I read Takedown: Inside the Fight to Shut Down Pornhub for Child Abuse, Rape, and Sex Trafficking by Laila Mickelwait. Overall I thought it was pretty good and it seemed mostly true (I didn't independently check most of the claims). I was disturbed by what Pornhub was able to do in public while being one of the world's most popular websites. I thought it was an interesting example of a big company getting away with a bunch of crime out in the open without needing to keep it very secret. This is related to my post Conspiracies Are Often Unnecessary and to my belief that lots of large companies break lots of laws and we have inadequate law enforcement about white collar crime and fraud.
What did Pornhub do? Here are some of the main issues. They let people easily upload any video without providing any documentation about who is in the video, how old they are, whether they consented, or who is uploading it. They put a download button next to many videos. They ran a tiny, understaffed moderation team that fast forwarded through videos with the sound off, had no way to tell whether many videos were legal or not, and approved many videos that obviously weren't legal. When victims asked for videos they were in to be removed, they were asked for documentation and proof (putting the documentation burden on victims not uploaders), and removal was a big hassle with delays. After removal, the same videos could be uploaded again because viewers had downloaded it before it was taken down, and then victim would have to start over and face another huge hassle trying to get the same video removed again, and this could happen many times. What kinds of illegal videos did Pornhub have? Among other things, they had videos of minors and of rape. It was easy to find illegal content by putting in search terms like "12 years old" or "middle school". Pornhub wasn't trying very hard to prevent that content from being posted, nor to restrict searches to make it hard to find, nor to find it and take it down after it was on the site.
A lot of people knew what Pornhub was doing before Mickelwait, but they didn't know of good ways to tell the world. They didn't think they had good whistleblowing options. Once Mickelwait went viral, lots of people started whistleblowing to her. I think some of them recognized the problem partly because of her explanations, but some already hated Pornhub and thought it was committing crimes before she said anything. Also, many illegal videos contained comments saying they're illegal in the comment section on the Pornhub website. Many videos were obviously illegal so viewers noticed and complained. Pornhub could have, but chose not to, use those kinds of comments to help them find and take down illegal videos. But many people noticing illegal videos, and being willing to write an online comment about them, didn't lead to the police and courts dealing with the issue. (For every person willing to post a comment on a Pornhub video saying it's illegal, there must have been many more people who just left the video without commenting. I figure most people on Pornhub don't write any comments, and also many people don't want to admit in writing to having visited illegal content.) I think the government was being really irresponsible not to notice and take action about a bunch of crime that was easy to find, and that helps explain why whistleblowing isn't as effective as David Deutsch thought it would be. The cops and FBI often don't care before an issue goes viral online and gets covered in newspapers, and I bet at least one person did report the problem (before Mickelwait's first public comment on the subject) to some government agent or department that didn't care or cared but wasn't able to take effective action (e.g. because their boss' boss didn't care and wanted them to work on other projects).
Pornhub still exists and I don't know exactly what happened after the events in the book or how popular or profitable it is today. Pornhub was one of the top 10 most visited websites in the world, and was making hundreds of millions of dollars per year, when Mickelwait challenged it.
Although I largely liked the book and agreed with its main points, I had some criticisms that I thought would be interesting to share.
Dishonesty
For context, a Pornhub executive's mansion was intentionally burned down. It was still under construction so no one was hurt. One narrative blamed Mickelwait, saying her tweets and #Traffickinghub advocacy inspired one of her fans to commit arson. She plausibly claims it was probably done by someone who lived nearby who had criminal connections and a grudge, not by any of her fans. Even if one of her fans did it, I don't think that'd be her responsibility (that's based on what I know – I don't think truthful tweets that Pornhub commits crimes would make her responsible for a fan committing arson).
Mickelwait wrote, quoting a newspaper then responding, with bold added by me:
“During the lead-up to the torching of Antoon’s mansion, extremists began doxing Pornhub employees and issuing violent threats online. Shepherding this movement was an outfit called Traffickinghub…‘Burn them to the ground!’ read a tweet shared on the Traffickinghub founder’s profile four days before the arson attack.”
I never uttered or wrote those words and Adam knows it. He also knows that I have often publicly condemned acts of violence and have always called for accountability within the bounds of the law. But truth doesn’t seem to matter when you are a “pick me” journalist with the chance to get the CEO of MindGeek on the media record for the first time in history.
The newspaper didn't say she uttered the words. It said she shared them. So I'm guessing she retweeted them but won't admit it. So, just based on reading her own account without checking anything else, I suspect she's dishonest. I guess she probably tricked the majority of her readers with this part, but when you write like this, some of your readers (especially the smarter, more educated ones who are more likely to have blogs, fans, platforms, money, etc.) will notice and dislike it.
