or whatever? Yeah. Patrick by David. You're 46 years old, you're fine, you can put up your video. Great. Fantastic. No, you're 15 years old, you can't put up. Your video cannot be uploaded. Great. All right, so that is headed in the right direction if this thing is going to stay on. That's the progress question I ask is how do you go back?

[A]

But they didn't, they didn't start doing that. So say they bought in March of 2023. I have the emails where they're telling their users it is only in September 3rd of 2024 when they started.

[B]

Yodi.

[A]

When they started requiring the age and consent verification of the individuals in the videos. Prior to that, after December, the big takedown in December after the New York Times article.

[B]

So for 18 months they're not requiring age of people and videos in the video.

[A]

So they only require the age of the uploader.

[B]

I got it. So that's September. So that's just two months ago.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And even is this documented that they.

[A]

I have, I have the emails right here. Let me show you. I will show it to you right now.

[B]

So Yod, can you pull up?

[A]

When did Pornhub starts using videos uploaded as of September 3, 2024 onward will will only be published if IDs and proof of consent have been submitted and approved for all co performers featured in the content.

[B]

So prior to proven that who, who, who does that? What is it?

[A]

Y does this? Yes, but before that, let me just tell you. They were only requiring the ID of the uploader. So remember I told you I tested the system in February 2020.

[B]

There's four people in the video. I'm the one that's uploading the video. You only check me. But the three other people that are in the video, you're not verifying them, but the video gets through and it's on there.

[A]

Okay, now let me give you an example on why that doesn't work. There is a man named Rocky Shea Franklin in Alabama who raped a 12 year old boy. He drugged him, he overpowered him and he raped him. And he took 23 of those assault videos and he uploaded them to Pornhub. They were being at the time they were being sold as a pay to download content on the site. Rocky Shay Franklin's in prison for 40 years. You can look it, you can look it up. You can google Rocky Shay Franklin for 40 years in prison for what he did. He was a verified uploader. Okay, we have the picture of Rocky. We have, we can, we know what his pornhub username was. He's not the only one. Multiple victims who are suing pornhub today had their abuse, whether it's adult rape or trafficking or child exploitation, uploaded by verified uploaders. So we know that that does not stop. And they knew that upon acquiring the company, they knew that just requiring the idea of the uploader does not solve this problem. Yet they allowed those 5.2 million videos, right? So those were videos where the uploader would have been verified, but not the individuals in the videos themselves. They only started to require that in September. So Ethical Capital Partners went that many months profiting from, and I say profiting from because this is free porn, but it is highly monetized porn. Every video has ads around it. They sell today. They sell 4 billion ad impressions on Pornhub and its sister sites every single day.

[B]

Well, if you look at the estimated revenue, 2022 was 468 million. 2023 was around half a billion. 2024, it could be between 450 to 550 million dollars according to some of the numbers that we see. Okay, so they started using Yodi of everybody in the video a month before they came on the podcast. Because they came on October 4th.

[A]

You're saying September 3rd, September 3rd, 2024 is when they started doing this. And they even then sent a follow up email to say, I know this is going to cause friction, right. It's going to be a more difficult process to upload. But what we're going to do is we're going to create a loophole for you. So let me show you another email.

[B]

Is that an article, Rob, that shows what they're using? Is that the announces biometric technology to verify users?

[A]

Yes, this is February 3, 2021 from Vice. And in it they mentioned Yodi. Right down here. For uploaders. It's for uploaders.

[B]

So for uploaders they started in 2021, but for everybody in the video, they started at September 3rd of 2024 and.

[A]

They implemented a system. So what they did was to make it easier, they created essentially what's a loophole to the system where they create an auto tag option where anybody. So you can get one person verified. And they describe it here as an auto tag function. So if you auto tag somebody else that they will automatically. They don't have to verify their age and consent in that in. So I'm trying to explain how this works. So you have a performer that is actually verified. So they show their ID and they, you know, do their consent form. Then they can toggle on this feature that they describe in these emails to their users where they can auto accept incoming tags. So another person could have X, Y and Z individuals in their videos. And in order for them to get around Actually having to show the ID and consent of all those individuals. They can go to somebody who has the auto, accept auto, tag on and just tag them. Okay? And what they said in this email, if and if they abuse the feature and try to tag you in a video that you're not in, our A compliance team will catch it and may not allow it. May not. Do you know what may not means? This is tricky, right? May not means we may allow it. Right. So even now it's clear that this system isn't, isn't really a robust and reliable system. And yet they're here, sitting here, Alex with that cross around her neck. And she's been there for so many years. She was there when these children were being abused where the rape and trafficking victims. And even today, I mean, even today they have illegal content on the site. And you know how I know this? The proof is the fact that they had to file a report under the Digital Services Act. The Digital Services act is a European law and they really fought hard not to have to report under the Digital Services Act. They said, look, we're not a very large online platform is their argument, because very large online platforms have to report. And they actually did. And they had to report how many videos that they took down that were illegal content. And from February 15th of 2024 to June 30th of 2024, they reported 3770 images that they believed were child sexual abuse material that had to be taken down. And over 8,000, it was 8,679, I think was the number of non consensual and adult rape videos. So that's averaging about a thousand children and 2000 adults per month because this was four and a half months that they had to disclose. And that's not counting 300,000 videos that they just lumped in under general terms of service violations. General terms.

[B]

Now let me. So in your eyes, let me continue with this. Who right now, like who do you go to to report this? And they get involved and say, well this is, you know, we got to investigate this. Who is being helpful? Who is not people you're reporting to law enforcement.

[A]

Helpful?

[B]

They are helpful, yes. In what way?

[A]

I mean, they will actually process a video. So there's certain Attorney General's offices across the United States that have, you know, become passionate about this issue and care about it. And so a video could be sent to them and they will then reach out to pornhub and demand that it comes down so that that's helpful. One thing that's not helpful is that Ethical Capital Partners has set up a system where if a user sees a problematic video on pornhub, they can't just flag the content and take it. Like actually just flag it. They have to log in.

[B]

That's how you just tweeted that they.

[A]

Have to create a user account in order to report it. Now I thought. I find that interesting because children don't have to create a user account to watch the videos on pornhub.

[B]

What?

[A]

Anyone in the world. So a child, right?

[B]

Anyone with a Device, go to pornhub.com.

[A]

All they have today. And they didn't even.

[B]

You're going to be fine because I'm the one that's going to write you up.

[A]

So they, so they only.

[B]

Oh, shoot, back up. Okay, I, I didn't. Seriously, that's the homepage? Yes.

[A]

Okay. They didn't even have an RU18 click through button when all this started in 2020. That any five.

[B]

You see those guys on the back. So let me ask you. You're so funny, Humberto. I can hear you. So a child can go on without logging in, but you can't.

[A]

But you can't flag a video. If you see a video on pornhub that you think is illegal, you can't just flag that video without actually logging in. Yet they allow anybody to watch their entire library of millions of videos without logging in. So I mean, how ethical is that? Right?

[B]

So, okay, so you go in. Anybody can go through any of the videos that are on there. But if I want to report something, I need to log in. I've already consumed the video, I've seen it. But if I want to report, I have to log in. Why do I have to log in to report?

