My Chat with Laila Mickelwait, Fighting Against Pornhub (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_706)
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Summary
Laila Micklewaite is the founder of Trafficking Hub and author of Takedown: Inside the Fight to Shut Down, Pornhub for Child Abuse, Rape, and Sex Trafficking. She is also the co-founder and CEO of the Justice Defense Fund.
Transcript
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Hi everybody. The last few days I've had a series of female honey badgers that have been on the show.
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As you know, the honey badger is a very fierce, dogged creature, and we certainly have one today.
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She is not afraid to take on the big guys and come out victorious today. I've got Laila
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Micklewaite. How are you doing? I'm doing well. Thank you so much for having me.
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It's a pleasure to have you. So I'm just going to introduce you very quickly and show your book.
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You are the co-founder and CEO of the Justice Defense Fund. You are the founder of Trafficking Hub.
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You hold a master's degree of public diplomacy from USC. We could talk about how USC treated me
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when I went there to give a talk last year. It wasn't pretty. And you are the author of the
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national bestseller, Takedown, Inside the Fight to Shut Down, Pornhub for Child Abuse, Rape, and Sex.
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Welcome on the show. Trafficking. Sex trafficking.
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I missed the trafficking. Thank you. Let me repeat the title. Takedown, Inside the Fight to Shut Down,
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Pornhub for Child Abuse, Rape, and Sex Trafficking. Did I miss anything that you'd like to add in the
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Okay. So let's maybe start with, I think you began your activism on this issue in 2006.
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What compelled you to start down that very dark rabbit hole?
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Yeah. Well, I mean, I grew up in a family where my father had, you know, just a beautiful person.
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He was a general and vascular surgeon that had dedicated his own life to saving lives and,
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you know, at great expense himself. It was a real sacrifice for himself and our family
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for him to choose that particular profession, but he wanted to make a difference. And I think,
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you know, even from an early age, just watching him do what he did impacted me and influenced me.
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And he was also, you know, very attuned to issues around the world. He was paying attention. He would
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watch, you know, history channel documentaries, the news, and always trying to get down to the root
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causes of things like, you know, slavery and war. And we had some of our most meaningful
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conversations and bonding moments as father and daughter speaking about these very deep
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subjects. And so I think from a very young age, I was kind of attuned to wanting to pursue
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something in the realm of human rights issues. And I ended up doing that after my father brought me
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into the living room one day and showed me a documentary about sex trafficking. It was child
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sex trafficking in Calcutta, India. And I was just so shocked. And I was horrified that this could even
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be real, that this could be happening to the most innocent, to children. And it set me on a path
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of learning, discovery, research, and then ultimately engaging in the fight against sex
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trafficking. And that's what I did. So that's, I kind of set, set myself on that path and have stayed
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Well, I mean, in the intro, I mentioned the honey badger. You may or may not know this,
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Laila, but in the last chapter of the parasitic mind, this yellow book, I talk about a call,
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you know, a call to action. And I say, activate your inner honey badger. And precisely because
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the honey badger truly epitomizes what it is to be fierce, to be ferocious. It's the size of a small
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to medium sized dog. And yet it could withstand an attack from, you know, six adult lions because of
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its ferocities. Now, when I'm asking people to activate their inner honey badger, I'm not saying
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to be violent, but I'm saying, once you see something that you can defend, that you have,
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you know, you have a set of principles, you shouldn't cower in silence. You should engage,
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you know, your voice matters. And in a sense, you exactly exemplify that because it starts with
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you having these wonderful conversations with your dad. And then he empowers you with the
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honey badger spirit. Is this something that we can teach in a seminar? Or do we all have to pray
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that we have as lovely and nurturing father as you did in order for us to nurture that capability?
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That's such a great question. And I would love to hear what you think about that. But,
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you know, I think a lot of it maybe comes from experience and practice as you grow up and as you
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maybe confront smaller things in your life, maybe things that may seem not very consequential,
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but you know, they're wrong. And I actually, I have a whole chapter of my book, where I'm thinking
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back and reflecting, you know, from a very young age, and on the first in first grade, when the bully,
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the classroom bully, you know, was kissing girls against their will, when they would squirm and
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disgust. And, you know, we're telling him to stop, and he wouldn't do it. And then one day he,
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you know, I was bending my head to drink at the water fountain at the playground, and he came and swooped in
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and kissed me on the lips. And I was so angry that he did this, but I wanted to teach him a lesson.
