I'm Asking You to Help Someone... · 11:26pm Aug 14th, 2020
I try to write stories about heroes – heroes of great crises, and heroes of little, everyday problems. Given that this is one of the most central themes of my writing, I can only assume that many of you read my work because that appeals to you.
Today, I’m going to offer you a moment for some of that everyday heroism. To do it, I have to share something unpleasant. Something I truly don’t want to talk about.
But I do talk about it. I talk about it because it’s real, and it’s evil, and it’s something that’s able to survive because people are willing to look the other way.
I don’t share this with you in a religious context, or a political one, or any other such formalized fashion. I share it as one human being who’s seen too much of other human beings being treated like shit. I share it because, if the only way I can do something about it now is to spread awareness and share a petition, then that’s what I’ll do.
What I have to say is not something that many of you will want to hear – it may sound too unbelievable to be real. But, I assure you, the evidence is overwhelming.
(Content note: from this point forward, this blog discusses sex trafficking; no graphic details, but discretion is advised.)
Human trafficking is a quiet epidemic which enables the terrorization and exploitation of thousands of innocent people every year. Many of them are children.
Most heinous of all forms of trafficking is sex trafficking, especially the sex trafficking of children. Yet it happens under the auspices of “legal” companies which have covered up and enabled abuse for years.
Well, one company in particular is having an increasingly hard time sweeping it under the rug. Pornhub, (the largest and most popular porn site in the world), has been caught repeatedly hosting, enabling, and profiting from videos of child rape, sex trafficking, and other forms of non-consensual porn exploiting women and minors.
This is in large part because Pornhub has no system in place to verify reliably the age or consent of those featured in the content which Pornhub hosts and profits from.
In fact, all that is needed to upload pornography onto Pornhub is an email address. Just an email address. No government-issued ID is required, not even to become “verified” with the official-looking blue checkmark that gives the false impression of legitimacy.
This has led to such horrific cases as the 15-year old girl who, after missing for a year, was found when her mother was tipped off that she had been in 58 Videos of rape and sexual assault, all featured on Pornhub. This is the most recent in a long string of abuses which the site has both enabled and profited from (Internet Watch Foundation found over 118 child rape cases in a recent investigation, and the lack of real oversight from Pornhub’s “verification” suggests this is only the tip of the iceberg). Though the trafficker and rapist are now facing felony charges, Pornhub itself has so far dodged responsibility.
One of the groups fighting against this injustice is Traffickinghub: a campaign founded by Laila Mickelwait and powered by the anti-trafficking organization Exodus Cry. It’s a non-religious, non-partisan effort supported by activists from 192 countries and over 300 organizations. It is dedicated to holding Pornhub executives accountable for the exploitation they have enabled and profited from.
The Traffickinghub campaign is currently gathering signatures on a petition to combat this trafficking. You can access this petition and find out more specifics about the acts which Pornhub has been complicit in by following this link.
I’d tell you what they’ve done myself but… frankly, it makes me sick to type it.
If you don’t want to read it, I don’t blame you. You can just sign the petition (it doesn’t require you to fill out all contact information, FYI).
You can also watch this video for a quick summary of what Pornhub has been caught doing. It’s not graphic but, well, viewer discretion is still advised. Just hearing the numbers is plenty disturbing.
This isn’t about politics. It’s not just a religious issue. It’s not about Right or Left. It’s about making sure little kids don’t have this shit happen to them. It’s about making sure the ones responsible can’t get away with it.
Please sign. Please share. Please spread the word. Don’t just let this happen quietly.
If you have been victimized on Pornhub or any Mindgeek owned website and want help click here. Media inquiries can be directed to Lailamickelwait@traffickinghub.com
I also know that many people decide to quit porn for reasons ranging from pragmatism, to personal and relational health, to sexual wellness, to moral objections, and any number of other motives. If you or someone you know feel this way or want to know more about the subject, I recommend Fight the New Drug. For the best accountability and filtration software on the market, I recommend Covenant Eyes.
There's no reason not to sign, so, done.
Done my friend.
Consider me in.
I had no idea, this is terrible beyond words. Signing.
um...I just clicked on the link to the petition, and McAfee WebAdvisor pulled up that the site might be risky, is this something that I should be concerned about?
Would it be okay if I posted this blog onto FB/Twitter?
