How Pornhub Became The Internet’s Biggest Crime Scene: Insights from Laila Mickelwait

What if you discovered that the world’s biggest adult site thrives on real sexual crimes? The hidden reality behind Pornhub exposes a network of trafficking, abuse, and corporate negligence.

Pornhub Is Not a Porn Site; It’s a Crime Scene

Far from being a neutral platform for consensual adult entertainment, Pornhub evolved into a digital hub where videos of real sexual violence and child exploitation proliferated for over a decade. Starting around 2007, the site adopted a user-generated content (UGC) model akin to YouTube, allowing anyone with an email address—and under ten minutes—to upload videos without any real ID or consent verification. That loophole created a marketplace for traffickers and abusers who monetized rape, kidnapping, and child sexual abuse material (CSAM) through ad revenue.

The scope was staggering: by 2019, Pornhub claimed 6.9 million new video uploads, and a total of 56 million pieces of content that year reached 170 million unique daily visitors and 62 billion annual visits. If you tried to watch every video back-to-back, it would take 169 years. Within this avalanche of material were videos of unconscious or intoxicated adults, minors as young as three, and self-generated CSAM—each clip distributing trauma worldwide under a download button that enabled indefinite re-sharing.

“This was something that was hiding in plain sight.” — Laila Mickelwait

The corporate owner behind Pornhub, a multinational behemoth now known as Alo (formerly MindGeek, Manwin, and Mansf), deliberately prioritized site growth and ad impressions over basic safeguards. A minimal three-person tech team oversaw the global network of sister sites—RedTube, YouPorn, XTube, and others—while failing to police or even report illegal content for more than 13 years, despite being legally obligated to flag child sexual abuse in Canada and other jurisdictions.

The Movement That Held Pornhub Accountable

Laila Mickelwait’s decade-long work in anti-trafficking advocacy collided with Pornhub’s crimes in late 2019. A tip alerted her to a 15-year-old Florida girl missing for a year, whose ordeal was filmed and uploaded under an account named “Daddy___,” resulting in 58 rape videos. Authorities only identified the victim after matching a 7-Eleven surveillance image to the uploader’s face on Pornhub.

Determined to expose corporate negligence, Mickelwait launched the #TraffickingHub campaign on February 1, 2020, after personally testing the upload process and confirming it took under ten minutes with zero oversight. She coupled that social media outcry with an op-ed in the Washington Examiner and a petition that rapidly amassed 2.3 million signatures from 600 global organizations and countless survivors. Through survivor interviews, media outreach, and legal advocacy, the movement laid bare Pornhub’s role as a trafficking enabler and rallied public demand for accountability.

The Investigation of Pornhub

Once #TraffickingHub gained traction, a series of high-profile investigations confirmed Laila’s findings. The London Sunday Times discovered dozens of illegal videos, including victims aged three to six, in mere minutes of browsing. The New York Times published “The Children of Pornhub,” a scathing expose by Nicholas Kristof that detailed stories like Serena’s—a 13-year-old from California coerced into sending images, which went viral on Pornhub and caused her nearly to drop out of school and attempt suicide.

Legal discovery unsealed thousands of internal emails, depositions, and policy documents when an Alabama court accidentally released confidential evidence. Those records revealed:

• A skeleton moderation team of just ten people per shift in Cyprus, expected to review 700–2,000 videos per eight-hour day with the sound off.
• A policy that prioritized approving content over removing abuse, with moderators reprimanded for slow throughput rather than for false negatives.
• An outright failure to report known child sexual abuse to law enforcement for over 13 years, despite legal mandates in Canada and elsewhere.
• Email threads showing refusal to remove keywords like “minor” or “teen” from search filters because they drove the most ad revenue.

By mid-2021, credit card companies—Visa, Mastercard, and Discover—refused to process payments, forcing Pornhub to delete 91 percent of its unverified content. Yet paid subscriptions and ad banners continued to fund any remaining illegal uploads until further legal pressure.

What Does A Healthy Porn Moderation Process Look Like?

Pornhub’s debacle underlines the urgency of robust, scalable content moderation. A secure, ethical platform must implement:

• ID Verification: Third-party biometric checks (e.g., Yoti) linked to government-issued documents ensure every uploader and on-camera participant is of legal age.
• Consent Documentation: Signed digital consent forms, with time-stamped multi-party confirmations, protect against non-consensual distribution.
• Hybrid Human-AI Review: AI filters flag potential abuse patterns—facial recognition for minors, audio cues for distress—while human moderators perform contextual checks, aided by randomized audits.
• Transparent Reporting: Mandatory, real-time reporting of any CSAM discoveries to law enforcement in all relevant jurisdictions prevents further victimization.

