This Past Weekend with Theo Von - E559 Laila Mickelwait

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00:00:13.780 today's guest is the co-founder and ceo of the justice defense fund she also founded the

00:00:20.500 trafficking hub movement she's been fighting against human trafficking for almost 20 years

00:00:26.320 and she just wrote a new book called take down inside the fight to shut down porn hub

00:00:33.180 we want to let you know as well that this episode can be somewhat sexually explicit at times so i want

00:00:41.360 to give you that warning in advance i'm very grateful for her time and her advocacy and her

00:00:48.240 information today's guest is lila micklewaite

00:00:52.240 so take down inside the fight to shut down porn hub for child abuse rape and sex trafficking

00:01:11.780 this is your book and i'm sitting here with lila micklewaite nice to be here is that the way to

00:01:18.960 say it you uh you almost got it lila micklewaite okay so didn't get it lila micklewaite um how did

00:01:26.520 your war against porn hub start sure i will tell you that story okay so in the context of years in

00:01:34.380 the fight against sex trafficking so i had been fighting sex trafficking when this began this

00:01:37.960 began at the start of 2020 um this is february 2020 when the the fight to hold porn hub accountable

00:01:44.560 for rape sex trafficking child abuse began and that was in the context of over a decade in the

00:01:49.780 fight against trafficking at that point and i had been paying attention to the headlines obviously when

00:01:54.740 when sexual abuse um stories trafficking stories uh came up you know i was paying attention and one of

00:02:01.980 the stories that came up at late 2019 that really arrested my attention it was a story of a 15 year

00:02:09.220 old girl and she was from broward county florida and she was missing for an entire year and she was

00:02:14.360 finally found when her distraught mother was tipped off by a porn hub user that he recognized her daughter

00:02:19.820 on the site wow and she was found in 58 videos being abused for profit um these are monetized videos

00:02:27.780 police you know were dispatched and they actually rescued her out of his apartment um she had been

00:02:34.460 impregnated um you know they got her out of that situation but that was a story that had made some

00:02:39.520 headlines and it was a horrifying story at the same time there was an investigation that was released

00:02:45.120 by the sunday times the london sunday times and they had found dozens of illegal videos on porn hub

00:02:51.260 within minutes even children as young as three um so these two particular stories were standing out

00:02:57.960 there was one other that was really horrifying at the time it was about an adult a woman named

00:03:03.700 nicole adamando and she was from new york and she was being abused by her partner she was being raped and

00:03:10.280 tortured he was filming it and he was uploading it to porn hub and then she ended up killing him in

00:03:15.600 self-defense but she was sentenced to life in prison separated from her two young children

00:03:20.560 and thankfully she had an amazing legal team and they fought that and they got it reduced to seven

00:03:26.240 years and she's finally out today but it was just a heartbreaking story and so i at the time you know

00:03:33.880 i was really actually discouraged in my fight against trafficking i had been doing it for a long time

00:03:38.220 i felt like we weren't making very much progress but you know it's not something that i can quit

00:03:42.480 because i i'm dedicated to this um but i was up late one night in uh in early 2020 it was i think it

00:03:50.420 was let's see january 31st 2020 and i was consoling my own crying baby at that time because he was

00:03:57.200 born he had a birth complication he was very mad baby what do you mean oh crying baby yeah crying

00:04:02.640 baby yeah he was up you know i was up at all hours of the night i thought you said crime baby i was like

00:04:06.820 oh what is a crime baby no crying baby okay yeah and so i was up late uh consoling him and thinking

00:04:14.800 about that story of the 15 year old girl and suddenly you know an idea came to mind i just said

00:04:21.880 you know what how are they vetting these videos um how is this abuse ending up on porn hub and an idea

00:04:29.360 just flashed into mind i said i'm going to test the upload system for myself and i'm going to see what

00:04:34.540 does it take to upload content to porn hub so put the baby down got out my phone um took a video of

00:04:43.660 the computer screen and the rug in the dark room and i uploaded it to porn hub and i found out what

00:04:49.500 millions of people already knew because at that time millions of videos were being uploaded every

00:04:54.680 year in fact the amount of content that was being uploaded to porn hub if you put those videos back to

00:04:59.740 back just the amount of content they would upload in one year it would take 169 years to watch if you

00:05:06.380 put those videos back to back that's how much content was being uploaded uploaded or had been

00:05:10.920 uploaded total you mean no per year wow yes that's not even counting the images unbelievable so i um

00:05:18.220 tested the i found out like i said what millions of people already knew and that was that all it took

00:05:22.920 to upload was an email address so in under 10 minutes anybody with an iphone anywhere in the

00:05:30.120 world can upload a video and they were not checking age they were not checking id to make sure that

00:05:36.180 these are not children in the videos they're not verifying consent to make sure that these are not

00:05:40.660 rape or trafficking victims and because of that i quickly understood that porn hub was not a porn site

00:05:46.420 it was a crime scene like it was infested with videos of real sexual crime um and so then the

00:05:52.940 people would upload them and then make money what off of advertising on them somehow or yes yes so the

00:05:59.000 so the ones that were making money off of this content because this is free porn right right uh free

00:06:04.340 porn is not free right it is heavily monetized with ads so they were selling 4.6 billion ad impressions

00:06:12.500 on porn hub every single day so they were heavily monetizing this content now the people who were

00:06:17.940 uploading were doing it mostly for free like 80 percent of people who are uploading were just doing

00:06:23.300 it for social currency like likes and clicks and comments and shares and all of that the reason why

00:06:29.020 people upload to social media right um some of them were doing pay to download content where they could

00:06:35.900 actually do profit sharing with porn hub that was happening as well but most of the money made from free porn

00:06:42.020 is actually made by the corporation running the site right and just to give you a little bit of um

00:06:48.280 context for how big porn hub and its parent company are who are making all of this money uh so porn hub at

00:06:55.700 the time so by december of 2020 they had capitalized on coronavirus so they had done crazy stunts like free

00:07:03.040 premium to the whole entire world um oh i remember something remember that yeah they had um done some

00:07:11.200 crazy pr campaigns at the time because if people they figure people are stuck at home they'll watch

00:07:16.160 porn yeah well it was that plus they were getting tons of bad press because trafficking hub movement

00:07:20.980 had gone viral starting at the beginning of the year and trafficking hub movement was what so i'll okay

00:07:26.340 so i'll go back to the story so well really quick i want to tell you kind of just so you know what

00:07:31.020 we're dealing with like how big okay yeah how big porn hub is okay so by the end of december 2020

00:07:37.580 so they had grown uh to be the fifth most visited website in the entire world so not just porn site

00:07:46.660 website they had 170 million visits per day 62 billion visits per year and like i said enough

00:07:55.080 content uploaded every year it'd take 169 years to watch so they had 56 million pieces of content on the

00:08:01.120 site by the end of 2020 and this was the year that trafficking hub movement began so go back to

00:08:07.200 the story so i made this discovery oh my god and i said massive i said oh i literally said what you

00:08:14.300 just oh my god this site is infested with videos of rape trafficking non-consensual content we used to

00:08:24.220 call it revenge porn but we call it image-based sexual abuse uh and i have to sound the alarm on this i have

00:08:30.460 to uh you know tell people what's going on and so i did the only thing that i could do at the time was

00:08:38.820 i took to my it was twitter right at the time twitter and i started to share this information share the

00:08:45.100 stories share uh the the what i discovered about the upload process and in a burst of inspiration i shared

00:08:52.460 the hashtag trafficking hub and the reason why i did that is because per definition so by definition

00:09:00.220 any sex act that is commercialized and it's involving a child or any sex act that's induced by

00:09:08.540 force fraud or coercion and it's commercialized so it's for profit like it's something of value is

00:09:14.980 exchanged for that sex act it is per definition an act of trafficking so every child being abused

00:09:22.440 on porn hub every adult who was non-consenting who was raped and trafficked those are instances

00:09:27.940 of trafficking i don't think people quite understand that but that is per international

00:09:33.800 definition and domestic definition and so that's why i launched the trafficking hub hashtag and it

00:09:39.580 slowly started to catch on i had a few thousand followers on twitter at the time but people were

00:09:44.180 horrified to find this out oh yeah well i think when you hear trafficking you kind of think like

00:09:49.340 i mean i picture literally like a train like people commandeered from other countries or you know

00:09:56.620 i guess younger people that have commandeered and kidnapped in like a train car going across the

00:10:01.780 country in the night or something like i think of it as a as a more like people like being smuggled

00:10:06.300 across the border or you know i don't think of it as um i guess the average person doesn't think of

00:10:12.160 it in such a a common kind of i don't know if it's common is the word i guess yeah the average person

00:10:18.080 probably doesn't think of it that it's that expansive right yeah well that's the way it's

00:10:22.720 portrayed in hollywood movies and that's the way that it happens often right sometimes but you know

00:10:28.500 the amount of trafficking going on if you think about non-consensual commercialized sex acts

00:10:34.880 this is massive um and so unbelievable yeah yeah i mean and so uh sound the alarm

00:10:43.940 launch traffic him hashtag that started to catch on people started to message me somebody said hey

00:10:50.900 if you don't start a petition um oh then i wrote an op-ed so i said okay well what else can i do besides

00:10:56.800 just share this on social media this has to get out to more people so i wrote a an op-ed about what i

00:11:03.820 discovered an op-ed means opinion it's like an essay yeah right i just want our listeners to know

00:11:08.420 most of our listeners are just like me they don't know um yeah yeah so op-ed means an opinion

00:11:13.360 editorial so uh like something that your opinion you'd write it into like a publication that'd be

00:11:18.520 published in a newspaper or something like that yeah okay great just want our listeners to always

00:11:21.840 know what that is exactly what it is and so i wrote that with kind of the findings highlighting some of

00:11:26.200 these stories that had just been in the news making the connections and that really caught on you

00:11:31.360 know people were sharing it and somebody who read it messaged me and they said hey you need to start a

00:11:37.180 petition to shut down porn hub and hold its executives accountable and if you don't do it

00:11:41.100 i will i said okay well i'll do that so i just went on change.org i started a petition and instantly

00:11:46.480 started going viral so on change.org you started a petition i started it there yeah now it's at

00:11:51.000 traffickinghubpetition.com and today we have um 2.3 million people who have signed the petition from

00:11:57.620 every country in the world let's go um and so we're gonna get more that's we got to get more

00:12:01.740 it's traffickinghubpetition.com yeah and this has been powerful to have this because as this was

00:12:10.460 going viral victims were seeing it and then they were starting to reach out to me um sometimes on

00:12:16.060 a daily basis victims that i was exploited on porn hub as a child as a teen i was raped i was

00:12:20.960 unconscious and i was raped on porn hub and i begged to get those videos down and i couldn't you know all

00:12:25.180 these stories started to come forward not only that but whistleblowers from inside the company

00:12:29.820 started to reach out to me and started to expose the inner workings of the company even the former

00:12:35.780 owner of porn hub actually reached out to me to say he wanted to help with all this he had his own

00:12:40.540 motives but right probably trying to cover his own tracks well yeah he had i discovered that he had

00:12:46.320 some financial motivations uh for wanting to do that but he did and one of the things that was so

00:12:52.160 important at this outset uh was we felt like you know this company that trafficking is a transactional

00:12:58.800 crime all of this is being done for money like that's the only thing that these companies care

00:13:04.020 about right and in order to you know make a difference here we have to hit them where it

00:13:08.820 hurts we have to go after the money and so we said we have to go after the credit cards um to cut ties

00:13:15.420 with porn hub and when the owner reached out he confirmed that he said listen the only thing they

00:13:20.760 care about is money if you you go after the credit cards that's the achilles heel of porn hub um

00:13:26.640 so you're saying if visa and mastercard they will say we will not allow our credit cards to be used

00:13:30.700 that would be the worst thing that could ever happen to porn hub yes because they you know they need

00:13:35.500 those yeah in order to sell ads premium memberships all of that um so reached out to try you know

00:13:42.480 credit card executives did letters you know organizations were signing on um so all of this was building

00:13:49.180 momentum the petition was gaining steam and that's why lots of media articles started to be written about

00:13:54.900 this um what like were some of the crimes that you see like saw happening what were some specific

00:14:00.420 instances that you were like oh my god this is just yeah i mean okay i mean is it okay to share

00:14:06.620 those yeah of course um and i think it's important to share because i think a lot of times people want

00:14:11.720 to just dismiss it and say you know you what you saw was just consensual you just didn't really

00:14:18.360 understand that it was you know these were obvious yeah it's vague until you make it specific i feel