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I'm not sure why it pulled up a McAfee alert for you; the link is secure for me, but sometimes different browsers/security are weird about it. You can just search "traffickinghub petition" on google and the organization should come up for traffickinghubpetition.com; the petition is easy to find once you get to the website.
As to sharing the blog, feel free to copy/paste the text and note that it was originally posted by someone who preferred to remain anonymous. I don't want the link to my blog posted. If the text doesn't fit for Twitter, you can find Laila Mickelwait (founder of traffickinghub) and share her content, as she says all this more succinctly. Thank you!
I usually refrain from commenting as I feel like I have nothing of value to say and I'm still not completely comfortable with English. This, however, is going to be one of those unusual exceptions as I think this is an important topic that should be discussed, addressed, and thoroughly explored. For those reasons, I offer you my humbly dissenting opinion.
By that I mean that I'm, to be honest, pretty conflicted and somewhat skeptical about the claims and demand made by the petition.
On the one hand, what has happened is absolutely horrible. Horrible to a point that simply is beyond what I'm capable of picturing. And something should be done ASAP.
On the other hand, I don't think it's reasonable to specifically hold Pornhub accountable for any of it. Or at the very least I don't find the case presented for doing so to be very convincing.
Let's start with what I believe is my most uncontroversial objection: verification marks.
(I) The petition describes the mark as a "trusty blue checkmark that makes everything seem a-OK." It proceeds to question the ease with which one can acquire it describing the process as "all I would need to do is send a photo of myself holding a paper with my username. That’s it."
It seems to me like the petition seeks to imply that the verification mark is some form of endorsement or legitimization by Pornhub of the users that have them. Which is, I believe, why they emphasized the fact that the abducted 15-year-old's account was verified. They see it as proof of the company's alleged complicity in the heinous act committed against the girl.
The problem with all this is that the verification mark has nothing to do with a companies approval of the actions of a given individual. Its purpose is another and a pretty simple one at that: it seeks to combat impersonation by confirming that the user is who they claim to be. How do you confirm such a thing? Well... by having the person creating the account send you a photo of them holding a paper with their user name. Simple. Efficient. Effective.
In the case of the 15-year-old, for example, the verification mark was correct. The girl was, indeed, behind the account in question. The problem wasn't that she had a verified account, that system worked perfectly well, the problem was that she was forced to have an account and successfully uploaded in the first case.
Which gets me to my second, not exactly objection this time, more like... concern? skepticism?: the video uploading process.
(II) One of the big contentions that the petition has is the ease with which one can upload. Saying that "all that is needed to upload pornography onto Pornhub is an email address. No government-issued ID is required."
My issue here is that I can't fathom how a website that, according to the video posted, sees six million new videos every year could reliably check that everyone participating in said videos is a consenting adult when international law enforcing agencies, with their vast coffers of resources, haven't managed to do so.
For example, following the petition's implied suggestion of using government-issued ID's, users would need to explicitly disclose to Pornhub who all participants in the video are and provide their respective documentation, information which Pornhub would then have to somehow verify because the uploader could, you know, simply lie. (Or, assuming that we are dealing with the earthly inferno that is organized human trafficking, not even that. How hard could it be, after all, for such groups to convincingly forge or 'legitimately acquire' ID's testifying to their actors' legal age? especially when you could use, idk, Somali ID's, or something like that.) Assuming Pornhub successfully manages that situation, even then, we can't know whether all participants are consenting ones! Another enormous problem.
(III) Knowing what has just been said I believe it's possible to reasonably defend the idea that all user-driven porn sites should be prohibited until such a system can be implemented, unfeasible as it might be. And I might agree with that. But the petition isn't "Shut Down Pornhub", it is "Shut Down Pornhub and Hold Its Executives Accountable for Aiding Trafficking". Which... why? It seems to me like this is a legally-grey area that demands attention and probably regulation, not an unambiguously criminal one that requires an immediate crackdown and arrests. I mean, is what Pornhub does even illegal in the first place?
That leads me to my next objection: Is Pornhub really the problem here?
(IV) The petition claims that "58 (...) videos of [a 15-year-old girl] rape and sexual abuse were discovered on Pornhub." However, the Newsweek news article they provide as a source only says that she "had appeared in 58 porn videos" without specifying a particular site. They, instead, generally say that:
"The girl had been spotted on Periscope, Modelhub, Snapchat and Pornhub among other various sites (...) according to a Sun-Sentinel report"
Said Sun-Sentinel report similarly states that:
"Police investigated and discovered nearly 60 pornographic videos of the Sunrise girl posted on Periscope, Pornhub, Modelhub, Snapchat and other websites, according to an arrest report."
