#956 - Laila Mickelwait - How Pornhub Became The Internet’s Biggest Crime Scene

28:17And it was because the court in Alabama for the child trafficking class action lawsuit accidentally. So the court accidentally released thousands of pages of internal documents and communications and messages and emails that were supposed to be sealed. So they had actually accidentally unsealed all of this information. So now we We have, I mean, it's an amazing amount of information, depositions where they actually deposed under oath. It's a crime if they actually tell a lie in these depositions, the managers, the employees, the executives, the owners, and we have all, like, you know, one deposition is like a 500 page deposition.

29:04And all of this put together, the question becomes how in the world are Pornhub's executives not in prison? and I honestly think after this release of this evidence, they will go to prison. I feel confident that we will see this company properly criminally prosecuted. Why aren't they in prison? It sounds to me like relatively open and shut case. There's already been investigations. This weird lily padding thing where something goes wrong and then we're rebranded over here and then we rebranded a little bit more and there's a tiny exact change. But most of the people that are behind the scenes all stay the same.

29:41It kind of doesn't really matter who's been switched in and switched out. Is it just taking a long time? I guess it's only been five years to do this. It's a big investigation. Is it just the kind of slow lumbering behemoth that is legislation happening? What's going on? I mean, there is the saying that the wheels of justice turn slowly, right? And I think that's true. I think the wheels of justice turn slowly, but they turn. And I think especially if we keep the pressure on they turn. I think that when we focus on something, we give it attention. And when there's a public outcry about something, then like the squeaky, what's it?

30:17The squeaky wheel gets the oil or whatever the saying is. But yeah, if you, if we can continue to put pressure on those in power to do their job, then I think that we will see it happen. And so I think that's a matter of time. There was a company called BackPage and the fight to hold them accountable for child traffic on that website, I think that was a 10 -year fight. So we're at five years now from really starting to shine a light on this, and I really believe that if we can keep it up, that's public pressure coupled with civil litigation to continue to hit these companies where it hurts in their bank accounts, that we will see the outcome of justice really being served.

30:59And why is that important? I think, you know, why is it important to hold Portham and its parent company accountable? People might say, well, this is just one of so many different sites. This is just one website. That's true, but there is something that is real and it's called deterrence. And one of the most important things that we can do to prevent abuse is to deter future abusers because at the end of the day, this is a risk -benefit calculation for what I call corporate traffickers. And this is about money for them and they're just saying, you know, is what's going to happen to me? The cost of doing business or is it worse than that?

31:39Like will I face real and serious consequences? And when they understand that they will face real and serious consequences, they'll make different decisions. They don't have to distribute illegal content on that site. They can, although it's expensive and it's not easy, they can make the decisions to prevent that, to put in those safety policies, and they have to be forced to do it. And so what we're seeing right now is the power of deterrence. Like right now, it corn hubs biggest competitors are proactively seeing what's happening on corn hub, and they're actually taking down illegal content from their sites.

32:16They're changing the way that the upload process works. It's for fear of being hit with the same kind of litigation. right? Okay. Exactly. I think, yeah, the obvious question is porn hub and even A -Lo X -Mine Geek aren't the only adults website in the world. So you shut this thing down and it goes elsewhere. And I know that you're pushing for porn hub itself to be shut down entirely as opposed to just meeting the standards of moderation that you would be happy with, is this because taking down Pornhub would be a very loud shot across the bow for everybody else and then presumably moving forward, you want what kind of moderation, why shut down not moderation exclusively on Pornhub and then what does a what does a healthy porn moderation process look like?

33:14Yeah, those are great questions. From the beginning, the call to action has been to shut down porn hub and I absolutely mean that. I didn't say it lightly when we started and that is because the level of harm that has been done by this company to so many victims since 2007 with impunity, with intentionality on purpose for profit is absolutely unacceptable. And the only just outcome is for the site to be shut down for reparations to be paid to all victims, significant reparations, and for there to be criminal prosecution. And that's what justice served looks like. And justice is important because that's how victims can heal.

