The Michael Knowles Show - December 14, 2023


PornHub EXPOSED ｜ Undercover Reporter Arden Young

Hosted by
Michael Knowles
Mentioned
Michael Sean Cody Brazzers Dylan
Lesbians & Dad Bods： Real Answer and Real Drinks ｜ YES or NO with Andrew Klavan LOL： Michael REACTS to Triggered Christmas Haters

Episode Stats


Length

17 minutes

Words per minute

170.52

Word count

2,962

Sentence count

208

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Toxicity

13

sentences flagged

Hate speech

13

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Pornhub and its parent company, MindGeek, have come under fire for what some have suspected for a long time. They ve been accused of allowing minors access to porn, and now they ve admitted to it. This is a breaking news story, and we're here to break it down.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Let's say you're 12 years old, you try to like push the envelope as much as you can, be like,
00:00:04.840 okay, can I hint at like, buy content here? The thing about trans angels, which is a site,
00:00:09.600 they sell that to straight men. Can I, can I like talk more about like,
00:00:14.560 what if we brought a trans talent onto the site? Porn in all of its forms are so normalized to 0.74
00:00:21.040 them and they're so callous to something as serious as a child being able to view pornography.
00:00:30.000 This is a breaking news story. I'm really pleased that we were able to get this story and we did not
00:00:36.960 do the investigation. This investigation was undertaken by a wonderful news group. This
00:00:42.960 would be sound investigations. I am joined here by one of the journalists, Arden Young. Arden,
00:00:49.440 thank you for coming on the show. Thank you so much for having me, Michael.
00:00:53.160 So Arden, before we get into how you conducted this investigation, what it all means,
00:00:57.420 I want to just show people some clips of, of what you've uncovered because some of us have suspected
00:01:04.640 that Pornhub and its parent company, formerly called MindGeek, now it's called ALO. They have
00:01:10.100 to keep changing the name because they're an evil company and they don't want to have to face the
00:01:15.600 music. Some of us have suspected that they've been up to these kinds of activities for a while.
00:01:20.520 Here it is in their own words.
00:01:21.980 Let's say you're 12 years old. You're still figuring out your sexuality, maybe even your
00:01:27.460 gender. Wouldn't it be helpful to see, not a celebration, but just like maybe a normalization
00:01:34.660 of something that you think is what you want, you know? Probably helps a lot. Let's say I was 12
00:01:42.460 and I saw like trans angels. I saw all these different sites. It would help me figure out
00:01:47.740 what I do like and what I don't like.
00:01:49.180 They need to try to push stuff that's more, less, less accepted. Like putting a, putting
00:01:56.180 a trans male or trans female in a scene, you wouldn't get that on a normal mainstream site.
00:02:02.220 So test it out. See if you get a bigger audience with it. See if you can convert somebody, right?
00:02:06.220 Like maybe somebody who's never looked for anything like that might find it interesting and click
00:02:10.120 on it. Same thing for buy stuff, same thing for gay. 1.00
00:02:12.500 That's another senior script writer at MindGeek now called ALO, but we all know it as Pornhub. 0.99
00:02:17.220 That's just the biggest pornographers on the planet. Two major discoveries here. One, they 0.95
00:02:24.340 know that kids are looking at their content. They're totally fine with it. It obviously helps
00:02:30.500 their business model. We all knew that. It's crazy to hear it in their own words. We all knew
00:02:34.720 that. The second discovery to me is the most shocking. Senior script writer here at the biggest
00:02:43.440 porn company on earth saying, yeah, we're trying to convert straight guys into looking at gay porn 1.00
00:02:52.720 or trans porn. We're always trying to push the boundaries. We're not even just serving the market 0.99
00:02:58.440 that already exists for porn. We're trying to create new markets by creating new desires in people
00:03:05.340 that they do not previously have that are certainly out of the mainstream, that are considered more
00:03:11.520 deviant. And we're going to slip that content into the porn to expand the palette, I suppose,
00:03:18.240 of the customer. I can't believe they're admitting this.
00:03:22.340 I know. I mean, I was sitting across from him. That was probably one of the last things I was