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It was wrong. And so I, you know, came behind him, he was on one of the steepest slides on the
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playground, and I kind of shoved him down with all my force. And he was crying, and I felt a sense of
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accomplishment for what I had done. And so, you know, I kind of reflect on different experiences
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like that in my younger years, when there was something that was wrong, and I knew was wrong,
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and I was able to practice this, you know, I guess, pursuit of justice, and not being afraid to
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confront injustice. And I think probably it's that, you know, it's not like we wake up one day with
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courage to do something that's difficult in the face of opposition. But if you've been exercising that
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muscle, I guess, in your younger years, that maybe it becomes more natural and easier to do,
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but I'd love to know what you think. Yeah, thank you for turning it back to me. I think what your
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answer hints to is something that I talk about as a evolutionary behavioral scientist that tries to
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tease out, you know, how much of a particular phenomenon is due to nature versus nurture. In a
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sense, it addresses your question, which is, I think that you, you meaning Layla, were already born
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with the personhood to be a fighter, but then that could be further nurtured, right? So now,
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even if you're not born with that mentality, there are things that you can pursue to empower that
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quality in you or to ignite it. So like most things, it really is a mixture of nature and nurture. So for
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example, one of the, in my own battles of trying to, you know, save the West from parasitic ideas,
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from the dreadful ideas that are destroying our, you know, enlightened societies, I try to convince
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people that their voice matters irrespective of how, how small they think and inconsequential their
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voice is, right? Because they'll often retort back to me, well, I'm not Joe Rogan. I don't have a
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podcast with 20 million people. I'm not some fancy professor with all the titles. I say, but that
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doesn't mean that, that's, that doesn't absolve you from when your professor says something idiotic
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in the classroom, challenge them politely. If you're at a bar and someone says something that
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is insane, maybe you can challenge them. Don't, don't always diffuse the responsibility. It's not
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only for Layla to take care of sex trafficking on behalf of all of us. You have a voice. Have you been,
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I'm, I mean, you've been able to gather an army, I think of 2 million people. It is, has that been
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some of the, the, the ways by which you were able to bring them onto the team? Well, I, I love what
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you said. And, uh, you know, when I started this battle with Pornhub for monetizing and globally
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distributing sex crimes, including child abuse and trafficking, um, I w I didn't have a big platform.
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I had a few thousand followers on Twitter. Um, but I knew what was going on was completely
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unjust. I mean, it was a horrific crime against these victims, uh, shattering their lives and I
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couldn't keep quiet about it. And so it really evolved organically on Twitter where I was taking
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what I knew, what I had discovered about this site and what was going on. And I was sharing it
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with passion, you know, trying to wait tagging, you know, the FBI and the prime minister of Canada
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and celebrities and people just saying, this is happening, you know, and, uh, and at that time,
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if I thought, well, what could I do? You know, I'm just one person shouting on Twitter. Is this going
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to do anything? And if I kind of backed down from that position of feeling, um, disempowered to really
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make a difference just because I didn't have a big platform, none of this would have ever happened.
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And so I guess your point, I would just encourage people. And I hope this, I hope my story is
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inspiring to others to say, I'm a re I'm a regular person who, you know, when this began, I, you know,
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it was some of the worst time of my life when I had a baby who was very sad, three month old,
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who had gone through a birth complication and was up at all hours of the day and night screaming and
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I'm, you know, comforting him and the darkness of my bedroom, thinking about some stories that I had
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heard in the news about children who had been trafficked and found on Pornhub. And we can talk
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about the, some of those stories. Um, but when I discovered what was going on on Pornhub, again,
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it was just, there was there, it was a small platform, but it was an important message and I knew it had to
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get out and, and the truth had to be told. And I think that's, what's important is that we're,
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you know, when you have a conviction about something, when you know, something is wrong
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and you call it out, it doesn't matter who's listening. It's your responsibility to do it
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regardless. Yeah. I mean, I often tell people when they ask me, well, why do you get involved in all
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these things? I mean, you lead enough of a stressful life. Why do you take on all these difficult
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situations where you get death threats and so on? And I always tell people, and I'm
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almost willing to bet that this is likely to resonate with you. Uh, I tell people that I'm,
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I'm my worst, uh, uh, critic, if you'd like, in that, you know, I need to please myself in the deep
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recesses of my thoughts so that when I go to bed at night and I put my head on the, on the pillow,
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the only way that I can feel whole and that I will not, you know, toss and turn with insomnia
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is to know that I was fully authentic and that I didn't walk away from defending truth,
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defending freedom, defending in your case, uh, children's rights, not to be raped. And so if I
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didn't do that, I would feel like a fraud and nothing would be more painful to my sense of
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personhood. And I, I suspect that probably applies to you. Correct.
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That resonates with me so much because, you know, something that I tried to do often is think about
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death and this may seem morbid to some people, but it's, I feel like it's a really important practice
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for me is to think about, you know, being on my deathbed or visiting my grave, you know, in my
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mind and thinking, do I have regrets? Do I, I don't want to have regrets. And if I do, then go back and
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fix what it was that I would regret that I didn't do that. I should have done, uh, or that I did that
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I shouldn't have done. So, yeah, I mean, I, in that sense, it totally resume resonates with me
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is that I don't want to get to the end of my life and think I should have done this and I was scared
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or, you know, uh, and have those regrets and that really is helpful. So how did you, I mean, one of the
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things that it's kind of become a joke now, but you know, that, that, uh, song by, is it Sarah
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McLaughlin or McLaughlin? She, it's the, the eyes of a angel or something. It's the, it's the animal
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song you're talking about. Yeah. Animal cruelty. So I've been conditioned like a, you know, a operant
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conditioning or Pavlovian conditioning to, as soon as I hear that, I want to flip the channel because I,
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I simply cannot bear to watch the very powerful images of animal cruelty. And so while I want to
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protect every animal, even in the, uh, you know, I, I'm not a vegan, I eat animals and I recognize
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that they are treated horribly, which is a moral dilemma that I face. I, it's very, very hard to
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ever be exposed to those images. Now, in your case, and you can tell us, you know, fill in the details,
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you have to go and quote, consume those, those videos. How are you able to do that and actually
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come on the show today without having jumped off the proverbial ledge? How, how, what kind of fortitude
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must you have had to inoculate yourself against the horrors of what you were viewing?