33:55When they see that what happened to them was recognized and it was paid for. And so that's important. It's also important, like I said, to be a deterrent to future abusers. So they understand that there will be consequences if they act in the same way. And in that way, we're going to help other websites not act in the same way that PornHub has. But again, it's not enough to hold one company accountable and don't forget holding PornHub accountable is also holding probably most of the world's most popular tube sites accountable because they're all owned by the same company. But going forward, we need policy to make sure that this doesn't happen in the future.

34:37and that's why I am a strong advocate for age and consent verification policies. Because the crux of the problem here was unfettered, unmonitored uploading on user -generated sites, right? And so the solution is pretty simple. It's verifying the age, ID, and consent, document, and consent of every person in every video on every website that per terms of service allows user generated porn. And this can be done at scale. So we have the technology to be able to do this at scale. How do you do it? What's the technology do? Yeah, so there's numerous companies that do this. One of them, that Pornheim is currently being forced to use is called YOTE.

35:21And what they do is they do a biometric scan coupled with verification of government issued ID in order to verify that the person in the video It includes a liveness scan. And so there's a liveness scan. A liveness. Yeah, so you move when you're doing the scan of your face. So you can make sure that you're not just putting somebody's picture up there. So I mean, there's different ways that this can be done. But the technology is there. And they can do this quickly, efficiently. Now it costs money, right? So the one who's going to pay for this is the porn companies who have to implement these third party checks.

36:00And I think third party is so essential because I would never, ever want anybody to give their ID to PornHub. I mean, they're actually facing a class action lawsuit for the exploitation of user data. So what have they done? What's the story behind the user data? Yeah. So apparently what was happening was that they were without consent obtaining and selling the user data of millions and millions of people who are visiting their sites to third parties without consent. And so they're facing a class action lawsuit for that.

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37:27Like they are so fucked dude. Holy shit. How many different ways? I don't know maybe maybe it's the case that we will look back on Pornhub and think that they were kind of the first through the door, Wild West frontier style porn company that just made all of the errors right? It was, look, this was before we had the the Lila, Michael Wade, active fucking 20, 28 or whatever, you know what I mean? It was before we had the correct barriers in place. Technology had enabled this kind of user -generated pawn uploading and it had done it at such a pace and no one had any idea what was going on and everyone was making money and lots of people were enjoying free access to pawn on the internet from mobile devices and their laptops.

38:19And then we realized just how sort of rotten the core of this was and maybe we'll look back and go, wow. Pawn herb and aloe are a shining example of all of the different ways that you can get this stuff wrong online. But it is kind of impressive. It actually genuinely is impressive to have one company that has accumulated. They like the neutron star of making errors with this stuff. Like how many, they're the LeBron James of getting, you know, they're like the goat of fucking up. But I mean, it's funny that you say that though, because if they had just been left alone, I mean, they were so popular.

39:03I mean, people were wearing their apparel proudly in public. Culturally, I mean, that's the power of brand. That just shows, obviously, So you need a product that backs it up. But if you are, they're the apple of porn, right? The first mover advantage you think mobile phone, you think Apple, you think porn, you think porn hub. Exactly. That's absolutely true. And the thing of it is this is that I think a lot of people today still have no idea that this ever happened, that they're facing all of these consequences for the horrific actions that they have deliberately done. And we're talking about the Wild West of the internet and this and that.

39:42And the thing that really, I think is important for people to understand about porn have based on all of the evidence that we've uncovered, like I said, is the knowing intentionality. It's that these were decisions that were made where it's not like they were completely oblivious to the children that were being exploited on the site or the rate victims. I mean, there's pages and pages in these recently released documents accidentally released where there's just years and years where they had people filling out their contact form and saying, please take these videos down. I was unconscious in this video.

40:23I was raped in this video. I was a child in this video or like, this is my friend, she's 15 in that video. She doesn't know that this was uploaded. You take it down and these were it was for years that they knew about that So, you know if you knowingly distribute Whatever underage sexual material look at me trying to sound like I know in terms of legislation and stuff. I've heard this I've heard this sentence before right not at me I can't I've seen other people have this sentence logic them before If you knowingly chat underage something, you get in trouble, right? Like it's really, really fun.