00:14:24.480 like a lot of times so for example and i'll tell you some i can tell you some victim stories i can

00:14:30.160 tell you some of the things that i saw myself on the site i mean one of the worst things that i saw

00:14:34.080 on the site was an instance where um it was a young asian woman and she was drugged so completely

00:14:42.980 that she was her body was completely limp she was unconscious and there was a masked assailant

00:14:50.340 who actually to prove to the camera that she was unconscious he was lifting her eyelids and touching

00:14:56.940 her eyeballs to prove that she wasn't responsive because and then tickling her feet and doing things

00:15:02.440 like that um and then the title was in chinese and so what i did was i took the title and i put it

00:15:09.800 into google translate and the title was um dead pig unconscious after being drugged and it included

00:15:20.880 eyes half open after being drugged like that was the actual title of the video and then of course

00:15:27.840 because there's the algorithm right they have set up the algorithm to make sure if you see one video

00:15:33.160 like that they're going to assume that you like that content so then they're going to take you on a

00:15:37.580 crazy rabbit hole i call it like you know just hell hole of rape like that's what it was and then you

00:15:46.760 go and they'll show you more and more of the same kind of thing you know in my book i do describe

00:15:54.120 these videos i don't really hold back because i want people to know what actually was taking place

00:16:00.460 what these victims were going through on the site and one of the things that victims have shared that i

00:16:06.960 think is also really important to know is that when those videos are uploaded they had a download

00:16:13.220 button so that anybody in the world could actually download and possess that child abuse the rape all

00:16:21.480 of that on their devices and then re-upload it again and again and again and again and so victims

00:16:27.940 actually call this the immortalization of their trauma so they say it's one thing to be raped but then

00:16:34.720 it's filmed and then it's uploaded and then it's monetized for profit and pleasure and people are

00:16:40.520 actually getting pleasure out of the worst moment of my life and it'll never go away because once it's

00:16:47.020 on the internet it's out of control and it's just like this whack-a-mole game where they're constantly

00:16:51.780 just trying to find it and then beg for it to come down and then even if they can it just gets uploaded

00:16:56.740 again and one victim said my abuser put me in a mental prison but porn hub gave me a life sentence

00:17:06.320 wow and that was a really powerful but and were all these like for the foreign were they domestic

00:17:13.520 it was everywhere it was everywhere so here's one story i'll share with you um serena flightis so

00:17:19.980 serena flightis she's from bakersfield california she was an innocent 13 year old girl and she had

00:17:28.280 a crush on a boy a year older than her so she uh you know she at the time she'd never kissed a boy

00:17:33.940 before she was a straight a student and he convinced her to send him some nude images and videos of

00:17:39.780 herself which she did because she wanted to impress him right this is like very common today sexting all

00:17:45.720 that and then he shared it with classmates and then the classmates uploaded to porn hub where it

00:17:51.660 began to get millions and millions of views so she would then reach out to porn hub and beg for them to

00:17:57.300 take the videos down and they would often ignore her and she's an adolescent yes she's a child like

00:18:02.360 she's a young teen right um and then if they did answer they would hassle her prove that you're a victim

00:18:08.880 prove that you're underage in these videos now remember nobody had to prove age and consent to

00:18:15.340 upload but if you want to get it down she's testifying she's testified this before canadian

00:18:20.140 parliament this is she's suing porn hub right now um that she would have to she would be hassled to

00:18:25.680 prove that she's victim then if she did get it down then it would just get re-uploaded again right

00:18:29.540 and so this sent her on a spiral of trauma and despair she ended up dropping out of school because

00:18:34.580 she was being bullied she got addicted to drugs to try to numb the pain she tried to kill herself

00:18:40.540 multiple times and then she wound up homeless living out of a car and that was her story right

00:18:47.000 and like that could happen to any young teen yeah i could imagine that a lot of people in that instance

00:18:53.920 you almost end up taking wanting to take your life or consider suicide because your life isn't even yours

00:18:59.180 anymore yeah because it's like that immortalization the trauma it's like i'll never escape this because

00:19:04.240 you know even if i can find healing i can you know do whatever i can do trauma therapy but then it's

00:19:10.480 like it's almost like a wound and then a scab just gets peeled off again and peeled off again as those

00:19:15.880 videos keep getting it's like hell it's like something you would hear about happening in hell

00:19:18.840 yeah and actually to your point the stats on ideations of suicide for victims of this kind of abuse

00:19:25.560 i mean it's 50 percent who have suicidal ideations um after going through this and and not just child

00:19:32.860 sexual abuse i mean that includes you know when videos are consensually recorded but then non-consensually

00:19:39.540 uploaded and the shame and all of that that comes along with that i mean this is the stats for victims

00:19:45.920 of this kind of abuse and so um so obviously once you start hearing these stories the fuel has to

00:19:53.260 really ignite you um i would imagine that at that point you were just like this has become like a life

00:19:59.240 purpose almost um do you were you letting go of a day job were you like did you no i mean this was my

00:20:04.380 this is i've been in anti-trafficking just okay all you know for years and years and so you're already

00:20:10.400 in that world i do yeah okay it is my world but then it became that i realized okay we're gonna go

00:20:17.960 after a mega predator here and to that point how big are they so it's not just porn hub right porn hub is

00:20:25.500 owned by a parent company that all of this kind of i learned over the last five years so called

00:20:31.320 mind geek okay now mind geek has a monopoly on the global big porn industry so we call it big porn

00:20:38.040 because there's big porn just like there's big tobacco there's big pharma there's big porn and it's

00:20:43.880 dominated by one company that company was was called mind geek they rebranded to ilo to try to

00:20:51.720 escape their reputation as peddlers of crime but they so with a 362 million dollar loan from a hedge

00:20:59.300 fund called colbert capital and 125 secret investors who were outed as including jp morgan chase

00:21:05.680 and cornell university they had basically rolled up the entire global porn industry under one company

00:21:13.560 so they owned it mind geek yes so they owned you know they were managing playboy

00:21:18.160 um digital playground wicked pictures browsers um reality kings pay sites subscription sites

00:21:26.520 and then the tube site so they so porn hub and its sister site so porn hub you porn red tube

00:21:33.980 tube bait gay tube x tube you know all i could go on and on yeah they own the most popular tube site so

00:21:43.100 vegan tube is that one that's no time for jokes um and who owns mind geek so my geek was owned by a

00:21:50.980 secret share majority shareholder so nobody knew who the owner of mind geek was when all of this began

00:21:58.820 and were they in america no we found out so we found them you know through the course of this there

00:22:04.400 was a an investigation called hunt for the porn king so they're they're not an american company so you

00:22:08.740 start on the hunt for the porn king right so we discovered who was the secret majority shareholder

00:22:13.140 of the company and his name was burned berg mayor and he was in austria and he lived part-time in

00:22:18.040 hong kong and burn berg mayor let's bring a picture of him up yeah you can i just want people to know

00:22:22.540 yeah burn berg mayor yeah and let's look at his wikipedia i just want to get a little he grew up

00:22:29.660 as a son of farmers in ansfelden attended grammar school in lins transferred to

00:22:35.900 he studied university of lins wherever that is he worked at goldman sachs in new york he became

00:22:42.060 the owner of porn site red tube in 2013 he sold to the site manwin now known as alio he was a former

00:22:49.140 majority owner of porn hub and mind geek okay yep so we're going to make sure we see him yeah he was

00:22:54.860 the majority and then feroz and tune and david disillo were the ceo and the coo and they were the

00:22:59.820 minority shareholders and they had kind of hidden themselves from the public as well for a really

00:23:04.060 long time okay and are these guys all from austria are they all from a specific place so canadian so

00:23:10.420 the company is an international corporation they are headquartered in canada so they have most of

00:23:16.260 their employees in canada but they have offices in now they have an office in texas they had one la

00:23:21.520 cyprus romania mind geek has offices everywhere everywhere yeah so they are a multinational corporation

00:23:29.860 huge corporation hundreds of millions of dollars a year multi-billion dollar corporation with a

00:23:35.800 monopoly on the global big porn industry and how much money was that was it bringing in a year do is

00:23:40.500 it yeah they're estimated about half a billion um per year it's the value of the company is multiple

00:23:45.700 billions of dollars um and you know porn hub was the flagship site so this was the cash cow of the

00:23:52.200 company this is how not only are they making money on 4.6 billion ad impressions every day and all the

00:23:58.000 traffic they're getting but they're advertising their pay sites on the free sites right so they

00:24:03.500 kind of have this ecosystem where they advertise browsers on porn hub and drive traffic to all the

00:24:09.360 other websites that they own i thought it was browsers which is crazy but also i don't care i mean it's

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00:26:43.960 so this is the company this is the this is who we're kind of coming up against right and so all

00:26:51.160 of this started to take off and go viral and victims are coming forward whistleblowers i told

00:26:57.660 you about um the former owner who came forward his name is fabian tillman and he was called the

00:27:02.360 zuckerberg of porn he's the one bring him up i just want to get a lot i want to put a face to

00:27:06.320 these guys fabian tillman he looks dang it's huh t-h-y yeah there you go

00:27:14.680 yep fabian tillman he's the one that put porn hub on the map you know he

00:27:20.940 kind of had this vision for the german entrepreneur who once built the biggest adult entertainment company

00:27:26.700 in the world let's see him that's him uh fabian okay so he is he's one of the guys schlepping it

00:27:37.680 so he yeah so he's the one who actually revealed to me who the secret majority shareholder was that

00:27:43.400 he sold the company to okay that's how we found out who he was okay so the movement's getting bigger

00:27:48.600 right uh so you have the traffic hub yep trafficking hub it's taking off so we're even out protesting on

00:27:56.140 the streets outside of mind geek headquarters and montreal and london and la you know sharing all

00:28:02.820 tons of viral victim stories are happening and then one of the things that we're going up through

00:28:08.360 having all these meetings with the credit card companies executives trying to present evidence

00:28:12.240 and evidence and more evidence to them and saying listen you have to stop monetizing this content

00:28:17.760 because actually it's even illegal to knowingly benefit from trafficking in the united states right so

00:28:24.040 at that point if they know if you put the knowledge on them that they're benefiting from it then that

00:28:27.800 becomes knowingly benefiting from trafficking and trying to bring this to them and saying listen you

00:28:33.280 have to stop but they were resisting right why because it's so much money you think um i think there's

00:28:38.640 multiple reasons i think it's because one it's they feel like this is a slippery slope if we do this

00:28:43.780 here we might have to do it there and they just don't want to take action unless they're forced to

00:28:50.260 take action so they're like we're really concerned this is so concerning thank you for bringing this

00:28:55.660 to us give us more information more information i give more information they want more information

00:29:00.360 anyway they're resisting right um then um so i reach out and uh get the attention of nick christoph

00:29:09.160 from the new york times so nick christoph has a history of really compassionate reporting

00:29:14.920 for victims of human trafficking and sex trafficking specifically so i was thinking if there's anybody

00:29:20.400 in the world that could cover this story in a really meaningful way it will be nick christoph

00:29:25.300 and so he got engaged and he started a six-month investigation of course he found out exactly what

00:29:33.940 we were saying was happening on the site i was connecting him with victims as they were coming forward so he

00:29:38.780 could be speaking to victims and whistleblowers and he ended up releasing this groundbreaking article

00:29:44.960 called the children of porn hub and it was featuring serena's story the girl i just told you about

00:29:50.720 flightess flightess flightess yeah serena flightess and many other victims like her who were children

00:29:57.180 abused on the site and had you been meeting were more people coming forward at this point was it yeah

00:30:01.820 all the time so many victims and i you know personally engaged with so many victims

00:30:08.120 of porn hub and thankfully attorneys were also coming forward saying we want to help

00:30:13.900 really amazing hard-hitting top-notch attorneys um you know one of the ones i speak about in my book

00:30:22.900 who um you know he had done the biggest hedge fund insider trading case in history against sac capital

00:30:29.380 and stevie cohen his name is mike bowie from brown rutnick and he cared about trafficking and he came

00:30:34.580 forward he became serena's attorney and he started representing now he represents um i think 200

00:30:40.600 victims let's bring that hero up bring a picture yeah mike bowie there he is yeah mike bowie yep thank

00:30:47.220 you mike son of a firefighter wanted to be a firefighter ended up being a he's fighting huge

00:30:52.500 fires now yeah right i mean that's one of the biggest fires in the world it sounds like human

00:30:57.040 trafficking yeah taking advantage of people's sexuality yeah um so okay back to the story so

