A lawsuit filed by more victims of the sex trafficking operation claims that Pornhub’s moderation staff ignored reports of their abuse videos.
Sixty-one additional women are suing Pornhub’s parent company, claiming that the company failed to take down videos of their abuse as part of the sex trafficking operation Girls Do Porn. They’re suing the company and its sites for sex trafficking, racketeering, conspiracy to commit racketeering, and human trafficking.
The complaint, filed on Tuesday, includes what it claims are internal emails obtained by the plaintiffs, represented by Holm Law Group, between Pornhub moderation staff. The emails allegedly show that Pornhub had only one moderator to review 700,000 potentially abusive videos, and that the company intentionally ignored repeated reports from victims in those videos.
The damages and restitution they seek amounts to more than $311,100,000. They demand a jury trial, and seek damages of $5 million per plaintiff, as well as restitution for all the money Aylo, the new name for Pornhub’s parent company, earned “marketing, selling and exploiting Plaintiffs’ videos in an amount that exceeds one hundred thousand dollars for each plaintiff.”
The plaintiffs are 61 more unnamed “Jane Doe” victims of Girls Do Porn, adding to the 60 that sued Pornhub in 2020 for similar claims.
Girls Do Porn was a federally-convicted sex trafficking ring that coerced young women into filming pornographic videos under the pretense of “modeling” gigs. In some cases, the women were violently abused. The operators told them that the videos would never appear online, so that their home communities wouldn’t find out, but they uploaded the footage to sites like Pornhub, where the videos went viral—and in many instances, destroyed their lives. Girls Do Porn was an official Pornhub content partner, with its videos frequently appearing on the front page, where they gathered millions of views.
read more: https://www.404media.co/girls-do-porn-victims-sue-pornhub-for-300-million/
I still take great issue with the equivalence of deriving sexual pleasure from watching women being sexually abused, inadvertently or not, and me using a cell phone. As I’ve said elsewhere in this thread, my cell phone I own to access society. It serves a purpose beyond child labor. I’m not deriving sexual pleasure from watching child labor or unethical companies operating. In the case of watching porn of a woman being raped and masturbating to it, the rape is the commodity you’re consuming. The rape is the thing that you’re getting off to.
So, if we are openly aware that these videos exist and that you will come across them while masturbating to porn - then you have accepted that you will masturbate to a woman being raped. It is acceptable that that happens so that you can continue to masturbate to porn. You do not have to watch porn. Porn has only existed for the last 130 years based on our present knowledge of early works. That means that only for the last 130 years have sex acts being performed on women been recorded, and thusly only for the last 130 years has deriving pleasure from a woman being raped in a video format been a possibility. The entirety of human history this has not existed and we have all gotten off just fine, many people continue to get off just fine today no porn involved. Watching porn is a choice, it is a want and not a need. You have to accept that you will get off to sexual abuse at some point in order to continue to consume it. That shouldn’t be acceptable to anyone who has any actual empathy for women. In essence the least that someone could say is they will go as far out of their way as possible to only consume content they are absolutely certain is not depicting sexual abuse. If you’re not researching the actors you watch, the studio that produced it, the film crew that worked on it, then you’re openly accepting that youre going to get off to porn depicting sexual abuse and that it’s okay for that to happen and not worth going to every length possible to ensure it doesn’t.
It’s just telling again and again that men see “inadvertently masturbating to a woman being raped” as equivalent in some manner to “using a cell phone who’s resources were gathered unethically”. And somehow the nuance that owning a cell phone for other reasons is not the same as consuming rape porn. It isn’t, no matter how hard you try to frame it that way it isn’t and never will be. Just to reiterate, so that we hopefully don’t go in circles on the same point again, in the example of the cell phone the child labor or unethical business practices is not what I am consuming. In the example of accidentally getting off to a woman being raped the rape itself is what is being consumed, a direct video of that sexual abuse is the commodity that is being consumed.
I understand that you are frustrated, but in my opinion you are using a lot of black/white arguments. Let’s try to work this out, as I think definition differences and perspective are confusing things.