41:01It's actually a crime. Is there a particular different type of carve out or was there a particular different type of carve out in the same way as whatever that article was that said, we are not a curation site. We are a pipeline utility that was. Ryan, you're talking about Section 230. Yeah. So, yes, yes. Section 230, thank you. Yes, Section 230 of the CDA. So the Communications Decency Act that essentially created a loophole for sites that allow users to upload things. And so they say that they're not responsible for things that other people upload it. Basically, they consider themselves to be like a neutral party.

41:49they're, you know, they're just the telephone, they're the wires of the telephone and they're not responsible for what people are saying. That's not the case with corn hubs. So, so corn hubs actually tried to argue section 230. They tried to get all of their lawsuits dismissed. I should have been on the legal team. I could have been a part of the legal team. I don't wanna be a part of the legal team. But, you know what I mean? They tried it, yeah. No, they tried it and they've lost. And the reason why they've lost every single except for one lawsuit that unfortunately was brought by a victim herself she didn't have an attorney But all of the others and again, you know, there's been dozens of these lawsuits and in every case the judge has said Absolutely not you do not get dismissed based on section 230 and that is because they were Actually creating so they were part of creating the content and curating the content and promoting it and duplicating it.

42:45So they were taking the content from Horn Hub and they were actually uploading it to their sister sites. They were also creating thumbnails of the content, both legal and illegal. They were recommending and they were helping people reach illegal content by suggesting things like, you know, minor and childhood and whatnot in titles and tags. In fact, in those uncovered legal discovery documents, we have communications where they actually refused. They were recommended by employees to take certain words and keywords off the site, and they actually refused minor childhood, wasted, things like that, where they were actually intentionally, and they were tracking to the dollar, how much they were making on these categories that included illegal content like teen, which was one of the most popular categories on PornHub and the most profitable of all the categories, and so they didn't want to take down any of that.

43:44So because of that, they have lost section 230 protection. Right. What was some of the most or more surprising ally ships that you made when going through this? I have to assume, I mean, like Bill Ackman got involved, but I have to assume that there were other even more left -field people than Bill Ackman. Yeah, I mean, probably the most surprising to me was when the former owner of PornHub came forward to help in the summer of 2020. Question on that. Got to interject on that. How much is that someone begging like, oh, please, like the latest off -protest tumor, I must be the white knight that can come in and save you.

44:33Dude. Yeah. So covering your own tracks here. It was, there was definitely a self interest in that that I discovered later on. I didn't really care what his motivation was in some words. Just be effective. What I wanted was information. And so one of the things that he actually disclosed was the hidden shareholder. So there was a hidden majority shareholder for years that nobody knew who he was. And the former owner Fabian told me who it was. So he just I asked him who's the secret chairholder of Pornhub now and he told me his name was burned Burke mayor and he Was a businessman that grew up in Austria and then lived part -time in Hong Kong and part -time in London But he was the majority shareholder that was hiding his identity forever And so he was able to be found and exposed and today he's being sued personally by dozens of victims But then again also he said listen go after the credit card companies because they're the Achilles heel of Pornhub and that's exactly what we did.

45:34Other than that, you know, obviously Bill Ackman, he was a a surprising ally. He had read The Children of CornHub, a New York Times article, and he was in SENS because he said his daughters of his own. And so he wanted to get involved and help. And so not only did he start tweeting about this, but he also reached out to the CEO of MasterCard because he knew him from the tennis circuit. And so he actually stepped in to help convince the credit card companies to cut ties with PornHub and actually they did at the end of 2020. But what we found out was that two weeks later, they quietly snuck back.

46:12So they actually snuck back to the advertising arm of PornHub. And it was another two -year fight to finally get them to cut all ties with PornHub and Bill Ackman played an important role that whole time. He helped put the pressure on. there was a lawsuit against Visa. So this was key to this whole story. So Serena, who I told you about the victim, she not only sued PornHub, she also sued Visa. And Visa actually lost their motion to dismiss their case. And it was the pressure of Visa losing their motion to dismiss their case, coupled with Bill Ackman helping myself and Serena's lawyer get on CNBC Squawk Box with Andrew Sorkin, which was this, you know, in America, it's a very popular, you know, morning financial show.

