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Pornhub hit with lawsuit over videos victimizing 12-year-old who was drugged and raped

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10 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By Doug Mainwaring

There is a backlog of about five months between when a user reports a video and an authorized team leader reviews it to determine whether to remove it, allowing the video to remain available on the Pornhub site for download and redistribution for nearly a half year after the complaint was first reviewed.

A man who as a 12-year-old boy was drugged and raped in nearly two dozen videos that were uploaded to Pornhub by his victimizer for monetary gain is suing the massive online pornography leviathan for breaking child sex trafficking and RICO laws.

According to the world’s leading anti-porn activist Laila Mickelwait, “His jury trial could put Pornhub out of business.”

In recent years, scandal-plagued Pornhub — and its shadowy parent company, Mindgeek, which recently changed its name to “Aylo” to escape its “scandal-ridden smut empire” reputation — has come under fire for posting child sexual exploitation material, sexual trafficking, and assault videos and then ignoring victim’s pleas to remove the videos from their website.

The predator who admitted that in the summer of 2018 he used, induced, and enticed the young boy and another minor to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing video pornography is now behind bars serving a 40-year sentence for “sexual exploitation of a child, advertising child pornography, and distribution of child pornography.”

However, Mindgeek and Pornhub have yet to face their young accuser for enabling the public distribution of the videos.

According to the lawsuit, videos of the boy’s molestation “astonishingly” generated nearly 200,000 video views, and as a result of Mindgeek’s actions and/or inactions, the now-young man “has suffered incomprehensible past and present physical, emotional, and mental trauma.”

“MindGeek knows that there is a demand for CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) on their sites and they cater to this demand,” according to the 78-page legal complaint filed in a U.S. District Court in Alabama where the sexual exploitation of the minors took place.

Hundreds of thousands of ‘teen’ sex video titles available

The case asserts that Mindgeek has historically sought to maximize profit, aggressively promoting child porn via titles and video descriptions that would more easily direct Google users to the exploitative videos featured on Pornhub.

“One such tag MindGeek used to classify pornographic content on its websites was ‘Teen.’ The suggested terms include ‘abused teen,’ ‘crying teen,’ ‘extra small petite teen,’ and ‘Middle School Girls,’” the legal complaint explains.

“In 2018, the word ‘teen’ was the seventh most searched term on all of Pornhub,” the complaint notes. “Other eponymous search terms, including ‘rape,’ ‘preteen,’ ‘pedophilia,’ ‘underage rape,’ and ‘extra small teens’ would call up videos depicting the same.”

The proliferation of these keywords and tags on the website ensures that when outside users Google these terms, Pornhub, or another MindGeek website, will be among the top results. This draws new users, even those searching the internet for illegal content, to MindGeek websites.

MindGeek’s aggressive data collection and traffic analytics mean that MindGeek knows exactly what users are looking for (and what exists) on their sites and that this includes sex trafficking material and CSAM.

For example, as The New York Times recently reported, as of December 4, 2020, a search for “girl under18” led to more than 100,000 videos. And a search for “14yo” led to more than 100,000 videos and “13yo” led to approximately 155,000 videos.  MindGeek sought to capitalize on such traffic by allowing illegal search terms, creating suggested search terms, keywords, and tags

Purposefully failing to censor criminal child/teen porn videos

The case notes that while Mindgeek-Pornhub does have online moderators who review complaints about videos on the site, the 10 moderators “have no prior training, medical or otherwise, to identify whether someone depicted in a pornographic video is a child” and are, by design, set up to fail at their task.

The ten individuals on the “moderation/formatting team” were each tasked by MindGeek to review approximately 800-900 pornographic videos per 8-hour shift, or about 100 videos per hour. According to Pornhub, there are approximately 18,000 videos uploaded daily, with an average length of approximately 11 minutes per video. Hence, each moderator is tasked with reviewing approximately 1,100 minutes of video each hour. This is an impossible task, and MindGeek knows that.

To compensate for and accomplish the impossible task, moderators/formatters fast-forward and skip through videos, often with the sound turned down. The problem is not resources: MindGeek’s annual revenues are at least $500 million, and it could certainly hire and train more true moderators.

One of the most disturbing assertions in the case is that “When minor victims of sex trafficking and their representatives have contacted MindGeek to remove videos of them from its websites, MindGeek has refused to do so.”

In some cases, MindGeek moderators/formatters even looked at video comments, deleted those noting a video constituted child pornography or otherwise should be removed from the system, and left the video up.

The MindGeek moderators/formatters are discouraged from removing illegal content for particularly profitable users. Generally, when an uploader has a history of highly viewed content, the employees are only permitted to send warning letters about illegal or inappropriate content.

There is a backlog of about five months between when a user reports a video and an authorized team leader reviews it to determine whether to remove it, allowing the video to remain available on the Pornhub site for download and redistribution for nearly a half year after the complaint was first reviewed.