I think writing like this was unnecessary. Even if she tweeted "Burn them to the ground!" herself it would have been metaphorical. It wouldn't actually make her responsible for arson. I personally don't like tweeting or retweeting adversarial, inflammatory comments like that which lack useful information, but it's a pretty normal thing that many people do. Our society doesn't think it's a very big deal in general, so being dishonest about it isn't necessary. (I think if everyone in the world would stop the adversarial, inflammatory comments, that would be a big deal, but it doesn't make much difference whether Mickelwait participates when so many other people are too.)
Principles
Mickelwait favors lots of things that would hurt Pornhub without seeming to consider various political philosophy principles. For example, one of her major goals was to get credit cards to stop working with Pornhub so that Pornhub couldn't accept money from viewers or advertisers. (They could still take cryptocurrency but would lose most of their income by relying on that.)
On the one hand, I see the point that credit card companies shouldn't help with crime. On the other hand, shouldn't Pornhub get their day in court? What if Pornhub didn't break the law but is put out of business with no trial and no due process because advocates pressure credit card companies? Or what if Pornhub is guilty but some other innocent company is destroyed by taking away their ability to accept credit card payments online? In general, I don't think credit card companies should act as police, judge, jury, lawyer or roles like that. Instead, it'd be nice if the courts would produce a reasonable verdict quickly and then credit card companies could base their actions on the outcome in court. I know we live in a society where court cases can drag on for many years, and a lot of laws aren't enforced well, so I see the temptation to try to do activism by other means, but there are some downsides there which Mickelwait doesn't seem to consider.
There are similar issues with going after web hosts, domain registrars, and all sorts of service providers. Realistically, having an online business requires working with some other companies. If an angry online mob can get those service providers to stop working with you, it can kill your business (or non-commericial personal website) without you getting an appropriate chance to defend yourself. I want to live in a world with a lot of freedom where putting up a website and accepting online payments is broadly accessible to almost everyone for almost any purpose. There can be exceptions like if the website is involved in crime, but I do think "innocent until proven guilty (in court)" is an important principle for dealing with crime.
I don't have an easy answer or great solution here. I do think credit card companies and other service providers should do some due diligence to check that they aren't participating in crime. They shouldn't exercise none of their own judgment. But if the courts haven't ruled against a website, and the reason for that isn't obscurity, then I see issues with service providers deciding it's a criminal enterprise when the courts did not.
I do also think, in general, that businesses should be able to make their own decisions, not be forced to work with a company they consider immoral and don't want to work with. But I also think it's good if there are some web hosts, credit cards and other services that are willing to work with companies that some people consider immoral. I don't want unpopular companies to be unable to exist even if they break no laws.
If a company can get a bunch of customers who like their stuff, and it isn't criminal, then I do think generally think they ought to be able to find some services providers to work with. I don't think all the service providers should be controlled by prudes. And they aren't. For example, in 2000, American Express decided not to work with porn websites (they said this was due to lots of chargebacks, not morality), but Visa does work with porn sites. Visa cares about bad publicity though, so a lot of public pressure and news articles can get Visa to drop a customer, even if Visa doesn't think the customer is a criminal enterprise. But public pressure and due process are different things, and it's really problematic if a bunch of outrage, which may be incorrect, can make a company go out of business. Well, let me be more specific. I think it's fine to complain about a company and boycott them, and if they go out of business from losing too many customers, that's fine. It's OK in general to publicly complain and try to get customers to turn against a company. Even if the complaints are wrong, public discourse should exist and customers are allowed to make mistakes. But if a company has plenty of customers who don't agree with the pressure campaign, but they go out of business anyway due to pressure on just a few specific service providers like Visa that don't actually agree about the problem but are coerced into compliance, that seems problematic. But I also suspect that Visa evaluated Pornhub's crime or lack of crime in a bad faith manner, which seems bad.
So I think there are some nuanced issues here that merit analysis. I don't have an easy answer. But Mickelwait didn't provide thoughtful analysis of this in her book. She doesn't seem to have considered these issues when pressuring credit card companies to stop working with Pornhub, nor later when writing the book. Her focus just seems to be on her side winning. For her, it seems implied but not stated that the end (Pornhub losing) justifies most legal means (maybe not lying or some other things that are widely considered unethical? I don't know).
Conclusion
I want to reiterate that I thought the book was mostly good and interesting. I thought it had convincing points about Pornhub committing lots of crime. And many other porn sites have similar problems. Maybe there are some sites where they get signed documents from everyone in every video saying they consent and they're old enough; I don't know; but Pornhub and some others are nothing like that (or weren't a few years ago; I don't know what changes they've made since then).
On a related note, I watched the documentary Girls Gone Wild: The Untold Story. It's really bad but Pornhub was much worse. Also, in 2020, someone got 20 years in jail for their involvement with the company GirlsDoPorn.
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