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I think part of it is having purpose in pain is knowing it's not without reason. And I, you know,
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having the power to press pause, right. And understanding that victims don't have that,
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they have to live with this trauma for the rest of their lives as it's been immortalized
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online. And they do call it the immortalization of their trauma. One victim said, my rapist put me
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in a mental prison, but Pornhub gave me a life sentence because they actually had a download button on
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every single video. Many of these were blatant rape, unconscious rape, uh, trafficking, and even
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consensually filmed, but non-consensually uploaded revenge porn, image-based sexual abuse. It's kind
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of like, there's a spectrum of abuse all the way from child rape to self-generated, um, child
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pornography in this age of sexting, right. Where, where then it gets uploaded online and it sends a
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victim into a spiral of trauma. Um, you know, I can give one example of how that has happened. Um,
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there was a, a girl named Serena. She was the, uh, kind of face of this groundbreaking article in
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the New York times by Nicholas Kristof called the children of Pornhub that was released in December of
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2020. And she was an innocent 14 year old girl. She had never kissed a boy before. She was a straight
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a student and she had a crush on a boy older than her who had convinced him to impress him, to send
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some nude images and videos, which she did. He sent them to classmates and then they ended up getting
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uploaded to Pornhub, getting millions of views. And, you know, she would beg for them to be removed.
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They would hassle her, prove that you're a victim, prove that you're underage. Um, if they answered at
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all, she may get one down and they would get uploaded again and again in this sadistic, you know,
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game of whack-a-mole of a child trying to handle this. And it sent her into this spiral of despair.
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She ended up being bullied at school. She had to drop out of school. She ended up self-medicating,
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uh, to numb the pain. And she ended up living homeless out of a car. And that was the trajectory
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for her. And then we have adults, you know, it's not just children who've been affected adults who've
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been raped, uh, trafficked, abused on the site, a spectrum of abuse. But I think the thing that
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really has helped me is, uh, you know, the idea of it's, it's pain that has a purpose and actually
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seeing the traction and seeing the progress that we have been making by bringing this truth to the
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world to say, you know, Pornhub is the largest or was the largest and most popular porn site in the
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world. You know, at the time that this fight against them began in early 2020, you know,
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they had 130 million visits per day, 47 billion visits to the site per year, enough content uploaded
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every year. It would take 169 years to watch if you put those videos back to back. So 6.9 million
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videos, um, researchers had named Pornhub the third most influential tech company on global society,
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just behind Facebook and Google. And it was the 10th most trafficked website in the world.
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This was a household brand name for porn. There were people, you know, joking about it on Saturday
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night live and they had pop-up shops for New York fashion week and people are wearing their apparel
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proudly in public. And at the same time, it was an unchallenged crime scene, uh, because what I
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discovered in, uh, you know, one night in February 1st, 2020, uh, I was thinking about the story of, uh,
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that I had recently heard in the news of a 15 year old girl from Florida who was missing
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for an entire year. She was finally found when her mother was tipped off by a Pornhub user that
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he recognized her daughter on the site. And she was found in 58 videos being raped in traffic.
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They were able to actually match the attacker, the rapist face in the Pornhub videos to surveillance
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footage from a seven 11. And they were able to locate the girl from his apartment and rescue her.
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He had impregnated her. Um, and it was just this horrific story. And I kept coming back to it.
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Also at the same time, there was an investigation that was published by the London Sunday times
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that had found dozens of illegal videos on Pornhub within minutes, even children as young as three
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years old. And so I had been thinking about that, thinking how in the world did this content end up
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on Pornhub and a wise phrase, my dad always used to say is assumption is the mother of all screw ups.
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And we were all collectively assuming right. Millions and millions of people, uh, were assuming
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that this content was vetted, that it was legal and consensual because that is what they had been
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projecting to the world. I mean, they had done an amazing job actually of spending millions of dollars
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on PR for their image. Uh, they w they had this whole arm of Pornhub called Pornhub Cares,
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which was the philanthropy arm of Pornhub, where they were, you know, doing these highly publicized
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campaigns to save the bees and save the whales and clean the oceans and donate for breast cancer
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research. And at the same time, their site was infested with equal, equal content because when I
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tested the upload system, so I had an idea, I said, listen, I'm just going to test this upload system
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to see what it takes to upload content to the world's largest porn site. And this is user generated
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porn. So this is the YouTube of porn, right? Anybody with a phone anywhere in the world can film a sex
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act, upload it online. So I just said, let me test it. I took a video of the dark room, the keyboard,
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and just went through that process in minutes without any verification of ID, without any verification of
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consent anonymously with only an email address, you were able to upload content to Pornhub. Um,
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and that is how I started to connect the dots that this site is potentially one of the largest
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repositories of sexual crime in North America, if not the world. At the time they had almost 11 million
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videos on this site. They had 42 million images that were uploaded with the same non-verification
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process. And that's when it all began. And I said, I have to sound the alarm on this,
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what is going on? And that's when trafficking hub began. I started the hashtag on Twitter,
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trafficking hub, and it all kind of spiraled from that moment when I made that discovery.
