Pornhub executives in Montreal were well aware of the presence of child pornography on the popular XXX site and refrained from reporting it to authorities until April 2020.
• Also read: A regulatory loophole that is still being exploited on the PornHub site today?
Emails, messages on teams and excerpts from extrajudicial interrogations released in September and viewed by our investigative office shed disturbing light on the way Quebec porn giant MindGeek’s flagship website was managed until recently.
They were used as evidence in a California class action lawsuit against the company.
The lawsuit was brought on behalf of a woman whose videos, recorded when she was 16, ended up on Pornhub without her knowledge.
“For more than a decade, MindGeek knowingly received and distributed child pornography and profited financially from child sex trafficking,” the lawsuit says.
- Investigative journalist Cybèle Olivier discusses child pornography and violence on porn sites like Pornhub QUB radio:
No report
According to an out-of-court interview, in November 2019, when MindGeek management discovered child pornography on Pornhub, it did not report it to law enforcement.
In this excerpt from an interview, a Mindgeek executive says the company did not report child pornography to authorities in November 2019. Pacer court documents
“We have started reporting to NCMEC [le National Center for Missing & Exploited Children aux États-Unis] in April 2020,” said Lauren Herbert Franklin, head of security and policy enforcement at MindGeek, during the interview.
An audit was then conducted to classify content present on Pornhub as CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material), he said.
Pressure
The documents portray a company primarily concerned with its profitability and aware that stricter rules will impact traffic on Pornhub.
“The problem is that management doesn’t want the rules to be applied as written,” complained a Teams moderator in June 2020.
A moderator writes in English on Teams that management does not want the rules to be applied as written. Pacer court documents
In another message submitted as evidence in April 2020, a moderator specifically asked a colleague not to copy the head of product management in child pornography reports.
“He doesn’t want to know how many PCs [vidéos de pornographie juvénile] “We ignored it for five years?” he replies.
A MindGeek executive said in June 2020 that he was in favor of approaching child protection organizations, but advised not to draw too much attention “until the house is in order.”
SCREENSHOT parlvu.parl.gc.ca Feras Antoon during his testimony before the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Protection of Personal Data and Ethics. SCREENSHOT parlvu.parl.gc.ca Screenshot
“Our regulations […] “Do not seem to correspond to our practices,” he admits.
The allegations raised in the appeal have not yet been proven in court.
In collaboration with Nicolas Brasseur.
Archive photo, QMI Agency
700,000 PROBLEMATIC VIDEOS, JUST ONE PERSON REVIEWING THEM
Pornhub took the presence of child pornography so little seriously that 700,000 videos were identified as potentially illegal content and only one person was responsible for reviewing them.
According to an internal email from May 2020, as of May 2020, as many as 706,425 active videos on Pornhub had received between one and fifteen reports from users.
Rape, presence of minors, incest or even sodomy were among the reasons that justified reporting, according to the website’s terms of use.
However, due to chronic staff shortages, only videos that received more than 15 reports were monitored, with 50 to 500 videos reviewed per day.
According to an email, a single person across the company was responsible for reviewing these videos five days a week.
In particular, this email explains that a single person is responsible for checking reports on a daily basis. Pacer court documents
panic
The documents filed reveal a climate of panic within the company as pressures mount in 2020.
In May 2020, credit card company Mastercard began asking questions after receiving reports of child pornography itself. Visa followed in June.
“I don’t want to mention that the threshold at which we manually review flagged videos is 15 flags,” the company’s chief product officer wrote in a May 27, 2020, email.
In this email from May, someone seems to have pointed out that a video that has been reported 15 times will never be reviewed. Pacer court documents
“It is obvious that we are trying to hide that this is a minimum number,” he wrote in another email.
Furthermore, it was only in December 2020 that the company decided to allow unverified users to upload content to Pornhub, following the publication of a shocking article in the New York Times. In a Teams message, a senior manager then emphasized that it was a difficult decision because the number of uploads could drop from 25,000 to just “maybe” 2,000 per day.
DISTURBING EXTRACTS
“She [Mastercard] We understand that we do not verify the age of user-generated content [UGC en anglais: user-generated content]» – Email in May 2020
Mindgeek’s CEO stated in May 2020, in response to an inquiry from MasterCard, that he was aware that the company does not verify the age of participants in user-generated content. Screenshot of court documents
“Older bugs are now being found and many will continue to be found in the backlog of 700,000 videos” – Email written in June 2020 by a member of a moderation team
“My fear […] “is that we made it seem like we were trying to exploit a popular video with a lot of views” – CEO of MindGeek in May 2020
“Hey, I’m sorry, could you make sure you don’t CC me? [NOM CAVIARDÉ] for CSAM reporting [Child Sexual Abuse Material]?» – an employee in an exchange on Teams in April 2020
In this English-language exchange on Teams, a moderator asks a colleague not to CC a Mindgeek vice president for reports of child pornography. Pacer court documents
PORNHUB INTO A FEW DATES
2007: Launch of the Pornhub site where users can upload XXX content.
2013: The company that owns the website changes its name to MindGeek. A German, Fabian Thylmann, sold his shares to Montrealers Feras Antoon and David Tassillo.
2020: Publishing a shocking article in the New York Times in December that the Pornhub site was littered with videos of women being raped, women being filmed without their knowledge, and minors being filmed without their knowledge.
2021: MindGeek CEO Feras Antoon’s magnificent home under construction north of Montreal burns down due to arson.
The $19 million home of Feras Antoon, the former CEO of MindGeek, which manages the Pornhub site, was the target of a fire in Montreal in April 2021. Archive photo, QMI Agency
“Older bugs are now being found and many will continue to be found in the 700,000 video backlog” – Email written in June 2020 by a member of a moderation team. In an email dated May 27, 2020, he then emphasizes that it was a difficult decision, because the number of uploads could increase from 25,000 to “maybe” 2000 per day.
2021-2022: Multiple lawsuits have been filed against the company in Canada and the United States related to alleged illegal content.
2023: MindGeek was sold in March to a fund called Ethical Capital Partners. In August the company was renamed Aylo.
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