47:00And for 17 minutes, we were able to call out the CEO of Visa, Al Kelly saying, what in the world are you doing? Why are you monetizing child sexual abuse? And it was just enough pressure that finally he actually made a personal statement. And he said, I'm a father, you know, we're going to withdraw our services from Pornhub. And so that's what happened. But other than him and Fabian, I think probably the porn stars and the porn performers were just very helpful allies that maybe people wouldn't normally think would be part of this, but they were essential in the fight against pornhead. I mean there was allies that were porn performers and porn producers and they came to me and we would talk for hours.

47:47And one of the things that they would share is their own struggle with trying to spend hours on PornHub every day trying to scour their PornHub and the tube sites, so the other sister sites, trying to take down their own stolen content. And when they were going through PornHub, they actually were finding so much illegal content and they were sending it to me. And so they were talking to it. Yeah, I suppose they are. They have an incentive to get content that they didn't consent to being uploaded from a monetization copyright standpoint, but you're observing professionals, adults, right that maybe even have a management company behind them and have preferential access to and porn hubs moderation team and stuff like that.

48:39They are struggling to keep on top of this game of whack em' all. So if you are 19 year old, X 15 year old girl trying to chase down your thing, trying to keep it from your parents, you don't want mum to find out, you don't want dad to find out, you're already ashamed, you're doing this on your own, you're spending all of this time, you're in your room, you're worrying, you're, you know, yeah, it's insane. It is absolutely insane. and you're absolutely right. They're, I mean, imagine the professionals who do this for a living, struggling and frustrated at the fact that every day they're having to scour these sites.

49:13And so, you know, the adult industry actually hated porn hub and the porn tube sites for what they did by allowing just unregulated, free porn to just flood the internet, which included so much of their copyrighted material. So they actually want age and consent verification when they're talking about kind of the professional corn industry and they've abided by that for many, many years. Like it has been the standard in studio produce you call it brick and mortar, corn valley, right? Like, you know, good old brick and multiple. The brick and mortar porn, like porn valley porn where, you know, they've actually had to abide by this law called the USC 2257.

49:57And basically in the United States and they abide by this internationally because they want to not be in trouble for distributing it in the US. And the DOJ can actually inspect a porn company's records and they are mandated to make sure that they had the ID of everybody who's in a scene to make sure that they're of age. And this was enacted in 1988. And the DOJ can inspect those records and if you don't have those records it's actually the criminal offense and you can be criminally charged for not having that. And they've accepted that and actually have, for the most part, abided by that. It's just with the advent of the internet and the free user generated porn site model that things have not been abided by with regard to the law.

50:47Now thinking about criminality, one of the things that's illegal is to distribute content under USC 2257. So, you know, I mentioned the download button. So, porn have had a download button on every single video. They were distributing that content from their servers onto the devices of people around the world, including illegal content, and they were not checking. So, they could also be held criminally liable for millions of violations of USC 2257. That's something to note as well. Have you ever got to sit down with the people behind porn hub? You've ever been in a room face to face with them?

51:24I have not. No. How do you imagine that would go? Well, I imagine it would never happen because one of the things that they did when I started this campaign to whole porn have accountable, one of the things they did was engage in attacks, smears, like they just tried to discredit the work that we were doing. They tried to discredit the trafficking hub movement, whatever ways that they could, they were doing that. I mean, they've done, they've, they've what we call a dirty tricks. Like, they've engaged in dirty tricks to try to silence. Instead of address it, they wanted to silence it because they knew it would be expensive.

52:02They actually made the changes that were necessary to stop the illegal content from being uploaded. So, no, they didn't want to engage. They wanted to silence. And they've done some pretty horrible things, not only to me, but, you know, victims have faced some real hardships as well. for speaking out. This episode is brought to you by Element. Summer hits different when you're actually hydrated. That tired, foggy, muscle crampy feeling, most people chalk up to heat or exhaustion. It might be electrolytes and plain water alone won't fix it, which is why element is such a game changer. It's a zero sugar electrolyte drink mix with sodium potassium and magnesium in the exact ratio your body needs.