00:31:03.460 nick christophe does this investigate he releases the children of porn hub and one of the things he

00:31:08.120 does in his article is he calls out the credit card companies and when this is released i mean i

00:31:13.440 couldn't believe the impact that it had it started to like thousands of follow-on articles the pressure

00:31:18.800 was on justin trudeau in canada was responding to the article saying how horrific what was going on was

00:31:24.500 canadian parliament was up in arms demanding an investigation and the pressure was on the

00:31:29.980 credit card companies and within days of that article being released visa mastercard and discover

00:31:35.840 joined paypal in cutting all ties with porn hub leaving them only with cryptocurrency as a payment

00:31:41.160 option incredible this was the worst thing that could happen to porn hub okay right and so they must

00:31:47.920 have in a panic yeah in an absolute panic this is the worst thing that could happen to them

00:31:52.080 so they did basically the unthinkable for their business model which relies on massive amounts of

00:31:59.260 content because content is king for the porn tube sites you have to understand this that

00:32:04.120 uh it's about getting unrestricted massive amounts of content so that they could get picked up in google

00:32:11.220 search results so that they can drive massive amounts of traffic so they can sell all those ad

00:32:16.680 impressions and make hundreds of millions of dollars a year on free porn okay worst thing they could do

00:32:22.060 is take content down from this site but they started to delete millions of videos they deleted 10

00:32:27.680 million videos and over 30 million images basically in 24 hours um and what financial times called

00:32:35.620 probably the biggest takedown of content in internet history they deleted all of their unverified videos

00:32:41.180 because they had no idea who was a child and like who was 16 and who was 18 right who was uh what was

00:32:48.700 rough sex and what was rape they had no idea what was consensually recorded and non-consensually uploaded

00:32:54.500 right and so they took down that much content because they're worried about the money yeah they wanted to

00:33:01.680 woo the credit card companies back right as they said okay we have to we have to do this they basically

00:33:06.440 deleted their site uh they uh well 80 of it at the time sadly i found out that so then there's global

00:33:15.940 headlines right hundreds of headlines all over the world visa mastercard you know the big takedown

00:33:22.060 i found out uh an insider came to me months later and said you don't know this but two weeks after

00:33:29.500 the credit card companies disengaged with porn hub they quietly snuck back to the advertising arm of

00:33:35.640 porn hub called traffic junkie because they have their own ad arm right and that's how they make most of

00:33:39.600 their money so business is going on as usual and i said oh my this is like the worst thing that i could

00:33:45.020 have ever i can't believe that this is what happened i said how what are we going to do now

00:33:50.480 like how how wouldn't a ceo of visa or one of these companies be like yeah we're just not going to do

00:33:54.960 this anymore how would they well why wouldn't they just say we would stop this is bad this isn't good

00:34:01.160 you know is at that point is it because they're also worried about free speech and stuff like that

00:34:05.540 do you think or this is not about free speech i mean i think i think it has to do with money

00:34:10.880 as well because one thing you have to know is like these are high risk transactions yeah they charge

00:34:15.840 more per transaction for high risk transactions which are porn transactions i see so there's big

00:34:21.480 money so there's money right um and they went back and so it was another two-year battle to try to get

00:34:29.080 them to finally disengage which happened uh because serena sued porn hub not only porn hub she sued its

00:34:38.160 individual owners and its executives and she sued visa for monetizing her abuse wow and she sued the

00:34:46.500 hedge funds for funding the whole enterprise did she win and so what happened was visa lost their

00:34:53.400 motion to dismiss the case because they had filed a motion to dismiss they lost it and at the same time

00:34:59.860 we were able to put the pressure on publicly so bill ackman was one of the heroes in this story i mean

00:35:06.260 he knew the ceo of mastercard and so he was making phone calls yeah bill ackman right there so he got

00:35:13.500 him and i on cnbc squawk box and we called out al kelly who was the ceo of visa for 17 minutes on the

00:35:20.480 show and this was right when visa lost their motion to dismiss so the pressure was on from an emotion to

00:35:26.300 dismiss is what so they say they want to say dismiss the case dismiss the case we are not involved like

00:35:31.440 this was had not you know nothing we could do about this we're not part of this problem and the

00:35:36.140 court says hold my gab in a damning decision and it wasn't just a a decision it was a like they the

00:35:42.700 judge actually said that visa gave porn hub the very tool through which to complete the crime of

00:35:49.560 benefiting from child trafficking like those were his words in his decision yeah and so the pressure

00:35:55.800 was on and then so then al kelly said he did kind of an unprecedented thing he was al kelly he's the

00:36:02.880 ceo of visa okay so the ceo of visa al kelly then then he says okay fine we're gonna cut them off once

00:36:08.820 and for all and he made a personal statement he said i'm a father and i you know don't approve blah

00:36:14.540 blah blah and so we're cutting off porn hub and then of course mastercard quickly followed discover

00:36:19.540 now they've lost it totally so and today so we found out they kept deleting content right so today

00:36:27.980 they have actually deleted 91 of the entire site so they went from 56 million pieces of content in

00:36:34.260 2020 when this started to 5.2 million pieces of content today and we're not done because they still

00:36:41.220 have unverified content on the site right so yeah wow congratulations but that's fast i mean

00:36:47.420 congratulations thank you i mean it's been not just i i have to pass that on you know that

00:36:54.440 congratulations to any victims who might be watching this because it's through their courageous

00:36:59.320 testimony and then you know stepping forward um it's backlash and um you know everybody who's

00:37:07.040 been involved we had 600 organizations that were involved in this and the lawyers and the journalists

00:37:12.840 and the whistleblowers and so many people came together to make this happen did you guys um

00:37:19.660 what was the one c what was the ceo what was that transaction that kind of occurred where he was

00:37:24.240 like where he reached out the previous ceo no he was the owner so oh he's a previous owner fabian

00:37:31.520 the zuckerberg of porn fabian thillman yeah he reached out in summer 2020 to say he wanted to help

00:37:38.200 and so one of the things that he did was he exposed the secret majority shareholders name

00:37:42.540 and he said go after the credit card companies as the as the former owner he said if you want to

00:37:49.680 make a difference here you go after the credit card companies to cut ties um and so that was now

00:37:56.480 what what i didn't realize at the time i was suspicious right why is he wanting to help and i kind of

00:38:02.600 later found out that he had intention to try to buy back the company so he kind of wanted to make a

00:38:09.220 killing again so i think he wanted to help take it down buy it then find a way to do it back probably

00:38:15.140 with crypto or something on a different chain i don't know what he was thinking but he wanted to

00:38:19.520 buy it back which i found out later on but the ceo and the ceo coo and the ceo were forced to resign

00:38:26.820 as well and today they're being sued by nearly 300 victims in 25 lawsuits including multiple class

00:38:33.620 actions on behalf of tens of thousands of child victims and they're doing amazing in the courts

00:38:39.000 uh so much more evidence has been uncovered in legal discovery so discovery is this amazing tool

00:38:46.420 when you engage in a civil lawsuit the the court gives you permission to get behind your opponents

00:38:54.240 so you can get their text messages you can get their emails you can get and so much has come out

00:39:00.220 of the complicity like you just couldn't believe the things that we've found out just through

00:39:06.920 legal discovery process like what are some of the things like just at ball like just okay so here's

00:39:11.580 an example we found out that they only had one person so they had 1800 employees they hired one person

00:39:20.720 five days a week to be reviewing videos flagged by users as terms of service violations including

00:39:27.220 rape and trafficking and child abuse one person they had a policy where they wouldn't even review

00:39:35.540 a video unless it was flagged 15 times now think about this you're a victim say there's a child victim

00:39:42.960 like serena she would have she would have to flag her video over 15 times because it had to be over 15

00:39:49.280 for it to be reviewed in order for that to even be put in queue for review and they had a backlog of

00:39:55.860 706 000 videos um that were just waiting for this one person to review them yes and they had like we've

00:40:04.820 discovered now in a recent uh filing in december of 2024 we found out specific instances of

00:40:12.040 prepubescent child victims who had their videos on there for years and they would have like 14 flags

00:40:18.720 13 flags and they just like that was the policy and then the ceo and the executives on pornhub

00:40:27.300 yes yes on pornhub yes um and so i'm just so i'm just grateful that we're having this conversation

00:40:37.160 because i bet most of the people who are listening to your show had no idea yeah that this was happening

00:40:43.720 that it's ever happened that this is an issue on user generated free porn sites and and they keep

00:40:52.240 it up because it's content right like you're saying yeah the more content yes content is king right

00:40:57.920 they don't want to remove content because that's how they have inventory so here's another like

00:41:04.800 egregious example of how they did this was so you know there's one case that i talk about in my book

00:41:10.640 where there was a case of a clearly prepubescent child who is being anally raped in a video and

00:41:17.480 she is being uh tortured the tags on the video so the type like the titles and tags were describing

00:41:23.880 her abuse that she was young um that she was being tortured all of this and we reported the video we

00:41:31.380 tried to get it down weeks go by it's not coming down video view counts going up up up we reach out to

00:41:37.440 the fbi they demand that it comes down so they connect with the national center on missing and

00:41:42.460 exploited children who confirms this is a child so they demanded the video come down okay and then

00:41:48.680 what they did was they took the video down but they left that black box up that said removed at the

00:41:56.160 request of the national center for missing and exploited children and they left the url live the tags

00:42:02.080 the titles the titles the views all of that and they did that with so many videos why would they

00:42:09.620 take the video down but leave all of that up and it's because it's inventory it's the click it's the

00:42:16.460 url shows like an ad company that they're going to sell to it still says well we have this many

00:42:21.500 videos so you could search that right most videos the tags the titles like they'll draw they'll still

00:42:26.340 come up in google search then you'll get to the site you won't find that particular video but

00:42:31.280 the algorithm will then direct you to others that are similar and it will advertise to you right

00:42:37.140 you'll get that those ad views so that's why do you have any victims that showed up to thank you in

00:42:41.980 person like you've had experiences like that kind of yeah oh yeah i mean i'm still in touch with

00:42:46.760 victims on a regular basis um they don't feel though that like justice has fully been served yet

00:42:52.980 i'm sure so porn hub was criminally charged by the u.s federal government in december 2023 for

00:43:00.360 intentionally profiting from sex trafficking but they're still allowed to stay open but they were

00:43:06.220 offered a deferred prosecution agreement which is just unbelievable to me that that happened where

00:43:13.840 um basically they said you pay 1.8 million dollars in a settlement and you have a monitor over your

00:43:20.480 company for three years and you can get out of going to trial uh so that happened but that was

00:43:27.220 related to a case like a specific case of a 100 trafficking victims from california

00:43:32.280 so they were part of the girls do porn trafficking operation the guy that was exploiting them his name

00:43:38.020 is michael pratt he was on the fbi's most wanted list 10 most wanted list michael pratt let's get a

00:43:43.960 look about i just want to put faces to these people so that they're not just names that pass by

00:43:49.080 right yeah michael pratt like on my uh actually on my twitter i just posted about him yeah he's

00:43:55.700 he's fbi's 10 most wanted and he was running a trafficking operation and over 100 victims were

00:44:03.020 exploited by him and let's look at wiki where is he from this guy who is this guy let me have a wiki

00:44:10.060 for this guy okay pratt is charged in a 19 count indictment with sex trafficking production of child

00:44:14.980 pornography unbelievable and he had so girls do porn was one of the most popular partner channels on

00:44:21.340 porn hub so they had over 760 000 subscribers and they had over 600 million views on the videos of

00:44:31.340 these women's trafficking and most of them were trafficked you think yeah oh it's not i think i mean

00:44:36.220 they've been convicted like his accomplices are in prison and this is in spain it says it was

00:44:40.840 happening well he ran away so he was a fugitive so he was doing this in san diego this is where it all

00:44:46.860 happened was in san diego uh 62 of those women have recently filed lawsuits 50 of them filed lawsuits and

00:44:53.460 settled those lawsuits but they uh so this channel was one of the most popular in porn hub and that was

00:44:59.660 what this criminal prosecution was related to it was about these specific you know over 100 victims

00:45:06.000 of this particular crime ring but there's so many others out there but he's not in jail this guy

00:45:11.220 well they captured him he's it's in process like they're they're working on his prosecution right

00:45:16.500 now okay yeah but his accomplices the others that were involved with him are already prosecuted it was

00:45:21.640 just that they have more recently found him and so he's going through the process of being convicted

00:45:27.520 understood is pornography causing a problem in your life do you find yourself watching porno for longer