Am I saying that the petition is lying? No (it could be an honest misunderstanding), I'm only mentioning it as a way of highlighting something. Why should Pornhub be singled out for what looks like a systemic situation? Why not Snapchat instead? Or any of the other mentioned websites?
It would be reasonable to focus on Pornhub had the petition merely used them to attract attention to a wider issue. But it doesn't seek that. It specifically and clearly demands that Pornhub and its execs be punished. So... why not Snapchat's? Why not Modelhub's, Periscope's, etc? Aren't they all complicit in human trafficking?
I know that they cite hundreds of different examples as evidence in their case against Pornhub. But what's the point of shutting down this particular website if sex traffickers simply move to a different one? This question isn't entirely rhetorical, my proposed answer is simple: there isn't one. The problem, as they present it, seems to me to be one that affects the entire user-generated porn world and should be addressed as such.
Actually, isn't YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, etc. all struggling with similar situations? At least I would consider profiting from ad revenue provided by illegal and immoral content to be somewhat similar. Which drives to the debate of accountability in general. Is a platform legally responsible for the content its users upload? That's a debate raging in the highest courts of the land right now and a complex moral issue on its own. Like, is the US Postal Service responsible for the drugs it unknowingly distributes every year? Should it be?
My point, to be perfectly clear, isn't that Pornhub and their execs shouldn't be punished, perhaps they should. But rather simply that it isn't obvious that they should. And demanding that a company be disbanded and their owners 'held accountable' (I assume jailed considering the severity of the alleged crime) shouldn't be done lightly.
(V) Finally, I'd like to end with a... different perspective on the topic that occurred to me while writing this. Hasn't Pornhub been a force of good in the battle against sex trafficking? For example, Pornhub, and the other websites, were neither responsible nor complicit in the kidnap of the repeatedly mentioned 15-year-old, while they seem to have, however, directly helped in finding her. If it wasn't for her kidnapers uploading the 58 porn videos, who know for how long she would have remained in their power.
Couldn't we utilize Porn websites to catch the low-hanging fruit of the illegal pornography world? Shouldn't we at least consider it?
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I give you 100% approval to be comfortable with English.
Sure, I'm always up for setting summat on fire.
Signed.
I've been fighting my addiction for a long time. Longer than I care to admit. I despise porn and what it does to a person. I hate that companies like PornHub profit off of exploiting children and women, and pay for it with the wallets of men so hooked that they can't get away.
I'll sign, because I know what porn has done to me, I hate what it does to other people, and I want it to burn.
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I understand not wanting to believe that it’s true, but allow me to offer some counterpoints. For context, I am not some random guy bringing this up without close knowledge of the situation – in my line of work, I have worked with people from groups like Homeland Security and the National Center on Sexual Exploitation to promote awareness campaigns and legislation on ending human trafficking. With that in mind, consider this:
If a company is going to profit from people producing content that is inherently vulnerable to exploitation, they have a responsibility to have safeguards in place to protect those people from exploitation. If those safeguards are found to not work well, that company has a responsibility to improve them. Pornhub has no safeguards, no oversight, and no intent to have either. This makes them morally and legally culpable for the sexual exploitation which they have been proven to enable and profit from on many different counts.
It must also be considered that one of the most searched video types on Pornhub (for ten consecutive years) is teen porn, and this has been increasingly searched alongside violent and exploitive words. We live at a time when sexual violence and sexual assault are growing increasingly frequent; such crimes are often committed against minors. There has also been a massive growth in demand for child sex trafficking victims. Pornography which glamorizes sexual violence, sexual assault, and in particular violent sex or sexual assault of minors contributes directly to creating a culture that normalizes sexual assault and sexual assault against children. Any company that promotes and profits from this kind of content thus also contributes to human trafficking, sexual violence, and the exploitation of vulnerable people (especially minors).
For more on this, I suggest you read through some of the links in the petition talking about this, as well as looking into the work of groups like Exodus Cry (https://exoduscry.com/), the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (https://endsexualexploitation.org/), and Shared Hope International (https://sharedhope.org/the-problem/what-is-sex-trafficking/).