Latest / Drawn of History / Laila Mickelwait _ This Past Weekend w_ Theo Von _559(M4A_128K)

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Laila Mickelwait _ This Past Weekend w_ Theo Von _559(M4A_128K) · Drawn of History

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Today's guest is the co-founder and CEO of the Justice
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Defense Fund. She also founded the Trafficking Hub movement. She's
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: been fighting against human trafficking for almost 20 years, and
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: she just wrote a new book called Take Down Inside
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: the Fight to Shut Down Porn Hub. We want to
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: let you know as well that this episode can be
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: somewhat sexually explicit at times, so I want to give
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: you that warning in advance. I'm very grateful for her
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: time and her advocacy and her information. Today's guest is
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Lila McElwain. So take down inside the fight to shut
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: down Pornhub for child abuse, rape and sex trafficking. This
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: is your book. And I'm sitting here with Lila Micklewaite.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: Nice to be here. Is that the way to say it?
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: You almost got it. Lila Micklewaite.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Okay. So I didn't get it. Lila Micklewaite. How did
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: your war against Pornhub start?
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  Speaker 2: Sure. I will tell you that story.
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  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: So in the context of years in the fight against
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  Speaker 2: sex trafficking. So I had been fighting sex trafficking when
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  Speaker 2: this began. This began at the start of 2020.
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  Speaker 1: Okay.
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  Speaker 2: This is February 2020 when the fight to hold Pornhub
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  Speaker 2: accountable for rape, sex trafficking, child abuse began. And that
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  Speaker 2: was in the context of over a decade in the
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: fight against trafficking at that point. And I had been
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: paying attention to the headlines, obviously, when sexual abuse stories,
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  Speaker 2: trafficking stories came up. I was paying attention. And one
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  Speaker 2: of the stories that came up at late 2019– That
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  Speaker 2: really arrested my attention. It was a story of a
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  Speaker 2: 15-year-old girl, and she was from Broward County, Florida. And
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: she was missing for an entire year, and she was
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  Speaker 2: finally found when her distraught mother was tipped off by
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: a Pornhub user that he recognized her daughter on the site.
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  Speaker 1: Wow.
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  Speaker 2: And she was found in 58 videos being abused for profit.
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  Speaker 2: These are monetized videos. Police were– dispatched and they actually
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: rescued her out of his apartment. She had been impregnated.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: They got her out of that situation. But that was
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  Speaker 2: a story that had made some headlines and it was
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: a horrifying story. At the same time, there was an
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  Speaker 2: investigation that was released by the Sunday Times, the London
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  Speaker 2: Sunday Times, and they had found dozens of illegal videos
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  Speaker 2: on Pornhub within minutes, even children as young as three.
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  Speaker 2: So these two particular stories were standing out. There was
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: one other that was really horrifying at the time. It
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: was about an adult, a woman named Nicole Otamondo, and
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: she was from New York. And she was being abused
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  Speaker 2: by her partner. She was being raped and tortured. He
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  Speaker 2: was filming it and he was uploading it to Pornhub.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: And then she ended up killing him in self-defense. But
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: she was sentenced to life in prison, separated from her
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: two young children. And thankfully she had an amazing legal
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: team and they fought that and they got it reduced
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  Speaker 2: to seven years and she's finally out today. But it
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: was just a heartbreaking story. And so I, at the time,
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  Speaker 2: you know, I was really actually discouraged in my fight
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  Speaker 2: against trafficking. I had been doing it for a long time.
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  Speaker 2: I felt like we weren't making very much progress, but
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  Speaker 2: you know, it's not something that I can quit because
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  Speaker 2: I'm dedicated to this. But I was up late one
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  Speaker 2: night In early 2020, I think it was, let's see,
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  Speaker 2: January 31st, 2020. And I was consoling my own crying
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: baby at that time because he was born, he had
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: a birth complication. He was a very mad baby.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: What do you mean? Oh, crying baby.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, crying baby. Okay. Yeah, he was up, you know,
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  Speaker 2: I was up at all hours of the night.
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  Speaker 1: I thought you said crying baby. I was like, oh,
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  Speaker 1: what is a crying baby?
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: No, crying baby.
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  Speaker 1: Okay.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and so I was up late consoling him and
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  Speaker 2: thinking about that story of the 15-year-old girl. And suddenly,
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  Speaker 2: you know, an idea came to mind. I just said,
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  Speaker 2: you know what? How are they vetting these videos? How
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  Speaker 2: is this abuse ending up on Pornhub? And an idea
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  Speaker 2: just flashed into mind. I said, I'm going to test
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  Speaker 2: the upload system for myself, and I'm going to see
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  Speaker 2: what does it take to upload content to Pornhub. So
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  Speaker 2: put the baby down, got out my phone, took a
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  Speaker 2: video of the computer screen and the rug in the
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  Speaker 2: dark room. And I uploaded it to Pornhub and I
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  Speaker 2: found out what millions of people already knew. Because at
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  Speaker 2: that time, millions of videos were being uploaded every year.
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  Speaker 2: In fact, the amount of content that was being uploaded
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  Speaker 2: to Pornhub, if you put those videos back to back,
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  Speaker 2: just the amount of content they would upload in one year,
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  Speaker 2: it would take 169 years to watch. if you put
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  Speaker 2: those videos back to back. That's how much content was
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  Speaker 2: being uploaded.
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  Speaker 1: Uploaded, or had been uploaded total, you mean?
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  Speaker 2: No, per year.
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  Speaker 1: Wow.
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  Speaker 2: Yes. That's not even counting the images. Unbelievable. So I
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  Speaker 2: tested it. I found out, like I said, what millions
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  Speaker 2: of people already knew, and that was that all it
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  Speaker 2: took to upload was an email address. So in under
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  Speaker 2: 10 minutes, anybody with an iPhone, anywhere in the world,
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  Speaker 2: can upload a video, and they were not checking age,
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  Speaker 2: they were not checking ID, to make sure that these
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  Speaker 2: are not children in the videos. They're not verifying consent
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  Speaker 2: to make sure that these are not rape or trafficking victims.
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  Speaker 2: And because of that, I quickly understood that Pornhub was
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  Speaker 2: not a porn site. It was a crime scene. Like
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  Speaker 2: it was infested with videos of real sexual crimes.
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  Speaker 1: And so then the people would upload them and then
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  Speaker 1: make money, what, off of advertising on them somehow?
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  Speaker 2: Yes, yeah. So the ones that were making money off
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  Speaker 2: of this content, because this is free porn, right? Free
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  Speaker 2: porn's not free, right? It is heavily monetized with ads.
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  Speaker 2: So they were selling 4.6 billion ad impressions on Pornhub
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  Speaker 2: every single day. So they were heavily monetizing this content. Now,
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  Speaker 2: the people who were uploading content were doing it mostly
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  Speaker 2: for free. Like 80% of people who were uploading were
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  Speaker 2: just doing it for social currency, like likes and clicks
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  Speaker 2: and comments and shares and all of that, the reason
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: why people upload to social media. Some of them were
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  Speaker 2: doing pay-to-download content where they could actually do profit sharing
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  Speaker 2: with Pornhub. That was happening as well. But most of
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  Speaker 2: the money made from free porn is actually made by
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  Speaker 2: the corporation running the site, right? And just to give
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  Speaker 2: you a little bit of context for how big Pornhub
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  Speaker 2: and its parent company are who are making all of
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  Speaker 2: this money. So Pornhub at the time, so by December
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  Speaker 2: of 2020, they had capitalized on coronavirus. So they had
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  Speaker 2: done crazy stunts like free premium to the whole entire world.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: Oh, I remember something like that.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, they had done some crazy stunts. PR campaigns at
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: the time.
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  Speaker 1: Because they figure people are stuck at home, they'll watch porn?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it was that plus they were getting tons
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  Speaker 2: of bad press because Trafficking Hub movement had gone viral
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  Speaker 2: starting at the beginning of the year.
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  Speaker 1: And Trafficking Hub movement was what?
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  Speaker 2: So I'll, okay, so I'll go back to the story. So, well,
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: really quick, I want to tell you kind of just
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: so you know what.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: We're dealing with, like how big- Okay, yeah, how big Pornhub.
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  Speaker 2: Pornhub is, okay? So by the end of December 2020,
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  Speaker 2: so they had grown to be the fifth most- visited
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  Speaker 2: website in the entire world.
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  Speaker 1: Unbelievable.
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  Speaker 2: So not just porn site, website. They had 170 million
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  Speaker 2: visits per day, 62 billion visits per year. And like
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: I said, enough content uploaded every year would take 169
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  Speaker 2: years to watch. So they had 56 million pieces of
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  Speaker 2: content on the site by the end of 2020. And
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  Speaker 2: this was the year that trafficking hub movement began. So
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  Speaker 2: go back to the story. So I made this discovery.
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  Speaker 1: Oh my God. That's massive.
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  Speaker 2: I literally said, oh my god. This site is infested
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  Speaker 2: with videos of rape, trafficking, non-consensual content. We used to
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  Speaker 2: call it revenge porn, but we call it image-based sexual abuse.
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  Speaker 2: And I have to sound the alarm on this. I
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  Speaker 2: have to you know, tell people what's going on. And
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  Speaker 2: so I did, the only thing that I could do
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  Speaker 2: at the time was I took to my, it was Twitter, right?
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  Speaker 2: At the time, Twitter. And I started to share this information,
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  Speaker 2: share the stories, share what I discovered about the upload process.
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  Speaker 2: And in a burst of inspiration, I shared the hashtag
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  Speaker 2: trafficking hub. And the reason why I did that is
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  Speaker 2: because per definition, so by definition, Any sex act that
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  Speaker 2: is commercialized and it's involving a child or any sex
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  Speaker 2: act that's induced by force, fraud, or coercion and it's commercialized,
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  Speaker 2: so it's for profit, like it's something of value is
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  Speaker 2: exchanged for that sex act, it is per definition an
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  Speaker 2: act of trafficking. So every child being abused on Pornhub,
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  Speaker 2: every adult who was non-consenting, who was raped and trafficked,
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  Speaker 2: those are instances of trafficking. I don't think people quite
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  Speaker 2: understand that, but that is per international definition and domestic definition.
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  Speaker 2: And so that's why I launched the trafficking hub hashtag.
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  Speaker 2: And it slowly started to catch on. I had a
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  Speaker 2: few thousand followers on Twitter at the time, but people
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  Speaker 2: were horrified to find this out.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Well, I think when you hear trafficking, you
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  Speaker 1: kind of think like, I mean, I picture literally like
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  Speaker 1: a train, like people commandeered from other countries or, you know,
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  Speaker 1: I guess younger people that have commandeered and kidnapped in
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  Speaker 1: like a train car going across the country in the
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  Speaker 1: night or something like I think of it as a
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  Speaker 1: as a more like people like being smuggled across the
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  Speaker 1: border or, you know, I don't think of it as
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  Speaker 1: I guess the average person doesn't think of it in
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  Speaker 1: such a common kind of. I don't know if it's
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  Speaker 1: common is the word. I guess, yeah, the average person
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  Speaker 1: probably doesn't think of that it's that expansive.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Well, that's the way it's portrayed in Hollywood movies. And
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  Speaker 2: that's the way that it happens often, right? Sometimes. But,
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  Speaker 2: you know, the amount of trafficking going on, if you
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  Speaker 2: think about non-consensual commercialized sex acts, this is massive. I can't,
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  Speaker 2: that's unbelievable.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, and so sound the alarm, launch traffic on hashtag,
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  Speaker 2: that started to catch on. People started to message me.
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  Speaker 2: Somebody said, hey, if you don't start a petition, oh,
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: then I wrote an op-ed. So I said, okay, well,
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  Speaker 2: what else can I do besides just share this on
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  Speaker 2: social media? This has to get out to more people.
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  Speaker 2: So I wrote an op-ed about what I had discovered.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: An op-ed means opinion.
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  Speaker 2: It's like an essay.
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  Speaker 1: Right. I just want our listeners to know. Most of
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: our listeners are just like me. They don't know. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: So op-ed means an opinion editorial. So like something that
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: your opinion, you'd write it in like a publication that'd
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: be published in a newspaper or something like that.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, great. Just want our listeners to always know what
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: that is.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly what it is. And so I wrote that with
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: kind of the findings, highlighting some of these stories that
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: had just been in the news, making the connections. And
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  Speaker 2: that really caught on. People were sharing it. And somebody
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  Speaker 2: who read it messaged me and they said, hey, you
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  Speaker 2: need to start a petition to shut down Pornhub and
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  Speaker 2: hold its executives accountable. And if you don't do it,
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  Speaker 2: I will. I said, okay, well, I'll do that. So
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  Speaker 2: I just went on change.org. I started a petition and
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  Speaker 2: instantly it started going viral.
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  Speaker 1: So on change.org, you started a petition?
