The parent company of porn site Pornhub is being sued by dozens of women in the United States. They say they are victims of sexual exploitation and that the company has knowingly profited from it.
Canadian company Mindgeek owns other popular porn sites like RedTube, Tube8 and YouPorn in addition to Pornhub. The law firm that is filing the lawsuit on behalf of the 34 women calls Mindgeek a “classic criminal organization”, which has developed a revenue model around images of involuntary sex.
“This case is about rape, not pornography,” the indictment said. According to the lawyers, the images offered are insufficiently checked and Mindgeek therefore profits from human trafficking and sex with minors. The law firm wants the women to receive compensation, among other things.
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The viewership counter will haunt me forever in my dreams.
The American news site CBS spoke with four of the 34 women behind the charges. One says she was forced by her boyfriend to make a nude video when she was 17. She had already forgotten that until she got a message from a friend: “I didn’t know you were in the porn industry.”
Hundreds of thousands of viewers
According to her, the video was uploaded anonymously on Pornhub, without the site asking her for permission. The images were viewed by more than 200,000 people, “including just about everyone in my training”.
“The viewership counter will forever haunt me in my dreams,” says the woman, who does not want to be in the media with her own name. According to her, she developed a sense of shame and had to change education. She also did not dare to go outside for fear that others would recognize her from the nude video.
The woman says she is joining the charges to protect other victims.
‘Absurd accusation’
Mindgeek is one of the largest companies in the porn industry worldwide, and its videos are said to be viewed some 3.5 billion times a week. In a response, the company said the charges are being investigated and any complaint of abuse will be taken seriously. Mindgeek calls the accusation that the company functions as a criminal organization “completely absurd, completely reckless and categorically incorrect”.
Six months ago, Pornhub also came under fire, after The New York Times wrote that the site contains many videos with rape and child pornography. As a result, credit card companies Visa and Mastercard stopped working with the platform.
Pornhub then removed millions of videos uploaded by unauthenticated users. Also, no new images can be posted from unverified accounts since then.
NOS Stories made a special about revenge porn in the Netherlands in 2019. It showed that every year hundreds of people report intimate images that unsolicited end up on porn sites, such as on Pornhub.