One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait | EP 503

A woman who has been combating sex trafficking for 18 years describes how she became involved in fighting the porn industry and the tactics she has employed to hold the online platform PornHub accountable for the distribution of illegal content, such as child sexual abuse and rape. She emphasizes the importance of verifying identities and consent in the porn industry, arguing that this is essential to making the internet a safer place.

Porn Industry and Sex Trafficking

• 00:03:41 The speaker has been combating the injustice of sex trafficking for 18 years and began investigating the connection between the porn industry and sex trafficking over 10 years ago. She explains that the large porn industry is dominated by a single company that owns a virtual monopoly on the industry, called MindGeek, which rebranded itself as ILO in 2021.

PornHub and Illegal Content

• 00:04:39 The speaker describes how she became aware of the illegal content on PornHub, including child sexual abuse and rape, after hearing stories in the media and conducting her own investigation. She uploaded a video of her keyboard to the site and found it was live in under 10 minutes, confirming that the site was not properly vetting its content.

Porn Industry Business Model

• 00:10:10 The speaker argues that the porn industry's business model, based on free user-generated porn, leads to the proliferation of illegal content. The company makes money through advertising and premium subscriptions, which have been shown to include illegal content, like videos of a 12-year-old boy being raped.

Lack of Accountability

• 00:11:59 The speaker discusses the lack of accountability in the porn industry, citing the example of PornHub hiring only 30 moderators to review millions of videos uploaded every day. These moderators are pressured to approve content quickly, leading to the spread of illegal content.

Impact of Pornography on Culture

• 00:12:15 The speaker discusses the potentially damaging effects of pornography on individuals and society. She argues that pornography use can accelerate into more and more extreme content, similar to the behavior of serial killers. She also notes that pornography has increasingly invaded popular culture, starting with the rise of Playboy and continuing to more explicit magazines and eventually the internet.

Desensitization and Psychological Effects

• 00:18:01 The speaker argues that exposure to violent and sexually explicit pornography can desensitize viewers to real-world violence. She compares this phenomenon to the process of reducing anxiety by exposing someone to their fears, suggesting that prolonged exposure to violent porn may reduce people's revulsion to violence.

Verification and Consent

• 00:44:25 The speaker believes the solution to the problem of illegal content in the porn industry is to implement mandatory third-party verification of age and consent for every individual involved in the production and distribution of user-generated porn. She argues that this would eliminate anonymity and make it more difficult for illegal content to be uploaded.

Enforcement and Financial Institutions

• 00:48:34 The speaker believes that the legal solutions to address illegal content in the porn industry are already in place, but are not being enforced. She advocates for government legislation to enforce existing laws and for financial institutions to implement policies that prohibit transactions with websites that do not verify age and consent.

Personal Journey

• 00:49:40 The speaker discusses her personal journey that led her to fight sex trafficking and the porn industry. She describes her time in the Hollywood scene and how she experienced a period of personal darkness before finding purpose and meaning through her work combating sex trafficking.