00:03:27.720 expecting him to say. My instincts were to just ask him about the kinds of things they were marketing
00:03:36.940 to people because I knew he does primarily work on gay and trans pornography sites. That's mainly what
00:03:43.680 he writes. And he was very, very open. He was very matter of fact. And in fact, he, like you saw,
00:03:52.000 he even viewed kids viewing porn as a positive thing.
00:03:57.500 So you, you're conducting this interview. This guy obviously has no idea what's going on,
00:04:02.920 but you'd think if, if you were working for so degenerate a company and you were engaged in such,
00:04:12.640 even today, frowned upon kinds of behaviors, you might play it a little closer to the vest,
00:04:18.320 right? He didn't though. Did it take much prodding or was he just open about this?
00:04:22.700 He was extremely open about this. And this, we're talking about Dylan in particular,
00:04:26.820 the senior script writer for ALO. He was extremely open, extremely obliging,
00:04:32.260 did not think my questions were strange or out of place at all. And it goes to show you kind of the
00:04:38.480 mindset these employees of this company are in. Porn in all of its forms are so normalized to them
00:04:46.440 and they're so callous to something as serious as a child being able to view pornography.
00:04:52.240 But of course we all know. And in fact, in one of your interviews, you, you mentioned that the,
00:04:57.700 the median age of exposure to pornography now for kids is something like 11. Frankly,
00:05:02.160 I'm surprised it's that high. I would even suspect it might be lower. Maybe today it is lower.
00:05:06.940 We all know that kids are accessing porn and that's how the porn companies cultivate and groom
00:05:15.120 their, their future crop of customers. Cause kids' brains are very, very malleable. If they
00:05:18.560 get addicted to this stuff when they're 10 or 11 years old, they're going to stick with it for a
00:05:22.140 very long time. Most likely again, it's horrifying. They should be prosecuted for it. It's just evil.
00:05:28.760 It's great to hear them admit it. The thing that is so shocking to me, I guess, is that we have been
00:05:34.980 told for my entire life by the left, by the, the pro pornography people, by the sexual revolutionaries
00:05:43.480 that sexual desire is innate and immutable. It's an orientation. Nobody becomes gay, bisexual, 0.94
00:05:56.080 trans. It's not that you, you're just, you're born that way. And how dare you suggest how do I, 1.00
00:06:01.660 we'll probably be kicked off of social media for even, for even repeating what this top porn employee 1.00
00:06:08.620 is who writes the stuff, who knows, who knows what he's talking about, what he is admitting on camera
00:06:13.360 will probably be kicked off even for repeating it. But what he is saying is, yeah, nah, that's all bunk.
00:06:19.020 Actually, yeah, you can convert people. That's how our business model works. You got to slip in this
00:06:24.160 weirder stuff. So you take a guy who's been straight his whole life, who's never entertained
00:06:28.120 any other kind of thought. And then you try to get him. Well, actually you went even in greater depth
00:06:34.640 with him. Let's play that clip. The thing is, it's like when you write for like Sean Cody,
00:06:39.920 which is like primarily gay targeted, when you write for trans angels, it's trans female presenting
00:06:44.760 targeted. You also try to see how much you can take of that and bring it to mainstream vanilla content,
00:06:51.380 right? Because like Brazzers and Reality Kings is predominantly for straight men, but you try to like 1.00
00:07:00.800 push the envelope as much as you can. Be like, okay, can I hint at like, buy content here? Can I, can I like
00:07:06.440 talk more about like, what if we brought a trans talent onto the site? And you kind of like take those risks
00:07:12.360 to try and broaden it a little bit more, even though you know that you have a site dedicated to that, right?
00:07:16.320 You're always trying to push a little further.
00:07:18.880 Because the thing is, the thing about trans angels, which is a site, um, it's female presenting trans 0.97
00:07:25.200 women. It's, and like, they sell that to straight men. Like that's the demographic. 0.99
00:07:32.340 There it is. There is, they are, they're trying to trans the straight guys. I mean, that's not my 1.00
00:07:38.620 words. Don't, Hey, Hey, social media companies, don't take me off for saying that. That's what the
00:07:42.880 senior writer at mind geek, the guy who writes all of this porn, he is saying, we are trying to