00:45:35.340 periods of time and having trouble stopping is porn affecting your relationship or dating life

00:45:42.800 well you're certainly not alone watching pornography has become so commonplace today and oftentimes men use

00:45:51.140 porn to numb the pain of loneliness boredom anxiety and depression shame and stigma prevent men from

00:45:59.080 talking about these issues and getting help for them i want to introduce you to my friend steve steve is

00:46:05.580 the founder of valor recovery a program to help men overcome porn abuse and sexual compulsivity steve is a

00:46:13.420 long-term sexual recovery member and has personally overcame the emotional and spiritual despair of

00:46:19.140 abusing pornography and has dedicated his life to empowering men to do the same steve is an amazing

00:46:26.320 person and he is a close friend of mine i mean that valor recovery helps men to develop the tools

00:46:33.380 necessary to have a healthier sex life their coaches are in long-term recovery and will be your partner

00:46:39.840 mentor and spiritual guide to transcend these problematic behaviors to learn more about valor recovery

00:46:47.120 please visit them at www.valorrecoverycoaching.com or email them at admin at valorrecoverycoaching.com thank you

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00:48:08.260 better help.com slash theo victims are so grateful for all that's happened so far and they've been a big part of it

00:48:16.340 you know i remember when the big takedown happened and the most meaningful thing that happened was that

00:48:22.260 victims were calling and they were crying tears of joy because for the first time their rape and

00:48:28.700 trafficking was finally off of pornhub after fighting for so long um but they just feel like

00:48:34.820 justice hasn't been fully served yet because they're still waiting for you know restitution

00:48:39.540 the site is still online you know it's been purchased now they're trying to do this whole

00:48:45.260 rebrand so it was sold as a distressed asset okay to a company that they created themselves to buy

00:48:53.320 pornhub okay and they are called ethical capital partners wow what a name ethical capital partners

00:48:59.880 and who is the who are the main bigwigs in that company do we know yes we do they have themselves

00:49:05.100 online you know the the guy that's out there kind of trying to do this whole rebrand of pornhub like

00:49:10.200 we're ethical capital partners um his name is solomon friedman and he is a criminal defense attorney

00:49:17.640 is he really a jewish guy from where where's he from uh canada he's from canada yeah um so he wants

00:49:24.120 to rebrand just make it more ethical well i mean that's what they're saying right they're saying they

00:49:28.920 call themselves ethical capital yet at the same time the the videos that are on pornhub right now

00:49:35.640 are still unverified mostly unverified so that 5.2 million left they had verified the uploaders right

00:49:44.260 but not the individuals in the videos so that doesn't work because often the abuser is the

00:49:51.080 uploader and i'll give you an example so there's a man named rocky shea franklin out of alabama

00:49:56.320 and he drugged and he overpowered and he raped a 12 year old boy and he filmed those assaults and he

00:50:03.500 uploaded 23 of those videos to pornhub with titles that indicated this was abuse like young it said like

00:50:12.100 uncle secret i mean i won't say the worst things but it was clear right um he was put in prison for

00:50:19.060 40 years for what he did police reached out multiple times to pornhub to try to get those videos down

00:50:25.300 they were ignored for seven months those videos stayed online getting hundreds of thousands of

00:50:30.100 views that boy is suing pornhub today so he's one of those many victims suing pornhub but rocky was a

00:50:36.480 verified uploader he had shown his id and he they know who he is they know who he is but they didn't

00:50:43.420 verify clearly right like who's in the video right so even today you know as of 2024 pornhub had to

00:50:52.020 produce a report they sent it into the european there's a european law called the digital services

00:50:57.560 act and in 2024 in four and a half months they had to take down 3 770 child sexual abuse videos from

00:51:06.320 the site and over 8 000 non-consensual and rape videos from the site okay so they're having to

00:51:12.760 be legally asked to do this right yeah well to disclose what they're doing so that's all under

00:51:18.720 ethical capital partners right okay so that's you know they do so ethical capital partners there's

00:51:25.060 still there's still stuff out there that's not supposed to be there yes they still haven't

00:51:28.860 actually implemented the preventative policies what's ethical about it it's just a farce i mean it's

00:51:34.340 just uh you know and that's why i think it's so important to sound the alarm on this rebrand because

00:51:40.480 from a victim's perspective like this is also a miscarriage of justice for them to go out there

00:51:45.620 and try to resuscitate pornhub's brand to say oh we're ethical capital listen the same men who made

00:51:52.060 all those decisions that the one person that was verifying videos they had 30 moderators 30 moderators

00:52:00.020 moderating the millions of videos on pornhub now compare that with facebook's 15 000 moderators and

00:52:06.500 they still don't have enough these moderators they were viewing between 800 and 2 000 videos per shift

00:52:13.720 clicking through those videos with the sound off just clicking through them guessing like i call it

00:52:18.680 the underage guessing game like this is a game of russian roulette with people's lives they're trying

00:52:23.020 to guess who's 15 and who's 18 who's 16 and who's 19 like nobody can do that on a like even a

00:52:30.040 pediatrician can't do that yeah and what happens to your brain at a certain point after seeing so

00:52:34.880 much traumatic stuff that you were even like that should be a crime and putting a employee through

00:52:40.980 that well i and i've spoken to those and some of those employees i call friends today because they

00:52:46.280 have they said that they've seen some it's been really intense was pricked oh i'm sure they came

00:52:50.580 forward and i've spent hours and hours in person and you know online and on the phone speaking to

00:52:57.400 them trying to understand how all of this worked and one of them um is especially dear to me and he

00:53:03.920 told me that it was so hard on him to do this job but he needed the money um and he was abused as a

00:53:11.080 child he was sexually abused as a child wow so it was especially hard for him to do this but i think

00:53:16.840 that's why he went and did it it's like you could find something else to do probably i mean not

00:53:21.560 calling him out but it's like maybe there's some weird thing that's created there too that like

00:53:25.080 i don't know but i appreciate what he did in coming forward but to say like the executive so back to

00:53:31.340 ethical capital it's like the men who made that decision to have 30 moderators just guessing what's

00:53:36.840 rough sex and rape guessing and they guess wrong all the time they were skipping through 2000 you know

00:53:41.820 thousands of videos per shift and they're still running pornhub today so they're still on the

00:53:48.380 sixth floor aquamarine montreal tower of that corporation running pornhub today yes the ceo and

00:53:55.100 the coo were forced to resign but they have the same cfo they have the same clo who's the cfo let's see

00:54:01.180 eddie de santo eddie de santo bring him up i don't know if you'll find him they try to they try to hide

00:54:06.420 they try to but some of them i mean you could find ryan hogan matt kalichi so you can look up

00:54:12.760 kareem almirazi he is the cpo and he's running it today kareem almirazi so that's so and so he's

00:54:20.920 there today right yep about him from canada as an integral part of the mobile broadband team

00:54:28.540 telecommunication engineering went to university of montreal hmm so they're still running they're

00:54:37.040 just trying to rebuild this company and still make money well so i mean what i'm saying is like ethical

00:54:41.660 capital right if they were coming in and saying like we're going to rebrand we're going to do this

00:54:45.080 new thing why would you still have the same men responsible for the decisions that destroy the

00:54:50.680 lives of countless victims just running the site today that's why it's like right it's just a farce

00:54:55.320 like it's not real yeah and even if it was real it doesn't mean that they escape justice being

00:55:02.460 fully served because what's important is victims receive the justice they need for healing and to be

00:55:12.560 a deterrent to future abusers like one of the most things most important things in the fight against

00:55:17.220 trafficking is not just to rescue victims right and to rehabilitate them that's important but to

00:55:22.520 prevent it from happening in the future and how do you prevent it you have to increase risk and

00:55:28.240 eliminate profitability you have to make the risk of continued exploitation greater than the benefit

00:55:33.520 that these executives get by maintaining the status quo and then when you do that and you end impunity for

00:55:39.740 these abusers you become a deterrent to future abusers because explain that little part to me again

00:55:44.500 so so you want to hold these companies fully accountable to the full extent of the law to me

00:55:51.260 that means pornhub gets shut down like we go from 91 percent to a hundred percent they do not exist

00:55:57.220 anymore because they have been destroying the lives of countless victims since 2007 when they came online

00:56:02.740 and when that happens other websites owned by other executives will say we don't want to end up in

00:56:08.640 that position right so let's just clean ourselves up because we can make a lot of money on legal content

00:56:14.140 right we don't have to monetize illegal content we can do this in a way where we're not distributing

00:56:20.680 sexual crime and they'll do that because they want to avoid losing the credit card companies they want

00:56:25.140 to avoid litigation they want to avoid criminal greed at a certain point it's some type of it's risk it's

00:56:30.820 risk benefit right but a sickness too to think that you would be able to know that that's happening

00:56:35.660 right right and keep going that's in it's like what type of sickness exists you know i mean it's

00:56:43.000 yeah it's almost like a hell you're like and you're like a slave trader of people's um

00:56:49.540 like solitude and and and peace you know but no you know i don't know i just can't i can't i can't even

00:56:58.760 i can't imagine that i can't fathom that someone would be like yeah this is okay i'm not gonna that

00:57:04.740 that's not gonna be the first thing i'm gonna worry about with my company right yeah so so just i'm just

00:57:09.900 fine-tuned into my my view here so a lot of your combativeness is not against pornography

00:57:17.040 it's against the um sex trafficking the like people illegally filming people filming drugs people

00:57:27.000 no verification of age all of these crimes basically yeah sexual crime okay being distributed online

00:57:33.040 in fact some of the most helpful allies in this fight have been those in the porn industry like at one

00:57:39.560 point you know i had um those who were producing their own porn on porn hub and they were doing

00:57:45.580 this in a professional sense and they were reaching out to me because they said listen we need to take

00:57:51.020 this company down because i'm sick and tired of spending two hours a day scouring porn hub and its

00:57:56.560 sister tube sites trying to get my own stolen illegal content off the site because they were not only

00:58:01.900 rape and trafficking right this is copyright infringement content like there's no protection for that either

00:58:07.420 no they're just uploading they're just pirating and uploading all of this content so so those in

00:58:12.340 the porn industry kind of hated mind geek already because the free porn tube sites were exploiting the

00:58:18.560 legally produced content of these those in the industry yeah because even with youtube there's like

00:58:24.440 there's like metadata and stuff that they could if they want to they can make sure that someone can't

00:58:29.620 do it without it being claimed or known you know right and so they will they could do these dmca

00:58:33.700 takedowns so that's what they would do so she was spending hours a day multiple right doing that

00:58:38.420 but as she was doing that she was coming across child abuse rape trafficking and then they were

00:58:45.140 sending the links and that was one of the things that was crazy that was happening is that as this

00:58:50.520 was all going viral and there's all these stories people around the world who were on porn hub who would

00:58:55.580 find an illegal video would be sending it to me and so i was in and so it was just kind of a

00:59:02.280 really intense right because then you're looking at it seeing what's going on you're like well what

00:59:06.780 am i supposed to do and then i have you know the responsibility to report it to you know take care

00:59:11.420 of you know witnessing what's happening and then trying to help how true that must have been insane

00:59:17.780 huh and it's yeah i mean yeah it's real it's so this is all real vile real stuff that was happening

00:59:24.600 and being uploaded yeah wow real real sexual crime so so what do you think kind of like the solution

00:59:30.180 is at scale you know when you think about that lila yeah well so yes it's one thing to hold one

00:59:36.960 particular company accountable and that's important but the question then becomes because

00:59:41.140 porn hub's not alone right i want everybody to understand that it's not like you go okay well

00:59:46.900 x videos must be fine they're a free user generated porn site that was operating in a similar way of not

00:59:53.080 verifying agent consent and there's nick christoph did an investigation and found you know reported on the

00:59:58.320 victims who were on x videos and there's x hamster and there's all of these of x and xx right and

01:00:03.880 there's others that operate in a similar way and so the question is well how do we stop this across

01:00:09.720 all of these sites right and that goes back to the source of the problem is not verifying agent consent we

01:00:17.920 have to demand third-party agent consent verification for every single person in every single video that is

01:00:25.560 uploaded to a user generated porn site and when that happens we're going to make a huge difference

01:00:31.200 in stopping that illegal content from being uploaded but that's a huge task right so it's not just

01:00:37.420 governments who have to do this because this is an international problem these sites operate

01:00:42.420 internationally so if the u.s does that well they're still in canada and they're in you know every

01:00:46.460 country in the world so the solution at scale becomes the credit card companies implementing that policy

01:00:52.680 because we know they're highly motivated by money and if visa says we don't do business with user