[A]

I think that it's a deterrent factor for reporting. I mean, why. Because if they get. So let me tell you another thing. In the legal discovery that's happened. So there's now, let's see, nearly 300 victims who are suing Pornhub in 25 lawsuits, including multiple class actions on behalf of tension of thousands of child victims. Okay. And part of the legal discovery has uncovered the fact that they only had one person. One person. Now, the company had 1800 employees by the end of 2020, and they employed one person to work five days a week reviewing videos flagged by users as containing terms of service violations, including what would be child rape, trafficking, all sorts of non consensual content. Okay. They had a policy that a video had to be flagged 10, sorry, 15 times before it was put in line for review. Are you following me? So an abuse victim put in for review.

[B]

One person that does five days a week. I'm following.

[A]

Right. So a victim could find their abuse on Pornhub. They would have to flag it over 15 times for it to even be put in line for review. And their Entire backlog was 706,000 videos.

[B]

Now, 706,000 videos of 15, 15 times.

[A]

Being flagged of a backlog of flagged videos.

[B]

Videos that were not 15 times just flagged.

[A]

Once just flagged, flagged videos. Now here are the emails that are saying. So these are. This is the CEO again. They're in trouble with MasterCard.

[B]

Is this the old CO for.

[A]

But the CPO who's currently the same CPO. The VP's that are currently the same VPs are discussing this policy and they're talking about, like he says, the below seems good and reasonable videos with 15 flag is never viewed. And they say we have 706,425 videos that have been flagged that are in the backlog. Okay, so this was the process. Now tell me now based on that, is it any wonder that they make it difficult to flag videos? I don't know how many they have today, but that's. That's the cpo Chief Product Officer. Yes.

[B]

Okay, who's the Chief Product Officer? What's the name?

[A]

Kareem El Morazi. Kareem Almorazi.

[B]

Kareem Almorazi?

[A]

Yes. El M A R. Oh, is that.

[B]

Like it's Sep. No, just he's giving you a suggestion right there. Says do you mean? Yeah, right there. Is this the guy?

[A]

There he is right there.

[B]

Okay, so can we read his background? I want to know his background. Colonel Bursa is currently Chief Product Officer, MindGeek. Before joining Mind Geek, he served President, TV of and Managed Services at Playboy Plus Entertainment. Okay. From August 2011 to July 16th. Before their time at Playboy, Kareem was the with bell from June of 02 to September of 2011 where they held the title of General Manager, Mobile solutions. And this role, Kareem was responsible for business solutions and wireless professionals going to some management. Okay, so all right, so he was at Playboy from Playboy. He comes in here, Chief Product Officer. And the email, he's saying those that get flagged 15 plus times don't get that many views. The other 706,000 videos that got flagged do.

[A]

No, he's the one that's part of this discussion where they have set up a policy. So this is what is so problematic.

[B]

The policy is the 15.

[A]

The policy is the fact that they have one person out of a staff of 1800. They're making hundreds of millions. So from you're a businessman, again, if you're a company that wants to make sure that there's not illegal content proliferating all over your site, okay, you have 1800 employees. Most of them are not doing the compliance work. In fact, we have evidence that they only had 30 moderators moderating the content.

[B]

What was the number? They told me when I asked them, do you remember that? When I said how many moderators?

[A]

They said, they said they wouldn't tell you a number, but they said hundreds. They said hundreds.

[B]

How many is actually doing it?

[A]

Well, I know that as of 2020, okay, as of 2020, they only had 30. And not only was so they had 30 working 10 per shift. And these people were actually tasked to watch at least 700 videos per shift. They were reprimanded if they had less than 700. Some of the more advanced moderators that were there for a long time and you had to skip through things very quickly or even watching up to 2,000 videos per eight hour shift. And they were watching these, just skipping through these. They just skipped through them. They just skipped through the videos.

[B]

So you watch it on 2.0 speed.

[A]

But this isn't even just Pornhub. This is for all the tube sites. So they own Pornhub, RedTube, YouPorn, GayTube, X Tube. You know, I mean, so many tube sites. And they had 10 people. Now compare this. Facebook has 15,000 moderators, okay? This is a company that owns most of the world's most popular porn sites, okay? Think of the massive amount. They hired 10 people per shift to do this job, okay? That is a policy that they put in place while they are not verifying agent consent while they have one person reviewing flagged videos. So when I say that these executives and these VPs set up these policies, these weren't accidents. These were decisions.

[B]

How many videos are uploaded per hour? They gave the number. Do you remember the video, Rob?

[A]

They said there were 2,000 per day. Now, okay? They used to have 25,000 per day. Now it's 2,000 in 2020, okay?

[B]

So if they got 2,000 per day, it works. If you have hundreds, like they said.

[A]

To review every video.

[B]

To review every video. It doesn't work if it's only 30.

[A]

The problem is it doesn't matter if they have 10,000 moderators if they're not verifying the age and consent of every Individual in every video. It's a guessing game and you hit on that during your interview. It's a game of Russian roulette with people's lives because there's no way that they can guess properly who's 16 and who's 18. Right. Because not even a pediatrician can guess on a consistent basis who's 15 and who's 18. It just, you just cannot do it.

[B]

Is this the part prop.

[A]

This is where they explain how many moderators.

[B]

Can I, can I hear this? I'm curious.

[C]

Every single video is reviewed by a human. We have age ID consent for uploaders, everybody appearing in content. There is absolutely no incentive to do otherwise on our platform. I always make that point like from a business perspective, there's no incentive to do anything but the highest standards of trust and safety. So you have a company with 1500 people, you're going to have people who are saying nonsense.

[B]

Technical product manager.

[C]

So like I have to say this. This is not someone obviously when I'm. When I'm reviewing the company and I look very, very carefully at it, including spending time. None of these. There's not trust and safety staff. These are not moderators. These are not people in compliance. They, whatever idea they have. Although it's very interesting, we learned something from these videos. We actually learned a very important lesson which was you can have a company of 1500 people and you'll have graphic designers and you'll have sales people and customer support. All of them need to be educated on our trust and safety system. So we actually the company in response and I think it was absolutely the right thing to do. Now whether you. Doesn't matter if you're the going to.

[B]

Tell us how many moderators they're not.

[A]

They'Re going to say. He continues this word salad where he actually doesn't answer how many moderators? They won't tell. They won't say exactly how many they were. No, he just, I mean they used to have 30. Okay, but here's what he just said was they review every single video. Now let me. They've been saying that since they started defending themselves in 2020. Let me tell you what that means. That is their admission of deep complicity because there was a 12 year old boy, right? Drugged, overpowered and raped in 23 videos with titles that indicated that it was abuse. I won't say what they are on because I don't want people to be disturbed. But the titles of the videos, maybe I will. I mean young ass is best uncle, Secret little nephew, things like that on the. On these videos they had. Right. Confirmed by the Sunday Times. Children as young as three on the site.

[B]

Be quiet.