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53:13That's drinklmnt .com slash modern wisdom. What has, has there ever been direct porn hub response to your work? Have you, has there ever been, have they interacted with that stuff directly? I mean, one of the things that they, are you talking about like their responses in the media or? Everything. I mean, have they, have they, have they, have they told you with private investigators, have they tried to counter sue for you accessing stuff? Well, they've never been, they've never tried to counter sue because here's the thing. If they were subject to legal discovery, I mean, they know that they're going to be in just hot water.

53:55And the problem with, if they were to engage in a defamation lawsuit, right, from the very beginning, they could have done that, but the problem is when you're telling the truth, I mean, that's the ultimate defense. And so, I mean, an absolutely 100 % everything that I've been saying, and it's not just me. I mean, really, this has been a movement of so many people, hundreds of organizations, hundreds of survivors, attorneys and lawmakers and law enforcement and lawyers and businessmen and so many people coming together that, no, they have not done that. But, yes, I've had faced, you know, And some of this cannot be tied directly to the company.

54:38Some of it can, and some of it has been. But yeah, there's been a lot of backlash from, you know, doxing, hacking, you know, online smear campaigns, media smear campaigns, letters being sent to my house with my children's names, middle names saying, we're watching you, you're gonna get somebody killed. even things like getting reported for child sexual abuse material distribution myself. So they, you know, people who we know are directly tied to PornHub put in fake police reports about me to actually get me investigated, but it didn't go well for them because obviously, you know, when they looked, they didn't find anything, but besides that, they did, they heard a lot about PornHub and so the police that were investigating me ended up becoming allies and saying, hey, we're on the same page.

55:32We're on the same team. And how can we help you? So that didn't go well for them. I have to imagine that the valuation arc of Pornhub looks like the saddest investing could have sold at the top opportunity of all time. Well, we know some numbers now. So it was a multi billion dollar corporation. And just Just a few weeks ago, some information was released from court documents where we understand that the site was sold and I put sold in quotation marks because it wasn't actually sold. It was just sold on paper, but it wasn't paid for. But the sale price was $400 million. So it has lost a significant amount of value as a company, for sure.

56:20Okay. I guess the question, Pornhub is the biggest largest mold that needs to be whacked. It's a shot across the bow of people who are maybe going to do something similar. It hopefully will be a massive deterrent. Presumably, there needs to be some changes in tech and or regulation to make this more scalable, sort of like scalable protection. I'm aware that what, you know, the purest approach would be, this is on the tube sites, they just need to be very strict with their moderation and so on and so forth. But we need to be realistic and kind of enable that, enable moderation to be made as easy as possible from a tech side and then increase the level of deterrence from a regulation side.

57:15It seems like kind of those are two important routes to go down. So what does the future look like with that? Yeah. So that is such an important question. And we have to think that way because we have to, at the end of the day, we need to make the internet a safer place. And yes, we need to hold these porn sites accountable. Like you said, the justice and the deterrence. But how do we at scale help prevent this across the many different user generated porn websites and other sites that you may not be porn websites, but per terms of service, they allow and they distribute user generated porn. And that is mandatory third party agent consent verification for every person in every video.

57:58But the scale solution, the at scale solution isn't just that governments implement this policy because Because these are international corporations, right? Every website is pretty much operating in every place, every country in the world. So if we have that policy in the US, well, we have to implement it in Canada and then we'll have to implement it in everywhere, which we should do. But I think that the at -scale solution is to have the financial institutions. So Visa, MasterCard, Discover, PayPal, say, we don't do business with user -generated porn sites that don't verify the age and consent of every individual in every video.

58:36And just like they have anti -money laundering policy, they can have anti -online exploitation policy. And we know that these websites are highly motivated by credit card company demands. I mean, that's exactly why porn have took down 91 % of the entire website was because of the credit card companies. So we know the power that they have. And when they enact that policy, it's instant and it's global. And I think that's going to be the most effective way to get all of these websites into compliance to start verifying agent consent. Yeah, in Texas, where I am at the moment, there's all manner of age verification stuff being debated right now.