01:00:59.320 generated porn sites that don't verify the agent consent of every person every video well all of these

01:01:05.820 companies are going to comply and they're going to do it quickly so that's the solution so how do we

01:01:10.260 because you would think at this point they would just go on ahead and say that because it's like

01:01:13.720 it's obviously the next right thing to do right and as in a moral sense it would feel like

01:01:20.680 well a lot of companies don't operate from right business doesn't have uh emotions well yeah and it

01:01:27.900 comes from pressure right and so that's where i see the litigation being important where these

01:01:32.700 survivors dozens of survivors who have sued the credit card companies right so now they're facing

01:01:38.540 some of it right right so they're feeling that pressure and at some point they go listen it's better

01:01:43.280 business to just let it go implement this policy just like we have anti-money laundering policy

01:01:49.040 we're going to have anti-online sexual exploitation policy and we just don't do business with user

01:01:54.100 generated porn sites that don't verify agent consent because it's too risky for us right

01:01:58.200 right because then yeah it hits their wallet without any exactly they're losing it's like big pharma it's

01:02:02.640 like you know litigation made a huge difference in reform in in the pharmaceutical industry we saw in

01:02:09.680 hedge fund insider trading cases when they had big litigation and criminal prosecution and it forced

01:02:14.920 those changes to happen so i think that could be uh that's where we're hoping to get to next yeah

01:02:21.620 that's where we need to go and who supports legally supports you guys is um like the legal costs yeah

01:02:27.060 well that's where i mean these firms a lot of them are working on a contingency basis where you know

01:02:32.920 they're working with victims some do pro bono um they have like different kinds of arrangements and

01:02:37.760 then we support victims as well at the justice defense fund um to help them get connected to lawyers

01:02:43.980 to support them along that journey um it's a hard thing to do to take on uh an abuser it's hard

01:02:50.120 thing to go into litigation and they need you know yeah therapy advocacy like all the ways that they

01:02:56.000 need to be supported and so um yeah that's our mission is to support survivors to pursue justice in

01:03:03.280 court to get that healing and to implement those preventative policies to make sure it doesn't happen

01:03:08.940 again now mastercard has come a lot like a little ways so they implemented a policy where they say

01:03:14.820 you have to verify uploaders but that's not far enough like you have to verify those in the videos

01:03:21.980 yeah so and do you think there's like backroom dealings between my between these companies and

01:03:27.340 the like uh credit card companies where they're like sending them extra cash or me you know like

01:03:32.800 they just know each other the owners know each other and it's like we'll let you stay open that

01:03:36.220 type of thing i haven't seen that i don't i don't i haven't seen that happen i don't get that sense

01:03:40.780 yeah i think that you know this is just one of many industries that they can make money on and they

01:03:47.940 will maintain that position yeah i was wondering if there's lobbying by the actual owners of the

01:03:53.280 companies towards the um towards the credit card companies you know other banks possible

01:03:59.460 you start to figure that that's where a lot of things really kind of happen

01:04:03.240 yeah um and then it bubbles up to the surface of what we can follow the money what we can see

01:04:08.260 yeah um what what state because i've noticed like you know i've watched pornography before i've had

01:04:14.020 issues with um uh pornography addiction kind of or i just i use it as an escape like especially in my

01:04:21.000 20s like um you know i found pornography when i was you know at a at a age where i was probably maybe

01:04:27.400 13 or 14 and so then i would use it to make me feel good it was like one of the only ways i felt

01:04:32.360 like when i was young that i could feel good you know i had really low self uh worth and so

01:04:37.400 once i realized pornography and porno and everything i was like oh dang i can control i have a control

01:04:43.940 basically lever on my body as to how when i can feel okay right and so um it was magazines and then

01:04:51.680 i guess as thing you know then it became like video online stuff like that you know um over time

01:04:57.440 um but it certainly has been something where it's like i don't feel good about myself i feel down

01:05:02.780 about myself what's the one way i know to feel good and would be to uh watch pornography you know

01:05:07.680 or use it to masturbate you know things like that to make myself and you get a you get a hit of dopamine

01:05:13.160 crazily and so then you part of you feels good for a while you know um so that's been you know that

01:05:20.040 was kind of my story with it except it got to it got to like i would notice instead of going and

01:05:25.820 meeting girls are trying to like like well part of my spirit started to suffer because i was taking

01:05:31.780 out like a important part of like my soul and my physiology by um ejaculating or like just like

01:05:39.220 abusing that part of me and it then i didn't have you know i think that part of you supposed to kind

01:05:45.020 of build up inside of you and help you have like some um it pushes you to talk to women and to want to

01:05:50.760 go on dates and things like that and so for me i think it started to weaken some of that over time

01:05:54.980 it was like well why go meet a girl or ask a girl out when i could just masturbate you know that was

01:05:59.960 some fun uh that was kind of what happened i guess in my head at some times yeah um yeah and i've been

01:06:07.280 in like recovery groups to talk about that you know i'm in recovery groups where there's like

01:06:11.200 multiple things that people have dealt with you know a lot of for me has just been like intimacy

01:06:15.540 stuff you know because if you're looking at pornography it creates it it skews the way you look at

01:06:20.960 intimacy because you start to think of like um sexual activity just in like frames and certain

01:06:26.280 um like you don't really think of connection because you don't see a lot of connection in porn

01:06:32.460 you know it's not like you watch a 45 minute porn and it's people two people getting to know each

01:06:37.460 other you know at a park or something you know so or splitting a diet soda or something so it's like

01:06:43.340 you know that part is all you know things get super i think things get kind of convoluted in your

01:06:49.580 psyche sometimes well yeah and it's driven by an algorithm now it's like right you know it's

01:06:54.960 people's sexual preferences and their their sexuality in today you know this internet porn

01:07:02.100 saturated world that's driven by an algorithm the algorithm is driven by executives who want to get

01:07:07.740 as many views and clicks um and add impressions as possible and then you know that's kind of shaping

01:07:14.380 the content that's being seen on the sites and what's especially alarming to me and you know it's

01:07:23.180 what you experienced right because you when you were 13 years old um when you were first exposed to

01:07:28.660 porn is that children you know are just en masse being exposed to not playboy right not the centerfold

01:07:37.080 that used to be but the free porn tube sites because you know it's free they have access

01:07:44.640 do you guys know that children are accessing those like is there is there statistics behind it oh yeah

01:07:49.980 i mean you know i think you know one study from 2022 was saying that 75 percent of 13 to 17 year

01:07:56.660 olds have viewed internet porn i mean i think would probably be more than that and right every kid

01:08:01.840 has a device you know there's five-year-olds that could click through the internet filters are not

01:08:06.760 doing a good job and you know parents who you know may not even know how to implement internet

01:08:13.980 filters for their kids and even if they do you know they can't control all the time so they can't be

01:08:18.820 at school and you know other places when they go to their friend's house or whatever it's just

01:08:23.800 what filters are they using are you are they because they're the ones that you suggest kind of that

01:08:27.840 people use um i don't have any particular brands that i would suggest but you know there's like so

01:08:32.400 many different apps that people can install you can get like routers that could actually block

01:08:36.840 the content at the router level oh that's awesome i didn't know that yeah and so there's stuff like

01:08:41.780 that out there but i know states are stopping people from like a lot of states are pro you have

01:08:47.180 to upload an identify id now well there's like this whole movement in the united states right now

01:08:51.880 that is saying look we understand that kids are accessing this content and we want to protect

01:08:58.960 kids from viewing and i call it um a form of secondhand sexual abuse right for kids to be witnessing

01:09:08.180 this kind of content and from my perspective i know how much of this content isn't just hardcore right

01:09:14.460 it's actually criminal right where they could be watching um a real rape as their sex education

01:09:21.160 as an eight-year-old child and you know they call it the creation of a sexual template right so it

01:09:26.900 becomes like what is your sexuality about and what is you know arousing to you and if they grow up on

01:09:35.040 this kind of content i mean it could do so much damage to an entire generation well especially i think

01:09:41.660 it's our i think a lot of that's already happened i think you've seen like the a lot of the effects

01:09:45.140 of pornography on um you know marriages like you know people get addicted to porn and then

01:09:50.880 they're no longer um expressing attraction to their spouse and uh because it's being hijacked

01:09:57.160 basically by this algorithm by the by the websites by this addiction and then marriages fall apart and

01:10:02.360 then families fall apart yeah and another implication of this is actually children who are acting out on

01:10:08.520 other children so we've seen um so i was just reading uh the amicus should call it amicus briefs so

01:10:15.780 these are briefs that uh were submitted to the supreme court so as these states across america are

01:10:21.580 implementing age verification to protect kids from viewing porn online um the porn sites are not happy

01:10:31.340 about this so porn hub and its um partners are suing those states so for example they sued the state

01:10:37.500 of texas to not have to abide by this age verification law and it's gone now they've appealed it they lost

01:10:44.740 they appealed now it's at the supreme court and on january 15 the justice has actually heard oral

01:10:51.220 arguments for whether or not we can have states enacting age verification to keep kids off porn sites

01:10:58.860 so they're going to have a decision by june but some of the briefs submitted are so compelling and

01:11:03.200 one of them was this nurse heidi olson and she's a sexual assault she's a pediatric sexual assault nurse

01:11:08.940 and she was talking about her experience with over 1500 cases of sexual assault that she had to

01:11:16.700 document and assess and she saw that 50 percent of those cases were children who were assaulting

01:11:24.460 other children uh and the the number one um the perpetrators in that group were 14 year old males

01:11:32.320 who were then assaulting females other females yeah children and you're saying that a lot you think

01:11:37.840 and they're citing pornography as being the reason why they're acting out right because

01:11:43.900 like you just that's how that's human nature like especially with kids oh yeah you see something

01:11:49.620 you mimic it or you yeah i mean like my like son he's like you know watch spider-man or something

01:11:53.780 and he's like jumping off the walls and you know pretending that he's spider-man they're acting out

01:11:58.440 what they see right and so you know if they're watching porn and they're watching potentially actually

01:12:03.740 watching sexual crime on these sites and they're you know kind of acting out what they see and so

01:12:09.980 it's not surprising that that's happening right it's sick it's literally being in a spiral of

01:12:14.540 sickness kind of i mean it's almost like what you would feel like people would describe as like some

01:12:19.240 sort of a hell you know um one of the wildest things that happens on porn sites is um how they

01:12:26.680 i don't know if this is targeted or what the goal is but you talk about it ruining families

01:12:31.920 some of the videos are like uh stepson mom right dad son's girlfriend like shit that's like you're

01:12:41.400 putting things into people's just even to yeah put that seed into somebody's psyche people don't

01:12:46.100 realize or we don't realize that when we're watching something that's that we become we're a

01:12:51.960 sponge right we might say oh i'm not really i'm watching this but i'm not it's just i'm watching it

01:12:56.620 for a brief second i'm using it right but it's also whatever it is it's also using you right it's

01:13:01.620 everything is an is a it's a back and forth relationship yeah so and teen was i mean one

01:13:08.320 of the most popular categories on porn hub was teen um and teen right like teen could be 18 and 19

01:13:16.680 but it also is 13 and 14 and 15 and 16 and so many of that those videos are you know where they could

01:13:24.940 be someone who's of age but they're intentionally made to look under age with the pigtails and the

01:13:31.600 flat chest and the braces and the no no makeup and all of that and they're you mixed in with videos

01:13:37.400 of real teenagers who are being abused and then this is being pushed right it's one of the they

01:13:43.220 were you know porn hub was tracking down to the dollar how much they would make monthly on those teen

01:13:49.420 categories um on their site and it was one of you know one of the most popular uh that they had and

01:13:55.420 so whatever is making the most money you push that forward right and so maybe it's they're getting

01:14:00.260 more clicks because people are like horrified by it or maybe you know i i don't know you know exactly

01:14:05.860 what um is happening there but whatever it is that gets the most clicks and views they they'll push the

01:14:11.460 algorithm right will of course push that forward but it's like why why i wonder how that even starts

01:14:17.520 if they say like mom son porn you know i'm saying like where does something like that dement like that

01:14:22.160 idea even start well i think it's so i've spoken to some porn producers who've talked to me about this

01:14:29.840 and the way that there's been like a trajectory from like playboy into more and more kind of extreme

01:14:36.740 forms of porn in different situations and they're saying like they're just told to create the most

01:14:44.180 extreme thing you can think of because you you need more shock value there's this um idea of uh you

01:14:52.260 know kind of desensitization for people where they want to kind of in order to get the same dopamine hit