Such a process parallels the longstanding USC 2257 record-keeping regulations that govern studio-produced content in the United States. Adapting those principles to UGC sites could cost platforms more in compliance than they currently make in exploitative ad impressions, shifting the corporate risk assessment decisively toward user safety.

How Pornhub Tried To Discredit TraffickingHub

Rather than confront the evidence, Pornhub and its parent company resorted to silencing tactics. They financed online smear campaigns, hired private investigators to dig up personal information on Mickelwait, and even submitted fraudulent police complaints accusing her of distributing CSAM. Physical threats—letters bearing her children’s names and ominous warnings—aimed to intimidate her into silence.

Survivors who spoke publicly faced doxing and hacking, while company executives dodged media requests. Yet the transparency of legal filings, combined with relentless public pressure and strategic alliances with fintech leaders like Bill Gates-adviser Bill Auman, ultimately forced credit card processors and advertisers to withdraw support, undermining Pornhub’s business model.

The Dangers Of Underage Exposure To Pornsites

Beyond the explicit abuse uploaded by criminals, user-generated porn sites endanger minors who stumble upon violent, degrading, or unrealistic sexual content. A UK Journal of Criminology study found that one in eight videos on homepage listings depicted some form of sexual violence. For children as young as eight, repeated exposure can distort their understanding of consent, intimacy, and gender dynamics.

Thorn, a leading child protection NGO, surveyed over 1,000 preteens and reported that one in seven children aged nine to twelve admitted to sharing nude images of themselves online—a trend that fuels blackmail, self-exploitation, and psychological trauma. The American Psychological Association warns that early pornography exposure correlates with aggression, risky sexual behavior, and emotional desensitization. In the absence of effective age gates and parental guidance, the internet becomes a classroom for the worst kinds of sexual instruction.

Keeping Children Safe Online By Using Aura

Technological solutions can help parents and guardians navigate this perilous landscape. Emerging tools like Aura employ on-device AI and local analysis—rather than cloud uploads—to monitor screen interactions and network traffic safely. Key features include:

• Adult Image Detection: Real-time scanning of photos and videos to flag or blur explicit content before children view or send it.
• Sentiment Analysis: Passive monitoring of typing rhythms, screen swipes, and app usage patterns to identify emotional distress or risk behaviors.
• Location-Based Alerts: Contextual insights that correlate a child’s geolocation with unusual device activity, offering clues about possible grooming or exploitation.
• Customizable Filters: Pre-set and adjustable web filters, integrated with DNS-level blocking, that prevent access to known adult or violent sites without resorting to VPN circumvention.
• Privacy-First Design: All processing occurs locally on the device, ensuring parental alerts without wholesale data harvesting or surveillance of personal messages.

Alternative platforms like Bark, Net Nanny, and Circle by Disney offer complementary features—screen time management, social media scanning, and gaming posture detection. By combining these tools with open conversations about healthy relationships, families can build effective defense lines against online abuse and premature sexualization.

Learn More About Laila

Laila Mickelwait has spent over twenty years combating sex trafficking and child exploitation. After founding the Justice Defense Fund, she spearheaded survivor support programs and legislative outreach in Washington, D.C. Her book, Takedown: Inside The Fight To Shut Down Pornhub (2023), chronicles her late-night discovery of Pornhub’s upload pipeline, the rise of #TraffickingHub, and the corporate reckoning that followed. Laila continues to advocate for policy reforms, serve as expert witness in federal hearings, and collaborate with NGOs worldwide to promote online safety and corporate accountability.

Conclusion: Past Lessons, Future Solutions

The fall of Pornhub underscores two critical truths: digital platforms must not abdicate responsibility for user-generated material, and robust regulation plus deterrence can reshape corporate conduct. As we look ahead, stakeholder collaboration—legislators, financial institutions, tech companies, and civil society—must cement the following priorities:

• Adopt mandatory third-party age and consent verification for every individual in every adult video.
• Enforce transparent, cross-border reporting standards for CSAM to law enforcement.
• Empower parents with privacy-preserving monitoring tools and comprehensive digital literacy programs.
• Elevate survivor voices in policy design and corporate governance.

Bold Actionable Takeaway: Press legislators and financial institutions to enforce age and consent verification on all platforms that host user-generated adult content.

What measures do you believe will most effectively safeguard users and deter corporate complicity in trafficking and abuse?