A. I’m not saying porn is the only way out, I’m saying it’s an outlet of existing (sexual) urges. Watching porn is as necessary as eating meat, both are not needed to survive and have not been accessible to people in the past per se. It’s an urge you can act on, purely for pleasure. Just like toying with one’s new iPhone can be considered a pleasure, while we might want to look for a more sustainable alternative that is not build on workforce abuse of all ages. But indeed, not all phones are bad, there is nuance and most people will need one. Just like not all food is bad, but we’ve got some pretty nasty stuff done to our fellow-earthlings. But there is nuance.
B. Porn can be consensual stimulating graphic imagery, for example in the form of a couple sharing part of their love life, a photoshoot of a nude model, but it can also be found in ancient paintings and has been common in books as old as time itself as texts (figuratively speaking). This distinction is important in the argument.
Perhaps we need to define the term porn better; as I understand it you mean the non-consensual form of real people in sexual situations in media.
And if I understand you correctly, you say that if you look at any of the forms of porn I’ve described above than you are masturbating to rape. But that’s strong generalizing in my opinion.
What I do get though, is the part when what you find online is questionable and you can’t see the difference. I’d say let’s rule out all the porn that does not have an approval certificate of actual consent by an official authority.
C. 130 years ago iPhones did not exist either, the context made them useful, but I think I get what you mean with that argument. Just to keep things in balance, perhaps the amount of sexual abuse was higher as well then, as there was less of an outlet for sexual frustration / less regulation. I don’t think we can get factual records on that, as sex has always been a bit of a taboo subject. What I’m sure of though is that sexual imagery has been around for far longer than 130 years.
D. In my opinion the Fairphone alternative (fairtrade, relatively expensive, sustainable) to an iPhone now (forced -child- labor, relatively cheap, marketed as 2 year object) is on an abstract level like the nuance discussion between consensual porn and nonconsensual. Most people do not know the difference even after some research. It is both extremely hurtful for real people, downright sadistic even, hurtful for the environment and just surfing in a wave of lustful dopamine. In both cases most people do not care enough to pay a bit extra, even do research.
In both cases people might throw the subjects under the bus because they do not see the relevance, while they’re both supported by extreme human suffering in the bad scenario. They do not want to see similarities between suffering if it does not support their story.
And I say yes, there is pain, and it is gutwrechingly terrible. So are humans, I despise all of us for existing. But the truth is just that we are bad at looking at our own flaws and good at pointing out others. We still want things to change? We must work together and that starts with nuance.
I acknowledge the downsides of porn, I do not ask of you to acknowledge an upside, only hope to instill a bit of nuance in the definitions we’re talking about.
I think that’s where most of this triggers emotions and confusion.
Again, I’m not cumming over the child labor that made my phone. Whenever you inadvertently jerk off to porn that depicts sexual abuse you are deriving sexual pleasure from watching someone be raped. There is no comparison here that is adequate. That is what you are doing. Besides literally in person jacking off to a woman being raped in front of you, there is no adequate comparison.
Sexual imagery has been around forever and I am not attacking sexual imagery. I am saying that jacking off to a drawing has a 0 percent chance of being a video recording of an actual real woman being raped.
No matter how you slice it you have to be okay with the chance that you’re doing that to watch porn. On some level every person who watches it has accepted that, or else they don’t even think about whether or not what they’re watching is consensual. I couldn’t tell you which is worse here.
Its not some hypothetical either if you’ve consumed porn regularly for years then you’ve pretty well definitely done that at some point. The mere thought that I could be witnessing that kills any and all desire to engage with it, and I would say it should for anyone. The fact that it doesn’t means, as I said, a form of acceptance that you may be doing that. Which isn’t okay like its not okay to do that.
There may be slight evidence that porn mitigates some kinds of violent offenses, but not nearly as much as having an egalitarian society that instills the concept of consent from birth in all people would.
Thank you for your patience with me. I think I understand you better now, as I sense you might have added some additional perspectives to my views. I’ll let it simmer in my mind a bit. Thanks again.