Staff Reports
The parent company of Pornhub, Aylo, has been hit with its tenth sex trafficking case since 2020. This is another setback for the company. This time, 61 people who say they were victims of the adult website GirlsDoPorn, which is no longer online, have sued in federal court. Aylo is now being sued by 256 people who say he is guilty of sex trafficking, human trafficking, and crime.
The founder of Traffickinghub, Laila Mickelwait, says this is the tenth case the company has been hit with. People who were swindled by GirlsDoPorn say that the company used fraud, force, and coercion to get young women to make pornographic movies that were then sold online. The lawsuit talks about how the videos went viral and made people avoid and make fun of the victims in their towns, which had a very bad effect on their lives.
It is important to note that in 2019, several people connected to GirlsDoPorn were charged with sex trafficking, and five of them have already pleaded guilty. The site's founder, Michael Pratt, barely got caught and was even put on the FBI's list of the 10 most wanted people. He was caught, though, in Madrid, Spain, in December 2022.
The lawsuit's plaintiffs say they asked Aylo to take the videos down from their website, but the company spedily ignored their requests, leaving the highly profitable videos online even though they knew it would hurt the victims. The videos were finally taken down from Pornhub after the workers of GirlsDoPorn were arrested and the site shut down. But the lawsuit says the damage was already done because Aylo had been sharing the videos around the world for ten years.
In addition to these claims, the lawsuit also brings up new information about how Aylo moderates material. Employees were caught on camera saying they didn't follow the rules for getting rid of illegal material like child pornography and sex trafficking. Documents found in a different trafficking case also showed that executives made it hard to look over possible child sexual material.
Aylo has strongly rejected any wrongdoing in terms of content moderation, saying that it has put in place a lot of protections to keep illegal content off of its platforms. However, as the lawsuits and proof against Aylo grow, it becomes clear that more needs to be done to deal with these serious claims.
The conservative editorial board is very worried about the fact that Aylo, the company that owns Pornhub, is being sued for sex trafficking again. This case involving GirlsDoPorn shows how horrible and cruel the pornography business is. It's unacceptable that Aylo reportedly ignored victims' pleas to take down the videos, putting money ahead of human decency. The new information about how Aylo moderates material is also very worrying because it shows that the company is not committed to fighting illegal content. This situation shows how badly the online pornography business needs stricter rules and more accountability.