[A]

The Sunday Times did an investigation in late 2019. They found dozens of videos on the site that were illegal within minutes. Even children as young as three they have had. Now, I've seen these videos and this is described in the New York Times piece by Nick Kristoff. Videos where victims are so unconscious and drugged, their bodies are completely limp and a masked assailant is actually lifting the eyelids of the victims. You can see their red bloodshot eyes and actually touching the eyeballs of these victims in pornhub on pornhub drug needles where you could see the needle with which they were drugged. And I don't want to. I don't want to disturb people by describing it in too much detail, but let's just say these. It is clear that this is not acting okay when you're actually tickling the feet and you're touching the eyeballs of a rape victim. And they're. What they're saying is that their moderators. What he just said was that this is what they've been saying since 2020. Their moderators viewed those videos. They approved. And there's. I'm not. This is confirmed. I. We have. I mean, look at lawsuits. 179 page complaints detailing the evidence of a site infested with real obvious sexual crime. He's saying that those moderators viewed and then said, looks good. Let's go ahead and put this live on the site. And not only that, let's go ahead and monetize it with ads. Because every video, I mean, I describe in my book one video of a clearly prepubescent child. It was. It's so obvious. And she is being anally raped by a perpetrator. And she is protesting in the video. And we reported it and it didn't come down. Weeks later, it was still up under.

[B]

New ownership or old ownership.

[A]

That was. This is the old ownership. But old ownership is the same VPs and executives that are there today. Right. Okay. We already know that. They already said that. It didn't come down. It got reported multiple times. It was only when we got the FBI involved, then they reported to the national center for Missing and Exploited Children that they finally were forced to take down this video. And even when they took down the video, because traffic is so important to them, because inventory is so important to them, they took down the video, but they left a black box there that said removed at the request of the national center for Missing and exploited children. They left the tags, the title, the views, the comments, everything. Why? Because they want inventory. Because they want it to be picked up on Google to drive more traffic to the site. And maybe they won't see that particular child's abuse, but then they'll just get directed to a whole bunch of other material.

[B]

Okay, so that's when I said, aside from you who is reacting to this?

[A]

Obviously so many people.

[B]

Is it? Is it? Is it?

[A]

This is a movement.

[B]

I get it's a movement. But now if you're in front of a court and you got lawyers. I got lawyers representing them. Pornhub, and I got lawyers representing you and the victims. Right. The lawyers representing them are going to say, your honor, we bought this company in March of 2023. We know these were the issues. Here's what we've done. We made the investment. We've gotten rid of this and we've gotten rid of that. And back in the days, this 91% of it is gone. And we are following the guidelines. And this because we want this thing to be extremely compliant, and we want to follow the guidelines by every single state and da, da, da, da, da. And this is what we've done.

[A]

That's not how the law works.

[B]

But how does it work?

[A]

Because you can't go commit a crime and just because time has passed, you don't get held responsible for it. Okay, so I. Right. That's not how justice works.

[B]

That's why not if it's new ownership, though, because if I buy a company.

[A]

That, well, they're the ones who are being sued. So. So ilo, right. Ethical Capital Partners is not able to escape the litigation of what I understand.

[B]

But. But even with the law that comes after them, because your outcome is you want to shut down Pornhub. That's you. The 2.33 million signatures that you've collected, they're supporting you because they want to see pornhub being shut down, not being moderated, not.

[A]

I'm glad. When they're taking steps to limit the amount of illegal content, can they do.

[B]

Anything where you will be in a position to say, guys, it's fine. It can stay on.

[A]

Absolutely not. Because victims will never forget it. That's not what justice looks like. It doesn't look like you say, sorry, you say, okay, we're going to clean some stuff up now because we got in trouble. It's not because they wanted to do this right. If they never. If the petition never happened, if Nick Kristoff didn't write his article, if Bill Amman didn't get involved to help get the credit card companies to cut them off if they didn't.

[B]

Bill Ackman is the one that got the Visa mascot to cut them off.

[A]

Yeah. So Bill Ackman. I love Bill. He's been such an important advocate in this fight. He read the Nick Kristoff New York Times piece. You know, I think it was the day after it was out sipping his morning coffee in his penthouse. And he was incensed because he has daughters himself. And I ended up getting in touch with him and explained everything that was going on. And he not only, you know, tweeted about it, he actually contacted Ajay Banga, who at the time was a CEO of MasterCard, because he knew him from the tennis circuit. And he shared the article and he said, look, you need to do the right thing here. And he said, I'm on it. And that's when they announced that they were going to be investigating the site, even though we had already been engaged with MasterCard now for almost a year at this point. But they were resisting. They were resisting. But then finally they actually said, okay, we're investigating. Of course, they confirmed the illegal content all over the site because they knew about it from. From the start.

[B]

Well, in one article, it says, Visa and massacre stopped doing business with Pornhub in December of 2020. But this is 2022. But no, no, got back on.

[A]

So here's what happened. So Bill Ackman intervenes, they confirm the illegal content. Mastercard's the first one that says, okay, we're disengaging with pornhub. Visa quickly follows suit. They're not going to be left behind in this. Discover does. PayPal already had done this at the beginning.

[B]

Whatever Visa does, MasterCard does. Whatever MasterCard does, Visa does.

[A]

Okay, so that was the worst thing that could have ever happened to Pornhub.

[B]

And by, I think, Unilever and PayPal also stopped advertising and offering their services to them during that same time.

[A]

Correct. They had done that actually at the beginning of December 2020. But they were losing all of their talking about, you know, advertisers and whatnot.

[B]

And so who is allowing them to accept payments today? Who do they still have?

[A]

So they have cryptocurrency and they have bank wires as payment options. But I'll tell you the story of what happened. So, so, so they get cut off by the credit card companies now. This is the worst thing that could ever happen to them. I mean, Fabian Tillman told me earlier in 2020, if you want to go after Pornhub, go after the credit card companies because that's the only thing they care about.

[B]

It's true.

[A]

And when they announced that they were cutting ties, pornhub did the unthinkable. And that is when they took down 80% of the entire website because it was all unverified content, because it was infested, because they didn't have ID and consent, because they didn't know who was in the videos. And there were so many illegal videos. That was the only thing that they could do to try to woo the credit card companies back. And there was headlines all over the world about this. So they lost the ability to process transactions for their premium, and they had cut off the advertising as well. But two weeks later, I found out an insider from the company came forward and said, I know you don't know this. This was months later, but two weeks after that New York Times piece, they actually went back to the advertising arm of the company. The advertising arm is called Traffic Junkie. And that's how they make most of their money. I mean, today they sat here and told you, how do we make money on Pornhub? We make it through advertising. They were selling 4.6 billion ad impressions on Pornhub every day. Okay? That's how they're making their money. The credit card companies went back. So then it was round two with the credit card companies. Of course, one of the first people I called was Bill. I said, you're not going to believe this. They've gone back. He said, I'm going to help. He did. We engaged with the credit card companies again, but it wasn't until there was. They were resisting again and again. It wasn't Until August of 2022, when Visa lost its motion to dismiss. So Serena sued Visa. She sued pornhub and the owners and executives, and Visa lost their motion to dismiss the case. Judge Carmack Carney in California gave a scathing decision. He said, according to the facts in this case, Visa gave pornhub the very tool through which to complete the crime of knowingly benefiting from child trafficking and denied them. Made headlines around the world. Bill. Bill got him and I on Squawk Box with Andrew Sorkin. Seventeen minutes. We're calling out. Al Kelly, the attorney for Serena got on Squawk Box the day before calling put. Pressure was on. The headlines were piling up. And then Al Kelly came forward with a personal statement. He said, I usually don't do this, but I'm a father and we're going to cut off pornhub. Once and for all. And then of course, mastercard followed Discover and that's how they finally got cut off by the credit card companies.