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So there are different, uh, constituencies, if you'd like of, of evil here, there is, okay. The,
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the perpetrators of the, the, the acts, the, the rapists, the traffickers, and so on. Okay, fine.
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We can talk about those, but we, we have an intuition why they're doing what they're doing. Uh,
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we have the Pornhub people who probably are just driven by greed. You know, I think that 99 point,
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I'm speaking now as if I were them, 99.9% of all of the stuff is completely legal. And between consenting
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adults, we don't have the sieve or the, the algorithms to be able to ensure that every
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single clip that's up there is good. And we'll do our best next time around. Is, does that sound
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like? Absolutely not. That's, that's not what they say. Absolutely not. I mean that, well,
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that may be what they try to project to the public. Yeah. That's what I meant. That's right. As,
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as that they're kind of this passive entity that doesn't really have, although when they started to be
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confronted with what was going on, they've made some very damning statements about their own
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policies, which we can talk about, but, um, the onion layers of peeling back the deep complicity
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of Pornhub and its owners are, you know, part of this story and the intentional decisions that they
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made that enabled and monetized this illegal content knowingly is, is really unbelievable.
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Oh, okay. So it's not, so it's not the plausible deniability. Absolutely not. Oh no. So they're
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willfully looking for that material. Well, the way that they set up their system. So this is stuff
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that we uncovered as so, so trafficking hub starts, hashtag people, you know, starts catching on. I,
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some new followers say you got to start a petition to shut down Pornhub. This is unbelievable and hold
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its account executives accountable victim. So I start a petition. It goes viral today. We have 2.3
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million signatures from every country in the world on the petition to shut down Pornhub and hold its
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executives accountable. And as this is going viral, uh, victims are starting to come forward,
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whistleblowers and insiders from the company are starting to come forward and they're starting to
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reveal how the site works, the policies that these executives put in place, uh, to enable and allow
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the unrestricted content from being monetized online. So the way you have to understand the
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business model of free porn. So this is like the free user generated YouTube of porn. The way that
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they make the most money is by selling 4.6 billion ad impressions on Pornhub every day. And the only way
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that they can do that is if they have massive amounts of content to be picked up in Google so
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that it can drive massive amounts of traffic to the site so they can sell those advertising
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impressions. So from their perspective, they want no friction in uploading because they want as much
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content to be uploaded as possible. So moderators who came forward, they said it was our job not to
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keep illegal content off the site, but to allow as much content to go through as possible. So let's just
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take a few of these business decisions, policy decisions that they made knowing all the while
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they do not verify agent consent for upload, right? They had hired 10 moderators per shift. So per eight
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hour shift, there was a team of 10 moderators in Cyprus. They had 30 total to be viewing these
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millions of videos and images that were being uploaded, not only to Pornhub, but this is really
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important. Pornhub was owned by a parent company called MindGeek. MindGeek has a monopoly on the
00:24:33.400
global porn industry. They own most of the world's most popular porn sites and brands, including most
00:24:39.620
of the world's most popular tube sites like Pornhub. So these 10 moderators were in charge of not only
00:24:45.780
porn hub, but red tube, you porn, gay tube, extreme tube, X tube, uh, uh, you know, you porn, all of
00:24:54.020
these tubes. And they were reprimanded if they watched less than 700 videos per shift where they
00:25:00.760
would just skip through these videos with the sound off. It was just to say that they had somebody
00:25:05.040
doing it. Um, some of them were watching up to 2000 videos per shift, just skipping through again.
00:25:11.480
And they told me, I know people in my office that let very underage content go through. And it was
00:25:18.920
because of the philosophy of the site is they didn't want to keep that content off the site.
00:25:25.100
So, um, the other quick example I'll give is they had 1800 employees working for this company. They're
00:25:32.860
making hundreds of millions of dollars a year. And they hired one person five days a week to review
00:25:39.640
videos that were flagged by users as terms of service violations, including child rape, trafficking,
00:25:45.280
um, and other, uh, non-consensual sex acts. And they had a backlog of 706,000 videos.
00:25:53.080
So what imagine in a, in a, in a company that big to hire one person to do that. And then they had a
00:25:59.780
policy where they would only put a video in queue for review if it had over 15 flags. So a victim
00:26:06.120
could flag their video 15 times, and it wouldn't even be put in line for review. And we have internal
00:26:13.340
emails that were uncovered in legal discovery in these lawsuits that victims are suing the company.
00:26:18.580
And he says in these emails, as he's talking about this policy, that it's good and it's reasonable. Um,
00:26:24.980
so those are just some examples of the way that they set this up to enable and monetize exploitation.
00:26:31.400
Okay. So when I was starting earlier with the constituencies of, of evil, I, I mentioned the
00:26:36.800
perpetrators that I mentioned the, the porn, uh, hub, uh, you know, executives and owners and the third
00:26:43.980
group, which again, you'll, you'll tell me whether it's willful ignorance or, or, or apathy or complicity.