00:07:48.480 take straight guys. Our target demo is converting straight guys into trans guys. 0.96
00:07:55.680 Yeah. And you know, I think, I think he meant convert in the marketing sense, which doesn't
00:08:01.260 really make it any better. Um, what's it's the same sense. And yes, I, there's a whole conversation
00:08:07.860 we had about the business model and capitalism, but it, when we're talking about a product that
00:08:13.060 involves at a very deep level, your own desires and your own identity,
00:08:18.120 then when you convert people to the product, you're converting them in their desire and their
00:08:23.760 identity. Exactly. And I think they're completely motivated by profits. They just want to make
00:08:29.500 more, a wider variety of content, more palatable and, um, more profitable to the single viewer.
00:08:37.540 Um, and you know, going back to children accessing pornography, we're seeing more and more ID laws 0.90
00:08:45.120 passed in the U S. So now in many states, it's required to verify your age before entering a
00:08:52.020 pornographic site. Um, ALO and the parent company of Pornhub is actively suing some of these U S 0.96
00:09:00.060 states trying to stop this from happening because they openly admit that requiring their ID before
00:09:07.160 accessing porn actually drives down their traffic by 80%. So for them, protecting children is not a
00:09:13.660 concern. Maximizing profits is 100% their concern. And they don't seem to care who they harm in the
00:09:20.900 process. Of course not. I thought it told the whole story when Utah first passed, I think it was Utah
00:09:25.380 passed that, that, uh, ID law and instantly Pornhub said, okay, we're not doing business in the state
00:09:31.200 of Utah anymore. He said, well, there you go. There, there you have it. Arden, tell me a little bit
00:09:35.260 about the investigation itself, whatever you can without compromising your methods.
00:09:39.800 Of course. Uh, well, we were inspired to investigate Pornhub in the first place because of a 2020 New
00:09:46.880 York times article called the children of Pornhub. It really detailed, uh, struggles of often underage
00:09:54.380 people to get their abuse videos taken off of Pornhub, which were being advertised and monetized.
00:10:01.400 Um, so Pornhub was benefiting monetarily from these videos as well as the abusers uploading the
00:10:08.580 videos. And through months and months of requests and begging Pornhub to take these videos down, uh,
00:10:15.380 the videos were not taken down. Only after legal action was taken, this article came out, did Pornhub
00:10:23.160 start really getting scared and taking these things seriously. But our premise for the whole
00:10:29.180 investigation was maybe their concern was just lip service and maybe these things are really still
00:10:34.900 going on. So that's what we sought out to prove. And we did, we have, um, multiple previous undercover
00:10:41.180 videos we've published that detail, just the lack of agent consent verification for pornographic uploads
00:10:48.480 and pornographic ads going on the site. Um, advertising porn to appeal to pedophiles and young teens.
00:10:56.380 Uh, we just have a plethora of undercover footage that we've been putting out. 0.97
00:11:01.980 You would think, well, this is a ridiculous premise, I guess, but if you were an executive 0.67
00:11:08.820 at Pornhub and you had any modicum of a moral conscience and you found out that you've got child 0.95
00:11:19.120 pornography on the site, that there are ads being targeted to pedophiles. And that the moment that
00:11:24.260 you say, no more kids get to look at Pornhub, your users drop by 80%, that that would cause you to
00:11:29.940 reflect and say, well, this is really bad, but they don't. Instead, they say, if you make us
00:11:35.620 in any way, try to keep kids off the site, we're going to boycott your whole state.
00:11:40.420 Exactly. And in those states now, the only way to access Pornhub is through a VPN,
00:11:44.960 which they also own, VPN hub. Um, and up until not too long ago, it was actually rated for ages
00:11:52.580 four and up in the app store. Yeah.
00:11:56.260 So VPN hub, is that, is that's obviously not just a porn thing. If it's a, if it's ages four plus,
00:12:02.700 it's just a VPN that anyone can use to mask their, right. It's just a VPN owned by Pornhub.
00:12:08.320 Wow. Have they explained why they keep changing the name?
00:12:12.400 I, you know, they, they went through a new ownership at the beginning of 2023. It was actually
00:12:17.440 bought a firm called ethical, ethical capital partners. Um, and so they went through this