[B]

So if it's crypto only and wiring money, you can't make a half a billion dollars a year with that.

[A]

Well, it's because they have the other pay sites, right? So they have.

[B]

What are the other pay sites?

[A]

They have the subscription sites, they have the browsers and the reality kings and they manage Playboy and they, you know, have mofos. And so many.

[B]

Percentage of the revenue comes from pornhub.

[A]

I don't know today how much of their total revenue as a company is coming from pornhub versus their other sites.

[B]

There's no way it's a lot if it's only wiring.

[A]

I mean, it definitely tanked. It definitely tanked. I mean, pornhub used to be the cash cow. Now I think what it's used as is more an advertising arm for them. So they advertise. There are other pay sites on pornhub. Right. When you go there.

[B]

So let's, let's go back to this. So let's go back to, you know, you want them to shut down. Okay, let's say they do. Pornhub is shut down. All right.

[A]

Yeah. Now what? Right?

[B]

You think there's not access to what are the other porn sites that are available or even the dark web or you don't think any of that exists and it's accessible to people like you? You accomplish. What did you accomplish? What's the accomplishment?

[A]

So part of this is not just to hold pornhub accountable, but we want to prevent this in the future. And what that means is that we are pressuring not only governments, but the credit card companies. So the financial institutions, I think are the key to this. And you might understand this as a businessman yourself. We want to see Visa, MasterCard and Discover. Say we don't do business with user generated porn sites that don't reliably verify the age and consent of every single person in every single video. Just like they have anti money laundering policy, they need to have anti online exploitation policy. And when they do that, they're the doer at scale. So they are the solution at scale because these companies, they may be free porn, but they're not free. They exist to make a lot of money and it's really hard for them to do that without the credit card companies and financial institutions. So I think that is the ultimate solution in addition to governments enacting the same policy.

[B]

So this, even if you shut down pornhub it's not going away because the porn laws in America are not going to look. By the way, it's so interesting because in this election, porn was one of the issues in the election. I don't know if you saw the video or not. Did you see the ad the Democrats ran?

[A]

Oh, I think I did. Scaring people that they're going to take away the porn watch this year.

[B]

One of the ads they ran, Rob, I think we texted it to you if you, you know, I saw it. Brandon, did you send it to Rob? Rob should have it. If you have one of the clips. I think this is the one. Yeah, watch this. This is a commercial. If folks are watching this, this is not a spoof. This is a real commercial. Commercial ran with budget of Kamala Harris to scare people who watch porn to not vote for Republican. This is maybe one of the weirdest commercials ads I've ever seen in my life. The only thing it was missing is Kamala Harris coming at the end of saying, hi, I'm Kamala Harris and I endorse this message. Go ahead and play this clip. Sorry, you can't do that. What the hell, man?

[A]

How'd you get in here?

[B]

I'm your Republican congressman. Now that we're in charge, we're banning bourne nationwide.

[A]

You can't tell me what to do.

[B]

Get out of my bedroom, you creep. I won the last election, so it's my decision. I'm just going to watch and make sure you don't finish illegally.

[A]

I mean, it's ridiculous because, I mean, porn, porn, like it or not, it's legal. It's constitutionally protected as expression. Okay? It's not going away. That's not my goal. That's not the goal of trafficking, Hub. That's not the goal of my organization, the Justice Defense Fund. We're after making sure that these sites are not infested and globally distributing and monetized sexual crime. Monetizing sexual crime. That is what we're after. And the problem with pornhub is that it is doing that. And so when we're shutting down pornhub, it's not shutting down all porn. If you want to have porn, you do so legally. You do so by verifying age and you verify consent. And that's possible. That's possible. But you have to reinvent the business model of free user generated porn. And that's okay. That's okay if they have to do that.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, again, so what are the laws right now with porn? What are the laws right now with porn? When it comes down to underage porn, it's illegal.

[A]

I mean, it's illegal to possess it, it's illegal to distribute it, to advertise it, to monetize it.

[B]

Why are there so many sites that have it?

[A]

They're breaking the law, but there's not.

[B]

Why are they not being held accountable?

[A]

There's not enforcement.

[B]

I don't get that, though. I don't. I don't understand. I'm very confused with that part. So who. Who wouldn't enforce that law? It's kids. You know, we. We had a guest on here a couple days ago where the interview went out, and it was a great kind. I wish she would mention more people that are alive instead of just mentioning people that are no longer here with us. One of the conversations was around the fact that According to the FBI 2022 data, 359,000 children are missing. I mean, I had a dog missing for nine days, Jimbo. And we were devastated as a family. Parents missing a child. Are you kidding me? The pain. What policy is above that? I don't know what policy is.

[A]

It's not a matter of the policy. It's a matter of the enforcement. And I think the problem is there's so much of this going on, and there's not enough political will and there's not enough resources being dedicated to do it. And that's why I think there's power in civil litigation, because civil litigation puts the power into the hands of the victims. They decide whether or not they're going to pursue justice in court, and they're not waiting and relying upon the government. And what often can happen is when you have a powerful legal complaint and the lawyers do all their work and discovery, and they unearth all of the facts and the evidence, then the criminal prosecution can come on the heels of that. And basically, they use everything they found in the civil litigation to pursue the criminal. It makes their job easier. And we've seen that over and over again.

[B]

Yeah. Do you remember the part when I asked him a question? I said, so is your goal, as in pornhub, to help people go out of the porn industry? Oh, no. A lot of people are very happy with their jobs and officers. So what are you talking about? How the hell does somebody become a porn star at 18 years old? They consumed underage to be inspired to do that. Right. And you go through these data and you talk to other people and say, so what is the profile of somebody that becomes a baseball player? Well, what is the profile of somebody that becomes a lawyer? What is the profile of somebody that becomes a dentist? What is the profile of somebody that becomes a realtor, an actor, an athlete? What is the profile of somebody that becomes a porn star? What is that profile? What percentage of that is broken homes where kids are forced to find a way? And you go look up some of the statistics on, you know, percentages, on what kids are going through, on how they get introduced to this business. As you're going through this search and the 2.33 million people that are messaging you, how many people have reached out to you that are former porn stars or former abusers that are saying, hey, my clips are still out there? How many of those people are reaching out to you?

[A]

A lot. A lot. I mean, some of my most helpful allies in this fight have been those in the porn industry or formerly in the porn industry, but in the porn industry. I mean, talk about illegal content. It's not just child rape and trafficking, it's copyright violations, pirated content on these free sites. So, you know, I, at one point, I had several porn performers who were telling me they spent hours a day scouring pornhub and its sister tube sites trying to find their own illegal content to try to take it down. In the course of doing that, they were coming across a whole bunch of child abuse and trafficking and they were sending the links over. But, you know, some of the greatest allies have actually been in the industry. And, yeah, there's a lot of pain that goes on with a lot of people. I mean, one, a book I recently just read is by a porn producer named Vic Lagina, and he has a book called Filthy. Did you say Vic Lagina?

[B]

You're not joking?

[A]

I'm not joking.