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: I started it there. Yeah. Now it's at traffickinghubpetition.com. And
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  Speaker 2: today we have 2.3 million people who have signed the
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  Speaker 2: petition from every country in the world.
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  Speaker 1: Let's go.
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  Speaker 2: We're going to get more.
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  Speaker 1: We got to get more. It's traffickinghubpetition.com. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: And this has been powerful to have this because as
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: this was going viral– victims were seeing it, and then
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  Speaker 2: they were starting to reach out to me, sometimes on
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: a daily basis. Victims that I was exploited on Pornhub
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  Speaker 2: as a child, as a teen. I was raped. I
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: was unconscious, and I was raped on Pornhub, and I
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: begged to get those videos down, and I couldn't. All
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  Speaker 2: these stories started to come forward. Not only that, but
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: whistleblowers from inside the company started to reach out to
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  Speaker 2: me and started to expose the inner workings of the company.
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  Speaker 2: Even the former owner of Pornhub actually reached out to
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: me to say he wanted to help with all this.
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  Speaker 2: He had his own motives.
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  Speaker 1: Right, probably trying to cover his own tracks.
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  Speaker 2: Well, yeah. I discovered that he had some financial motivations
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: for wanting to do that, but he did. And one
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  Speaker 2: of the things that was so important at this outset
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: was we felt like trafficking is a transactional crime. All
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: of this is being done for money. That's the only
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: thing that these companies care about. Right. And in order
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: to make a difference here, we have to hit them
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: where it hurts. We have to go after the money.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: And so we said, we have to go after the
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: credit cards to cut ties with Pornhub. And when the
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: owner reached out, he confirmed that. He said, listen, the
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: only thing they care about is money. If you go
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: after the credit cards, that's the Achilles heel of Pornhub.
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  Speaker 1: So you're saying if Visa and MasterCard, they will say,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: we will not allow our credit cards to be used.
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  Speaker 2: That would be the worst thing that could ever happen
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: to Pornhub. Yes, because they need those in order to
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: sell ads, premium memberships, all of that. So reached out
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: to credit card executives, did letters, organizations were signing on.
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  Speaker 2: So all of this was building momentum. The petition was
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: gaining steam, and that's why lots of media articles started
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: to be written about this.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: Um, what like were some of the crimes that you see,
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: like saw happening? What were some specific instances that you
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: were like, Oh my God, this is just, yeah.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: I mean, okay.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: I saw those. Yeah, of course.
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  Speaker 2: Um, and I think it's important to share because I
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: think a lot of times people want to just dismiss
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: it and say, you know, what you saw was just consensual.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: You just didn't really understand that. It was, you know,
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: these were obvious crimes.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's vague until you make it specific, I feel like,
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: a lot of times.
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: So, for example, and I'll tell you some, I can
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: tell you some victim stories. I can tell you some
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: of the things that I saw myself on the site.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: I mean, one of the worst things that I saw
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: on the site was an instance where it was a
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: young Asian woman and she was drugged so completely that
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: she was, her body was completely limp. She was unconscious
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: and there was a masked woman assailant who actually to
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: prove to the camera that she was unconscious, he was
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: lifting her eyelids and touching her eyeballs to prove that
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: she wasn't responsive because and then tickling her feet and
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: doing things like that. And then the title was in Chinese.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: And so what I did was I took the title
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: and I put it into Google Translate and the title
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: was dead pig unconscious after being drugged. And it included
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: eyes half open after being drugged. Like that was the
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: actual title of the video. And then of course, because
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: there's the algorithm, right? They have set up the algorithm.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: to make sure if you see one video like that,
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: they're going to assume that you like that content. So
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: then they're going to take you on a crazy rabbit hole.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: I call it like, you know, just hell hole of rape.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: Like that's what it was. And then you go and
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: they'll show you more and more of the same kind
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: of thing. You know, in my book, I do describe
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: these videos. I don't really hold back because I want
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: people to know what actually was taking place, what these
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: victims were going through on the site. And one of
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: the things that victims have shared that I think is
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: also really important to know is that when those videos
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: are uploaded, they had a download button so that anybody
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: in the world could actually download and possess that child abuse,
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: the rape, all of that on their devices and then
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: re-upload it again and again and again and again. And
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: so victims actually call this the immortalization of their trauma.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: So they say, you know, it's one thing to be raped,
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: but then it's filmed and then it's uploaded and then
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: it's monetized for profit and pleasure. And people are actually
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: getting pleasure out of the worst moment of my life.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: And it'll never go away because once it's on the internet,
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: it's out of control. And it's just like this whack-a-mole
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: game where they're constantly just trying to find it and
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: then beg for it to come down. And then even
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: if they can, it just gets uploaded again. And one
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: victim said, my abuser put me in a mental prison,
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: but Pornhub gave me a life sentence.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: And that was a really powerful, but.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: And were all of these like foreign? Were they domestic?
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: It was everywhere.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: It was everywhere. So here's one story I'll share with you. Um,
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: Serena Flightis. So Serena Flightis, she's from Bakersfield, California. She
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: was an innocent 13-year-old girl, and she had a crush
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: on a boy a year older than her. So at
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: the time, she'd never kissed a boy before. She was
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: a straight-A student. And he convinced her to send him
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: some nude images and videos of herself, which she did
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: because she wanted to impress him, right? This is very
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: common today, sexting, all that. And then he shared it
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: with classmates. And then the classmates uploaded to Pornhub, where
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: it began to get millions and millions of views. So
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: she would then reach out to Pornhub and beg for
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: them to take the videos down, and they would often
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: ignore her.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: And she's an adolescent.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: Yes, she's a child. Like, she's a young teen, right?
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: And then if they did answer, they would hassle her.
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: Prove that you're a victim. Prove that you're underage in
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: these videos. Now, remember, nobody had to prove age and
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: consent to upload. But if you want to get it down...
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: She's testifying. She's testified this before Canadian Parliament. She's suing
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: Pornhub right now that she would be hassled to prove
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: that she's a victim. Then if she did get it down,
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: then it would just get re-uploaded again, right? And so
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: this sent her on a spiral of trauma and despair.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: She ended up dropping out of school because she was
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: being bullied. She got addicted to drugs to try to
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: numb the pain. She tried to kill herself multiple times,
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: and then she wound up homeless living out of a car.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: And that was her story, right? And that could happen
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: to any young teen.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I could imagine that a lot of people in
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: that instance, you almost end up wanting to take your
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: life or consider suicide because your life isn't even yours anymore.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because it's like that immortalization, the trauma. It's like,
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: I'll never escape this because... Even if I can find healing,
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: I can do whatever, trauma therapy, but then it's almost
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: like a wound and then a scab just gets peeled
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: off again and peeled off again as those videos keep
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: getting uploaded online.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: It's like hell. It's like something you would hear about
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: happening in hell. Yeah.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: And actually, to your point, the stats on ideations of
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: suicide for victims of this kind of abuse, it's 50%.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: who have suicidal ideations after going through this. And not
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: just child sexual abuse. I mean, that includes when videos
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: are consensually recorded, but then non-consensually uploaded. And the shame
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: and all of that that comes along with that. I mean,
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: this is the stats for victims of this kind of abuse.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: And so.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: So obviously, once you start hearing these stories, the fuel
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: has to really ignite you. I would imagine that at
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: that point, you were just... like this has become like
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: a life purpose almost. Were you letting go of a
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: day job?
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: Were you like, did you- No, I mean, this was
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: my- I've been in anti-trafficking just all, you know, for
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: years and years.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: So you're already in that world.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It is my world. But then it became that
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: I realized, okay, we're going to go after a mega
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: predator here. And to that point, How big are they?
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: So it's not just Pornhub, right? Pornhub is owned by
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: a parent company that all of this kind of I
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: learned over the last five years, called MindGeek. Now, MindGeek
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: has a monopoly on the global big porn industry. So
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: we call it big porn because there's big porn, just
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: like there's big tobacco, there's big pharma, there's big porn,
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: and it's dominated by one company. That company was called MindGeek.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: They rebranded to ILO. to try to escape their reputation
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: as peddlers of crime. But they, so with a $ 362
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: million loan from a hedge fund called Colbert Capital and
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: 125 secret investors who were outed as including JPMorgan Chase
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: and Cornell University, they had basically rolled up the entire
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: global porn industry under one company.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: So they owned it, MindGeek.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so they owned, you know, they were managing Playboy,
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: Digital Playground, Wicked Pictures, Browsers, Reality Kings, Pace Sites, Subscription Sites,
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: and then the Tube Sites. So Pornhub and its sister sites.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: So Pornhub, YouPorn, RedTube, Tubate, GayTube, XTube, you know, I
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: could go on and on. They own the most popular
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: Tube sites.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: VeganTube, is that one? No time for jokes.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: And who owns MindGeek?
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: So MindGeek was owned by a secret majority shareholder. So
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: nobody knew who the owner of MindGeek was when all
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: of this began.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: And were they in America?
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: No, we found out. So we found them, you know,
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: through the course of this. There was an investigation called
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: Hunt for the Porn King.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: So they're not an American company. So you start on
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: the Hunt for the Porn King.
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: Right. So we discovered who was the secret majority shareholder
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: of the company. And his name was Bernd Bergmaier. And
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: he was in Austria and he lived part time in
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: Hong Kong.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Bernd Bergmaier. Let's bring a picture of him up.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you can.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: I just want people to know who he is. Yeah,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: there he is.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: Bernd Bergmaier. And let's look at his Wikipedia. I just
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: want to get a little. He grew up. As a
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: son of farmers in Ansfelden, attended grammar school in Linz,
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: transferred to, he studied at University of Linz, wherever that is.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: He worked at Goldman Sachs in New York. He became
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: the owner of porn site RedTube in 2013. He sold
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: to the site Manwin, now known as Alio. He was
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: a former majority owner of Pornhub and MindGeek. Okay. Yep.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: Just want to make sure.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: We see him. Yeah, he was the majority and then
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: Feroz Antoon. And David DeCillo were the CEO and the COO,
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: and they were the minority shareholders. And they had kind
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: of hidden themselves from the public as well for a
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: really long time.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: Okay. And are these guys all from Austria? Are they
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: all from a specific place?
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: So, Canadian. So, the company is an international corporation. They
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: are headquartered in Canada. So, they have most of their
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: employees in Canada, but they have offices in– now they
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: have an office in Texas. They had one in LA, Cyprus, Romania, London.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: Mindy has offices everywhere?
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: Everywhere. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So they are a multinational corporation,
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: huge corporation, hundreds of millions of dollars a year, multi-billion
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: dollar corporation with a monopoly on the global big porn industry.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: And how much money was that bringing in a year?
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're estimated about half a billion per year. The
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: value of the company is multiple billions of dollars. And,
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: you know, Pornhub was the flagship site. So this was
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: the cash cow of the company. This is how not
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: only are they making money on 4.6 billion ad impressions
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: every day and all the traffic they're getting, but they're
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: advertising their pay sites on the free sites, right? So
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: they kind of have this ecosystem where they advertise browsers
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: on Pornhub and drive traffic to all the other websites
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: that they own.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: I thought it was browsers, which is crazy. But also,
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: I don't care. I mean, either way, it's bad.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: The start of the new year is the perfect time
• 24:04
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• 24:10
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• 24:14
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• 25:00
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• 25:10
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• 25:16
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• 25:18
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• 26:30
  Speaker 2: So this is the company. This is who we're kind
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: of coming up against, right? And so all of this
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: started to take off and go viral, and victims are
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: coming forward, whistleblowers. I told you about the former owner
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: who came forward. His name is Fabian Tillman, and he
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: was called the Zuckerberg of porn.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: He's the one. Okay, let's bring him up. I want
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: to put a face to these guys. Fabian Tillman. He
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: looks Danish, huh?
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: It's T-H-Y. Yeah, there you go. Yep.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: Fabian Thelman.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: He's the one that put Pornhub on the map. You know,
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: he kind of had this vision for.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: The German entrepreneur who once built the biggest adult entertainment
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: company in the world. Let's see him. That's him. Fabian. Okay,
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: so he is... He's one of the guys schlepping it.
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: So he, yeah, so he's the one who actually revealed
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: to me who the secret majority shareholder was that he
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: sold the company to. So that's how we found out
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: who he was.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: Okay, so the movement's getting bigger, right? So you have
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: the traffic hub.
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: Yep, trafficking hub. It's taking off. So we're even out
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: protesting on the streets outside of MindGeek headquarters in Montreal
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: and London and LA, you know, sharing tons of viral
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: victim stories are happening. And then one of the things
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: that we're going up through having all these meetings with
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: the credit card companies, executives trying to present evidence and
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: evidence and more evidence to them and saying, listen, you
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: have to stop monetizing this content because actually the It's
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: even illegal to knowingly benefit from trafficking in the United States. Right.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: So at that point, if you put the knowledge on
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: them that they're benefiting from it, then that becomes.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: A crime against them. Then they're knowingly benefiting from trafficking
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: and trying to bring this to them and saying, listen,
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: you have to stop. But they were resisting, right? Why?