00:12:26.060 entire rebrand and renamed it a low because of, you know, all the bad press they'd gotten under
00:12:32.260 mind geek. So I think they're, they're really, they, they tout themselves as the, the leader in
00:12:40.580 compliance, the leader in ethics of the adult industry. But if they truly are the leader in
00:12:47.380 ethics of the adult industry, we have a huge problem.
00:12:51.140 People have written into me and whenever I've covered, I interviewed a former porn performer
00:12:55.280 and, and had a long interview with him and people would write in about their terrible relationship
00:13:00.940 to porn. Young men write into my show all the time. They say I'm addicted to porn. I've been
00:13:04.300 looking at it since I was 10 years old. And I have read accounts of men who say I was just a straight
00:13:11.000 guy. I was just a normal straight guy. I was married. I was not. And then I fell into this kind
00:13:16.480 of weird trans porn. And now I think I'm a chick or, or you'd hear for, I interviewed a trans widow, 0.97
00:13:22.140 a woman who whose husband left her to go pretend to be a woman. And I, I spoke to another expert on
00:13:29.900 this subject. And she said that pornography use, even like mainstream stuff, the biggest porn company
00:13:35.360 in the world, Pornhub, porn use is an extraordinary predictor of people falling into this transgender 1.00
00:13:44.100 identity. This is something, again, I don't think I'm allowed to say it on social media. This part
00:13:47.960 will probably just have to be behind the daily wire paywall or on X. But I don't ever want to hear a
00:13:53.880 social media company say that that's disinformation. They've got to take me off, off the air for saying
00:13:58.340 that again. You're hearing it straight from the horse's mouth. Absolutely. And you know, we've
00:14:03.820 gotten a comment from ALO before on our past releases where different employees admit to
00:14:09.740 different things. And in one of them, they actually allege that the employee is too high ranking to know
00:14:16.680 what he's talking about in the video. He's, he's too powerful. How could he possibly know what his
00:14:23.020 underlings are doing? You've got to be kidding me. Yeah. So their responses to us have just gotten
00:14:29.380 increasingly ridiculous. Um, you know, they've actually bragged about the fact that they report 0.81
00:14:37.120 fewer incidences of child exploitation to the national center, um, child exploitation or like
00:14:44.780 missing and exploited children, um, which is a requirement for us based companies. So they're
00:14:49.420 bragging that they've reported fewer incidences to the NCMEC than other major tech platforms.
00:14:57.360 But the logic says, actually, you should be reporting as much as you can, because we know
00:15:04.300 these things are happening on a platform literally dedicated to pornography where random users are
00:15:10.960 uploading pornographic videos. And by the way, if a user's face is not in a video, if it's filmed from
00:15:18.160 the neck down, say, which is very, very common, it is impossible for these content moderators to verify
00:15:24.460 that a face on an ID matches a body. And we have one of the employees saying it, that he was very
00:15:31.880 concerned about that loophole, as he calls it at one point. But when he brought it up to leadership,
00:15:37.240 he was told to F off and shut up. So there's this loophole gaping wide open for children to be uploaded,
00:15:45.160 for, you know, young teens to be uploaded or, you know, date rapes, different rapes, um, to be
00:15:51.940 uploaded. And, and no one would know. There's so much more to say about this. I'm, I know you're
00:15:56.600 very busy. Thank you for giving me so much of your time. Uh, the takeaways here for me,
00:16:01.140 if you are a private individual, call your Congressman. If you use the political order,
00:16:07.900 this is, this is as clear cut a case for, for proper political action as I've ever seen. 0.76
00:16:13.360 Stop looking at porn. If for no other reason, then the senior writers here are saying they
00:16:18.440 want to make you gay and trans. Okay. They want to screw up your head and twist your desires 1.00
00:16:22.500 and, and wrench your very identity. If for no other reason, at least out of self-preservation,
00:16:27.840 don't do that. Arden, incredible, incredible work. Thank you so much for coming on. Can't wait
00:16:34.280 to hear more. And I can't wait to hear the excuses from these psychos. Thank you so much, 0.93
00:16:40.500 Michael. It's a pleasure.
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