01:14:58.560 with porn it's not necessarily that you need more it's that you need different and you need

01:15:04.440 something yeah more extreme to kind of get that same dopamine hit what does porn do to our brains do you

01:15:12.160 have anything on that i'm trying to see just the psychological effects new research sheds light

01:15:16.880 on the global impact of problematic pornography use okay i'll look at this a little bit but after

01:15:21.760 this i want something more about the actual effects of on our brain a comprehensive international study

01:15:26.580 involving tens of thousands of participants from dozens of countries suggest that problematic

01:15:30.080 pornography use might have a prevalence rate as high as 16.6 percent so that's saying that 16.6 percent

01:15:37.540 of people per this study have problematic pornography use problematic pornography use refers to a

01:15:45.560 condition where individuals can experience an uncontrollable urge to consume pornography

01:15:49.420 leading to significant distress or impairment in their daily functioning first most people use

01:15:56.000 pornography but only a small group of them develop problems with it so we wanted to see how many people

01:16:00.520 may experience such problems worldwide and whether there are any country gender or sexual orientation based

01:16:05.980 differences as most previous studies focused on really specific populations i.e. men from the united states

01:16:13.020 i think one of the most important takeaway messages from our study is that problematic pornography use seems to

01:16:18.740 be as common as other mental health issues i.e. depression so we need to better understand this problem and

01:16:24.940 provide appropriate care for people experiencing this this issue probably the most surprising finding of the

01:16:30.900 study is that only four to ten percent of individuals with problematic pornography sought help for this

01:16:36.020 issue with an additional twenty to forty percent one wanting to but did not do so for various help

01:16:42.060 reasons well part of that is shame right and that's why i am so grateful i'm sure so many of your

01:16:48.420 listeners are grateful that you talk about it oh well i'll say this exact i'll say this exactly and

01:16:52.740 specifically when i um you know we actually a friend of mine um started a a program called valor recovery

01:17:01.220 and it's for porn addiction and i know i met this guy in different uh recovery meetings and he's a friend

01:17:08.960 of mine and so i'll go to the meetings and um and i'm excited to go to the meetings and i'm helping we're

01:17:15.300 helping kind of work to try and make this thing bigger right to make it bigger and one of the things i noticed

01:17:21.940 when i took when i had the most time i ever had off of pornography the shame i had disappeared oh

01:17:30.140 there was still some shame at certain moments but it i was able to finally notice it because before i'd

01:17:36.220 just been in this circle of shame because i would masturbate i would feel ashamed of myself i would start

01:17:41.460 to feel a little bit better um but i would be like had some but then when i needed to when i needed to

01:17:49.220 feel okay when if i started to feel a little shaky or need to feel okay again i would be

01:17:52.960 right back to the pornography and then the shame you know the shame of it cycle oh yeah it was and i

01:17:58.720 didn't realize i i was stuck in it probably for a decade i was still going dates and being relationship

01:18:03.000 stuff but it ruined a lot of are you like free today from that i wouldn't say i'm free but i'm

01:18:08.160 definitely on parole yeah you know what i'm saying like it's a different uh i have tools and stuff now

01:18:16.500 in place to like battle against it and um so what helped you the most to going to meetings recovery

01:18:24.820 12-step recovery community community yeah getting in groups and you'll start to see in groups i've been

01:18:30.120 in groups where men at first can't were scared to even talk like in the groups and then like three

01:18:34.660 months later you see that like their wife has moved back in they're spending time with their

01:18:38.980 kids they're not watching pornography they're not acting out in these certain ways with um

01:18:43.000 you know uh escorts and uh prostitutes and all of that but the biggest thing i noticed for myself

01:18:49.060 was shame i just noticed that it started to disappear because i'd always had this heavy shame

01:18:52.980 and i'd never really noticed that it could have had to do with um really the masturbate just the

01:18:58.540 part of like if i need to make myself feel good then i'll use masturbation you know um do you think

01:19:03.480 that there's i mean could be like two sides to shame right shame could be really destructive and

01:19:08.560 unhealthy because it causes you not to seek help or get community or be able to talk about it and so

01:19:14.960 then you push push the problem down and then it becomes then you know worse right because then you're

01:19:20.760 trying to alleviate that pain okay say it one more time for me start so you know could could the shame

01:19:26.320 have two sides to it where there's kind of like a healthy shame where it's pricking pricking your

01:19:31.560 conscience and saying like this is not who i am i can do better than this and it inspires you to

01:19:37.640 overcome but then there's the other side of shame which keeps people kind of hiding it pushing it down

01:19:43.700 not be not being able to get community not being able to talk about it which then could cause the

01:19:48.260 problem to be worse right for me yeah that i agree both of those things can happen i think some of them

01:19:55.480 kind of happened at certain moments for me but i think overall it was just i didn't want to be doing it

01:20:00.220 anymore yeah and i kept doing it yeah and so for then it was just constant like um like i don't

01:20:07.140 have any willpower yeah and so that made me ashamed of myself yeah it wasn't it sometimes the act itself

01:20:12.980 would like definitely like i would watch pornography on the computers or something and i would immediately

01:20:16.940 close it did you ever feel like you were encountering potentially non-consensual content when i

01:20:24.240 never felt like i was i never felt like i saw anything like that yeah but i do think that i've this is how

01:20:29.920 long i've long thought this i believe because sometimes you see like a lot of like people get

01:20:34.840 compromised right it seems like a lot of times in our society that uh like freedom seekers or people

01:20:43.500 that want to change the status quo that want to like rise up and do something different at some point

01:20:47.660 some of them get it feels like maybe they get compromised in their i don't know if money hits them

01:20:53.220 or there's some opportunity that's presented to them this is all this is a lot of conspiracy

01:20:57.000 temple has stuff but and then they change their tune are their tune weekends or their goal their agenda

01:21:03.360 like kind of curbs a little bit and you think oh somebody got to them i think that a lot of these sites

01:21:10.620 record somehow secretly these days can record the user watching porn and so then that they are able to use

01:21:18.300 that against users like say like because i think everybody's probably watched some type of

01:21:24.820 pornography maybe i don't know everybody that i know has watched it but i would guess anyway like

01:21:31.220 if you had to tickle and be like tell me if you watch it they would do they would admit it but um

01:21:35.580 but that's what i've always thought i'm like man i bet some people it's like they use that that's

01:21:40.220 something like because you always wonder what's that tool that like once people get like some power or

01:21:46.500 something that what's the tool that they use to keep them down and it would either be like well

01:21:49.940 we're gonna assassinate you or we have this video of you masturbating that would be like oh it's too

01:21:55.340 much shame for me to handle you know so and even if it doesn't actually happen the fear of that right

01:22:01.160 yeah that'd be a risky card to say you know what i'm not going to call your bluff that'd be crazy you

01:22:05.880 know well there is where some of the opposition to user age verifications coming from probably

01:22:12.060 from users who are afraid that they are going to have to identify themselves oh for sure going to

01:22:18.680 those sites but i would assure people like that is actually not a real fear in this situation because

01:22:24.960 we have ways now with technology and there's third-party companies so i would never want

01:22:31.480 anybody to actually have to give their id to porn hub because i would never trust them in a million

01:22:37.740 years with that content because they exploit data like they're being sued right now in a class action

01:22:42.700 for data exploitation you know they gather so much information already sell it to people they sell

01:22:47.780 it to advertisers so like when you go to porn hub you think that it's all private right and but

01:22:52.520 they're gathering like the ip address they can find out your zip code from your zip code they

01:22:57.540 probably find your income level they're looking at your sexual preferences they're determining if

01:23:01.880 you're a you know a male or a female um you know what language you speak what browser you use i mean

01:23:08.080 they're gathering so much information about everybody yeah and so there's that but there's

01:23:16.300 third-party companies that can verify age safely effectively with respecting privacy in fact they don't

01:23:23.520 even have to actually take your image so it's biometric scanning so there's a company called yoti where

01:23:30.000 they actually will in one second they can determine your age 99 over 99 accuracy with a facial scan

01:23:37.460 but using ai that's trained on you know thousands or millions of images and so and they just look at

01:23:43.540 pixels and numbers they don't actually even store the actual image of your face right and then they

01:23:49.220 erase that so that's you know that's how they can verify so anybody who wants to oppose age

01:23:55.660 verification for the reason of privacy concerns which is what porn hub is shutting itself down

01:24:01.400 in states across the united states right now they're they're shutting themselves down in opposition to

01:24:09.260 age verification right okay so they're saying instead of having people verify their age to watch we

01:24:15.620 would rather shut ourselves down yes because it costs them money and we have their senior hire a third

01:24:20.820 party company to verify exactly they're not allowed to age verify well i mean it's not that they're not

01:24:25.840 allowed to i don't think that they can and i don't and i don't think anybody would ever want to like

01:24:31.220 hand their id over to porn hub so there's this third party sites that have that technology that can at

01:24:37.000 scale you know verify so they're used by meta tiktok you know other um companies who do this but

01:24:43.640 they're saying oh it's too much it's not cost effective anymore they're saying like porn hub is out there

01:24:48.120 in the media saying we're protest we're shutting ourselves down because we care about user privacy

01:24:53.340 because we don't want people handing over their personal that's a lot of user privacy then they

01:24:58.520 would care about protecting people who are on on a non-consenting right yeah but that's the most

01:25:05.000 privacy it's the most but not only that it's like the same company also runs pay sites that are

01:25:10.380 collecting credit card information right with your name your you know when you put in your billing address

01:25:15.820 your credit card details so it's all it's all a facade it's all just a facade and so that's why

01:25:20.640 it's important for people to know the truth about what is the opposition to age verification

01:25:25.620 what is what's really going on behind the scenes here and it's really about money and we even have

01:25:31.440 their senior community manager who you know publicly admitted in a reddit thread she was having

01:25:36.340 conversation and she says um age verification would basically devastate their traffic and it costs us

01:25:43.840 money to verify and that's why it would be a disaster for them is because it costs them money

01:25:48.460 and so that's really what this is about it's about money yeah yeah when people say that like how do you

01:25:53.280 respond to that argument that people say like oh we are this you're limiting freedom of speech

01:25:57.300 right yeah well i mean i would just well from the responsibility of the person right so both of those

01:26:03.080 things maybe well there's two sides so there's you know so we're talking about those who are in the

01:26:07.340 videos then we're talking about who's viewing the videos and i would just you know over and over

01:26:11.920 and this has been judges have said this too it's like you know child sexual abuse is not an expression

01:26:16.320 it's not um an idea like rape's not an idea like these are actual crimes as contraband being

01:26:23.040 distributed so anybody that's saying that fuck them really basically to be honest because it's

01:26:27.760 just a mess it's like what are you saying here you're saying that because if you know that these

01:26:32.300 sites are doing that now and then you're then you can't really argue freedom of speech for them

01:26:37.440 because they're not speech right it's not speech right right in fact it's the fact that somebody

01:26:41.860 can't speak up for themselves right and even when people do they have to be videos have to be flagged

01:26:47.560 so many times or they don't have proper people in place to help those people who are trying to speak

01:26:51.560 up for themselves right yeah so that um so there's that on that side but then on the other side you

01:26:56.880 know they're they're trying to argue this is limiting free speech right for um us to implement age

01:27:02.280 verification and again it's like no you know this is not limiting anybody's ability to access this

01:27:09.500 content or anybody's ability to express themselves on these sites it's simply like a one second age

01:27:15.140 verification biometric scan using you know the safest you know privacy protection that you can um and it's

01:27:24.880 no different than if you go into a physical store and they're selling alcohol or right and then the

01:27:31.340 bartender would do like a you know look at you and determine do i think that they're of age or not

01:27:36.480 let me see your id take a moment make sure you're an adult and on your way like that doesn't restrict

01:27:43.900 uh somebody's ability to get what they want they still can go in the bar and they can get the alcohol

01:27:49.520 anybody can still go to a porn site and access porn if they want to they just have to take these few

01:27:54.860 steps in between and it helps keep it out of the hands of children if a kid gets on there also too a lot

01:27:58.940 of times the fear of something you get on something like 18 year older you have to verify yourself

01:28:03.280 as a kid i remember you if you even would have clicked something like that and then it opens to

01:28:06.860 another page you get so scared sometimes you close it down you know you'd be like oh my god they're

01:28:10.740 gonna know my dad's gonna you know there was just there was a lot of that kind of fear but now there's

01:28:15.200 just like the are you 18 click-through button they didn't even have that right in 2020 finally now if

01:28:21.440 you're like on a mobile device they'll be like are you 18 and then you could just click yes