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: Because it's so much money, you think?
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: I think there's multiple reasons. I think it's because they
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: feel like this is a slippery slope. If we do
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: this here, we might have to do it there. And
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: they just don't want to take action unless they're forced
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: to take action. So they're like, we're really concerned. This
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: is so concerning. Thank you for bringing this to us.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: Give us more information, more information. I give more information.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: They want more information. Anyway, they're resisting, right? Then, so
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: I reach out and get the attention of Nick Kristof
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: from the New York Times. So Nick Kristof has a
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: history of really compassionate reporting for victims of human trafficking
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: and sex trafficking specifically. So I was thinking if there's
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: anybody in the world that could cover this story in
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: a really meaningful way, it will be Nick Kristof. And
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: so he got engaged and he started a six month investigation.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: Of course, he found out exactly what we were saying
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: was happening on the site. I was connecting him with
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: victims as they were coming forward so he could be
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: speaking to victims and whistleblowers. And he ended up releasing
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: this groundbreaking article called The Children of Pornhub, and it
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: was featuring Serena Story, the girl I just told you about. Flaytus?
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: Flaytus.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Serena Flaytus. many other victims like her who were
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: children abused on the site.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: And had you been meeting, were more people coming forward
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: at this point?
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, all the time. So many victims. And I personally
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: engaged with so many victims of Pornhub. And thankfully, attorneys
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: were also coming forward saying we want to help really amazing, hard-hitting,
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: top-notch attorneys. One of the ones I speak about in
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: my book, he had done the biggest hedge fund insider
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: trading case in history against SAC Capital and Stevie Cohen.
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: His name is Mike Bowie from Brown Rettnick. And he
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: cared about trafficking, and he came forward. He became Serena's attorney,
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: and he started representing. Now he represents, I think, 200
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: victims or more.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: Let's bring that hero up. Bring a picture of him up.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Mike Bowie. There he is.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: Mike Bowie.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Mike.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: Son of a firefighter. Wanted to be a firefighter. Ended
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: up being a.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: He's fighting huge fires now.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's one of the biggest fires in the world,
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: it sounds like. Human trafficking. Yeah. Taking advantage of people's sexuality.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: So.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: Okay. Back to the story. So Nick Kristof does this investigation.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: He releases the children of Pornhub. And one of the
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: things he does in his article is he calls out
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: the credit card companies. And when this is released, I mean,
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: I couldn't believe the impact that it had. It started to, like,
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: thousands of follow-on articles. The pressure was on. Justin Trudeau
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: in Canada was responding to the article saying how horrific
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: what was going on. Canadian Parliament was up in arms
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: demanding an investigation. And the pressure was on the credit
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: card companies. And within days of that article being released, Visa, MasterCard,
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: and Discover joined PayPal in cutting all ties with Pornhub.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: leaving them only with cryptocurrency as a payment option.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: Incredible.
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: This was the worst thing that could happen to Pornhub, okay?
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: Right? And so- They must have lost it.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: In a panic, in an absolute panic. This is the
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: worst thing that could happen to them. So they did
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: basically the unthinkable for their business model, which relies on
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: massive amounts of content because content is king for the
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: PornTube sites. You have to understand this, that it's about
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: getting- unrestricted massive amounts of content so that they could
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: get picked up in Google search results so that they
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: can drive massive amounts of traffic so they can sell
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: all those ad impressions and make hundreds of millions of
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: dollars a year on free porn, okay? Worst thing they
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: could do is take content down from this site, but
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: they started to delete millions of videos. They deleted 10
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: million videos and over 30 million images basically in 24 hours.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: in what Financial Times called probably the biggest takedown of
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: content in internet history. They deleted all of their unverified
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: videos because they had no idea who was a child
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: and like who was 16 and who was 18.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: Who was, what was rough sex and what was rape.
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: They had no idea what was consensually recorded and non-consensually uploaded, right?
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: And so they took down that much content.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: Because they're worried about the money.
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they wanted to woo the credit card companies back
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: as they said, okay, we have to do this. They
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: basically deleted their site. Well, 80% of it at the time. Sadly,
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: I found out that, so then there's global headlines, right?
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: Hundreds of headlines all over the world. Visa, MasterCard, the
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: big takedown. I found out an insider came to me
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: months later and said, you don't know this, but two
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: weeks after the credit card companies disengaged with Pornhub, they
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: quietly snuck back to the advertising arm of Pornhub called
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: Traffic Junkie because they have their own ad arm, right?
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: And that's how they make most of their money. So
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: business is going on as usual. And I said, oh my,
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: this is like the worst thing that I could have
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: ever– I can't believe that this is what happened. I said,
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: what are we going to do now?
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: And how wouldn't a CEO of Visa or one of
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: these companies be like, yeah, we're just not going to
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: do this anymore?
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: How would they?
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: Why wouldn't they just say we would stop? This is bad.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: This isn't good. At that point, is it because they're
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: also worried about free speech and stuff like that, do
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: you think?
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: This is not about free speech. I mean, I think
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: it has to do with money. as well because one
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: thing you have to know is these are high-risk transactions.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: They charge more per transaction for high-risk transactions, which are
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: porn transactions.
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: I see. So there's big money.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: So there's money, right? Big money. And they went back.
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: And so it was another two-year battle to try to
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: get them to finally disengage, which happened because Serena sued Pornhub.
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: Not only Pornhub, she sued its individual owners. And it's executives.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: And she sued Visa for monetizing her abuse. Wow. And
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: she sued the hedge funds for funding the whole enterprise.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: Did she win?
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: And so what happened was Visa lost their motion to
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: dismiss the case because they had filed a motion to dismiss.
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: They lost it. And at the same time, we were
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: able to put the pressure on publicly. So Bill Ackman
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: was one of the heroes in this story. I mean,
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: he knew the CEO of MasterCard. And so he was
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: making phone calls. Yeah.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: That's Bill Ackman right there.
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: So he got him and I on CNBC's Squawk Box.
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: And we called out Al Kelly, who was the CEO
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: of Visa, for 17 minutes on the show. And this
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: was right when Visa lost their motion to dismiss. So
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: the pressure was on from multiple angles.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: And a motion to dismiss is what? Oh, they want
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: to dismiss the case.
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: Dismiss the case. We're not involved. Nothing we could do
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: about this. We're not part of this problem.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: And the court says, hold my gavel, brother.
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: In a damning decision. And it wasn't just a decision.
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: The judge actually said that Visa gave Pornhub the very
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: tool through which to complete the crime of benefiting from
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: child trafficking. Those were his words in his decision.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: Fuck yeah.
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: And so the pressure was on. And then, so then
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: Al Kelly said he did kind of an unprecedented thing.
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: Who is Al Kelly?
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: He's the CEO of Visa.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: Okay. So the CEO of Visa, Al Kelly, then?
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: Then he says, okay, fine. We're going to cut them
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: off once and for all. And he made a personal statement.
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: He said, I'm a father and I don't approve, blah, blah, blah.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: And so we're cutting off Pornhub. And then of course,
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: MasterCard quickly followed Discover. Now they've lost it. Totally. So.
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: And today, so we found out they kept deleting content, right?
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: So today they have actually deleted 91% of the entire site.
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: So they went from 56 million pieces of content in
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: 2020 when this started to 5.2 million pieces of content today.
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: And we're not done because they still have unverified content
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: on the site. So yeah, it's not over yet.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: Wow, congratulations. That's fascinating. I mean, congratulations.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: Thank you. I mean, it's been not just.
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: I have to pass that on, you know, that congratulations
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: to any victims who might be watching this because it's
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: through their courageous testimony and them, you know, stepping forward
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: amidst backlash and, you know, everybody who's been involved. We
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: had 600 organizations that were involved in this and the
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: lawyers and the journalists and the whistleblowers and so many
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: people came together to make this happen.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: Did you guys– what was the one– what was the CEO?
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: What was that transaction that kind of occurred where he
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: was like– where he reached out the previous CEO?
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: No, he was the owner.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: Oh, he was the previous owner.
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: Fabian Thillman, the Zuckerberg of porn, right?
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: Fabian Thillman.
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he reached out in summer 2020 to say he
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: wanted to help. And so one of the things that
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: he did was he exposed the secret majority shareholder's name
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: and he said go after the credit card companies. As
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: the former owner, he said, if you want to make
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: a difference here, you go after the credit card companies
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: to cut ties. And so that was– now, what I
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: didn't realize at the time, I was suspicious, right? Why
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: is he wanting to help? And I kind of later
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: found out that he had intention to try to buy
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: back the company. So he kind of wanted to make
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: a killing again. So I think he wanted to help
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: take it down, buy it.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: And then find a way to do it back, probably
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: with crypto or something on a different chain.
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: I don't know what he was thinking, but he wanted
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: to buy it back, which I found out later on.
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: But the COO and the CEO were forced to resign
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: as well. And today they're being sued by nearly 300
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: victims in 25 lawsuits, including multiple class actions on behalf
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: of tens of thousands of child victims. And they're doing
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: amazing in the courts. So much more evidence has been
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: uncovered in legal discovery. So discovery is this amazing tool.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: When you engage in a civil lawsuit, the court gives
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: you permission to to get behind your opponents. So you
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: can get their text messages, you can get their emails,
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: you can get, and so much has come out of
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: the complicity. Like you just couldn't believe the things that
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: we've found out just through legal discovery process.
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: Like what are some of the things like just involved,
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: like just.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: Okay, so here's an example. We found out that they
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: only had one person. So they had 1800 employees. They
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: hired one person five days a week to be reviewing
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: videos flagged by users as terms of service violations including
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: rape and trafficking and child abuse. One person. They had
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: a policy where they wouldn't even review a video unless
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: it was flagged 15 times. Now, think about this. You're
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: a victim. Say there's a child victim like Serena. She
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: would have have to flag her video over 15 times,
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: because it had to be over 15 for it to
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: be reviewed, in order for that to even be put
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: in queue for review. And they had a backlog of 706,000 videos.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: That we're just waiting for this one person to review them? Yes.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: And they had, like we've discovered now in a recent
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: filing in December of 2024, we found out specific instances
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: of prepubescent child victims who had their videos on there
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: for years and they would have like 14 flags, 13 flags.
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: And they just like, that was the policy. And then
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: the CEO and.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: The executives- All of this on Pornhub?
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: Yes. On Pornhub.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: And so I'm just so, I'm just grateful that we're
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: having this conversation because I bet most of the people
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: who are listening to your show had no idea that
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: this was happening, that it's ever happened, that this is
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: an issue on user-generated free porn sites.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: And And they keep it up because it's content, right?
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: Like you're saying the more content. Yes.
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: Content is king, right? They don't want to remove content
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: because that's how they have inventory. So here's another egregious
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: example of how they did this. So there's one case
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: that I talk about in my book where there was
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: a case of a clearly prepubescent child who is being
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: anally raped in a video, and she is being tortured.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: The tags on the video, like the titles and tags
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: were describing her abuse, that she was young, that she
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: was being tortured, all of this. And we reported the video.
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: We tried to get it down. Weeks go by. It's
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: not coming down. Video view counts going up, up, up.
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: We reach out to the FBI. They demand that it
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: comes down. So they connect with the National Center on
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: Missing and Exploited Children, who confirms this is a child.
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: So they demanded the video come down. And then what
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: they did was they took the video down. But they
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: left that black box up that said removed at the
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: request of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: And they left the URL live, the tags, the titles,
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: the views, all of that. And they did that with
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: so many videos. Why would they take the video down
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: but leave all of that up? And it's because it's inventory.
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: It's the URL.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: It still shows like an ad company that they're going
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: to sell to. It still says, well, we have this
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: many videos.
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: So you could search that, right?
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: We have the most videos.
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the tags, the titles, like they'll still come up
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: in Google search. Then you'll get to the site. You
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: won't find that particular video, but the algorithm will then
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: direct you to others that are similar and it will
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: advertise to you, right? You'll get that. those ad views.
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: So that's why.
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: Do you have any victims that showed up to thank
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: you in person? Like you've had experiences like that kind of?
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, I'm still in touch with
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: victims on a regular basis. They don't feel though that
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: like justice has fully been served yet.
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: I'm sure.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: So Pornhub was criminally charged by the U.S. federal government
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: in December, 2023 for intentionally profiting from sex trafficking.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: And they're still allowed to stay open?
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: But they were offered a deferred prosecution agreement, which is
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: just unbelievable to me that that happened, where basically they said,
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: you pay $ 1. 8 million in a settlement and you have
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: a monitor over your company for three years. And you
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: can get out of going to trial. So that happened.