59:20It seems like that's even in the news sort of at the moment, there's stuff bouncing back I can forth what is, you know, I have to assume restricting access as well. I haven't even talked about that. We literally haven't talked yet about, I'm what about exposing porn to people who are underage. That's like an entire other world too. That's the other world and that's the debate right now in Texas that's going on and there's this movement across the United States and in other countries. So we were seeing it in Europe. We're seeing in the UK and Canada where countries are understanding legislators and the population is understanding the harm that is being done to children through unfettered free access to these tube sites, to these porn sites and just to porn online.

1:00:07And so, yeah, there's age verification laws that have been enacted and right now in Texas, so they enacted mandatory age verification for users. So that's, you know, people who go to that site, they're going to have to verify their inadult to get onto the site. And PortHub obviously does not want this to happen. So they're shutting themselves down in states across the US that are implementing age verification for users in protest of this policy. And why? It's because it's expensive for them. They have to pay to get every user verified. But that's the cost of running a porn site and making sure that children aren't all over your site Both in back of the screen and in front of the screen because this is a form of second -hand sexual abuse for a child To have to access and witness what's happening on these sites and like I said so much of it is Legal so much of its illegal some of its illegal on the home pages of these sites and some of its illegal But it's pretend illegal So like there was a study done by the UK Journal of criminology in 2021 and they looked at 150 ,000 I think was the number of videos on the home pages of the most popular porn tube sites X videos X hamster porn hub these free porn sites and They were analyzing what's showing up to just anybody who may accidentally or intentionally land on the home page and they were finding that one in eight of the videos was depicting sexual violence.

1:01:39So, you know, some of this may be pretend like, you know, what I said, there's no way to tell what's rough sex and what's rape. There's no way to tell who's 15 and who's 18. But so much of this was also the teen content that children are witnessing as their sex education from as young as 8, 10 years old. I mean, I get messages all the time from especially men who say, I was addicted to the free porn tube sites when I was, even six years old, eight, ten, and they've been addicted ever since. And it's shaping their sexual template, right? This is where they're saying, what's normal? What is sex supposed to look like?

1:02:20What is it supposed to be like? And they're seeing so much of, you know, things that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy to have to witness that I've seen on these sites. I have to imagine that this is going to get even more complex as AI renderings of porn, whether it's stuff that's so lifelike that you can't tell. Is it ethical to put out non -consensual AI porn? because there hasn't been anybody's consent that has been crossed, but there is an ethical essence of what this potentially increases real -world harm by changing people's expectations. There's something kind of just the virtue of a person being represented in this way is also something that kind of should be protected.

1:03:17The ability to take photos of people and then recreate videos that aren't them, but like them, do you own your own likeness when it comes to this sort of protection? So, I mean, it is like the real front lines of this at the moment. Absolutely. And there was just a law that was passed in the US called the Take It Down Act, where now it's federally accrimed to upload even AI -generated, non -consensual contents. So this would be like deep fakes where people could have their face on Superimposed onto porn and it looks realistic and is being distributed. So, you know, that's illegal But also, you know what what's Important to that parents might not even realize when it comes to AI generated content like this is that now there's the ability for Predators abusers anybody to take an image even of a child.

1:04:15So if you have an open social media account in your posting pictures of your children, they could take that image of the child's face and put that into an AI -generated child sexual abuse material video and make it look like it's actual abuse of that child. And that's actually happening. Now, in certain countries, even the depiction of child sexual abuse is illegal. So in Australia, in the UK, in Canada, even if it is somebody over the age of 18 that is being used in a video and they look like they're a child, that's illegal. In the US, you know, that actual, and we're not talking about AI right now, but the depiction of a child by a person that is over the age of 18 is not illegal.

1:05:06That was made legal in a case called Ashcroft versus the free speech coalition, unfortunately. But in other countries, that's illegal. But yeah, there's this whole frontier of what's going to happen with all of this AI generated content. And I actually think that at least on websites that distribute user generated content, that by having agent consent verification policies in place, you can actually prevent that even the AI generated content from being just... Because that would have to cross the same... Yeah. So if you have somebody's face superimposed on a deep fake, how are you going to get the ID and actually have a verification of that person to verify their government issued ID and consent, it would stop that from being uploaded.