01:28:25.220 but some of them now have a thing where you have to have identification right what state

01:28:29.280 level government are doing the best help support um the the the battle against i guess porn or dirty

01:28:39.520 porn you know or like illegal content illegal content illegal and then porn in general yeah

01:28:45.000 at some point it becomes also it can be a moral or ethical i don't know if ethical it could be a

01:28:49.640 moral choice for a population at a certain point do we want to continue to consume this yeah i mean

01:28:55.060 from my perspective you know i think that we could come into agreement about children like i think

01:29:00.980 that that could be pretty easy yeah i think that's easily done i i think that's true it's just obviously

01:29:05.260 some people don't care so yeah the states that are doing the best to protect kids from access i would

01:29:11.480 probably say i mean the one that's kind of taking up the fight is texas like they have they're going

01:29:17.080 they're in the ring right they're at the supreme court trying to battle this out with the big porn

01:29:22.140 um companies and to to implement age verification so i think you know but there's multiple other

01:29:29.580 sites and i would just say like this is bipartisan so there's people from both parties that are in

01:29:34.620 agreement that kids should not be accessing online porn that's true um and then on the other side of the

01:29:40.420 screen you know i mean we've had several bills that have been introduced in the united states

01:29:46.700 since 2020 that would require age and consent verification um but they didn't pass there's

01:29:53.100 efforts in the uk there's efforts in canada because this isn't just a u.s issue right but why aren't they

01:29:58.760 passing more than a dozen states have passed new laws that led to restrictions on pornography now the

01:30:03.860 supreme court will weigh in right yeah yeah you mentioned that right this is but what's what we need the

01:30:08.740 other side too like we need our government not just to implement age verification for users

01:30:14.000 but also for those who were in the videos right and that just but here's but has that bill gone to

01:30:19.780 them before and they didn't pass it it just didn't it kind of uh you know uh it was at the end of it

01:30:24.240 was like at the end of a session and then it kind of died and then you have to reintroduce it but

01:30:27.960 here's the thing we don't really have to enact that law in order to rein in these big porn companies

01:30:35.860 because we have laws that govern studio produced porn like the brick and mortar porn valley

01:30:43.600 you know pornography has always been highly regulated and they've abided by those regulations

01:30:49.820 like one of them is called usc 2257 and that's been in place since 1988 it's a law it's a law in

01:30:56.320 the u.s it's a crime to distribute or to produce porn if you don't verify the age and consent of those

01:31:04.520 who are in the videos and that has been in place for decades and it has been complied with the only

01:31:10.760 problem is in the internet age when it became user generated content then these sites say well

01:31:16.520 we get a pass because guess what we're not the ones that are producing them right we're just hosting it

01:31:21.540 we're just hosting it we're just but in the case of pornhub they've tried to make that argument it

01:31:26.800 doesn't really hold because not only is it about producing it's also about distributing it's transferring

01:31:33.520 and they had that download button on every video we're from their servers they were transferring

01:31:39.480 this content to the devices of millions of people around and that's illegal i mean isn't it true of

01:31:44.720 somebody if they find child pornography on someone that they can oh just to possess it i mean right

01:31:50.300 victims couldn't even possess their own videos of abuse like i had to be meticulously careful but

01:31:56.460 then these sites can like can transfer so much possessing it on their servers is actually it's actually

01:32:02.820 legal and they we now in this 7-11 to the law litigation there's employees who are going back and

01:32:07.900 forth in their messages going i just had to download one of the worst child abuse videos that i've ever

01:32:13.980 witnessed i need to see a therapist for what i just witnessed uh-oh i forgot to delete it am i going to

01:32:19.920 get i could go away for a long time for this like these are the conversations that are turning up from

01:32:24.580 pornhub employees wow in discovery that they are doing this so if you're concerned right if they're

01:32:31.100 concerned at that level yeah so there's laws like we already have laws that can be implemented to

01:32:36.460 like you can't distribute child pornography usd 2257 it's just they have to be modernized and applied

01:32:43.260 today right over the modern way that we distribute porn on the internet it's funny sometimes it seems

01:32:49.800 like our government is kind of the last like once something has come through and made all of its money

01:32:53.940 and ruined so many lives then they'll help with it yeah that's why i'm always like how complicit is our

01:32:59.020 own government sometimes in a lot of these things because that's what it feels like it's like oh

01:33:03.320 after this wave of has ruined the lives of a million people and made half a billion dollars then we'll

01:33:09.820 shut it down you know but it's like that's why everybody's had their grift or their hand in it yeah

01:33:14.620 that's why i'm really hopeful about the route of you know strategic civil litigation empowering

01:33:20.380 survivors in that way to hold the financial institutions accountable right because i think that could go way

01:33:25.180 faster we hope you're enjoying your air canada flight rocky's vacation here we come whoa is this

01:33:32.380 economy free beer wine and snacks sweet fast free wi-fi means i can make dinner reservations before we land

01:33:40.580 and with live tv i'm not missing the game it's kind of like i'm already on vacation nice on behalf of

01:33:49.240 air canada nice travels wi-fi available to airplane members on equipped flights sponsored by bell

01:33:54.180 conditions apply see your canada.com which credit companies are still accepting payments for

01:33:59.620 pornography websites oh pornography websites um well all of them except american express okay so american

01:34:06.100 express is the only they've never been involved in online or like pornography so american express is the

01:34:12.380 only yeah credit card company that doesn't will not allow its information to be used on pornography

01:34:21.780 websites yeah period yeah and i'm not suggesting that that has to be the position of like the other

01:34:28.200 credit card companies no but if they're not going to say that we're not going to verify things

01:34:31.920 yeah that well the that's the easy route here is for them to just say like we have anti-money laundering

01:34:40.200 policy we have this anti-exploitation policy policy and you have to verify age and consent if you want

01:34:46.320 to do business with visa that's it like and that will that'll take place instantly and globally like

01:34:53.420 it'll apply everywhere so what could we say then to the companies like if we were to put out a clip

01:34:57.180 it's like hey this is what right now credit card companies are allowing transactions on pornography

01:35:05.600 websites that are not verifying the age and consent that are not verifying the age and consent

01:35:10.280 of every individual in every single video every individual in every single video and they need to

01:35:15.520 stop that and they need to stop that right now the only one who doesn't do it is american express

01:35:19.980 right because they just have like this blanket policy against because they have a blanket policy

01:35:23.800 but the other ones um so you could so hypothetically someone could be watching a pornography video on a

01:35:32.120 website that the user is uh being coerced or trafficked under the influence a child minor or a child or a

01:35:42.400 minor and the websites are not verifying that that isn't the case there's no verification at the point

01:35:50.960 of upload so like what they try to say is okay let anybody upload right and then later on you know if

01:35:58.860 somebody complains we'll try to take it down quickly and sometimes you know they didn't use

01:36:02.580 to even take it down quickly right um or our moderators will view it but no before so this is

01:36:08.740 like prevention because there's that immortalization of trauma right one hour is too long on a site

01:36:15.520 that's getting 170 million views per day yeah you know and even if they can't download you can screen

01:36:20.840 record like you can right so like any minute is too long we have to stop it before it gets uploaded

01:36:27.740 and the only way to do that is to age and consent verify before it's uploaded and they because of the

01:36:33.880 technology that we have like they can do that at scale like they can do that on a right they could

01:36:38.220 do it but they don't because but they don't because money because money friction because when you

01:36:44.420 introduce friction to uploading you get less uploading right you get less people who will do it

01:36:49.560 and so that goes against the whole big porn free porn business model because they need massive amounts

01:36:56.020 of content right so anything that you would do that would diminish the amount of content on these

01:37:01.440 sites they don't want to do got it they have to be forced to do it and actually as of september of

01:37:06.440 2024 porn hub after being criminally charged right and having to have this monitor over their site

01:37:11.640 they're finally saying that we're going to start verifying the age and consent of those who are in

01:37:16.800 the videos as of september of 2024 um however they still have millions of videos that were uploaded

01:37:23.940 prior that time that we don't know that they don't know yeah and visa and mastercard and are those

01:37:30.160 companies are still accepting payments on those site well no not on porn hub oh not on porn hub not

01:37:34.280 on porn hub or any of the mind geek ilo owned tube sites okay they will not so they're on those

01:37:39.960 they're not they are done yeah and that's for the consent of the people in the videos too yes so

01:37:45.700 they they need to verify age and consent of those but what i'm saying is is is porn hub currently

01:37:51.240 accepting visa and mastercard payments at all no okay they can't they would they would like to but

01:37:56.800 they can't they can't no they've been cut off from that but porn hub is still not as of september

01:38:03.880 2024 they said they were going to start verifying the age of consent of those individuals from then on

01:38:09.840 yes not prior we don't know yet no for sure they're not for sure they haven't deleted the

01:38:16.120 content that was uploaded prior to that where it's only the uploader that was verified right and it's

01:38:21.740 not just like rocky shea franklin i mean there's multiple other victims who are currently suing

01:38:26.600 porn hub because they had verified uploaders uploading their trafficking their rape and abuse got it so

01:38:32.520 that's you know so that's the way of the land that's the solution um going forward and it's a matter of

01:38:37.780 public pressure so i believe like this conversation is so valuable to this fight because we're

01:38:45.940 introducing not only the problem to so many people who probably never heard that this was an issue

01:38:51.020 before but also the solution so that we can pressure those in positions of power to implement

01:38:56.960 the solutions to make the internet a safer place right so who do we pressure though like who do i when if

01:39:01.780 i have if i have them in here yeah who do i ask and what do i ask them okay so if you have like the

01:39:07.920 ceo visa or mastercard or the vp's there that's why do you not have this policy in place and what will

01:39:16.520 it take to get you there um because policy of age and consent verification for every single person

01:39:23.860 and every single video on a user-generated porn site like that it's not going to stop it a hundred

01:39:28.880 percent right but it's going to stop it a lot yeah it's going to really you know just help make

01:39:35.360 like i said like the internet an actual safer place oh i wish that 15 years ago i would open it up and

01:39:40.400 be like a fuck i can't even get in this thing i can't even do it fuck it i'm gonna go outside i'm

01:39:44.440 gonna go take a walk or i'm gonna go do something i'm gonna respond to one of my buddy's text messages

01:39:48.160 that was asking me to go do something i'm gonna go do something positive more positive for myself i did a

01:39:52.600 lot of positive things i'm not saying like woe is me or anything like that but when it came to a lot of

01:39:58.240 like uh relationships and intimacy type shit i was more like it was i it was just uncomfortable and so

01:40:06.060 using pornography was easier but then that started to kind of like fray like the part of me i think

01:40:13.740 that even cared about building a relationship because it i didn't nurture that part of me at all

01:40:19.000 part of some of the times it didn't it didn't even grow how would it grow if i'm not sitting there

01:40:22.800 you know nurturing it or paying attention to it yeah you know the only part of this that dopamine

01:40:28.860 freaking you know my dopamine thing was just leaking or whatever you know because i'm just sitting there

01:40:33.560 watching all this slurp lord stuff on there it's just trash it's just but anyway whatever dude god

01:40:39.500 well one of the things that's also happening is not just like intimacy and relational issues yeah

01:40:44.160 because that happens right oh yeah dude but it's also um men young men are having kind of an epidemic of

01:40:53.700 what they call porn-induced erectile dysfunction oh yeah and yeah p-i-e-d where so there was a study

01:41:00.840 in canada and it was a journal of sexual medicine and they had found a third of young men between 16 and

01:41:09.080 21 had issues with porn-induced erectile dysfunction oh yeah buddy and they're young

01:41:16.580 yeah well it's heartbreaking and then here's that creates a ton of shame and a lot of that's just

01:41:20.700 nervous energy and then here's the thing if you get used to watching porn then you finally are in an

01:41:25.800 instance with a woman or the is this some sexual activity or whatever it's so foreign to whatever

01:41:32.000 the part of your brain that watches a screen and the part of your brain that engages with someone

01:41:36.460 or two i don't know this for a fact but to me it feels like two totally different parts

01:41:41.340 one of them is very active and feels very visceral and real and one of them feels very passive and

01:41:49.800 transactional almost in a way like i'm going to give this my attention i'm going to get some reward out

01:42:00.420 of it but that's all this is whereas over here this is a field of communication and connection

01:42:06.720 right so um so yeah i wanted to watch this right here watching pornography this is a from neuroscience

01:42:14.280 news watching pornography rewires the brain to a more juvenile state that's interesting

01:42:18.840 um pornography has existed throughout recorded history i'd love to get someone to come in and talk

