Laila Mickelwait took on a porn giant and got 2.2 million people behind her. The founder of the Justice Defense Fund investigated Pornhub, launched a petition, and the rest is a still-unfolding history..The married mother from California began to combat human trafficking ten years ago, and soon began to examine criminal exploitation in the porn industry. Pornhub was in her sights, especially after a 15-year-old girl, missing for a year, was found by her mother after 58 videos of her rape and sexual abuse were posted to the site..Mickelwait opened a Pornhub account and uploaded blank test content to the site. The video was up instantly, which showed the amount of verification (not) going on..“What I discovered in my investigations of the site was that it was set up for exploitation, and that all it took to upload content to the site was an email address. And so essentially, anybody around the world could upload sex acts to the site, even when they were criminal, crime scene footage, with only an email address and under 10 minutes. And that is how the site became infested with videos of the real rape, assault, child sexual abuse, non consensual image-based sexual abuse,” she told the Western Standard..Mickelwait penned an op-ed on the experience in February of 2020 that led to further action..“Quickly after there was a strong response, people wanted to do something. They were horrified and shocked to find out that the world’s most popular mainstream porn site was filled with real crime scene videos.”.Mickelwait launched Traffickinghub.com as a spoof site of Pornhub and posted a petition titled, “Shut Down Pornhub and Hold Its Executives Accountable for Aiding Trafficking”. It has since been signed by 2.2 million people from 192 countries..Even former porn star Jenna Jameson linked to the petition and tweeted..Substantial change began on December 4 last year when New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote “The Children of Pornhub,” asking “Why does Canada allow this company to profit off videos of exploitation and assault?” Within days, the site lowered its video count from 13.5 million down to less than 3 million..Pornhub, said on a blog post they had “enacted the most comprehensive safeguards in user-generated platform history,” including barring unverified uploaders from adding new content, eliminating the ability to download most videos and has removed all previously uploaded content that was not created by Pornhub’s verified content partners or members of its adult performer network.”.Liberal MP Nathan Erskine-Smith requested MindGeek executives to speak to the parliamentary ethics committee. In February Mickelwait testified, sharing some of the stories she heard from girls who had reached out to her with their own stories..Caroline said, “I spent two months begging Pornhub to take down a video of me being orally raped at the age of 15. I was crying, screaming. I had a bloody nose. It was up for a year and a half before I knew about it.”.Beth said, “I was 10 the first time I was raped. My uncle saw those porn stories and used me to play out his fantasies. Two years later I found the videos of me on Pornhub.”.The same day Mickelwait testified, parliament heard other witnesses with their own stories of problems getting content removed. Since then, the RCMP and justice minister have claimed their own difficulties dealing with MindGeek because it has servers and offices in various countries beyond its office space in Montreal..A $600-million lawsuit has been filed in Quebec against MindGeek, and Mickelwait says there have been others filed in the U.S. She also wants the Canadian government to take action..“It’s been said by numerous experts, and legal experts and practitioners, that, indeed, Canada already has the laws to be able to hold this company accountable for the harm that they’ve done to countless victims for over a decade.”.Harding is a Western Standard correspondent based in Saskatchewan