The videos that the boy’s victimizer uploaded to Pornhub bore “disturbing titles that clearly suggested the child depicted was a minor, including but not limited to: ‘(Had sex with) my Step Nephew’; ‘Taking Teen Virginity’; ‘My sweet little nephew.’ The other 20 video titles are too crude and obscene for LifeSiteNews to cite.

Despite those titles and the content of the videos, Mindgeek “never informed the authorities about the identity of the child sexual predator, the fact he posed child sexual violence, or the fact that child sexual violence was being utilized on their platforms for profit to their mutual benefit.”

At no time did the MindGeek Defendants attempt to verify CV1’s identity or age, inquire about their status as minor children, victims of sex trafficking, or otherwise use their platform to root out the trafficking of their images. Instead, the MindGeek Defendants continued to disseminate these images around the world for profit even after law enforcement informed the MindGeek Defendants the images contained child pornography.

‘Pornhub would rather stop doing business than prevent kids from watching porn’ 

Pornhub has now ceased operations in 12 states that have begun to require age verification in order to enter the porn sites: Texas, Utah, Arkansas, Virginia, Montana, North Carolina, Mississippi, Kentucky, Indiana, Idaho, Kansas, and Nebraska.

“The world’s biggest porn site would rather stop doing business than prevent kids from watching,” conservative commentator and author Michael Knowles noted earlier this year. “Quite telling!”

“Pornhub has decided that age verification laws damage their business model to such an extent that it is better for them to simply block entire states rather than comply with (age verification laws),” LifeSiteNews columnist Jonathon Van Maren wrote in January.

Despite the legal troubles, Pornhub racked up a total of 5.49 billion visits globally in May, and with over 1.1 billion visits in the U.S. was ranked 10th nationally for online traffic. It’s not unusual for the website to reach over 10 billion total global monthly visits.

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Automotive

Tesla Vandals Keep Running Into The Same Problem … Cameras

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Hudson Crozier

People damaging Teslas in anger toward their owners and Elon Musk aren’t picking up on the fact that the vehicles have multiple cameras capable of catching them in the act.

At least nine perpetrators have been caught on video keying, writing graffiti or otherwise defacing Tesla vehicles in parking lots across the U.S. in the month of March alone. Most have led to an arrest or warrant based partly on the footage, which Tesla’s “Sentry Mode” automatically films from the side of the unattended vehicle when it detects human activity nearby.

“Smile, you’re on camera,” Tesla warned in a March 20 X post about its Sentry Mode feature. Musk’s company has been working to upgrade Sentry Mode so that the vehicles will soon blast music at full volume when vandals attack it. The camera system, however, has not stopped an increasing number of vandals from singling out Tesla owners, usually in protest of Musk’s work in the Trump administration for the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

One incident happened on March 29, the same day leftists coordinated protests around the country for a “Global Day of Action” against Musk. That Saturday also saw alleged instances of violence at protests. The demonstrations stemmed from an online call to action by groups such as the Disruption Project, which encourages activists to foment “uprisings,” find a “target’s” home address and other confrontational tactics.

Tesla’s press team did not respond to a request for comment.

One man allegedly caught on camera keying a Tesla SUV on March 24 apologized to the owner who confronted him in a parking lot in Pennsylvania, police and media reports said. The man faces charges of criminal mischief, harassment and disorderly conduct for allegedly carving a swastika onto the vehicle.

“I have nothing against your car, and I have nothing against you,” the suspect said while the owner filmed him in the parking lot. “Obviously, I have something against Elon Musk.” The man called his own behavior “misguided.”

The defendant’s lawyer told Fox News his “client is a proud father, long-time resident, and is currently undergoing cancer treatment” and that he would not comment publicly “pending the outcome of the case.”

One of the most aggressive acts caught by Sentry Mode was in the case of a man who drove an ATV-style vehicle into a Tesla on March 25. Texas police identified the man as Demarqeyun Marquize Cox, arrested him and said he allegedly gave two other nearby Teslas the same treatment while also writing “Elon” on them. The public defender office representing Cox did not respond to a voicemail from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Tesla cameras also caught three other people in FloridaTexas and Arizona keying and smearing bubble gum on the vehicles in March. The three suspects named by police do not have attorneys listed in county records available for contact.

Many of the vandalism cases since Trump’s return have reportedly caused thousands of dollars in damage for individual owners. For example, the bubble gum incident in Florida brought $2,623.66 in costs, while another keying incident in Minnesota brought $3,200.

Some reported attacks on Tesla vehicles and chargers have gotten the attention of federal law enforcement, including cases of alleged firebombing or shooting.

Two other suspected vandals in New York, one in Minnesota and one in Mississippi have reportedly avoided arrest for now — with one owner declining to press charges — but were all seen on the Teslas’ cameras scratching up the vehicles. Police identified the Mississippi suspect as an illegal migrant from Cuba.