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: But that was related to a case, like a specific
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: case of 100 trafficking victims from California. So they were
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: part of the Girls Do Porn trafficking operation. The guy
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: that was exploiting them, his name is Michael Pratt. He
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: was on the FBI's most wanted list, 10 most wanted list.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: Michael Pratt. Let's get a look at him. I just
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: want to put faces to these people. So that they're
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: not just names that pass by.
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: You said Pratt, right?
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Michael Pratt.
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: P-R-A-T-T. Actually, on my Twitter, I just posted about him.
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: This is him. Yeah, he's FBI's 10 most wanted. And
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: he was running a trafficking operation, and over 100 victims
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: were exploited by him.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: And let's look at Wiki. Where is he from, this guy?
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: Who is this guy? I think they have a Wiki
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: for this guy. Okay. Pratt is charged in a 19-count
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: indictment of sex trafficking, production of child pornography. Unbelievable.
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: And he had– so Girls Who Porn was one of
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: the most popular partner channels on Pornhub. So they had
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: over 760,000 subscribers and they had over 600 million views online.
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: on the videos of these women's trafficking.
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: And most of them were trafficked, you think? Yeah.
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: Oh, it's not, I think. I mean, they've been convicted. Like,
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: his accomplices are in prison.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: And this was in Spain, it says it was happening. Why,
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: are the laws different there?
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: Well, he ran away. So he was a fugitive. So
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: he was doing this in San Diego. This is where
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: it all happened, was in San Diego. 62 of those
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: women have recently filed lawsuits. 50 of them filed lawsuits
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: and settled those lawsuits. But they, so this channel was
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: one of the most popular on Pornhub and that was
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: what this criminal prosecution was related to. It was about
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: these specific, you know, over a hundred victims of this
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: particular crime ring. But there's so many others out there.
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: But he's not in jail, this guy.
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: Well, they captured him. He's, it's in process. Like they're,
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: they're working on his prosecution right now.
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah. But his accomplices, the others that were involved with
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: him are already prosecuted. It was just that they have
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: more recently found him and So he's going through the
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: process of being convicted.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: Understood. Is pornography causing a problem in your life? Do
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: you find yourself watching porno for longer periods of time
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: and having trouble stopping? Is porn affecting your relationship or
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: dating life? Well, you're certainly not alone. Watching pornography has
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: become so commonplace today, and oftentimes men use porn to
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: numb the pain of loneliness, boredom, anxiety. and depression. Shame
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: and stigma prevent men from talking about these issues and
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: getting help for them. I want to introduce you to
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: my friend Steve. Steve is the founder of Valor Recovery,
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: a program to help men overcome porn abuse and sexual compulsivity.
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: Steve is a long-term sexual recovery member and has personally
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: overcame the emotional and spiritual despair of abusing pornography and
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: has dedicated his life to empowering men to do the same.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: Steve is an amazing person and he is a close
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: friend of mine. I mean that. Valor Recovery helps men
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: to develop the tools necessary to have a healthier sex life.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: Their coaches are in long-term recovery and will be your partner, mentor,
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: and spiritual guide to transcend these problematic behaviors. To learn
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: more about Valor Recovery, please visit them at www.valorrecoverycoaching.com. or
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: email them at admin at valorrecoverycoaching.com. Thank you. This show
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: is sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp is the group that's encouraged
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: a lot of people to check on their mental health,
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: especially when it comes to their relationships and their life.
• 47:04
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• 47:08
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• 47:57
  Speaker 2: Victims are so grateful for all that's happened so far,
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: and they've been a big part of it. You know,
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: I remember when the big takedown happened, And the most
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: meaningful thing that happened was that victims were calling and
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: they were crying tears of joy because for the first time,
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: their rape and trafficking was finally off of Pornhub after
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: fighting for so long. But they just feel like justice
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: hasn't been fully served yet because they're still waiting for restitution.
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: The site is still online. It's been purchased now. They're
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: trying to do this whole rebrand. So it was sold
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: as a distressed asset to a company that they created
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: themselves to buy Pornhub. And they are called Ethical Capital Partners.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: Wow, what a name. Ethical Capital Partners. And who are
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: the main bigwigs in that company? Do we know?
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: Yes, we do. They have themselves online. The guy that's
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: out there kind of trying to do this whole rebrand
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: of Pornhub, like we're Ethical Capital Partners. His name is
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: Solomon Friedman, and he is a criminal defense attorney.
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: Is he really? A Jewish guy from where? Where is
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: he from? Canada.
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: He's from Canada. Yeah.
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: So he wants to rebrand and just make it more ethical?
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, that's what they're saying, right? They're saying
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: they call themselves ethical capital, yet at the same time,
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: the videos that are on Pornhub, right now are still unverified,
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: mostly unverified. So that 5.2 million left, they had verified
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: the uploaders, right? But not the individuals in the videos.
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: So That doesn't work because often the abuser is the uploader.
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: And I'll give you an example. So there's a man
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: named Rocky Shea Franklin out of Alabama. And he drugged
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: and he overpowered and he raped a 12-year-old boy. And
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: he filmed those assaults and he uploaded 23 of those
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: videos to Pornhub with titles that indicated this was abuse. Like, young.
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: It said, like, uncle secret. I mean, I won't say
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: the worst things, but... It was clear, right? He was
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: put in prison for 40 years for what he did.
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: Police reached out multiple times to Pornhub to try to
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: get those videos down. They were ignored for seven months.
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: Those videos stayed online getting hundreds of thousands of views.
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: That boy is suing Pornhub today. So he's one of
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: those many victims suing Pornhub. But Rocky was a verified uploader.
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: He had shown his ID and he.
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: They know who he is.
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: They know who he is, but they didn't verify clearly, right?
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: Like who's in the video, right? So even today, you know,
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: as of 2024, Pornhub had to produce a report. They
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: sent it into the European... There's a European law called
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: the Digital Services Act. And in 2024, in four and
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: a half months, they had to take down 3,770 child
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: sexual abuse videos from the site and over 8,000... non-consensual
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: and rape videos from the site. Okay.
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: So they're having to be legally asked to do this, right? Yeah.
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: Well, to disclose what they're doing. So that's all under
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: ethical capital partners, right? Okay. So that's, you know, they do.
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: So ethical capital partners, there's still, there's still stuff out
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: there that's not supposed to be there.
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: Yes. They still haven't actually implemented the preventative policies.
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: So what's ethical about it?
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: It's just a farce. I mean, it's just, you know,
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: and that's why I think it's so important to sound
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: the alarm on this rebrand, because from a victim's perspective,
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: like this is also a miscarriage of justice for them
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: to go out there and try to resuscitate Pornhub's brand
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: to say, oh, we're ethical capital. Listen, the same men
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: who made all those decisions that The one person that
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: was verifying videos, they had 30 moderators, 30 moderators moderating
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: the millions of videos on Pornhub. Now compare that with
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: Facebook's 15,000 moderators and they still don't have enough. These moderators,
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: they were viewing between 800 and 2,000 videos per shift.
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: clicking through those videos with the sound off, just clicking
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: through them, guessing. Like I call it the underage guessing game.
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: Like this is a game of Russian roulette with people's lives.
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: They're trying to guess who's 15 and who's 18, who's
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: 16 and who's 19. Like nobody can do that on a,
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: like even a pediatrician can't do that. Yeah.
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: And what happens to your brain at a certain point
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: after seeing so much traumatic stuff that you were even
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: a Like that should be a crime and putting a
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: employee through that.
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: Well, I, and I've spoken to those and some of
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: those employees I call friends today because they- Really?
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: Have they said that they've seen some, it's been really intense?
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: Their conscience was pricked.
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: Oh, I'm sure.
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: And they came forward and I've spent hours and hours
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: in person and, you know, online and on the phone
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: speaking to them, trying to understand how all of this worked.
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: And one of them- is especially dear to me. And
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: he told me that it was so hard on him
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: to do this job, but he needed the money. And
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: he was abused as a child. He was sexually abused
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: as a child.
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: So it was especially hard for him to do this.
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: But I think that's why- You almost wonder why he
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: went and did it. It's like you could find something
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: else to do probably. I mean- Not calling him out,
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: but it's like maybe there's some weird thing that's created
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: there too.
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: That like, I don't know, but I appreciate what he
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: did in coming forward. But to say like the executive,
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: so back to ethical capital, it's like the men who
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: made that decision to have 30 moderators, just guessing what's
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: rough sex and rape guessing. And they guess wrong all
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: the time. They were skipping through 2000, you know, thousands
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: of videos per shift. And they're still running Pornhub today.
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: So they're still on the sixth floor, aquamarine Montreal tower
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: of that corporation. Running Pornhub today. Yes, the CEO and
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: the COO were forced to resign, but they have the
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: same CFO. They have the same CLO.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: Who's the CFO? Let's see.
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: Eddie DeSanto.
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: Eddie DeSanto. Bring him up.
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you'll find him. They try to.
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: Hide his face.
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: They try to, but some of them, I mean, you
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: can find Ryan Hogan, Matt Colicci. So you can look
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: up Kareem Almarazi. He is the CPO and he's running
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: it today.
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: Kareem Almarazi.
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: And so he's there today, right? Yep.
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: About him from Canada as an integral part of the
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: mobile broadband team, telecommunication engineering, went to university of Montreal. Hmm.
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: So they're still running. They're just trying to rebuild this
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: company and still make money.
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: So, I mean, what I'm saying is like ethical capital, right?
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: If they were coming in and saying like, we're going
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: to rebrand, we're going to do this new thing. why
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: would you still have the same men responsible for the
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: decisions that destroy the lives of countless victims just running
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: the site today? That's why it's like, it's just a farce.
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: Like it's not real. And even if it was real,
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: it doesn't mean that they escaped justice being fully served
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: because what's important is victims receive the justice they need
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: for healing, and to be a deterrent to future abusers.
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: Like one of the most important things in the fight
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: against trafficking is not just to rescue victims, right? And
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: to rehabilitate them, that's important, but to prevent it from
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: happening in the future. And how do you prevent it?
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: You have to increase risk and eliminate profitability. You have
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: to make the risk of continued exploitation greater than the
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: benefit that these executives get by maintaining the status quo.
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: And then when you do that and you end impunity
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: for these abusers, you become a deterrent. to future abusers
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: because other- Okay, explain that little part to me again.
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: So you want to hold these companies fully accountable to
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: the full extent of the law. To me, that means
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: Pornhub gets shut down. Like we go from 91% to 100%.
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: They do not exist anymore because they have been destroying
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: the lives of countless victims since 2007 when they came online.
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: And when that happens- Other websites owned by other executives
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: will say, we don't want to end up in that position.
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: So let's just clean ourselves up because we can make
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: a lot of money on legal content. We don't have
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: to monetize illegal content. We can do this in a
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: way where we're not distributing sexual crime and they'll do
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: that because they want to avoid losing the credit card companies.
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: They want to avoid litigation. They want to avoid criminal prosecution.
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: Just greed at a certain point is some type.
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: Of obviously sick. It's risk benefit, right?
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: But a sickness too to think that you would be
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: able to know that that's happening, right?
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: And keep going. It's like what type of sickness exists,
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: you know? I mean it's almost like a hell. You're
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: like a slave trader of people's– like solitude and, and,
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: and peace, you know, but no, you know, I don't know.
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: I just can't, I can't, I can't even, I can't
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: imagine that. I can't fathom that someone would be like, yeah,
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: this is okay. I'm not going to, that that's not
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: going to be the first thing I'm going to worry
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: about with my company.
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: Right. Yeah.
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: So, so just, I'm just fine tuned into my, my
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: view here. So a lot of your combativeness is not
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: against pornography, right? It's against the sex trafficking, the like
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: people illegally filming people, filming drugged people, no verification of age,
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: all of these crimes basically.
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sexual crime being distributed online. In fact, some of
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: the most helpful allies in this fight have been those
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: in the porn industry. Like at one point, you know,
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: I had those who were producing their own porn on
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: Pornhub and they were doing this in a professional sense.
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: And they were reaching out to me because they said, listen,
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: we need to take this company down because I'm sick
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: and tired of spending two hours a day scouring Pornhub
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: and its sister tube sites trying to get my own
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: stolen illegal content off the site. Because they were not
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: only rape and trafficking, right? This is copyright infringement content.
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: There's no protection for that either.
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: No, they're just uploading. They're just pirating and uploading all
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: of this content. So those in the porn industry kind
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: of hated MindGeek already. Because the free porn tube sites
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: were exploiting the legally produced content of those in the industry.
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because even with YouTube, there's like metadata and stuff
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: that they could– if they want to, they can make
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: sure that someone can't do it without it being claimed
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: or known.
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: Right. And so– well, they could do these DMCA takedowns.