00:26:51.840
So why doesn't the criminal justice system, you know, I'll, I'll let you explain the intricacies of
00:26:59.480
who has jurisdiction over an internet company, but why aren't you able to mention this to someone in
00:27:06.300
the justice department in the United States? And they go, what? I didn't know this. All right. I'm
00:27:10.840
on it Tuesday morning. That's the first thing on my item. And I could shut this down in four minutes.
00:27:15.640
What stops that the good guys from intervening? That's the question of the day. And I want to
00:27:24.520
know what you think about it. Um, because that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to get justice
00:27:31.240
fully served. And it's so important because victims need justice in order to heal, in order to have
00:27:38.380
closure for what happened when their lives have been completely shattered and countless victims. I mean,
00:27:43.440
it's out of their control, right? The criminal justice system is out of civilian control. Uh,
00:27:49.480
that, that is up to the U S government, the Canadian government, they have offices all over
00:27:53.800
the world. They can be criminally prosecuted, um, in Canada. I can mention specifically the laws that
00:27:59.180
they violated in Canada, uh, where they're headquartered, but the civil justice system is in
00:28:04.600
their control. And there are currently, you know, over, let's say nearly 300 victims suing in 25 lawsuits
00:28:10.920
across the U S Canada and the UK, including multiple class action lawsuits on behalf of tens of
00:28:16.760
thousands of child victims. And they're not only suing the company, but they're suing the individual
00:28:20.540
owners of the company. They're also suing their enablers visa and the hedge funds in dozens of
00:28:26.840
these lawsuits are suing the hedge funds that actually provided the money for mind geek to exist
00:28:31.540
and knew the risk they were taking. And instead of saying, no, we don't want to have any part in
00:28:35.740
monetizing child sexual abuse and rape, they said, let's charge 20%, uh, interest on our investment.
00:28:43.000
So we can make a lot of money on this high risk venture. So they're suing them for that. But
00:28:48.680
that's the question is what is, what is holding back justice being fully served where, you know,
00:28:55.200
we have a example of backpage.com in the United States where that website was selling cars.
00:29:01.500
It was also selling children to be trafficked and the justice department actually seized the site.
00:29:07.900
If you go to backpage.com, there's a seal of the department of justice that you,
00:29:11.720
they have seized the site. They're prosecuting and sentencing the owners, I think even this week.
00:29:19.700
I mean, there could only be two possible bifurcations in terms of causes. One is there is
00:29:26.340
a vested interest not to act. So that would only be if, you know, whomever is, has the power to
00:29:33.520
handle this issue is financially benefiting and doesn't want them. Now that seems a bit too
00:29:38.520
conspiratorial. So could it simply be that the wheels of justice are moving, but they move so slowly
00:29:45.620
that it's, you know, justice delayed is justice denied. Could, could that simply?
00:29:49.760
I think that that, I think you're, I think you're exactly right. And I think it's a matter of putting
00:29:53.680
enough pressure. I think I am a firm advocate. We need multiple strategies to see justice fully
00:29:59.920
served. You know, one is hit them where it hurts in the bank account. I mean, these companies above
00:30:05.120
everything else are making their calculations about what they do and they don't do based on
00:30:10.340
what is best for their bank account. And so victims being able to courageously pursue civil litigation,
00:30:15.720
I think is incredibly important, shining a huge spotlight on this issue, which I hope, you know,
00:30:20.800
the book actually does as it gets to many, many people who've never heard this story and
00:30:25.200
they go on a journey. Yeah. They go on a journey of discovery with me from that moment. I described
00:30:31.100
that night, February 1st, 2020. And, you know, it's told in first person is told in present tense,
00:30:35.920
where you actually go through all of this. You meet the victims, you meet the whistleblowers,
00:30:39.880
you watch the videos with me as I describe them in detail, what was, you know, being shown on the site.
00:30:46.660
You're almost making, you're, you're, you're assuring me that I might not end up reading your
00:30:52.420
book because as cowardly as it might sound, I don't want to be exposed to that kind of stuff, but
00:30:57.320
that's, that's my moral. I felt like it was important, you know, not to go too far because
00:31:03.500
there's so much more that I could have shared, but to do it enough where you understand this isn't
00:31:09.140
pretend. A lot of people want to assume, look, you just don't understand. This is consensual non-consent.
00:31:15.720
This is just rough sex and you're a prude who doesn't understand, right? That that's what,
00:31:20.860
no, I needed to explain this in a way where, you know, without a doubt, what I know and what the
00:31:28.320
victims know, and that this is real sexual crime. This is not pretend. And so, you know, not going
00:31:35.580
too far, but going far enough where people understand the reality. And so there's a strong
00:31:41.520
trigger warning on the front of the, in the front of the book and people can skip over some of that
00:31:46.900
stuff if it's too much, but I thought that, you know, it's important because this is, I feel the
00:31:53.280
indictment that hasn't been brought yet in, in the United States and Canada and other countries that
00:31:59.460
needs to be with the evidence and the, the proof of what was going on. And so, you know, I hope that
00:32:05.700
this helps raise the level of awareness and puts pressure on those in power to do something.