1:05:54That's an interesting single solution to multiple problems. Yeah. How do you think that use and monetize platforms, only fans admire me .vip, stuff like that? How do you think of that as contributing to this sort of ecosystem at the moment? There's a lot of moral panic around the normalization of regular people becoming sex workers online and all of the objectification that comes along with that. Do you think about, have you got concerns around that? How do you think about that sort of working into this world? Yeah, well, I know that we have seen some really concerning reports from the BBC multiple reports from the BBC and from other news outlets that have been investigating the subscription sites.

1:06:45And so some of those are the only fans model where they have actually had children and victims who have been abused and even that content under behind the paywall on the subscription sites. And even victims that I have had come forward to me that have been abused on PornHub or the tube sites of some of them have also been abused on only fans. I think that they've tightened up a lot of their regulation now. Again, the power of deterrence, right? Starting in 2020, when they saw what was happening with PornHub, I definitely know that there was a change in policies in the way that they were checking, who's in those videos, but it's not by any means it doesn't seem like it's perfect.

1:07:28And I think miners are being abused on the subscription sites. For sure, I know that that's true. Um, and so that, I mean, it's just a real concern that a lot of this again is self generated where it's not that a child is out there getting raped and having an abuser post their content. Children are now, it's very, become very normalized for children to be sharing nude images, not realizing the harm that that could do to them the way that the internet is forever. And there was a study done by Thorn. So Thorn is a big child protection organization in the United States. They focused on CSAM online child sexual abuse material.

1:08:12and they surveyed over a thousand children and they found that one in seven nine to twelve year olds said that they had shared a nude image or video of themselves with somebody else. One in seven. One in seven nine to twelve year olds had shared a nude image or video of themselves with somebody else. Holy fuck, I am so glad that I had a Nokia 3410 when I was 14 years old. like, you know what I mean? Yeah, I think the same thing. I do. I mean, it's so hard to be a child these days. I have a perilous mind field of bullshit. That's a question. I had, do you know Jeffrey Katzenberg is, he was the guy that founded DreamWorks with Steven Spielberg.

1:08:57He did Aladdin, he did the Lion King. He is now pushing this thing called Aura, a URA. And it is, I mean, it's, to be honest, it's pretty mind -blowing what it can do. It's a security app, I guess, but it allows parents, you just install it on your child's phone, and it uses sentiment analysis to work out whether kids are accessing or messaging stuff that isn't good if they receive adult images or send adult images or take photos of adult images. It sort of pings the parent immediately. So it doesn't restrict the use of the phone, all that much, It's not a overbearing level of supervision, but it keeps, it allows the parent to sort of be notified about what's going on.

1:09:41It can do stuff. It can even work out the mood of the kids based on the geolocation of where they've been. So it'll say, when you go to football for an hour, you type less hard. You hit the screen less aggressively and less aggressive screen hitting has been associated with lower cortisol, which means that you're typically in a better mood. on the nights when your child doesn't use their phone for half an hour before they go to bed, they stay in bed, they don't use their phone for a bigger window, which we can correlate with better quality sleep. It is the most, it turns a phone into kind of like a wearable, like a biometrically informed wearable device.

1:10:19The whole thing, I think pretty much everything's done locally, so it's not like they're sending this up to the cloud, security, so I just think, you know, these kinds of, I know there's always this arms race of tech versus tech. But that was the first time that I sat down and he had Harry is co -founder of this company. And they just kept on telling me more and more of this. Oh yeah, we can work out how hard they hit the screen is an indication of their level of autonomic arousal and whether that's stress. And so there are some cool. Amazing. Yeah, technology is the capability of technology to help solve the problems that technology creates is amazing.