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: So that's what they would do. So she was spending
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: hours a day, multiple of them doing that. But as
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: she was doing that, she was coming across– child abuse, rape, trafficking,
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: and then they were sending the links. And that was
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: one of the things that was crazy that was happening
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: is that as this was all going viral and there's
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: all these stories, people around the world who were on
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: Pornhub who would find an illegal video would be sending
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: it to me. And so I was in, and so
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: it was just kind of a really intense Right.
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: Because then you're looking at it, seeing what's going on,
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: and you're like, well, what am I supposed to do here?
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: And then I have, you know, the responsibility to report it, to,
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: you know, take care of, you know, witnessing what's happening
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: and then trying to help bring justice.
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: To the victims. That must have been insane, huh?
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, it's real. So this is all real, vile,
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: real stuff that was happening and being uploaded.
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: Real, real sexual crime.
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: So what do you think kind of like the solution
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: is at scale, you know, when you think about that, Lila?
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, so yes, it's one thing to hold one
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: particular company accountable, and that's important. But the question then becomes,
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: because Pornhub's not alone, right? I want everybody to understand that.
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: that it's not like you go, okay, well, X videos
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: must be fine. They're a free user-generated porn site that
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: was operating in a similar way of not verifying agent consent.
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: And there's Nick Kristof did an investigation and reported on
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: the victims who were on X videos. And there's X hamster.
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: And there's all of these of X and XX, right?
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: And there's others that operate in a similar way. And
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: so the question is, well, how do we stop this
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: across all of these sites, right? And that goes back to,
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: source of the problem is not verifying agent consent. We
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: have to demand third-party agent consent verification for every single
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: person in every single video that is uploaded to a
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: user-generated porn site. And when that happens, we're going to
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: make a huge difference in stopping that illegal content from
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: being uploaded. But that's a huge task, right? So it's
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: not just governments who have to do this because this
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: is an international problem. These sites operate internationally. So if
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: the U.S. does that, well, they're still in Canada and
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: they're in every country in the world. So the solution
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: at scale becomes the credit card companies implementing that policy
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: because we know they're highly motivated by money. And if
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: Visa says, we don't do business with user-generated porn sites
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: that don't verify the age and consent of every person,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: every video, well, all of these companies are going to
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: comply and they're going to do it quickly. So that's
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: the solution.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: So how do we– because you would think at this
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: point they would just go on ahead and say that
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: because it's like– it's obviously the next right thing to do. Right.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: In a moral sense, it would feel like.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: Well, a lot of companies don't operate from– Right.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: Business doesn't have emotions.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah. And it comes from– pressure, right? And so
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: that's where I see the litigation being important, where these survivors,
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: dozens of survivors have sued the credit card companies, right?
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: And the hedge funds.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: So they're feeling that pressure. And at some point, they go, listen,
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: it's better business to just implement this policy. Just like
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: we have anti-money laundering policy, we're going to have anti-online
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: sexual exploitation policy. And we just don't do business with
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: user-generated porn sites that don't verify agent consent because it's
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: too risky for us, right?
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: Right, because then, yeah, it hits their wallet.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It's like big pharma. It's like, you know, litigation
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: made a huge difference in reform in the pharmaceutical industry.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: We saw it in hedge fund insider trading cases when
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: they had big litigation and criminal prosecution, and it forced
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: those changes to happen. So I think that could be.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: That's where we're hoping to get to next.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's where we.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: Need to go. And who supports, legally supports you guys'
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: like the legal costs?
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, that's where, I mean, these firms, a lot
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: of them are working on a contingency basis where, you know,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: they're working with victims. Some do pro bono. They have, like,
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: different kinds of arrangements. And then we support victims as
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: well at the Justice Defense Fund to help them get
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: connected to lawyers, to support them along that journey. It's
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: a hard thing to do, to take on an abuser.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: It's a hard thing to go into litigation, and they need,
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: you know— therapy, advocacy, like all the ways that they
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: need to be supported. And so, yeah, that's our mission
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: is to support survivors, to pursue justice in court, to
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: get that healing, and to implement those preventative policies to
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: make sure it doesn't happen again. Now, MasterCard has come
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: like a little ways. So they implemented a policy where
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: they say, you have to verify uploaders, but that's not
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: far enough. Like you have to verify those in the videos. Right.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And do you think there's, like, backroom dealings between
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: these companies and the, like, credit card companies where they're, like,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: sending them extra cash or, you know, like, they just
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: know each other, the owners know each other, and it's like,
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: we'll let you stay open, that type of thing?
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: I haven't seen that. You don't think that's going on?
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: I haven't seen that happen.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: You don't get that feeling?
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: I don't get that sense. Yeah. I think that, you know,
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: this is just one of many– Industries that they can
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: make money on and they will maintain that position.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's one of those lobbying by the actual owners
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: of the companies towards the credit card companies, the banks.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: Possible.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: You start to figure that that's where a lot of
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: things really kind of happen.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: And then it bubbles up to the surface of what
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: we can– Follow the money. What we can see.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: Um, what, what state, cause I've noticed like, you know,
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: I've watched pornography before I've had issues with, um, uh,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: pornography addiction kind of, or I just, I use it
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: as an escape, like, especially like in my twenties, like, um,
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: you know, I found pornography when I was, you know,
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: at a, at a age where I was probably maybe
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: 13 or 14. And so then I would use it
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: to make me feel good. It was like one of
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: the only ways I felt like when I was young
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: that I could feel good, you know, I had really
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: low self, uh, worth. And so, Once I realized pornography
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: and porno and everything, I was like, oh, dang, I
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: have a control, basically lever on my body as to
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: when I can feel okay, right? And so it was magazines,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: and then I guess as things, you know, then it
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: became like video online, stuff like that, you know, over time.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: But it certainly has been something where it's like, I
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: don't feel good about myself. I feel down about myself.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: What's the one way I know to feel good? And
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: it would be to watch pornography, you know, or use
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: it to masturbate, you know, things like that to make
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: myself– and you get a hit of dopamine crazily. And
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: so then part of you feels good for a while,
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: you know. So that's been– you know, that was kind
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: of my story with it, except it got to, like–
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: I would notice instead of going and meeting girls or
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: trying to, like– Well, part of my spirit started to
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: suffer because I was taking out like an important part
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: of like my soul and my physiology by ejaculating or
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: like just like abusing that part of me. And then
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: I didn't have– I think that part of you is
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: supposed to kind of build up inside of you and
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: help you have like some– it pushes you to talk
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: to women and to want to go on dates and
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: things like that. And so for me, I think it
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: started to weaken some of that over time. It was like, well,
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: why go– meet a girl or ask a girl out
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: when I could just masturbate. You know, that was some,
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: that was kind of what happened, I guess, in my
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: head at some times.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: And I've been in like recovery groups to talk about that.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm in recovery groups where there's like multiple
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: things that people have dealt with. You know, a lot of,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: for me, it's just been like intimacy stuff, you know,
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: because if you're looking at pornography, it creates, it skews
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: the way you look at intimacy because you start to
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: think of like sexual activity just in like frames and certain, Um,
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: like you don't really think of connection cause you don't
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: see a lot of connection in porn. You know, it's
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: not like you watch a 45 minute porn and it's people,
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: two people getting to know each other, you know, at
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: a park or something, you know, so, or splitting a
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: diet soda or something. So it's like, you know, that
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: part is all, you know, things get super, I think
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: things get kind of convoluted in your psyche sometimes.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: Um, Well, yeah, and it's driven by an algorithm now.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: It's like, you know, it's people's sexual preferences and their sexuality.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: And today, you know, this internet porn saturated world that's
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: driven by an algorithm. The algorithm is driven by executives
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: who want to get as many views and clicks and
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: add impressions as possible. And then, you know, that's kind
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: of shaping the content that's being seen on the sites.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: And what's especially interesting alarming to me and you know
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: it's what you experienced right because you when you were
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: 13 years old um when you were first exposed to
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: porn is that children you know are just en masse
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: being exposed to not playboy right not the centerfold that
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: used to be but the free porn tube sites because
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: It's free it's just in Do you guys know that
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: children are accessing those? Is there statistics behind it? Oh, yeah.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think one study from 2022 was saying
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: that 75% of 13 to 17-year-olds have viewed internet porn.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think it would probably be more than that.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: Every kid has a device. There's five-year-olds that could click through.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: The internet filters are not doing a good job. And
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: parents who may not even know how to implement internet
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: internet filters for their kids. And even if they do,
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 2: they can't control all the time. So they can't be
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: at school and other places when they go to their
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 2: friend's house or whatever.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: It's just everywhere. Which filters are they using? Are they
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: the ones that you suggest kind of.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: That people use? I don't have any particular brands that
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: I would suggest, but there's so many different apps that
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: people can install. You can get routers that could actually
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: block the content at the router level.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's awesome. I didn't know that. Yeah.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: And so there's stuff like that out there, but.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: I know states are stopping people from like a lot
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: of states are pro you have to upload an ID now.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: Well, there's like this whole movement in the United States
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: right now. that is saying, look, we understand that kids
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: are accessing this content, and we want to protect kids
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: from viewing. And I call it a form of secondhand
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: sexual abuse, right, for kids to be witnessing this kind
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: of content. And from my perspective, I know how much
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: of this content isn't just hardcore, right? It's actually criminal.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: Where they could be watching a real rape as their
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: sex education as an eight-year-old child. And, you know, they
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: call it the creation of a sexual template, right? So
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: it becomes, like, what is your sexuality about and what is,
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: you know, arousing to you? And if they grow up
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: on this kind of content, I mean, it could do
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: so much damage to an entire generation.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: Well, especially, I think a lot of that's already happened.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: I think you've seen, like, a lot of the effects
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: of pornography on, you know, marriages. Like, you know, people
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: get addicted to porn and then they're no longer– expressing
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: attraction to their spouse because it's being hijacked basically by
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: this algorithm, by the websites, by this addiction, and then
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: marriages fall apart and then families fall apart. Yeah.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: And another implication of this is actually children who are
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: acting out on other children. So we've seen So I
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: was just reading the Amicus, you should call it Amicus briefs.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: So these are briefs that were submitted to the Supreme Court.
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: So as these states across America are implementing age verification
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 2: to protect kids from viewing porn online, the porn sites
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: are not happy about this. So Pornhub and its partners
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: are suing those states. So for example, they sued the
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: state of Texas to not have to abide by this
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: age verification law. And it's gone now. They've appealed it.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: They lost. They appealed. Now it's at the Supreme Court.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: And on January 15, the justices actually heard oral arguments
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: for whether or not we can have states enacting age
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 2: verification to keep kids off porn sites. So they're going
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: to have a decision by June. But some of the
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: briefs submitted are so compelling. And one of them was
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: this nurse, Heidi Olson, And she's a sexual assault, she's
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: a pediatric sexual assault nurse. And she was talking about
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 2: her experience with over 1,500 cases of sexual assault that
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: she had to document and assess. And she saw that
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: 50% of those cases were children who were assaulting other children.
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: And the number one, the perpetrators in that group were
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 2: 14-year-old males who were then assaulting Females? Other females, yeah.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: Children. And you're saying that a lot.
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: And they're citing pornography as the reason why they're acting out, right?
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: Because that's human nature, especially with kids. Oh, yeah.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: You see something, you mimic it.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, like my son, he's like, watch Spider-Man
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: or something. And he's like jumping off the walls and
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: pretending that he's Spider-Man. They're acting out what they see, right?
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 2: And so if they're watching porn and they're watching potentially
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: actually watching sexual crime on these sites and they're, you know,
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: kind of acting out what they see. And so it's
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: not surprising that that's happening, right?
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: It's sick. It's literally being in a spiral of sickness
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: kind of, I mean, it's almost like what you would
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: feel like people would describe as like some sort of
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: a hell, you know? Um, one of the wildest things
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: that happens on porn sites is, um, how they I
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: don't know if this is targeted or what the goal is,
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: but you talk about it ruining families. Some of the
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: videos are like stepson mom, dad, son's girlfriend. Like shit
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: that's like you're putting things into people's– just even to
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: put that seed into somebody's psyche. People don't realize or
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: we don't realize that when we're watching something, that's– we're
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: a sponge, right? We might say, oh, I'm not really–
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: I'm watching this, but it's just I'm watching it for
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: a brief second. I'm using it, right? But whatever it is,
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: it's also using you, right? Everything is a back and
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: forth relationship.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And teen was, I mean, one of the most
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: popular categories on Pornhub was teen. And teen, right, like
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: teen could be 18 and 19, but it also is
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: 13 and 14 and 15 and 16. And so many
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: of those videos are– You know, where they could be
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: someone who's of age, but they're intentionally made to look
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 2: underage with the pigtails and the flat chest and the
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: braces and the no makeup and all of that. And
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 2: they're mixed in with videos of real teenagers who are
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: being abused. And then this is being pushed, right? It's
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 2: one of the– they were– you know, Pornhub was tracking–
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 2: down to the dollar, how much they would make monthly
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: on those teen categories on their site. And it was
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 2: one of the most popular that they had. And so
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 2: whatever is making the most money, you push that forward, right?