[B]

Trump would love that name. The way he says China, it almost.

[A]

Sounds like, yeah, so this is not a joke.

[B]

This is not a story.

[A]

No. He actually was a producer and director for many, many years, and he wrote a book about his experience. And, you know, one of the things that's really clear is that there is definitely a lot of trauma and there's a lot of, you know, history of prior abuse and all of those things that are in the professional studio produced porn industry. Even some of the porn performers who actually were in the studio produced content are suing pornhub. There's a porn star named Phoenix Marie that's currently suing for tens of millions of dollars. She's suing ILO and, you know, the parent company of pornhub for her own exploitation. So it's not a secret that that happens. But the work that we're doing is to help those who are, you know, not in that professionally studio produced content, although they're welcome to come forward for help if they're been abused too. But I think to your point of, you know, children who are witnessing this, it's not just that they might aspire to the porn industry someday. I think probably more concerning than that is the fact that 8 year olds as their sex education, as their introduction to sex, could actually witness a real sexual crime. On pornhub, as their introduction to sexuality, they could witness a real rape, they could witness abuse. There's a study done by the British Journal of Criminology and they looked at over 100,000 of the videos that are on the homepages of these free tube sites and they found that 1 in 8, 1 in 8 of every of those videos shows violence and non consent. So that is what children are viewing when pornhub allows free access to these sites by anybody with no restriction, with no safeguarding. So I say that children are abused in front of the screen and children are abused behind the screen. And I think both need to be protected.

[B]

What do you see as the pattern of people who get into the porn industry? Do you see, Rob, can you, can you actually ask this call? Let's do this, let's ask Chad GBT and let's see what it says. If you go in ChatGPT and ask the question, what causes someone to get into the porn industry? I'm actually curious to know what the answer is going to be. And so financial motivation. Okay, I see that everywhere. Personal choice and agency. Sexual freedom and empowerment. Right. Influence of environment. Makes sense. Psychological emotional factors. Self esteem of being validated. Trauma vulnerability in certain cases of individual have history of abuse, trauma might be susceptible to entertaining industry coping, Exploitation, rebellion and escapism. Escapism. Okay. Recruitment and opportunity. Socioeconomic and educational barriers. Make sense. Online accessibility. All right, so question. What, what is your view on the difference between Only fans and pornhub? Do you have any problem with only?

[A]

Well, only I? Well, I have victims who have been exploited that have come forward who have also been exploited on only.

[B]

How do you get exploited on OnlyFans now?

[A]

They have. They have really watching. So one of the beautiful things that's happened in holding pornhub so publicly accountable with all of the serious repercussions that has happened to them is other websites. It's a domino effect. Right? Other websites and other companies are watching what happened to them and saying we don't want to end up in that position. So Let us proactively try to clean up what we're doing and improve our. I see. But with OnlyFans, I think the biggest, one of the biggest things is that it's subscription based so that it's not just free access to go on the site. So I think that definitely prevents children from being able to access that content freely like they can on the free porn tube sites. I think the free porn tube sites are the most dangerous out there, not only from the user perspective of who's viewing it, but also from who are in the videos. And I would, I want to address something that Solomon and his partner said on this show when you started to talk about protecting children from access to the site and they raised this big objection, right? Oh, this is about privacy. This is about privacy. And I just want to point out how ridiculous that is coming from them because for one, they exploit and they harvest the data of every single user that visits their site. They're currently being sued in a class action for the exploitation of user data. So they already do that. But you pointed out that because they own pay sites as well, these subscription sites, they already age verify on those sites. Right, because you have to have a credit card to access the site. So they are, they have no problem getting the personally identifying information, the name, the credit card, the address of people for their paid sites. But they suddenly have a problem with age verification with their free sites because their free sites depend on frictionless traffic to the sites to sell ad impressions. So I just want to point out the flawed logic that they're using in that case and point out the fact that it's a lie that this is really about privacy when it's really about money for them. And in fact, I have emails from their senior community manager discussing this very fact and what she says, not email, sorry, posts online. She says exactly what you said. Mindgeek loses money. Age verification devastates traffic. Pornhub stands to lose 50% of traffic. It costs us money to verify, and overall it's a disaster. That's exactly what it's about when it comes to the resistance to age.

[B]

I don't think it's 50%. I think they'd lose 90%. I think if right up front, if the website verified 90% is gone, there's 90% will be gone in, in in no time.

[A]

If that was so. I think whether it's 50 or 90, I think the important thing is the truth again is to get to the truth. What is the truth? Why are they resisting age verification? And it comes down to money for sure. It's expensive.

[B]

It's going to be the traffic that goes to it. So if you have to do that, the cost and the traffic and you have to be able to show like when you do a sponsorship with somebody. When we used to entertain a lot of sponsors, you know, a few sponsorships, two years ago it was. So how many views you get? We get this. Okay, we pay this per this. Okay, cool. No, all right, we'll pay this. All right, sounds good. Boom. Here's one. Okay. I find a hundred thousand dollars. Great. But if you don't have viewerships, you know, advertisers are not going to pay you big dollars. You have to get the eyeballs. They don't want to not give up the eyeballs.

[A]

They don't want to lose traffic.

[B]

They don't want to lose traffic because.

[A]

That'S the business model of free user generated porn. So I think it's really, really important, especially because, you know, this is going to be making headlines soon with regard to age verification for users because the Supreme Court on January 15 is hearing their opposition to age verification in Texas. So Texas Pornhubs, yes, it's pornhub and their partner, the Free Speech Coalition. So they call themselves the Free Speech Coalition. And so Texas actually enacted age verification requirements for users. They went ahead and sued the state of Texas. Now it's going to the Supreme Court. And you know, it's under this pretense of oh, we care about privacy. You know, we don't want people to have to show their ID to access a porn site. Well, they don't have to show their ID to pornhub. I would never want anybody to have to show their ID to pornhub. They have third party sites, right? Yoti? These are reliable. These are privacy respecting corporations that are third party that exist to be able to easily and safely verify age and id. And so it's. I just want to call out the BS from them. I want to call out the excuses and just get right down to the truth. Just say it like it is. Say it that you just don't want to lose profit because you want to put profit over the safety of children every single time.

[B]

Yeah, I mean when I'm looking at this website. Rob, the Free Speech Coalition, nonprofit. What a great name though. Free Speech Coalition. Honestly, it's a great name. FSC, the adult entertainment industry in the US founded in 1990. What opposes the passage of an enforcement of obscenity laws and many censorship laws. That lady to the right, Nina Hartley. If you Want to go to her. Nina Hartley is from the industry herself. Right? She. By 2017, she had expressed. She's an American porn star and sex educator. By 2017, she had appeared in more than 1,000 adult films. She had been described by Las Vegas Weekly as an outspoken feminist, an advocate for sexual freedom, and by CNBC as a legend in the adult world.

[A]

She's not leading it anymore.

[B]

She's not. What is she doing now?

[A]

I don't, I don't know what she's doing now, but I know that she's.

[B]

She stepped away from it.

