“Why does Canada host a company that inflicts rape videos on the world?”, NYT exposes Canada’s tolerated child-abuse
By Samuel Rz, founding editor at Westphalian Times. Make sure to subscribe to my substack below to get live breaking news and analyses in your mailbox. Follow Westphalian Times for honest journalism.
A shocking report by Nicholas Kristof, investigative journalist and twice a Pulitzer Prize winner shows the dark side of Pornhub, a pornographic content website operated by the porn-tech conglomerate Mindgeek, located in Montreal.
The report details numerous instances of child pornography, revenge porn, rape, and degrading footage from hidden cameras published on the website.
In what is becoming increasingly common, a mother found footage of her daughter who had been missing for over a year on Pornhub. Her daughter, aged 16, appeared on 58 videos.
Another video hosted on Pornub showed the sexual assault of a 14-year old and was reported by a classmate to the authorities.
Instances of teens who had their intimate footage exposed on Pornub for millions to see are too numerous to tell. Once the original footage is removed from the website, it is often too late. Pornhub allows users to download videos directly from the website.
Victims of abuse caught on video or revenge porn often find themselves scrambling to get the videos off of the internet with no success. Uploaded once, the videos often reappear over time.
Pornhub fails at properly monitoring and removing inappropriate content. Facebook removed 12.4 million images related to child exploitation over a period of three months last year. Twitter closed 264,000 accounts in a half-year for engaging in the sexual exploitation of children.
Pornhub noted that the Internet Watch Foundation reported only 118 instances of child abuse on their platform over a span of three years. As Kristof explains, this figure is misleading:
The Internet Watch Foundation couldn’t explain why its figure for Pornhub is so low. Perhaps it’s because people on Pornhub are inured to the material and unlikely to report it. But if you know what to look for, it’s possible to find hundreds of apparent child sexual abuse videos on Pornhub in 30 minutes. Pornhub has recently offered playlists with names including “less than 18,” “the best collection of young boys” and “under- – age.”
A petition titled: “Shut Down Pornhub and Hold Its Executives Accountable for Aiding Trafficking” has now gathered over 2.1 million signatures.
As Kristof points out, there is a clear contradiction between the “feminist” image that Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau tries to promote and the fact that his country is host to a child trafficking hub:
“Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada calls himself a feminist and has been proud of his government’s efforts to empower women worldwide. So a question for Trudeau and all Canadians: Why does Canada host a company that inflicts rape videos on the world?”
Pornhub lacks proper content moderation to filter out inappropriate content. There are about 80 moderators working for Mindgeek (Pornhub and other sites) worldwide. In contrast, Facebook hires over 15,000 moderators.
There are approximately 1.36 million new hours of video uploaded on Pornhub per year. With 80 moderators for all their websites, there is no wonder that so much sexual trafficking material makes its way to the public through this platform.
By simply requesting the identity of video publishers on their platform to be verified, Pornhub could eliminate a large portion of the trafficking content on its website.
With proper identification, local authorities could be alerted when trafficking content is submitted to the platform.
Repealing section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in the United States would also make Pornhub liable for trafficking content published on its website. Repealing section 230 has been one of President Trump’s main policy objectives.
Earlier today, Mastercard and Visa announced they are investigating their ties to Pornhub and Mindgeek over the child abuse report from the Times.
More details will come.