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 2: And so maybe it's they're getting more clicks because people
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 2: are horrified by it. Or maybe, I don't know exactly
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 2: what is happening there, but whatever it is that gets
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 2: the most clicks and views, they will push the algorithm, right?
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 2: Will push that forward. Of course.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: But it's like, why, I wonder how that even starts
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: if they say like mom, son, porn, you know what
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: I'm saying? Like where does something like that idea even start?
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 2: Well, I think it's, so I've spoken to some porn
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: producers who've talked to me about this and the way
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: that there's been like a trajectory from like Playboy into
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 2: more and more kind of extreme forms of porn in
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: different situations. And they're saying like, They're just told to
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: create the most extreme thing you can think of because
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 2: you need more shock value. There's this idea of kind
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 2: of desensitization for people where they want to kind of–
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: in order to get the same dopamine hit with porn,
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 2: it's not necessarily that you need more. It's that you
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 2: need different and you need something different. Yeah, more extreme
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: to kind of get that same dopamine hit.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: What does porn do to our brains? Do you have
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: anything on that? I'm trying to see just the psychological effects.
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: New research sheds light on the global impact of problematic
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: pornography use. Okay, I'll look at this a little bit.
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: But after this, I want something more about the actual
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: effects on our brain. A comprehensive international study involving tens
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: of thousands of participants from dozens of countries suggests that
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: problematic pornography use might have a prevalence rate as high
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: as 16.6%. So that's saying that 16.6% of people, per
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: this study, have problematic pornography use. Problematic pornography use refers
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: to a condition where individuals experience an uncontrollable urge to
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: consume pornography, leading to significant distress or impairment in their
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: daily functioning. First, most people use pornography, but only a
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: small group of them develop problems with it. So we
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: wanted to see how many people may experience such problems
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: worldwide and whether there are any country, gender, or sexual
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: orientation-based differences, as most previous studies focused on really specific populations, i.e.,
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: men from the United States. I think one of the
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: most important takeaway messages from our study is that problematic
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: pornography use seems to be as common as other mental
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: health issues, i.e., depression. So we need to better understand
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: this problem and provide appropriate care for people experiencing this issue.
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: Probably the most surprising finding of the study is that
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: only four to 10% of individuals with problematic pornography sought
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: help for this issue with an additional 20 to 40%
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: wanting to, but did not do so for various help reasons.
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: Well, part of that is shame, right? And that's why
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 2: I am so grateful. I'm sure so many of your
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 2: listeners are grateful that you talk about it.
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: Oh, well, I'll say this exactly and specifically. When I,
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: you know, we actually, a friend of mine, I started
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: a program called Valor Recovery, and it's for porn addiction.
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: And I know I met this guy in different recovery meetings,
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: and he's a friend of mine. And so I'll go
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: to the meetings, and I'm excited to go to the meetings,
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: and we're helping kind of work to try and make
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: this thing bigger, right, to make it bigger. And one
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: of the things I noticed when I took– when I
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: had the most time I ever had off of pornography–
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: the shame I had disappeared. There was still some shame
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: at certain moments, but I was able to finally notice
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: it because before I'd just been in this circle of
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: shame because I would masturbate. I would feel ashamed of myself.
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: I would start to feel a little bit better, but
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: I would be like had some, but then when I
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: needed to, when I needed to feel okay, when, if
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: I started to feel a little shaky or needed to
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: feel okay again, I would be right back to the
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: pornography and then the shame of it. Like a cycle.
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like a cycle.
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: And I didn't realize, I was stuck in it probably
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: for a decade. I would still go on dates and
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: be in relationship stuff, but it ruined a lot of those.
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 2: Are you like free today from that?
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't say I'm free, but I'm definitely on parole.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying? Like it's a different... I
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: have tools and stuff now in place to like battle
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: against it. And so.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 2: What helped you the most to.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: Going to meetings, recovery, 12-step recovery.
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 2: Community.
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: Community, yeah. Getting in groups. And you'll start to see
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: in groups, I've been in groups where men at first
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: were scared to even talk in the groups. And then
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: three months later, you see that their wife has moved
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: back in. They're spending time with their kids. They're not
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: watching pornography. They're not acting out in these certain ways
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: with escorts and prostitutes and all of that. But the
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: biggest thing I noticed for myself was shame. I just
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: noticed that it started to disappear because I'd always had
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: this heavy shame And I'd never really noticed that it
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: could have had to do with really the masturbate, just
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: the part of like, if I need to make myself
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: feel good, then I'll use masturbation, you know?
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 2: Do you think that there's, I mean, it could be like...
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: two sides to shame, right? Shame could be really destructive
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 2: and unhealthy because it causes you not to seek help
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: or get community or be able to talk about it.
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 2: And so then you push the problem down and then
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: it becomes, then you you know, worse, right? Because then
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 2: you're trying to alleviate that pain.
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: Okay, say it one more time for me.
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 2: So, you know, could the shame have two sides to
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 2: it where there's kind of like a healthy shame where
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 2: it's pricking your conscience and saying like, this is not
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: who I am. I can do better than this. And
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 2: it inspires you to overcome. But then there's the other
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: side of shame, which keeps people kind of hiding it,
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 2: pushing it down, not being able to get community, not
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 2: being able to talk about it. which then could cause
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 2: the problem to be worse. Right.
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: For me. Yeah. I agree. Both of those things can happen.
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: I think some of them kind of happened at certain
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: moments for me, but I think overall it was just,
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: I didn't want to be doing it anymore and I
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: kept doing it.
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: And so for then it was just constant, like, um,
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: like I don't have any willpower.
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: And so that made me ashamed of myself.
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: It wasn't– sometimes the act itself would like definitely like
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: I would watch pornography on the computers or something and
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: I would immediately close it.
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 2: Did you ever feel like you were encountering potentially non-consensual content.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: When you were viewing? I never felt like I was–
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: I never felt like I saw anything like that.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: But I do think that I've– this is how I've
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: long– I've long thought this. I believe– because sometimes you
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: see like a lot of like people get compromised, right?
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: It seems like a lot of times in our society
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: that– like freedom seekers or people that want to change
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: the status quo that want to like rise up and
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: do something different. And at some point, some of them get,
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: it feels like maybe they get compromised in there. I
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: don't know if money hits them or there's some opportunity
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: that's presented to them. This is all, this is a
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: lot of conspiracy temple hat stuff, but, and then they
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: change their tune or their tune weekends or their goal
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: or agenda, like kind of curbs a little bit. And
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: you think, Oh, somebody got to them. I think that
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: a lot of these sites are, record somehow secretly these
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: days can record the user watching porn and so then
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: that they are able to use that against users like
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: say like because i think everybody's probably watched some type
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: of pornography maybe i don't know everybody that i know
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: has watched it but i would guess anyway like if
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: you had a tickle and be like tell me if
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: you watch it they would do they would admit it
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: but um But that's what I've always thought. I'm like, man,
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: I bet some people it's like they use that. That's
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: something like because you always wonder what's that tool that
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: like once people get like some power or something, what's
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: the tool that they use to keep them down? And
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: it would either be like, well, we're going to assassinate
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: you or we have this video of you masturbating. That
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: would be like, oh, it's too much shame for me
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: to handle, you know.
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 2: And even if it doesn't actually happen, the fear of that, right?
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: That'd be a risky card to say, you know what?
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to call your bluff. That'd be crazy,
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: you know?
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 2: Well, there is where some of the opposition to user
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 2: age verification is coming from, probably, from users who are
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 2: afraid that they are going to have to identify themselves
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 2: when they're going to those sites. But I would assure people...
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 2: Like that is actually not a real fear in this
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 2: situation because we have ways now with technology and there's
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 2: third party companies. So I would never want anybody to
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 2: actually have to give their ID to Pornhub because I
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 2: would never trust them in a million years with that
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 2: content because they exploit data. Like they're being sued right
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 2: now in a class action for data exploitation.
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 2: You know, they gather so much information already.
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: And then they sell it to people?
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 2: They sell it to advertisers. So, like, when you go
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 2: to Pornhub, you think that it's all private, right? But
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 2: they're gathering, like, the IP address. They can find out
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 2: your zip code. From your zip code, they can probably
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: find your income level. They're looking at your sexual preferences.
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 2: They're determining if you're a. a male or a female,
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 2: what language you speak, what browser you use. I mean,
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 2: they're gathering so much information about everybody. And so there's that.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 2: But there's third-party companies that can verify age safely, effectively,
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 2: with respecting privacy. In fact, they don't even have to
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 2: actually take your image. So it's biometric scanning. So there's
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 2: a company called Yoti where they actually will, in one second,
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 2: they can determine your age over 99% accuracy with a
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 2: facial scan using AI that's trained on thousands or millions
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 2: of images. And they just look at pixels and numbers.
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 2: They don't actually even store the actual image of your face.
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 2: And then they erase that. So that's how they can verify.
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 2: So anybody who wants to oppose age verification for the
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 2: reason of privacy concerns, which is what Pornhub is shutting
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 2: itself down for, in states across the United States right now,
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 2: they're shutting themselves down in opposition to age verification. Right.
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: Okay, so they're saying instead of having people verify their
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: age to watch, we would rather shut ourselves down?
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 2: Yes, because it costs them money. Oh, because they have to.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: Hire a third-party company to verify. Exactly. They're not allowed
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: to age verify.
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, it's not that they're not allowed to.
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 2: They won't. I don't think that they can, and I
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 2: don't think anybody would ever want to hand their ID
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 2: over to Pornhub. So there's this third-party sites that have
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 2: that technology that can at scale verify. So they're used
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 2: by Meta, TikTok, other companies who do this.
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: But they're saying, oh, it's too much. It's not cost-effective anymore.
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 2: They're saying– like Pornhub is out there and the media
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: is saying we're shutting ourselves down because we care about
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 2: user privacy because we don't want people handing over their
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 2: personally identifying information.
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: But that's a lie. If they care about user privacy,
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: then they would care about protecting people.
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 2: Who are un- A non-consenting, right? Yeah.
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: That's the most privacy. It's the most.
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: But not only that, it's like the same company also
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 2: runs pay sites that are collecting credit card information, right?
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 2: With your name, your, you know, when you put in
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: your billing address. your credit card details.
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: So it's all a facade.
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 2: It's all just a facade. And so that's why I
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 2: think it's important for people to know the truth about
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 2: what is the opposition to age verification, what's really going
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 2: on behind the scenes here, and it's really about money.
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: And we even have their senior community manager who publicly
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: admitted in a Reddit thread, she was having a conversation,
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 2: and she says... age verification would basically devastate their traffic.
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 2: And it costs us money to verify. And that's why
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 2: it would be a disaster for them is because it
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 2: costs them money. And so that's really what this is about.
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: It's about money. Yeah. When people say that, like, how
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: do you respond to that argument that people say like, oh,
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: we are this, you're limiting freedom of speech, right?
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I mean, I would just, well, from the.
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: Or responsibility of the person, right? So both of those things, maybe.
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 2: Well, there's two sides. So there's, you know, so we're
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 2: talking about those who are in the videos, and then
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 2: we're talking about who's viewing the videos. And I would just,
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 2: you know, over and over, and this has been, judges
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 2: have said this too, it's like, Child sexual abuse is
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 2: not an expression. It's not an idea.
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: Agree wholeheartedly.
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 2: Rape's not an idea. These are actual crimes as contraband
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 2: being distributed.
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: So anybody that's saying that, fuck them, really.
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 2: Basically, yeah.
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: To be honest, because it's just a messed up. It's like,
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: what are you saying here? You're saying that. Because if
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: you know that these sites are doing that now, and
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: then you can't really argue freedom of speech for them
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: because they're not- It's not speech.
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: It's not speech. Right.
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: It's crime. In fact, it's the fact that somebody can't
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: speak up for themselves.
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: And even when people do, videos have to be flagged
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: so many times, or they don't have proper people in
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: place to help those people who are trying to speak
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: up for themselves. Right.
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So there's that on that side, but then on
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 2: the other side, they're trying to argue this is limiting
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 2: free speech, right, for us to implement age verification. And again,
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 2: it's like, no, you know, this is not limiting anybody's
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 2: ability to access this content or anybody's ability to express
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 2: themselves on these sites. It's simply like a one second
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 2: age verification biometric scan using, you know, the safest, you know,
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 2: privacy protection that you can. And it's no different than
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 2: if you go into, a physical store and they're selling
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 2: alcohol or right. And then the bartender would do like a,
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 2: you know, look at you and determine, do I think
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 2: that they're of age or not? Let me see your ID,
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 2: take a moment, make sure you're an adult and on
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 2: your way. Like that doesn't restrict somebody's ability to get
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 2: what they want. They still can go in the bar
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 2: and they can get the alcohol. Anybody can still go
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 2: to a porn site and access porn if they want to.