[A]

Yeah, I don't think she's the leader of, of this, but this is an industry. So it's a porn industry interest group. Basically. They exist to lobby for the interest not of porn performers, not of those who were actually in those videos, but for the industry. And they fight laws every single time. They fought really hard and I think they won. There was a law in the United States that actually made it illegal to depict a child. So where it wouldn't be real. Right. It would be a depiction of a child. It could maybe be a realistic depiction. But they fought it being illegal to depict a child in a video. And that's when the explosion of teen porn came to be where. So teen is one of the most popular categories on pornhub for so many years in a row. And when you say teen. Right, teen. They have 18 year olds that look like children. They have pigtails, braces, flat chest. They talk like children, they act like children. And it's an entire genre of porn that exploded because it's not illegal to do so in Canada, it's actually illegal to depict a child in a pornographic video, even if it's not a child.

[B]

What is that, Rob?

[A]

That's one what she's describing somebody that's above age or maybe above age, but they're portrayed as a younger person.

[B]

Is that Dylan Mulvaney or is that actually. No, I'm actually asking her. So that's not Dylan Mulvaney?

[A]

No.

[B]

Oh, I'm sorry, I thought. I. It just. It looks like him. So.

[A]

And so that. So that was the problem on pornhub is, you know, real children were being raped alongside depictions.

[B]

But by the way, what, what, what is the, what is the position legally against AI porn that they can do? What, what's. What is legal or illegal with that? Is there laws against it? Like if CGI and they can. The. The direction ChatGPT is going, the technology that they're going to be creating, what if they use AI to Create porn. Is there any laws against it?

[A]

Uh, I think that they're trying to catch up with, you know, the advancement of AI and being able to create abuse imagery. Because, you know, what they can even do today? And I say keep your kids faces off social media if you can, because what AI can do today is actually take the face of a child from a picture and then create child sexual abuse material from just an innocent picture of your kid, you know, playing at the playground. They can take that and then they can, you know, make very realistic looking child sexual abuse imagery. And that needs to be completely outlawed. And we need to have, you know, strong laws against that. We call it deep fakes as well. But in the United States, there's been a law that's been enacted since 1988 for the porn industry, for the brick and mortar, you know, porn industry. Porn Valley. You know about Porn Valley, right? You, you know, grow up, right? You're near Chatsworth, is that right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it's called USC 2257. And it requires age verification and record keeping. And it's actually a felony. If you don't keep those records and be able to produce them to the doj anytime they want it, they can request it. Because it's understood. Anybody with a brain knows that if you don't have that, the industry is going to be awash with criminal content. The problem is that with the advent of the Internet and the YouTubes of pornography, that these companies have basically ignored the law. And pornhub would be held to the standard of this law because the law says if you transfer pornographic content in the United States, if you produce or transfer pornographic content in the US you have to be held to USC 2257 recordkeeping law. And they have been transferring. Right. They had a download button on every single video. They were transferring that content. So they have violated that law millions and millions of times without now without repercussion. And we need to see that change.

[B]

Yeah, I'm curious to know what happens and then what happens afterwards. Like what is. Once something happens with them? Let's just say if it does, then what if.

[A]

So if pornhub is held fully accountable. Right. We've made a lot of progress in holding them accountable. There's still lawsuits that need to be resolved. Restitution needs to be paid to victims. What we're going to see is a transformation of the entire industry, of the entire online porn industry to become a safer place for children, for victims, for generations to come. If we're successful, the Internet will become a Safer place because there will be regulation on user generated porn.

[B]

So how did they attack you? Did they at all attack you? I think one article I saw is they attacked you for you being a Christian or something like that. What was that article about?

[A]

Yeah, I mean that was the kind of the play that they made from the beginning. Instead of actually acknowledging that there was a problem and taking the necessary steps to fix it. What they did was they tried to deflect, they tried to deny that there was a problem and then they tried to discredit those who were raising the problem, like me, like victims, like so many other. I mean, at one point we had 600 organizations that were involved in this fight. But what they did was they tried to say, look, this is just a religious right wing moral crusade against people who hate sex and want sex removed from the Internet completely. Don't listen to anything they say. And that was their, that was their.

[B]

Play and said ex. To describe the shady evangelical group of Trump ties waging war on a pornhub. Is this it?

[A]

I mean it's one of many articles that were written like that.

[B]

So who's. Who wrote this? By the. What site is this? Daily.

[A]

This is the Daily Beast. I mean the Daily Beast is essentially, you know, unfortunately, in my opinion, with the stuff that they've produced that is actually blatant lies about the movement, you know, a glorified tabloid.

[B]

But they don't have the same credibility. I mean, I don't know if they've had it. They just don't. That's. Oh, that's four years ago. The picketing and launching hotline anti trafficking campaigns against pornhub. Some of those strange.

[A]

And that's what Solomon said right here. Right. So Solomon was here and you know what he said? He said that Trafficking Hub was a started by a group called Morality and Media that's been picketing against sex shops since, he said, the 80s and 90s. I was born in 1982. I founded Trafficking Hub. Okay. I started trafficking Heav. I mean, you could play exactly what he said. It is just a blatant lie because that's. They say, oh, they're conflating trafficking and sex work. The only one conflating trafficking and sex work and porn is pornhub by hosting real sexual abuse and crime against actual legal videos. I mean, you could play what he actually said. It's a, it's a complete lie. We've had people from left and right, atheists have joined this fight alongside Muslims and Christians. You know, we've had people who Are pro porn and anti porn, left wing outlets with right wing outlets. Because simply, we can all agree that nobody should be raped and trafficked for profit on the world's largest porn site.

[B]

Rob, is this when he says that, or is this when I ask, are you a man of faith? This is when you ask, are you a man of faith? Yes. Go ahead and play the clip. Go back a little bit.

[C]

I am a man. Then you have a safer Internet.

[A]

I think that's the wrong way.

[B]

Are you a man of faith?

[C]

I am a man of faith.

[B]

You would say you are, yeah. Are you ever conflicted?

[C]

I think that the work we are doing in an industry, whether you like it or not, right? And we happen to. We like the people we work with. We like the industry, okay? It will exist. So to be part of the movement that's going to make it safer, not by getting 2.5 million, shut it down, have a petition, be nasty, but by actually doing the work, investing in making it safer. This is an extraordinarily positive thing to.

[A]

Do and destigmatization as well. Because one of the realities is that this is a very stigmatized industry, right? And we know full, full fact that when there is increased stigma, right? There's more, there's increased violence. So whenever we have.

[B]

I'm listening. I'm just reading hard.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I mean, I got a big nose when I breathe.

[A]

The whole city credit for that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I mean, so I don't know. I want to tell you something about Solomon. I think this is important to the context of this conversation. And I reported this in Newsweek, and you can pull it up if you want. I wrote an article in July. It's called, you know, pornhub is still a crime scene even after its rebrand. You can pull that up. Solomon, you know, actually is a criminal defense attorney that has a history of representing pedo criminals in court. Okay, so he's represented all kinds of criminals, but he has had a specialty in those who are pedophiles. And he actually publicly congratulated the sinking of a massive child pornography case in Canada that involved over 737,300 videos of child sexual abuse, including over 2,000 videos of infants being raped by grown men. Okay. This is documented case that happened in Canada.

[B]

Wait, wait.

[A]

And go to the Newsweek article. Go. Go ahead. Right there.

[B]

Is that it, Rob?