00:32:11.680
You know, we've got, got the book in the hands of every member of Congress in the U S every state
00:32:16.740
attorney general. And in Canada, we're trying to get it into the hands of MPs and those who can
00:32:23.440
actually take action. There has been criminal action in the U S. So there was a criminal charges
00:32:30.100
that were brought against Pornhub in December of 2023 by the U S federal government, where they
00:32:36.980
were charged with knowingly benefiting and profiting from the transactions of a hundred specific victims
00:32:43.360
in California who are victims of sex trafficking. Unfortunately, they were offered a deferred
00:32:48.160
prosecution agreement by the government where they were told you have to pay $1.8 million and you have
00:32:55.740
to have a government babysitter, basically a monitor over what you're doing for three years. And if you
00:33:01.580
do these things and we won't move forward with our full prosecution, but I feel like that is a slap on
00:33:07.320
the wrist, to be honest. Um, I mean, it's something, but so much more has to be done in order to really
00:33:12.880
bring justice that is commensurate with the harm that has been done to victims.
00:33:17.220
What, what amazes me is that so many of these, you know, orgiastic transgressions, whether they be,
00:33:23.460
I mean, certainly criminal ones or moral ones, how the perpetrators get away with it, right? So
00:33:29.260
the 2008, uh, housing bubble crisis, how many, how many CEOs of those investment banks have gone to
00:33:36.240
prison? Oh, none. Uh, when you think about this, the Sackler family, I had the, the, uh, the author of,
00:33:44.220
of the book that had done an expose on the, you know, the opioid crisis with the Sackler family and how
00:33:50.740
they were involved. Yes. They ended up paying a hefty penalty, but I, if I, I hope I'm not
00:33:55.440
mistaken, but I don't think anybody served prison. So there are really two, two elements of punishment.
00:34:02.560
There is the, as you said, hitting them where it hurts, which is, you know, their bank accounts.
00:34:07.860
But at least from my perspective, maybe I'm too pure, uh, that wouldn't be enough, right? I mean,
00:34:12.600
I, you, you need to go for 80 years to prison because that's, and now it's, it's very confusing to
00:34:19.140
me because you often will hear a story of some football coach. Maybe I'm being too stereotypical,
00:34:25.020
but some football coach who's stopped, uh, because he downloaded child porn and he's got 80 of those
00:34:32.240
photos and he gets sentenced to 37 years. So why isn't it that very easily with the technology that
00:34:38.600
we have today, you can go after all of them very, very quickly in one quick swoop. I mean, you download
00:34:44.280
willingly images of where it's clear that it's a four-year-old being great while we're coming
00:34:50.220
after you. What stops the government from doing that? Right. Well, I a hundred percent agree with
00:34:57.180
you. And I think that I agree as well, that civil justice is not enough. It's something, and I think
00:35:02.380
it's meaningful to victims, right? Cause it's recognizing the harm done, which is so important,
00:35:06.440
but criminal justice, I think is, is crucial, not only for what it does to victims and recognizing the
00:35:13.160
harm and bringing them healing, but also because it becomes a deterrent to future abusers. So if we
00:35:18.340
want to take a step back and say, okay, it's one thing to deal with Pornhub, but how are we going to
00:35:24.380
prevent this from, you know, on the internet, uh, as a whole, right. From there's many user generated
00:35:31.180
porn sites that, um, are operating on the internet and how are we going to stop this? Right. So one way
00:35:39.040
is we need to create a deterrent because for, I call them corporate traffickers, right? It's a risk
00:35:44.020
benefit calculation for them. And they will continue doing this as long as the benefit outweighs the
00:35:50.140
risk. However, when you see a executive held accountable where they pierce that corporate veil
00:35:58.080
and actually hold the owner accountable and they serve prison time, that will create an enormous
00:36:06.640
deterrent for decision makers at these corporations running these websites to maybe do something
00:36:12.720
different. Um, at the same time, we need policy to prevent it in the future as well. So simply
00:36:19.600
common sense policy that says, if you run a user generated porn site, you have to verify the age and
00:36:27.500
the consent of every individual and every video that is uploaded to that site. And I think it's really
00:36:35.480
important for governments to do that, but because these are international corporations, even more
00:36:40.860
important are for financial institutions to implement that policy. So Visa, MasterCard, Discover, PayPal,
00:36:47.400
they say we do not do business with user generated site or websites that distribute user generated porn
00:36:52.580
unless they reliably verify via a third party, the age and consent of those who are in the videos. And when
00:36:58.540
they do that, it's instant, it's global. And these companies are so motivated to maintain their profits
00:37:06.520
that they will comply. And so I think that could be a huge way to stop this in the future.