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 2: They just have to take these few steps in between.
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: And it helps keep it out of the hands of children.
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: If a kid gets on there also too, a lot
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: of times the fear of something, you get on something
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: like 18 or older, you have to verify yourself. As
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: a kid, I remember if you even would have clicked
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: something like that and then it opens to another page,
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: you get so scared sometimes you close it down. You'd
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: be like, oh my God, they're going to know my
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: dad's going to, you know, there was just, there was
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: a lot of that kind of fear.
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 2: But now there's just like the, are you 18 click
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 2: through button? They didn't even have that.
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 2: In 2020. Finally, now if you're like on a mobile device,
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 2: it'll be like, are you 18? And then you could
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 2: just click yes.
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: But some of them now have a thing where you
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: have to have identification.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: What state level government are doing the best to help
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: support the battle against, I guess, porn or dirty porn,
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: you know, or.
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 2: Like illegal content.
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: Illegal content.
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 2: Like the illegal, yeah.
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: And then porn in general. Yeah. Because at some point
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: it becomes also, it can be a moral or ethical topic.
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: I don't know if ethical. It could be a moral
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: choice for a population at a certain point. Do we
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: want to continue to consume this?
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean from my perspective, I think that we
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 2: could come into agreement about children. Like I think that
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 2: that could be pretty easy.
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's easily done. I think that's true.
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: It's just obviously some people don't care.
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 2: So yeah, the states that are doing the best– To
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 2: protect kids from access, I would probably say, I mean,
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 2: the one that's just kind of taking up the fight
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 2: is Texas. Like, they have, they're going, they're in the ring, right?
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 2: They're at the Supreme Court trying to battle this out
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 2: with the big porn companies and to implement age verification.
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 2: So I think, you know, but there's multiple other states.
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 2: And I would just say, like, this is bipartisan. So
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 2: there's people from both parties that are in agreement that
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 2: kids should not be accessing online porn.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: That's true.
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 2: And then on the other side of the screen, you know,
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 2: I mean, we've had several bills that have been introduced
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 2: in the United States since 2020 that would require agent
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 2: consent verification. But they didn't pass. There's efforts in the UK.
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 2: There's efforts in Canada. Because this isn't just a U.S. issue, right?
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: But why aren't they passing? More than a dozen states
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: have passed new laws that led to restrictions on pornography.
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: Now the Supreme Court will weigh in, right?
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you mentioned that, right? This is.
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but we need the other side too. Like we
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 2: need our government not just to implement age verification for users,
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 2: but also for those who were in the videos. Right.
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 2: And that just– but here's the thing.
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: But has that bill gone to them before and they
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: didn't pass it?
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 2: It just didn't. It kind of, you know– It was
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 2: attached to other stuff. It was like at the end
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 2: of a session and then it kind of died and
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 2: then you have to reintroduce it. But here's the thing.
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 2: We don't really have to– enact that law in order
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 2: to reign in these big porn companies. Because we have
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 2: laws that govern studio produced porn, like the brick and mortar,
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 2: porn valley, you know, pornography has always been highly regulated.
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 2: And they've abided by those regulations. Like one of them
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 2: is called USC 2257. And that's been in place since 1988.
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 2: It's a law? It's a law in the US. It's
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 2: a crime. to distribute or to produce porn if you
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 2: don't verify the age and consent of those who are
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 2: in the videos. And that has been in place for decades.
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 2: And it has been complied with. The only problem is
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 2: in the internet age, when it became user-generated content, then
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 2: these sites say, well, we get a pass because guess what?
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 2: We're not the ones that are producing the porn.
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: We're just hosting it.
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 2: We're just hosting it. We're just... But In the case
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 2: of Pornhub, they've tried to make that argument. It doesn't
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 2: really hold because not only is it about producing, it's
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 2: also about distributing. It's transferring. And they had that download
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 2: button on every video where from their servers, they were
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 2: transferring this content to the devices of millions of people
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 2: around the world.
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: And that's illegal. I mean, isn't it true if somebody,
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: if they find child pornography on someone that they can
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: go to jail?
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 2: Oh, just to possess it. I mean, victims couldn't even
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 2: possess their own videos of abuse. I had to be
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 2: meticulously careful.
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: But then these sites can transfer so much.
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 2: Possessing it on their servers is actually legal. And we
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 2: now in these recent litigation, there's employees who are going
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 2: back and forth in their messages going, I just had
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 2: to download one of the worst child abuse videos that
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 2: I've ever witnessed. I need to see a therapist. for
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 2: what I just witnessed. Uh-oh, I forgot to delete it.
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 2: Am I going to get, I could go away for
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 2: a long time for this. Like these are the conversations
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 2: that are turning up from Pornhub employees in discovery that
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 2: they are doing this.
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: So if you're concerned, right, if they're concerned at that level.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So there's laws, like we already have laws that
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 2: can be implemented to, like you can't distribute child pornography,
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 2: USD 2257. It's just they have to be modernized and
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 2: applied today over the modern way that we distribute porn
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 2: on the internet.
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: It's funny. Sometimes it seems like our government is kind
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: of the last, like once something has come through and
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: made all of its money and ruined so many lives,
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: then they'll help with it.
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: That's why I'm always like, how complicit is our own
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: government sometimes in a lot of these things? Because that's
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: what it feels like. It's like, oh, after this wave
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: of has ruined the lives of a million people and
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: made half a billion dollars, then we'll shut it down.
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: Not if everybody's had their grift or their hand in it.
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why I'm really hopeful about the route of
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 2: strategic civil litigation, empowering survivors in that way to hold
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 2: the financial institutions accountable. Because I think that could go
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 2: way faster.
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: Which credit companies are still accepting payments for pornography websites?
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 2: Oh, pornography websites. Well, all of them except American Express.
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: Okay, so American Express is the only.
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 2: They've never been involved in online or pornography at all.
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: So American Express is the only credit card company that doesn't...
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: will not allow its information to be used on pornography websites. Yeah, period.
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 2: And I'm not suggesting that that has to be the
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 2: position of the other credit card companies.
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: No, but if they're not going to say that we're
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: not going to verify things.
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That, well... That's the easy route here is for
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 2: them to just say, like we have anti-money laundering policy,
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 2: we have this anti-exploitation policy, and you have to verify
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 2: agent consent if you want to do business with Visa.
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 2: That's it. And that will take place instantly and globally. Like,
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 2: it'll apply everywhere.
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: So what could we say then to the companies? Like,
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: if we were to put out a clip, it's like, hey,
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: this is what, right now, credit card companies are allowing transactions.
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: On pornography websites.
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 2: That are not verifying the age and consent.
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: That are not verifying the age and consent of.
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 2: Every individual in every single video.
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: Every individual in every single video.
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 2: And they need to stop that.
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: And they need to stop that right now. The only
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: one who doesn't do it is American Express. Right.
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 2: Because they just have like this blanket policy against all
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 2: of it.
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: Because they have a blanket policy. But the other ones.
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: So you could. So hypothetically, someone could be watching a
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: pornography video on a website that. The user is being
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: coerced or trafficked under the influence.
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 2: A child, minor.
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: Or a child or a minor. And the websites are
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: not verifying that that isn't the case. There's no verification.
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 2: At the point of upload. So like what they try
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 2: to say is, okay, let anybody upload, right? And then
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 2: later on, you know, if somebody complains, we'll try to
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 2: take it down quickly. And sometimes, you know, they didn't
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 2: use to even take it down quickly. Right. Or our
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 2: moderators review it, but no before. So this is like
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 2: prevention because there's that immortalization of trauma, right? One hour
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 2: is too long on a site that's getting 170 million
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 2: views per day.
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 2: You know, and even if they can't download, you can
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 2: screen record, like you can. Right. So like, any minute
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 2: is too long. We have to stop it before it
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 2: gets uploaded. And the only way to do that is
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 2: to agent consent verify before it's uploaded. And they, because
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 2: of the technology that we have, like they can do
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 2: that at scale. Like they can do that.
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: On a massive, but they don't because, but.
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 2: They don't because money, because money friction, because when you
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 2: introduce friction to uploading, you get less uploading, right? You
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 2: get less people who will do it. And so that
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 2: goes against the whole big porn, free porn thing. business
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 2: model because they need massive amounts of content. So anything
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 2: that you would do that would diminish the amount of
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 2: content on these sites, they don't want to do.
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 2: They have to be forced to do it. And actually,
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 2: as of September of 2024, Pornhub, after being criminally charged, right,
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 2: and have this monitor over their site, they're finally saying
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 2: that we're going to start verifying the agent consent of
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 2: those who are in the video's as of September of 2024. However,
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 2: they still have millions of videos that were uploaded prior
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 2: to that time.
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: That they don't know. That they don't know. Yeah. And
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: Visa and MasterCard, those companies are still accepting payments on
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: those sites.
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 2: Well, no, not on Pornhub.
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: Oh, not on Pornhub.
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 2: Not on Pornhub or any of the MindGeek, ILO-owned tube sites.
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 2: They will not.
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: So on those, they're not.
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 2: So they are done. Yeah.
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: And that's for the consent of the people in the videos, too? Yeah.
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 2: Yes. So they need to verify age and consent of those.
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: But what I'm saying is, is Pornhub currently accepting Visa
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: and MasterCard payments at all?
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 2: No. They can't. They would. They would like to, but
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 2: they can't.
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: They can't?
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 2: No. They've been cut off from that.
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: But Pornhub is still not, as of September 2024, they
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: said they were going to start verifying the age of consent.
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 2: Of those individuals.
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: Uploaded from then on, but not prior. We don't know yet.
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 2: No, for sure they're not. They haven't deleted the content
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 2: that was uploaded prior to that where it's only the
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 2: uploader that was verified, right? And it's not just like
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 2: Rocky Shea Franklin. I mean, there's multiple other victims who
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 2: are currently suing Pornhub because they had verified uploaders uploading
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 2: their trafficking, their rape and abuse. Got it. So that's
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 2: the lay of the land. That's the solution. going forward.
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 2: And it's a matter of public pressure. So I believe
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 2: this conversation is so valuable to this fight because we're
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 2: introducing not only the problem to so many people who
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 2: probably never heard that this was an issue before, but
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 2: also the solution so that we can pressure those in
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 2: positions of power to implement the solutions to make the
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 2: internet a safer place.
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: Right. So who do we pressure though? Who do I,
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: if I have them in here, who do I ask
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: And what do I ask them?
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 2: Okay. So if you have like the CEO of Visa
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 2: or MasterCard or the VPs there, why do you not
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 2: have this possibility? in place? And what will it take
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 2: to get you there? Because.
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: The policy of.
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 2: Age and consent verification for every single person and every
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 2: single video on a user-generated porn site. Like that... It's
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 2: not going to stop at 100%. Right. But it's going
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 2: to stop it a lot.
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 2: It's going to really... You know, just help make, like
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 2: I said, like the internet an actual safer place.
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: Oh, I wish that 15 years ago I would open
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: it up and be like, fuck, I can't even get
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: in this thing. I can't even do it. Fuck it.
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: I'm going to go outside. I'm going to go take
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: a walk or I'm going to go do something. I'm
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: going to respond to one of my buddy's text messages
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: that was asking me to go do something. I'm going
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: to go do something positive, more positive for myself. I
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: did a lot of positive things. I'm not saying like
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: woe is me or anything like that. But when it
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: came to a lot of like relationships and intimacy type shit,
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: I was more like, it was, it was just uncomfortable.
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: And so using pornography was easier, but then that started
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: to kind of like fray, like the part of me,
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: I think that even cared about building a relationship because it,
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: I didn't nurture that part of me at all. Some
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: of the times it didn't, it didn't even grow. How
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: would it grow if I'm not sitting there, you know,
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: nurturing it or paying attention to it. You know, the
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: only part of this, that dopamine fricking, you know, My
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: dopamine thing was just leaking or whatever, you know, because
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: I'm just sitting there just watching all this slurp lord
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: stuff on there. It's just trash. But anyway, whatever. Dude, God,
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: I need some help.
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 2: Well, one of the things that's also happening is not
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 2: just like intimacy and relational issues because that happens, right?
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, dude.
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 2: But it's also young men are having kind of an
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 2: epidemic of what they call porn-induced erectile dysfunction. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, P-I-E-D.
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 2: So there was a study in Canada, and it was
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 2: the Journal of Sexual Medicine, and they had found a
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 2: third of young men between 16 and 21 had issues
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 2: with porn-induced erectile dysfunction.
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, buddy.
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 2: And they're young.
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it's heartbreaking. And then here's that creates a
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: ton of shame, and a lot of that's just nervous energy.
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: And then here's the thing. If you get used to
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: watching porn... Then you finally are in an instance with
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: a woman or there is some sexual activity or whatever.