[A]

Yes. You can click on those links and you could see that he actually congratulated the sinking of this. He said it on Twitter. He's since locked his Twitter account down.

[B]

He was a Criminal MT congratulates Weinstein Defend illegal computer search by Ottawa Police sinks child porn case Ottawa Citizen.

[A]

Now, if you go back and you can link to the archive of the article he shared, he did it twice where he congratulated the sinking of this case. If you click on 7730 images. Okay, go ahead. I think you could click on that. Can you click on that? It's loading right now. Okay, might take a second. There you go. So there's the case. And in the case you can see the details of the amount of child pornography that was on this man's device. And he's congratulating the sinking of that case. Okay, so that's who, you know, we're talking about as the face of Ethical Capital Partners. And it's no wonder that they wouldn't be honest about what they're currently doing, what's happened in the past. And I just think that it's really important to expose the truth about this company, who they are and what's actually currently going on.

[B]

So what's this here? This is illegal computer search by autopilot. Singh's child porn case Judge commits Acquits man found with 7730 explicit images on flash drives this is the man that got. He was representing him?

[A]

No, it was a colleague and a criminal defense attorney. And so he, he was just saying, congratulations, good job, you sunk a child. A massive child porn case on a technicality. And so I think the. So the point that I want to make here is that character matters, right? And if you could lie about something as easily, like a proven lie that says that Trafficking Hub was started by a group that used to protest sex shops in the 70s or sorry, 80s and 90s. This is a easily. I mean, they have investigated Trafficking Hub deeply. They know exactly who started it, what it's about, who's involved. And if you would lie about something so simple as that, then how could you trust anything that they're saying? So, I mean, I think that's.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, look, a story came out, Rob, I don't know if you have it or not. The story about this guy who was allowing people election betting site. Is this the one?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

FBI raids apartment of an election betting site Poly market CEO and seize a cell phone. Sources say the FBI rated Shane Copeland's home after the website elections betting market controversially predicted Donald Trump's win and the FBI went after this guy. It's just a website that, you know, can you go a little low? Rapidly FCS a cell phone electronic device a Betting site polymarket CEO in a raid in his New York City apartment Wednesday. The company's market wagered correctly and controversially in Donald Trump's favor and bets who would win the presidential election, even though opinion polls showed a tight race. This is ridiculous. You lost seven states, battleground states, new phone. Who's this? Point of the story is this. If they're willing to investigate a person like this, who accurately got it right on how betters were betting, they can investigate other people if they choose to.

[A]

But it's not a firework about the new ag. I, I think Bondi is her name that she. Yeah, she has a history of really going hard on child exploitation, trafficking. And that is really encouraging to know because the fight's not over. I mean, pornhub was criminally charged by the US Federal government for intentionally profiting from the sex trafficking of over 100 victims in a notorious crime ring, a trafficking ring called Girls Do Porn. Now, the guy that was running the ring was on the FBI's most wanted list, and he was a partner with Pornhub for years. I mean, he had 800,000 subscribers. They had 600 million views on Pornhub. And so the federal government did investigate this. They criminally charged them. And this was in December of 2023. So you could look up DOJ Pornhub charges and you could see that if you want to. Unfortunately, this was only about the specific victims that were represented by this particular crime ring. And there's so many more victims who are awaiting justice to be fully served. And so I hope that what we'll see the wheels of justice turn slowly, but they do turn. And I think that we're not done with this fight for justice yet. And I think they will turn and I think we will see full criminal prosecution of the owners of pornhub. And I hope that we do, because when that happens, there's going to be a huge deterrent to other abusers. And I think that's a key point here, is that deterrence is so important. And we've seen it in other industries when there's accountability. Think about the hedge fund, insider trading, right? When we saw criminal prosecution, when we saw huge fines, we've seen it diminish. Right?

[B]

Yeah. Look, to me, I ran an insurance company for 15 years. We sold. I've been in insurance for. Since day before 9 11. And I've been that space. And we would. I'm around a lot of sales guys. We're in 50 states. We license 60,000 insurance agents. A lot of young men we were half. 54% women, 46% men. A lot of husband and wives got married. And one of the common challenges, while you're sitting there mentoring a young guy or you're in a sales office walking around, can't tell you how many times I walked in on people watching porn. Okay? And look, it's the direction we're going, it's going to be there. AI is going to take it to a different level. Virtual reality is going to take you to a different level. Relationships with AI, where, you know, people look at the number of birth rates going lower, where we're having fewer kids because we have more TV time, more ways of not having. People are on their phones, more than they're talking to their girl or their wife or their husband. They're just, like, stuck like this. Normally, if that wasn't there, they'd be spending time together. So this. Eliminating porn is going to be very difficult to do. My biggest challenge with this space is going to be underage.

[A]

Yeah, of course.

[B]

I have zero. I have zero.

[A]

Zero tolerance.

[B]

I don't have any tolerance for it.

[A]

Good.

[B]

Zero tolerance when it comes down to that. Zero. My entire conversation with them was, okay, so now you run one of the bigger sites. If you're running one of the bigger sites, that traffic comes through you. What if lawsuits can force you to do the right thing? Because if they don't go to pornhub, that traffic's going somewhere, it's going to go somewhere. What if that becomes a standard and enforcing all the other companies that are benefiting from it to say, here's the guidelines you have to follow.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Because you can take this guy down who's selling cocaine to everybody in the community. Somebody else is going to go sell that cocaine. It's going to go some. Something's going to happen versus getting to the bottom of it and seeing where's the cocaine coming in from? Where's the fentanyl coming in from? Where are we selling this stuff? How do we. What do we do with the damages that this is taking place? I posted something the other day which obviously is not, you know, constitutionally, it's illegal. I said, you know, this whole illegal immigration stuff. If somebody commits a crime in America and you're a US Citizen, you know, whatever the laws, you get the crime. But if you commit a crime in America and you're. If you want to pull it up, Rob, in one of my tweets, and you're an illegal immigrant, I think the punishment should be five to 10 times. And if it has to do with anything to do with kids, rape, anything, you go to jail for the rest of your life. Zero tolerance. Come do that on our homeland, you get death penalty done. Don't touch our kids, don't touch our women, don't mess with them. You're going straight to jail. And even at the highest level, death penalty, and obviously that's a little extreme for some people. It's my position. I think there needs to be some kind of a punishment if you mess with this great country that we're living in right now. Yeah, this is the one.

[A]

Well, I appreciate your passion for justice.