00:37:13.660
Yeah. Well, as you know, if any of those folks end up going to prison, their time is not easily
00:37:20.080
served when other prisoners find out what they're there, what they're there for. So, uh, you know,
00:37:25.900
even within the context of the prison ecosystem, there is a moral code and the lowest person on
00:37:32.160
that ladder is the child abuser. So in a sense, you almost feel a sense of cosmic justice. If a few
00:37:38.040
of those guys can go in there, face a really rough time in there, and then cosmic justice has been
00:37:43.100
meted out. Let me ask you, I hope you don't want to ask you this, uh, of course, going after the
00:37:49.140
non-consensual adult stuff, the revenge porn, as you said, bad, you know, rape of even an adult is
00:37:55.780
bad of a child. It's horrifying, but do you take a position against porn in general, or you clearly
00:38:05.640
make a delineation? I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm taking no moral stance against porn or porn consumers,
00:38:11.880
or is it all part of one sort of crusade against porn in general? Yeah. I think what's really
00:38:17.720
important is our language, right? Because porn is porn. What I'm talking about is sexual crime.
00:38:24.300
And in fact, when victims, um, hear it called porn, it's very offensive and, and hurtful. And, you know,
00:38:31.000
that's why we're moving away from even calling it child pornography, instead calling it child sexual
00:38:36.160
abuse material, because there is a difference between legal pornography, which is again, legal.
00:38:43.220
And, you know, if it's done between two consenting adults and it's consumed by adults, that's none of
00:38:49.380
my business. I don't, you know, that's not the aim of my work. That's not the aim of trafficking hub.
00:38:54.020
That's not the aim of the justice defense fund, my organization. We are very specifically and narrowly
00:38:59.140
focused on eliminating the distribution and the monetization of online sexual crime in all that
00:39:05.520
kind of spectrum of, of illegality and non-consensual image-based sexual abuse. Um, that is our
00:39:13.440
position. Um, and really quick, going back to what you were just talking about regarding criminal
00:39:21.020
penalties. I did, there was one thing I did want to add and to understand for viewers that, you know,
00:39:27.680
there's actually a download button that they had placed on every single video. So they were transferring
00:39:35.320
from their servers onto the devices of potentially 5 million users per hour who were consuming content
00:39:42.620
on Pornhub. Every single video had a download button and that would enable the actual transfer
00:39:48.880
of this contraband, this illegal content, including, you know, most obviously it's child sexual abuse,
00:39:56.160
right? It's even illegal for a victim to possess their own child sexual abuse material. And so having that
00:40:04.540
possessed on the servers, then transferred right from there to devices, and it's a, it's not a
00:40:10.860
download like on YouTube when you can download it and then watch it later, it's an actual possession
00:40:16.200
where you could then take that file and you could do what you want with it. You could re-upload it to
00:40:21.340
Pornhub at the time that was happening or to anywhere else across the internet. And in, in the U S and
00:40:27.540
Canada, I mean, that is actually a felony level offense, each instance of that. And I learned
00:40:33.800
something interesting in Canada is that it's even illegal to distribute the depiction of a child,
00:40:41.880
regardless of whether it's real or not. In Canada, it's actually a criminal offense. I don't know if
00:40:47.420
many people knew this to, to transfer, possess the depiction. And you mean like it could be a drawing?
00:40:54.080
What does the picture mean? Yeah. It means that it would appear to be a real child, but it may not
00:40:59.360
be right. So it could be an 18 year old that looks like they're 13. And consider this, that teen was
00:41:08.760
one of the top searched terms on Pornhub for years in a row. And these teens, right? Like think about
00:41:15.560
the word teen. The only teens that are legal are 18 and 19. But many of these videos that you would
00:41:22.020
see on Pornhub appeared to be very young braces, pigtails, flat chest, no makeup. And those videos
00:41:30.560
that were depictions were interspersed with videos of real child sexual abuse. So I'm just putting that
00:41:37.400
out there for people in Canada, as far as the criminal code goes. I mean, there's a huge amount
00:41:42.940
of liability there. And besides the fact that in Canada and in the US, it's mandatory to report
00:41:50.740
child sexual abuse to the authorities when you're aware of it as a corporation. And it's a criminal
00:41:55.920
offense in Canada. I think it's seven years in prison that you can get if you don't report.
00:42:00.620
And we have testimony from the heads of the leading child protection organizations in Canada,
00:42:05.340
in the US, as well as depositions that were taken of employees that now prove that Pornhub went 13
00:42:12.640
years without reporting a single instance of known child sexual abuse to authorities.
00:42:18.140
Again, it's illegal to do that. And we can think about how many children could have been rescued from
00:42:23.920
situations of abuse if they were actually doing what they should have been doing and reporting.
00:42:27.980
Are there any... I mean, you earlier told us about the haunting story of that 15-year-old who ended up
00:42:37.120
living in her car. I'm afraid to ask, what is the conclusion of that story? But you can answer
00:42:43.020
that. Or are there any other positive stories? Here's a story of Linda who went through a horrible
00:42:49.480
ordeal. She's now married. She has three kids. And she's a neurosurgeon. Because it always
00:42:55.960
gives people a sense of purpose to know that there is a way out of the infinite darkness.
00:43:03.120
Well, I would say in the case of Serena, I couldn't be more proud of what she's done to
00:43:08.580
help bring justice to herself and to so many other victims. So not only did she courageously share her
00:43:16.820
story in the New York Times article that really blew this up in 2020, but she is suing. And I say
00:43:23.680
she's suing the literal hell out of Pornhub, its owners, Visa, the hedge funds. And she's making
00:43:29.200
enormous progress in what she's doing to get justice and to help prevent this in the future.
