Inside the Shady Sex-Work Abolitionist Group That Gutted Pornhub

On Monday, Pornhub, one of the largest porn distribution platforms in the world, announced that it would remove all content submitted by unverified users—effectively disappearing some 10.6 million videos in a single day. Over the weekend, the MindGeek subsidiary hosted a library of 13.5 million videos. By Tuesday morning, that number had dwindled to just 2.9 million.

The overhaul came after a controversial opinion piece earlier this month from New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. The column, titled “The Children of Pornhub,” highlighted several victims of statutory rape and their experiences with the platform, calling for “search engines, banks or credit card companies” to demonetize it. The article prompted Mastercard and Visa to investigate Pornhub for illegal material, and subsequently to cut ties with it, along with MindGeek’s other properties, including Brazzers, Redtube, and XTube.

Part of Kristof’s case against Pornhub rested on the work of an activist campaign called #Traffickinghub. “Concerns about Pornhub are bubbling up. A petition to shut the site down has received 2.1 million signatures,” Kristof wrote, referring to a petition circulated by the campaign. “An organization called Traffickinghub, led by an activist named Laila Mickelwait, documents abuses and calls for the site to be shut down.”

Last week, following the announcement of Pornhub’s policy changes, Kristof took a victory lap, applauding the campaign again in a second column. “Visa and Mastercard are reviewing their ties with Pornhub; there are calls for criminal prosecutions,” Kristof wrote, “activist groups like Traffickinghub are demanding action.”

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Neither piece elaborated on the origins of the #Traffickinghub campaign, which The Daily Beast investigated last month. The movement’s founder, Laila Mickelwait, works for the Christian “anti-trafficking” non-profit Exodus Cry—a fringe evangelical group with far-right ties that aims to abolish the commercial sex industry entirely. The campaign, which germinated in the pages of the Washington Examiner, was also co-sponsored by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), the nonprofit formerly known as Morality in Media and once the “nation’s loudest voice against adult pornography.”

Mickelwait and Kristof did not respond to requests for comment. Pornhub declined to comment on the op-ed or campaign, pointing instead to their statement on the organizations. In the statement, Pornhub fingered the two groups as evidence that the campaign took issue not with the company’s content moderation but with its business as a whole.

“It is clear that Pornhub is being targeted not because of our policies and how we compare to our peers, but because we are an adult content platform,” Pornhub wrote. “The two groups that have spearheaded the campaign against our company are the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (formerly known as Morality in Media) and Exodus Cry/TraffickingHub. These are organizations dedicated to abolishing pornography, banning material they claim is obscene, and shutting down commercial sex work.”

In the immediate aftermath of Kristof’s first piece, Mickelwait started a GoFundMe fundraiser to raise money for one of the women he interviewed. The page, which cited the article, set a $20,000 goal, promising that “100% of all funds received will go directly to victims.”

Three days later, the campaign had raised $38,000, adjusted its goal to $50,000, and changed its phrasing: “All funds received will go directly to support victims and will be managed and disbursed by The Rebecca Bender Initiative, a leading US organization dedicated to assisting survivors of commercial sexual exploitation and trafficking.” Notably, Rebecca Bender sits on the board of Exodus Cry.

By December 10, the GoFundMe had raised $75,000 and amended the language to include an organization called “Elevate Academy.” The organization is also run by Rebecca Bender, and is a partner of Exodus Cry.

In his follow-up piece, Kristof reported that one of the women he interviewed had received aid from the GoFundMe. “I’m thrilled to report that Fleites has been deluged with offers of housing, jobs, education and counseling, and she and her dogs have moved into a long-stay hotel with help from a GoFundMe backed by readers,” he wrote.

Dr. Nicole Prause, a scientist at the research institute Liberos who specializes in human sexual behavior, found the decontextualized reference to #Traffickinghub concerning. After co-authoring a high-profile study on pornography addiction, which challenged the idea that sex or porn could elicit a neural response similar to drug or alcohol addiction, Prause became a frequent target of anti-pornography advocates, several of them linked to Exodus Cry.

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“In the New York Times piece, some of the phrasing was concerning, just because of my own experience,” Dr. Prause said. “I feel like we’ve seen some of this in anti-abortion rhetoric, where folks who oppose abortions will talk about ‘child murder,’ and then when there’s violence against doctors who perform these procedures they disavow it. Some of the language in [Kristof’s] op-ed concerned me, because we [female researchers] are already getting death threats.”

Prause has claimed some advocates have sexually harassed her and sent her death threats.

Pornhub has come under attack in the past year for its inaction against sex trafficking on the platform. Last year, 22 Jane Does sued a pornograpy production company called GirlsDoPorn—a former Pornhub Content Partner—for using fraud and intimidation to coerce young women into shooting adult videos, promising that the footage would never be released online or in North America. Pornhub, which contracted with the company since 2011, allegedly hosted, marketed, and profited from the videos until as late as 2019, when a federal indictment shut the website down. The operators of the site were charged with sex trafficking and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking.

“Making the general public register with Pornhub is a good start but that alone would not have helped my clients,” said Brian Holm, an attorney who represented Jane Does in the 2019 civil case. “MindGeek did not sever its partnership with GirlsDoPorn until the people running it were in jail—a time when GirlsDoPorn was no longer profitable to MindGeek anyway. It shouldn’t take a four-year civil lawsuit and an indictment for companies to dump sex traffickers from their platforms. MindGeek should have had policies relating to who it lets into its partnership programs and what is necessary to remain in the program.”

Shortly after Pornhub removed unverified content, Holm and his colleagues filed a lawsuit against its parent company, MindGeek, on behalf of 40 Jane Does. The latest suit, filed Tuesday, alleges that MindGeek knowingly profited from GirlsDoPorns’ sex-trafficking operation, ignoring the complaints of the company’s victims. The suit, which has been in the works for several months, requests more than $80 million in punitive and compensatory damages.

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Sex workers who spoke with The Daily Beast received the news of Pornhub’s changes with ambivalence. “Everybody was outraged by the fact that they could lose a significant form of income if a major platform isn’t taking mainstream forms of payment,” said Curvy Mary, a performer who participates in Pornhub’s Model Program, “which could potentially take away a big chunk of our customer base.”

“First of all, if underage girls are being exploited that has to stop,” said Ginger Lynn, an OnlyFans and Sext Panther worker, whose business is unaffiliated with Pornhub. “We can all agree on that. ‘How’ is the question. Mainstream internet companies deal with the same issues. Facebook reported 84 million instances of child sex abuse material [Editor’s note: Lynn is referring to a study conducted by English nonprofit the Internet Watch Foundation, referenced in Kristof’s initial article]. In the same time, the Internet Watch Foundation reported only 118 incidents on Pornhub. But credit card companies aren’t stopping processing on mainstream sites. Porn—as it always has—garners extra scrutiny.”

The Internet Watch Foundation and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Jasmine Johnson, a sex worker and clinical therapist who produces sex education videos for Pornhub under the name Jet Setting Jasmine, said the crackdown was overdue.

“It is going to be a positive impact for a couple of reasons. One is that to be a sex worker you have to be participating consensually in whatever work that you’re doing,” Jasmine said. “If people are underage or unidentifiable or non-consensual, that’s not sex work. This is delineating people who are truly sex workers versus people who are exploiting places where sex workers can place their content, exploiting sex workers’ content, and exploiting people who have nothing to do with the sex work industry.”

UPDATE: A previous version of this story mentioned an unproven allegation that is still being litigated in court. It has since been removed.