[B]

No, I'm not. I'm not okay with that. I'm not okay with that because. And. And the other part is educating. Like, when I joined the army, I'll never forget when I joined the army, our drill sergeant taught us. I was 18 years old. We're at a unit and they said, hey, guys, before you have sex with a girl, ID them. Can you imagine how weird of a thing that is to say? Like, what do you mean? He says, before you're going to go, because you're going to go out, you're going to have a lot of interaction with girls. They like guys in uniform, ID them, don't do anything. Like, that's kind of weird. Why? Everybody's asking why? Why? If they tell you they're 18, don't believe it until you see the ID and then you see a couple guys that. That fear they put in the young men, it was like, dude, you know, some of us are like that deterrent, right? You know it. For some of us to go 30 and up, we're like, look, I'm just going to be like, you don't look over 30. I'm playing the other game to be a little bit safer so I don't have to worry about it. Now this is 18. We live in a different kind of a life. But some guys are like, nah, it's going to be all right. It's going to be all right. Boom. Guy got arrested, went to military jail. Let me tell you, that scared the crap out of a lot of people very quickly. But you also need to shape the mindset of young kids of what's possible. Right. My son right now is learning how to fight, and he's a very good fighter. Right now. It annoys me because he kicks me. So when I'm. He's 12 years old, he still thinks he can be daddy. I would whoop his tail right now still. But I think he's got two more Years before. It's going to be dangerous for me to threaten them if we fight. But I had a talk with him last night. I said, listen, bro, just because I'm having you train with this UFC guys and you're getting very good. You mess around anything in school, you do something, there is not suspension. You're getting kicked out of school. You can't be using this weapon that you're learning here. This is not a joke, what you're learning. You can really hurt somebody. He says, no, I get it. That. I said, let's. You just got to realize we'll make the investment, but make sure. This is to prevent fights, not to have fights. So someone needs to coach these young men. Someone needs to have. It's preventative, right? It's as much preventative as it is, you know, because we have to be proactive. Like a lot of parents I talk to. I'm afraid to talk to my kids about sex. Well, you better do, because somebody else will. I'm afraid to talk to my kids about drugs. You better talk to them before somebody else does. Well, I'm just worried about it. It's embarrassing. It's uncomfortable. No, you got to do it. So I think it's both preventative, I think it's both proactive, and then at the same time making sure the punishment for underage is so high. That scares the crap out of.

[A]

But not only underage, I think we need it for also, because adults are. Are definitely suffering from.

[B]

I mean, if you're saying revenge porn and stuff like that, of course, no, to me, it's underage, dad. But rape is rape across the board. Doesn't matter how old you are. Young, old. Human trafficking is human trafficking. For anybody that's doing any of that. That, to me, is the highest level underage. When some of these guys are doing that to make, obviously that.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, there's a spectrum of abuse.

[B]

Well, let me give this data. Let me give this data. Let me give this data because you just said that. I was going to wrap up, but I'll give you this data. So you ready? So, as of 2023, global US sex and trafficking statistics, approximately, approximately 49.6 million individuals are estimated to be in modern slavery worldwide, encompassing forced labor and sex trafficking, of which 12 million are children, of which 54% those are women, girls. In modern slavery, it's $150 billion a year industry. And then it breaks down to say in America, the states, number one is California, number three is tech, number two is Texas, number three is Florida. Each state I've lived in a minimum of four years. But as you go a little bit deeper, you see it's also happening on adults. The percentage of what's going on with adults under. Because typically you think about human trafficking, you think underage. There's a lot that's above 18 years old that this is happening to as well. This is a real issue. I would be very curious to know whether it's Pam Mundy, Trump, any of those guys. I think Musk is not one that's a fan of this at all. Neither is Vivek, neither is Trump. It would be very interesting to see how the current administration attacks this issue. That is an epidemic that very few people have the courage to talk about. And even when we do these types of podcasts, right, people say they'll message me, Pat, get off this topic. It's painful to watch. You got to watch it. It's real. But go back to the business stuff and all this other stuff. Look, I'm doing it because I want parents to be aware that this is out there and we have to get more educated.

[A]

I appreciate that so much that you're doing that, that you're shining this light because there's nothing. We can't stop it. We can't prevent it. And I love your heart for prevention because this is can't be a game of whack a mole. If we're going to solve a problem at scale. And when we're talking about online sex trafficking, when we're talking about online sexual abuse, there are solutions that can prevent it at scale. And I think that that's what we really need to focus on. Yes, justice, but also, like you just said, prevention. Prevention is the key. And thank you for shining a light. Thank you for using your platform. Because any, you know, what I've seen, what I've learned is that this movement needs all of us. And you know, the businessman who has a platform, the lawmaker, the journalist, the lawyer, everybody, and including everybody at home who could simply click share, could click like, make a comment. It actually means something.

[B]

No, for sure. Again, share this with everybody. And folks, click on a link below, go order the book, take down and support Layla. Because, you know, Leila's got her own set of things that she has to deal with. Family, you talked about, you know, kids and all the things that you're doing to dedicate your time to something like this and get to the bottom of it and having some powerful people that are coming after you and targeting you, it's not easy to do. So if you want to support her, please go order a book that just came out a few months ago. Support Takedown Inside the Fight to Shut down pornhub for Child Abuse, Rape, and Sex Trafficking. Layla, I'm glad I responded and I'm glad you reached out for us to sit down and have this conversation. You're amazing. Keep at it.

[A]

Thank you.

[B]

Anytime. Take care, everybody. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. You're going to think I'm crazy when I tell you this, but the last 13 and a half years, I've been working on my first fiction book to write, ever fiction book to write. And while I finished this book a year ago, I got the strangest phone call about one of the characters in a book where the guy wanted to meet with me, and he read the book, and afterwards it's like, wait a minute, am I the villain in the book? This is a story about a character named Asher who is half Armenian, half Assyrian, whose father was involved in the Iranian revolution, linked to SAVAK working with the Shah, that they escape, and he gets recruited to a secret society. Well, when you go to the secret society, it's been around for a couple thousand years. They've developed some of the craziest leaders of all time. And they test you. There's unique tests that they have at the society where they test to see your emotional, mental, toughness. One of the tests that they have is very rigorous. It's purely mental. Of course, there's a physical one, but one is mental and emotional. If you're Armenian, if you're Syrian, if you're Persian, this is a book you're gonna be reading and saying, holy moly. This the kind of stuff you talk about in here? Yes. If you're somebody that's fascinated by history, this is a book for you characters. There's a technology that this society, secret society, builds where you go into a vault. I won't spoil it for you. When you go down, they have a technology where you get to sit down and watch and have a three, four hour conversation with Tupac. You can set up a debate between Karl Marx and Ayn Rand. Karl Marx is in the book. Who wrote Communist Manifesto. Ayn Rand, who wrote Atlas Shrugged, is in the book. Marilyn Monroe explains the concept of seduction and sex in the book. When you read the book, it's about development of the next leaders in the world and how they do it and how they've been doing it for many years. And it's also about how to prevent the end of civilization and how this organization goes about doing it. So I've never written a parenting book before, but if I ever wrote a parenting book, this is the closest thing to it because it's all mindset. A lot of crazy stories. Again, thirteen and a half years. Trust me, I told myself I will not publish this book until I sell my insurance company and I'm fully disconnected from it where it's no longer My responsibility. 100%. When you read this, if you're a crate, if you're a creative person, if you like fiction books, if you enjoyed Atlas Shrugged, or if you enjoy Divergent, if you like books like that, I think you can enjoy reading this book. It's the creative side. Business books is very easy. Here's how you do it. Here's how it works. This is very creative. If you haven't placed your order yet, now you can order it on Simon and Schuster, Amazon. I'm going to put the link up below somewhere here, maybe even in my profile. Go order the book and read it. I sincerely, I've never written a book where I can't wait to read your reviews to see what you think about this book. So I'm going on this wild journey and we have some plans with this book here. If you support the things that I work on, I would appreciate you going and reading the book. Order the book on Amazon and then post a review.