00:43:36.120
So she's progressing in her life. She has support. She has advocacy support. And she's trying to
00:43:45.060
get a business up and running with something that she cares about. So I don't want to go
00:43:50.720
into too many details about her. But she is trying to move forward and also just courageously. Talk
00:43:57.800
about the honey badger. I mean, Serena, the one that was actually abused, going and taking it on
00:44:04.580
and head on, even though she's faced a lot of backlash and attacks that I talk about in my book
00:44:10.680
with even her specific story of things that happened to her after she spoke out. And then
00:44:15.460
there's other victims too that have done, that are doing the same, that a 12 year old boy in Alabama,
00:44:21.800
he was drugged, overpowered and raped in 23 videos. The rapist, his name is Rocky Shea Franklin. He's in
00:44:28.080
prison for 40 years and he uploaded those rape videos to Pornhub and they were being sold, paid to
00:44:33.440
download content in a profit sharing partnership with Pornhub. And police reached out multiple times to
00:44:40.600
get those down. Pornhub ignored the police until the third time when they finally removed it after
00:44:45.600
seven months. But that victim, that boy is currently suing Pornhub in Alabama. And he just filed his
00:44:53.360
amended complaint a couple of weeks ago. And it's powerful. And I think that if it goes to trial,
00:45:00.200
I mean, these could be billion dollar judgments for what's happened to these victims. And
00:45:04.880
I'm anxious to see what, what happens. Incredible. I mean, it, it points to something
00:45:09.880
that I've talked about, this idea of faux victimhood, which of course, none of the people
00:45:14.680
that you're talking about belong in that category. They're, they're the epitome of real victims and
00:45:20.240
how in our society today, we tend to lionize all these fake victimhood story. And I always tell
00:45:26.960
people, you know, I grew up, I'm, I'm a, my childhood was in the Lebanese civil war and we
00:45:32.760
faced some very, very difficult circumstances. And I always tell people that, you know, it, it cheapens
00:45:38.080
the victimhood narratives of actual victims. When you try to ascend the social hierarchy with your
00:45:45.720
fake, you know, Jussie, Jussie Smollett stories. And then you hear stories of these, you know,
00:45:51.600
unimaginable victimhood stories, real victimhood stories, and that people can still persevere. It's,
00:45:56.760
it's certainly it's, it's invigorating in a sense, because you know that there's always a brighter
00:46:02.620
day tomorrow. Okay. Let's suppose that we press the magic button, we wave the magic wand, and we got
00:46:10.220
rid of all of these diabolical issues. What would Laila wake up tomorrow to tackle next, given her
00:46:19.320
infinite honey? I think I would just take a break, play with my kids, have time to read really good
00:46:25.840
books. And you know, I, what a wonderful day that would be when there's no more work to do in this
00:46:33.860
particular fight. So it's not, so the reason why I'm asking this is that there are other injustices
00:46:42.660
that exist that could just as easily invoke your ire and your indignation. So that if I solved
00:46:50.700
pancreatic cancer tomorrow, that doesn't mean that I need to retire, maybe the next day I'll tackle
00:46:55.440
diabetes. So it for you, is it a singular issue, which is, of course, gigantic and infinite in its
00:47:02.500
and how evil it is, but that would you given sort of your own sense of purpose and meaning always want
00:47:09.780
to look for the next battle? Or would you say, look, I've contributed enough, I got rid of child sex
00:47:16.400
trafficking, mic drop, I'm done, I'm retiring at the beach in Newport Beach?
00:47:22.540
I don't know what would happen at that point. I mean, it's definitely a situation we have to imagine,
00:47:30.080
right? Because it's not going to end tomorrow. It probably, well, I could probably fight this until
00:47:36.140
I'm old and gray and on my deathbed, right? But in that case, you know, I have just felt,
00:47:43.220
again, you know, for so long, just this passion for this very specific and narrow issue and even
00:47:49.620
getting even more narrow, even in the last four years of going just after a particular
00:47:55.800
behemoth, right? Like Pornhub and its parent company, MindGeek, and to the point where it's
00:48:02.900
like, I'm a broken record, just going after the same thing again and again. And it's even gotten
00:48:09.180
more narrow, right? Even than generally sex trafficking at large in the world. And that
00:48:15.980
feels to me to be the place, you know, where I want to just keep focusing my attention. And when it's
00:48:24.000
when it's over, God willing, that there is a day when that happens, I guess we'll see, you know,
00:48:31.420
if there's something else that stirs my heart the way that this has. And if that were to happen,
00:48:38.260
then maybe there's a new journey on a different part, different issue. But for now, this is this
00:48:45.020
is it. From your lips to God's word, God's ear. This is the book people take down, go read it. It's
00:48:51.800
a fantastic book. You know, if every person had your mindset, we wouldn't be facing all of the
00:48:57.280
problems that we are facing in the West today. Layla, thank you so much for coming. Stay on the
00:49:01.960
line so we could say goodbye offline. Real pleasure. Thank you for having me. It was just a wonderful
00:49:07.200
conversation and I really appreciated it. Thank you. Thank you, Layla.