One Tesla owner in North Dakota ridiculed a man who allegedly carved the letter “F” into his Cybertruck in a Costco parking lot — as seen on the Cybertruck’s camera. The defendant faces charges of criminal mischief, and county records say he is representing himself in court.

“I can’t believe this guy is potentially ruining his life to follow a political ideology,” the owner told WDAY News.

“If you’re going to vandalize these vehicles, you’re going to get caught,” the owner said.

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Carbon Tax

The book the carbon taxers don’t want you to read

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By Franco Terrazzano

Prime Minister Mark Carney wrote a 500-page book praising carbon taxes.

Well, I just wrote a book smashing through the government’s carbon tax propaganda.

It tells the inside story of the fight against the carbon tax. And it’s THE book the carbon taxers don’t want you to read.

My book is called Axing the Tax: The Rise and Fall of Canada’s Carbon Tax.


 
Axing the Tax: The Rise and Fall of Canada’s Carbon Tax 

Every now and then, the underdog wins one.

And it looks like that’s happening in the fight against the carbon tax.

It’s not over yet, but support for the carbon tax is crumbling. Some politicians vow to scrap it. Others hide behind vague plans to repackage it. But virtually everyone recognizes support for the current carbon tax has collapsed.

It wasn’t always this way.

For about a decade now, powerful politicians, government bureaucrats, academics, media elites and even big business have been pushing carbon taxes on the people.

But most of the time, politicians never asked the people if they supported carbon taxes. In other words, carbon taxes, and the resulting higher gas prices and heating bills, were forced on us.

We were told it was good for us. We were told carbon taxes were inevitable. We were told politicians couldn’t win elections without carbon taxes, even though the politicians that imposed them didn’t openly run on them. We were told that we needed to pay carbon taxes if we wanted to leave a healthy environment for our kids and grandkids. We were told we needed to pay carbon taxes if we wanted to be respected in the international community.

In this decade-long fight, it would have been understandable if the people had given up and given in to these claims. It would have been easier to accept what the elites wanted and just pay the damn bill. But against all odds, ordinary Canadians didn’t give up.

Canadians knew you could care about the environment and oppose carbon taxes. Canadians saw what they were paying at the gas station and on their heating bills, and they knew they were worse off, regardless of how many politicians, bureaucrats, journalists and academics tried to convince them otherwise. Canadians didn’t need advanced degrees in economics, climate science or politics to understand they were being sold a false bill of goods.

Making it more expensive for a mom in Port Hope to get to work, or grandparents in Toronto to pay their heating bill, or a student in Coquitlam to afford food won’t reduce emissions in China, Russia, India or the United States. It just leaves these Canadians, and many like them, with less money to afford everything else.

Ordinary Canadians understood carbon taxes amount to little more than a way for governments to take more money from us and dictate how we should live our lives. Ordinary Canadians also saw through the unfairness of the carbon tax.

Many of the elites pushing the carbon tax—the media, politicians, taxpayer-funded professors, laptop activists and corporate lobbyists—were well off and wouldn’t feel the brunt of carbon taxes. After all, living in a downtown condo and clamouring for higher carbon taxes doesn’t require much gas, diesel or propane.

But running a business, working in a shop, getting kids to soccer and growing food on the farm does. These are the Canadians the political class forgot about when pushing carbon taxes. These are the Canadians who never gave up. These are the Canadians who took time out of their busy lives to sign petitions, organize and attend rallies, share posts on social media, email politicians and hand out bumper stickers.

Because of these Canadians, the carbon tax could soon be swept onto the ash heap of history. I wrote this book for two reasons.

The first is because these ordinary Canadians deserve it. They worked really hard for a really long time against the odds. When all the power brokers in government told them, “Do what we say—or pay,” they didn’t give up. They deserve to know the time and effort they spent fighting the carbon tax mattered. They deserve all the credit.

Thank you for everything you did.

The second reason I wrote this book is so people know the real story of the carbon tax. The carbon tax was bad from the start and we fought it from the start. By reading this book, you will get the real story about the carbon tax, a story you won’t find anywhere else.

This book is important because if the federal Liberals’ carbon tax is killed, the carbon taxers will try to lay blame for their defeat on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. They will try to say that carbon taxes are a good idea, but Trudeau bungled the policy or wasn’t a good enough salesman. They will try to revive the carbon tax and once again make you pay more for gas, groceries, and home heating.

Just like with any failed five-year plan, there is a lingering whiff among the laptop class and the taxpayer-funded desk rulers that this was all a communication problem, that the ideal carbon tax hasn’t been tried yet. I can smell it outside my office building in Ottawa, where I write these words. We can’t let those embers smoulder and start a fire again.

This book shows why the carbon tax is and always will be bad policy for ordinary Canadians.

Franco’s note: You can pre-order a copy of my new book, Axing the Tax: The Rise and Fall of Canada’s Carbon Tax, here: https://www.amazon.ca/Axing-Tax-Rise-Canadas-Carbon

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