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: It's so foreign to whatever. The part of your brain
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: that watches a screen and the part of your brain
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: that engages with someone are two– I don't know this
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: for a fact, but to me it feels like two
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: totally different parts. One of them is very active and
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: feels very visceral and real, and one of them feels
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: very passive and– Um, transactional almost in a way, like
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: I'm going to give this my attention and I'm going
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: to get some reward out of it, but that's all
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: this is. Whereas over here, this is a field of
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: communication and connection. Right. So, um, so yeah, I wanted
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: to watch this right here, watching pornography. This is a,
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: from neuroscience news, watching pornography rewires the brain to a
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: more juvenile state. That's interesting. Pornography has existed throughout recorded history.
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: I'd love to get someone to come in and talk
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: about just the whole history of it. At the bottom here,
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: we have the impact. Okay. In the long term, pornography
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: seems to create sexual dysfunctions, especially the inability to achieve
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: erection or orgasm with a real-life partner. Marital quality and
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: commitment to one's romantic partner also appear to be compromised.
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: To try to explain these effects, some scientists... have drawn
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: parallels between porn consumption and substance abuse. Through evolutionary design,
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: the brain is wired to respond to sexual stimulation with
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: surges of dopamine. So if you get sexually stimulated, your
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: brain gives dopamine. And that makes sense because we're creatures
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: that are supposed to reproduce, right? And have attraction. This neurotransmitter,
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: most often associated with reward anticipation, also acts to program
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: memories and information into the brain. This adaption means that
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: when the body requires something like food or sex, the
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: brain remembers where to return to experience the same pleasure.
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: Instead of turning to a romantic partner for sexual gratification
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: or fulfillment, habituated porn users instinctively reach for their phones
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: and laptops when desire comes calling. Furthermore, unnaturally strong explosions
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: of reward and pleasure evoke unnaturally strong degrees of habituation
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: in the brain.
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 2: Dang.
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: That's wild. I could definitely see that. Mm-hmm.
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: And then it's like, and then you feel ashamed, you know,
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: like what parent wants to go and talk to their
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: son and wish him good night if he's been master.
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: I'm sure that's a weird thing. You know what I'm saying? Like,
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 1: I don't know what that's like, but I'm sure that
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: there's some shame there.
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 2: It's like, well, that's where I think that one of
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 2: the important things that we can do is create like
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 2: actually shame free zones where parents, Kids.
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 1: Like the kitchen or whatever? I don't know.
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, like your household, right?
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: Oh, I see what you're saying. Oh, okay.
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 2: You know, like where you can feel like you're in
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 2: a relationship that is safe to talk about the things
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 2: that you would feel ashamed talking about.
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 2: You know, because then you don't just stuff it down.
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: Well, that's what recovery meetings, that's one thing that's why
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 1: I think 12-step meetings are great because it's like, and
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: if people are wondering, well, how do I get another meeting?
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: There's slaa.org, I think it's called. If you want to
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: look at that up, Nick, and see.
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: But you can also look up SLAA online, and that's
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: just you can find meetings. And then once you get
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: into a meeting, you can talk to people. Now you're
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: not a weirdo. Now you get in a program. You
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: kind of get some things organized. You create basically a
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: set of principles for yourself, and then you have a
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: new kind of design for living.
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 2: I wonder, too, though, like in all of this and
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 2: the recovery and all the ways that you can help
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 2: yourself and people who are struggling with this, You know,
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 2: does hearing this truth about the victims who are on
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 2: the other side of the screen, I've had numerous people
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 2: and men and women who have struggled with compulsive behavior.
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 2: porn addiction that they didn't want, but they couldn't kick it.
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 2: They just really struggled with it. And when they heard
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 2: about the victims who could be behind that screen on
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 2: these sites, which is the primary way that porn is
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 2: distributed today, they felt like it finally gave them the
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 2: fortitude or the motivation to just be like, I don't
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 2: want to participate in somebody else's trauma like i don't
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 2: want to participate in their suffering i don't want to
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 2: give money i don't want to give clicks and views
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 2: to a big porn corporation who's making a living off
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 2: of the devastation of real victims lives and that is
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 2: actually what gave them the um i guess like the
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 2: ammunition to just finally like be like no like i'm
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 2: not gonna I'm.
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: Not going to do that. Yeah. What were some, well,
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: I certainly think you're right though. It's like, I have
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: some friends that work in porn and that sort of thing.
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: And it's not like, I don't think what they're doing
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: is bad. I don't think that for me, porn isn't good.
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: It's not a good, it's not, it hasn't been a
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: tool that I use properly or whatever. And I don't
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: think it's good for me.
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: It may be good for some people. It might be
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: good for them. Um, But I'm not damning the people
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: that work in it or anything like that.
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 2: It's a big business. No, and neither am I. I mean,
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 2: to each his own.
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: For sure. But the kids should be able to access it.
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: I don't think it's good.
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 2: No. Kids is where you draw the line.
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: I think it's really alarming.
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 2: Because they can't choose. Like they need to be able
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 2: to get to adulthood before they decide where they can
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 2: make that decision. And also it's that prefrontal cortex of
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 2: the brain where it's like that decision-making center of the
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 2: brain where It's not even developed. So they can't like reason.
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 2: Is this going to be good for me? Or do
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 2: I want to do this? Or what are the consequences
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 2: of me you know, and they just don't have that yet.
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 2: And so like, they definitely need to be protected. But
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 2: once you're an adult, you know, you can make decisions.
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 2: Like you should have the freedom to make whatever decisions
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 2: you want. And I take the position of like, you know,
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 2: if it's consenting adult, like that's their business, right?
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: Yep, I agree. But then also be, we also have this, like,
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: imagine if you opened your door and there was a
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: bunch of porn there. That's really what it's like. It's like,
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: I mean, the internet's just our front porch now. So
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: you open your door and everything is there. Everything is there.
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 1: So if you as a parent or as a country
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: kind of can't decide maybe what should and shouldn't be
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 1: there sort of, and at a certain point you see
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: enough proof, well– 90% of this many, this much percentage
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: of people maybe get addicted to this. It ruins this
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: many marriages, hypothetically. Like at a certain point, you might
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: think this isn't for our society. This just doesn't help
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: society that much overall. I'm not saying that. I don't
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: know if that's true.
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 2: But at least we can all, I mean, everybody can
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 2: agree that like step one, let's just keep kids away
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 2: from accessing it. And then, you know, because they will
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 2: get a, they will get that compulsive porn use when
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 2: they are young.
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no doubt about that. I think we get it.
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that's, yeah, I think there's no doubt
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: about it. It would be hard to hear, listen to
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: anyone's argument against that.
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 2: Well, it's, I mean, they're not arguing that kids shouldn't
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 2: watch porn. but they're arguing against the ways that we
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 2: can prevent them from doing it.
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: Which is kind of the same thing, isn't it?
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's just a different, yeah, I guess it's
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 2: a different way to say it, but yeah.
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: And who are the people that are arguing against it?
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 2: The people who profit from it, right? Which is the
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 2: big porn industry. That's crazy. If you had a politician
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 2: sitting in front of you, I think probably you could
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 2: just ask them, look, we need to introduce... preventative laws
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 2: to help keep victims from being abused on these sites
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 2: across the internet and that is again age and consent
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 2: verification for every individual. And I don't think there would
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 2: be resistance to that. I don't even think that... the
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 2: porn industry itself has a real legitimate way to resist that,
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 2: or they would, because they have been complying with USC
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 2: 2257 for so long, like since 1988. That standard has
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 2: been like brick and mortar studio porn.
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: They've been doing it. So the internet just hasn't.
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So it's just evolving with the internet.
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: And the government's always behind the times. Yeah.
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 2: So they just need to get up with the times.
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: It's the gap in between when the government is behind
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 1: the times and When people get hurt. Right.
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 1: Just like this recurring market that continues to happen. Just
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: the gravity is different. The source of the gravity is different.
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 1: We certainly appreciate your work and appreciate you coming through
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: here to share about this journey and what it's like
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 1: to take on something like Pornhub.
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you for shining a light on this. Thank
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 2: you for caring about it. Thank you for talking about it.
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 2: Thank you for being vulnerable about your own journey. Oh, yeah.
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: I think, I mean, all I am is just a
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: fucking mule for my own bullshit at this point. Or
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: a mule for my own problems.
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think it's so valuable because I think
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 2: that it helps, like, normalize that conversation so that people
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 2: can actually feel like they can talk about it and
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 2: get help if they want to get help. I think.
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: Well, I've been in a relationship one time. I was
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: just like, I'd watch pornography instead of hook up with
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: my girlfriend or have some sort of intimacy with my girlfriend.
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 1: And I, man, I feel horrible about that years later.
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 1: You know, I just didn't have, uh, I didn't know
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 1: how to do it there. You know, I just was
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: kind of, I don't know. I think I was, I didn't,
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: I was, I didn't want to talk to her about stuff.
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: And so I just, it was easier to do that than, uh,
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 1: like engage with her and, you know, but it's just, it,
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: you know, Just all comes at a cost. At the time,
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: I didn't think that it was, you know, I don't
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 1: know what I thought. I don't think I was thinking.
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 1: I think just, I was like, oh, this is the
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: easy way. And I wasn't kind of brave enough to
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 1: take the tougher route of like, let's lay here and
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: talk and see what's going on and then maybe build
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: up some intimacy.
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 2: But even to just recognize that is like so awesome.
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: I was outsourcing a lot of my intimacy, you know,
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: just to this screen that didn't care about me really.
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: And then to potentially the people on the other side
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: of the screen, you're saying they don't even know. It's
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: like it's a really pretty twisted– both sides. Say if
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: like there's somebody who's masturbating to a video of something
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: that they– the person didn't want to be in it, right?
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: They're being exploited. This person is doing it just because
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 1: out of addiction or shame or addiction, they're stuck in
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 1: this cycle that this is how they do to make
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: themselves feel okay. Okay. Then you basically have.
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 2: This exploitation cycle. Yeah, neither one of.
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: Them wants to be doing anything that they're doing. And
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: it's just this magnet.
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 2: Lack of freedom here and lack of freedom here because
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 2: they're doing what they don't want to do and they're
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 2: being forced to do, you know, they're being exploited here.
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 2: Their freedom is being taken away. And it's like, we
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 2: need freedom, freedom on both sides, right?
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, being alive is a, it's a journey.
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 1: But yeah, thanks for coming and sharing some of that
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 1: information with us.
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and also just to not– also, if you like
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 1: pornography and you can use it in a way that's
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 1: okay for you, then that's your world too. I don't
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 1: want everything to be a Debbie Downer that everything is
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: horrible and this and that. We're not looking at that.
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 1: If you can casually jerk off or whatever or touch
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 1: your body or whatever, then that's good for you. But
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 1: I think this is when it maybe gets out of
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: control and then– At certain ages, people look at pornography
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: differently too, I think. I think when you're 17 or something,
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 1: you're like just– you're just freaking rabbiting around the town.
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: You're not even thinking about a bigger picture of things.
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 2: Literally not thinking because they don't have that reasoning center
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 2: developed until you're like mid-20s.
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 1: Oh, you're just freaking serving jerk chicken all around town anyway.
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 1: But yeah, what can people do to help support?
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, so– easy thing they could do is sign
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 2: the petition, right? Which is trafficking competition.com. Um, they can
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 2: read the book, take down a hundred percent of all
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 2: proceeds from Author proceeds from that are donated to the
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 2: Justice Defense Fund to support victims in their pursuit of
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 2: justice and healing.
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: Amen.
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 2: And the book, it's written in first-person present tense where
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 2: you go on a journey of discovery with me, where
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 2: you go from that night I described in early 2020
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 2: all the way through this fight. You meet the victims.
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 2: You meet the whistleblowers.
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 1: You.
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 2: you know go through this day-to-day with me and so
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 2: at the end of it you really would feel like
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 2: you are immersed in it you understand it really deeply
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 2: at like a heart level you know that was my
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 2: goal for writing that book was that it wouldn't just
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 2: be like information that people get but they would go
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 2: on this journey and they would come out of it
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 2: feeling inspired and activated to take action. And on that note,
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 2: like they could join Team Takedown. We've created Team Takedown.
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 2: And so you can go to takedownbook.com and you can
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 2: join there and all of that. So yeah, we're going
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 2: to just keep at it until justice fully prevails. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 1: And it's, you know, it's like, yeah, once you start
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 1: to put the light on something, it grows, you know,
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 1: and that's such a nice, Gift that you gave us here.
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: The truth is like a lion. Let it loose. It
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 1: will defend itself.
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 2: St.
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: Augustine. That's really cool. Take down Inside the Fight to
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: Shut Down Pornhub. Thank you so much for your time today.
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: I really appreciate it.
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me. It was really
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 2: an honor.
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 1: You bet. cornerstone oh but when i reach that ground
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 1: i'll share this piece of mind i found i can
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: feel it in my bones