01:42:25.020 about just the whole history of it um hundreds of at the bottom here we have the impact okay in the

01:42:32.520 long term pornography seems to create sexual dysfunctions especially the inability to achieve

01:42:36.740 erection or orgasm with a real life partner marital quality and commitment to one's romantic partner

01:42:41.760 also appear to be compromised to try to explain these effects some scientists have drawn parallels

01:42:48.200 between porn consumption and substance abuse the through evolutionary design the brain is wired to

01:42:54.700 respond to sexual stimulation with surges of dopamine so if you get sexually stimulated your brain gives

01:43:00.680 dopamine and that makes sense because we're creatures that are supposed to reproduce right and have

01:43:06.620 attraction this neurotransmitter most often associated with reward anticipation also acts to program

01:43:13.060 memories and information into the brain this adaption means that when the body requires something like food

01:43:19.460 or sex the brain remembers where to return to experience the same pleasure instead of turning to a romantic

01:43:24.240 partner for sexual gratification or fulfillment habituated porn users instinctively reach for their

01:43:29.200 phones and laptops when desire comes calling furthermore unnaturally strong explosions of reward

01:43:34.680 and pleasure evoke unnaturally strong degrees of habituation in the brain dang that's wild i could

01:43:41.100 definitely see that yeah and then it's like and then you feel ashamed you know like what parent wants to go

01:43:48.760 and talk to their son and wish him good night if he's been master i'm sure that's a weird thing you know i'm

01:43:53.340 saying like i don't know what that's like but i'm sure that there's some shame there it's like yeah

01:43:57.200 well that's where i think that one of the the important things that we can do is create like

01:44:02.480 actually shame-free zones where kids like the kitchen or whatever i don't know i mean like

01:44:08.100 your household right like oh i see what you're saying oh okay you know like where you can feel like

01:44:13.360 you're in a relationship that is safe to talk about the things that you would feel ashamed talking about

01:44:20.660 oh yeah you know because then you don't just stuff it down well that's what recovery meetings that's

01:44:24.520 one thing that's why i think 12-step meetings are great because it's like and if people are wondering

01:44:28.260 how do i get into the meeting there's sla.org i think it's called if you want to look at that up

01:44:33.300 nick and see um but yeah but you can also look up sla online and that's just you can find meetings and

01:44:41.040 then once you get into a meeting you can talk to people now you're not a weirdo now you get in a

01:44:44.200 program you kind of get some things organized you create a basically a set of principles for yourself

01:44:48.440 and then you have a new kind of design of for living i wonder too though like in all of this

01:44:54.540 and the recovery and all the ways that you can help um yourself and people who are struggling with

01:45:00.240 this you know does hearing this truth about the victims who are on the other side of the screen

01:45:07.180 i've had numerous people and men and women who have struggled with compulsive porn addiction that

01:45:15.820 they didn't want but they couldn't like kick it they just really struggled with it and when they

01:45:21.520 heard about the victims who could be behind that screen on these sites right which is the primary way

01:45:29.220 that porn is distributed today they felt like it finally gave them the like fortitude or the

01:45:37.100 motivation to just be like i don't want to participate in somebody else's trauma like i

01:45:42.940 don't want to participate in their suffering i don't want to give money i don't want to give clicks and

01:45:47.220 views to a big porn corporation who's making a living off of the devastation of real victims lives and

01:45:56.080 that is actually what gave them the um i guess like the ammunition to just finally like be like

01:46:03.420 no like i'm not gonna i'm not gonna do that yeah what were some well i certainly think you're right

01:46:08.820 though it's like i have some friends that work in porn and that sort of thing and it's not like

01:46:11.940 i don't think what they're doing is bad i don't think that for me porn isn't good right it's not a

01:46:18.120 good it's not it hasn't been a tool that i use properly or whatever and i don't think it's good for

01:46:23.260 me right it may be good for some people might be good for them um but i'm not damning the people

01:46:30.240 that work in it or anything no and neither am i i mean i like to each his own for sure but the kids

01:46:36.660 should be able to access that i think i don't think it's good no kids is where you draw the line

01:46:40.980 because they can't choose like they need to be able to get to adulthood before they decide where

01:46:48.320 they can make that decision and also it's that prefrontal cortex of the brain where it's like

01:46:52.820 that decision-making center of the brain it's not even developed so they can't like reason like

01:46:58.860 is this going to be good for me or do i want to do this or what are the consequences of me

01:47:04.000 you know and they just don't have that yet and so like they definitely need to be protected but once

01:47:08.840 you're an adult you know you can make decisions like you should have the freedom to make whatever

01:47:13.880 decisions you want and i i take the position of like what you know if it's consenting adult like

01:47:19.300 that's their business right and yep i agree but they'd also be we also have this like imagine if

01:47:24.300 you opened your door and there was just a bunch of porn there that's really what it's like it's like

01:47:27.920 you know i mean the internet's just our front porch now it's like so you open your door and everything

01:47:32.760 is there everything is there so if you as a parent or as a country kind of can't decide maybe what

01:47:38.880 should and shouldn't be there sort of and at a certain point you see enough proof well 90 percent of

01:47:45.480 this many this much percentage of people maybe get addicted to this it ruins this many marriages

01:47:49.920 hypothetical like at a certain point you might think this isn't for our society this just doesn't

01:47:55.160 help society that much overall i'm not saying that i don't know if that's true but at least we can all

01:48:01.800 i mean everybody can agree that like step one let's just keep kids away from accessing it and then

01:48:09.080 you know because they will get a they will get that compulsive porn use when they oh yeah no doubt about

01:48:14.220 that i think we get it yeah yeah yeah yeah i think that's yeah i think there's no doubt about it

01:48:18.640 it would be hard to hear listen to anyone's argument against that well it's i mean they're

01:48:24.020 not arguing that kids shouldn't watch porn but they're arguing against the ways that we can prevent

01:48:29.300 them from doing it which is kind of the same thing isn't it i mean it's just a different yeah i guess

01:48:33.720 it's a different way to say it but yeah and who are the people that are arguing against the point the

01:48:38.800 big the people who profit from it right which is the big porn industry um but yeah crazy um if you had

01:48:46.080 a politician uh sitting in front of you um you know i think probably you could just ask them look

01:48:52.340 we need to introduce preventative laws to help keep victims from being abused um on these sites

01:48:59.120 across the internet and that is again agent consent verification for every individual and i don't

01:49:04.280 think there would be resistance to that like i don't even think that the the porn industry itself

01:49:09.280 has a real legitimate uh you know way to resist that or they would because they have been complying

01:49:15.480 with usc 2257 for so long like since 1988 right that standard has been like brick and mortar studio

01:49:22.260 porn they've been doing it so the internet just hasn't yeah so they're just it's just evolving with

01:49:26.080 the internet and so the government's always behind the times yeah so they just need to get up get up

01:49:30.680 with the times it's the gap in between when the government is behind the times and when when people get

01:49:35.420 hurt right oh yeah yeah just like this recurring yeah it's this recurring market that continues to

01:49:41.340 happen just the uh the gravity is different the source of the gravity is different um we certainly

01:49:49.400 appreciate appreciate your work and appreciate you coming through here to share about this

01:49:53.700 journey and what it's like to take on um something like porn hub well thank you for shining a light

01:50:02.460 on this thank you for caring about it thank you for talking about it um thank you for being vulnerable

01:50:07.320 about your own journey oh yeah i think i mean what all i am is just fucking mule for my own bullshit at

01:50:14.320 this point or mule for my own problems i mean i think it's so valuable because i think that it helps

01:50:19.680 like normalize that conversation so that people can actually feel like they can talk about it and get

01:50:24.840 help if they want to get help i think well i've been in a relationship one time i was just like i'd watch

01:50:29.380 pornography instead of hook up with my girlfriend or have some sort of intimacy with my girlfriend

01:50:32.960 and i yeah man i feel horrible about that years later you know i just didn't have uh i didn't know

01:50:41.140 how to do it there you know i just was kind of i don't know i think i was i didn't i was i didn't

01:50:47.040 want to talk to her about stuff and so i just it was easier to do that yeah then uh like engage with

01:50:52.500 her and yeah you know but it's just it you know just all comes at a cost at the time i didn't think

01:50:58.420 that it was you know i don't know what i thought i don't think i was thinking i think just i was

01:51:03.340 like oh this is the easy way and i wasn't kind of brave enough to take the tougher work the tougher

01:51:07.480 route of like let's just lay here and talk and see what's going on and then maybe build up some

01:51:13.120 intimacy but even to just recognize that is like yeah so awesome i was outsourcing a lot of my

01:51:18.660 intimacy you know yeah just to this screen that didn't care about me really yeah and then to

01:51:22.740 potentially the people on the other side of the screen you're saying they don't even know you know

01:51:25.300 it's like it's really pretty twisted sort of you know both sides if you say if like there's

01:51:31.080 somebody who's masturbating to a video of something that they the person didn't want to be in it right

01:51:35.680 they're being exploited this person is doing it just because out of addiction or shame you know

01:51:40.040 or addiction they're stuck in this cycle that this is how they do to make themselves feel okay

01:51:43.720 then you basically have this exploitation people cycle yeah neither one of them wants to be

01:51:48.220 doing anything that they're doing and it's just this magnet lack of freedom here and lack of

01:51:53.040 freedom here because they're doing what they don't want to do and they're being forced to do you know

01:51:57.440 they're being exploited here their freedom is being taken away i'm just like we need freedom freedom on

01:52:02.540 both sides right yeah it's in a right i mean being alive is a it's in a it's a journey um but yeah

01:52:10.240 thanks for coming and and sharing some of that information with us thank you yeah and also just to not

01:52:15.760 also if you like pornography and you can use it in a way that's okay for you then that's your world

01:52:20.960 too i don't want everything to be a debbie downer that everything is horrible and this and that

01:52:24.820 um we're not looking at that you know if you can casually jerk off or whatever touch your body or

01:52:30.740 whatever then that's good for you you know but i think this is when it maybe gets out of control

01:52:35.940 and then at certain ages people look at pornography differently too i think you know i think when

01:52:41.880 you're 17 or something you're like just you know you're just freaking rabbiting around the town you

01:52:47.100 know you can you know you're not even thinking about a bigger picture of things literally not

01:52:51.500 thinking because they don't have that reasoning center developed till you're like mid-20s oh you're

01:52:56.620 just freaking right serving jerk chicken all around town anyway but um yeah what what can people do to

01:53:03.880 help uh support yeah well so easy thing they can do is sign the petition right which is

01:53:09.540 traffickinghumpetition.com um they can read the book takedown 100 of all proceeds from author

01:53:17.500 proceeds from that are donated to the justice defense fund to support victims in their pursuit

01:53:21.920 of justice and healing amen and the book it like it will um it's written in first person present tense

01:53:29.060 where you go on a journey of discovery with me where you go from that night i described in early

01:53:33.520 2020 all the way through this fight you meet the victims you meet the whistleblowers you you know go

01:53:38.780 through this day-to-day with me and so at the end of it you really would feel like you are immersed in

01:53:45.500 it you understand it really deeply at like a heart level you know that was my goal for writing that

01:53:50.460 book was that it wouldn't just be like information that people get but they would go on this journey

01:53:55.240 and they would um come out of it feeling inspired and activated to take action and um on that note

01:54:03.280 like they could join team takedown we've created team takedown and so you can go to takedownbook.com

01:54:09.080 and you can join there and all of that so yeah we're gonna just keep at it until until justice

01:54:14.920 fully prevails yeah yeah and it's you know it's like yeah once you start to put the light on

01:54:20.060 something it grows you know and that's such a nice gift that you gave us here the truth is like a lion

01:54:24.200 let it loose it will defend itself saint augustine that's really cool um take down

01:54:30.620 inside the fight to shut down porn hub thank you so much uh for your time today i really

01:54:35.460 thank you so much for having me it was really an honor

01:54:38.000 now i'm just floating on the breeze and i feel i'm falling like these leaves i must be

01:54:44.620 cornerstone

01:54:46.920 oh but when i reach that ground i'll share this peace of mind i found i can feel it

01:54:55.680 in my bones but it's gonna tell you

01:55:00.520 and i'm just waiting all day

01:55:09.280 and i'm sorry

01:55:09.860 and i can feel itinfeld

01:55:09.960 and i'm just going to helpifer

01:55:12.020 and i am going to deal with that

01:55:13.860 then i'm going to die

This Past Weekend with Theo Von - February 03, 2025

E559 Laila Mickelwait

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