1:11:03And I mean, there are even some apps and different programs now that for children's devices, where they can prevent even the filming, so the camera itself could detect whether it's filming a nude image or video and actually stop it from ever being filmed in the first place, if it's a child's phone. That kind of thing, I mean that level of prevention at that level. But yeah, I mean the ways that we can implement technology to help is amazing. But the harm that children face, the danger that children face online and young people and even adults, right, is incredible levels. And I think the more that we can talk about it at least have young people understand the consequences of Distributing content online and that yeah, it's nude images and videos, but it's also Things that we say online that we take it so lightly Sometimes even things we say or things we distribute online not realizing the internet can be forever And that maybe you'll regret saying that 10 years from now when you know your employer goes and there's a screenshot of you saying whatever But just to have more of a sense of, I don't know, I guess a gravity about the way that things do get immortalized online and the consequence of that, especially when it's a nude image in video, because there's sometimes there's so many people that think that, you know, it's fun right now, and I'm going to do this, but they don't realize that maybe they won't want those nude images in videos online in 10 years from now.

1:12:43but then it's forever. So informed consent, I think is a really important thing as well for people to not just consent, but understand exactly what they're consenting to when they're sharing those kinds of images online. There is a weird type of, it's I think in the history of ideas, it's called conceptual inertia. So you can imagine there is a time when it's proposed that maybe the entire solar system in universe doesn't orbit around the earth, perhaps the earth orbits around the sun. And this is a total heresy, and we can't believe that this is the truth. And then, you know, evidence continues to come forward.

1:13:25And you can say somebody proposes a thing that most people aren't sure whether they agree with, and then slowly maybe evidence or data or science catches up with this and they go, okay, this person wasn't talking bullshit. This is actually legit. This is the way it But there is still this huge lag, and it even happened with that revolution, this huge lag for just most people to use the right language. And given that we're talking about the internet being around for two decades, sort of widespread porn being around for one, one and a half, something like that, and you think, okay, is Did any surprise that cultural norms and expectations and understandings of behavior and the way the parents communicate with their kids that these things are taking time to catch up and you know, it's people like you that are applying a nitro boost, like turbocharged thing to hey, these are all of the areas, these are all of the different bits of weakness and vectors is where shit can go awry and don't fall down that fisher over there and we need to be worried about this thing.

1:14:33And yeah, I mean, you're a trooper. You're a real hero for putting this stuff together, I think, but God knows what would have happened if it hadn't been for you. And it certainly seems like the hashtag in the movement that you put behind this is definitely expedited this process. So yeah. Well, thank you. I always want to pass that on because I know that shout out to the survivors who have spoken up and without their voices, none of this would have been possible in their bravery to speak up and to share their stories, their powerful, powerful stories. And so many of them have done that at risk.

1:15:11It's hard to talk about your own exploitation. But they have done it because they don't want this to happen to others. And so I just, yeah, thank you for that. And I would love to pass. They've got a powerful ally in you. My intention is to spend the rest of my life not being the subject of an investigation that you do. I do not want to be on the other side. I'm sure you will not. I guarantee that. Look, tell people where they can check out your stuff online and support you, do all of the things. Of course. Yeah. So, many people are still signing the Trafficking Hub petition and it is still a powerful awareness tool and you know it is a way that so many people are getting this message so you can go to traffickinghubpetition .com and sign that and join others.

1:16:01You can also so I wrote a book about this story that was released last summer called Take Down Inside the Fight to Shut Down Porn Hub and you can buy that book and all proceeds 100 % of author proceeds from the sale of the book go to the cause, go to the Justice Defense Fund, an organization that I founded. And in the book, like you will go through this journey with me. It's written, a lot of people are calling it a true crime thriller, where, you know, it's first person, present tense. And from that moment, in February 1st at night, when I tested the upload system, you go on the journey with me all the way through.

1:16:36And you will understand this issue not only in your head, but you'll understand it in your heart. You will experience it with me. And so hopefully you'll be inspired by that. So you can do that at takedownbook .com. And you can join what we created called Team Take Down. So this is a team of dedicated activists that are saying, look, yes, we're gonna take down PornHub, but we're gonna work to take down illegal content across the internet to make the internet and actually a safer place for our children, for generations to come. So you can do that. And my organization is called the Justice Defense Fund.

1:17:09And you can go to JusticeDefenseFund .org. So you are doing God's work. I appreciate you very much. Thank you. I appreciate you too. Thank you. Thank you