A lawsuit filed by more victims of the sex trafficking operation claims that Pornhub’s moderation staff ignored reports of their abuse videos.
Sixty-one additional women are suing Pornhub’s parent company, claiming that the company failed to take down videos of their abuse as part of the sex trafficking operation Girls Do Porn. They’re suing the company and its sites for sex trafficking, racketeering, conspiracy to commit racketeering, and human trafficking.
The complaint, filed on Tuesday, includes what it claims are internal emails obtained by the plaintiffs, represented by Holm Law Group, between Pornhub moderation staff. The emails allegedly show that Pornhub had only one moderator to review 700,000 potentially abusive videos, and that the company intentionally ignored repeated reports from victims in those videos.
The damages and restitution they seek amounts to more than $311,100,000. They demand a jury trial, and seek damages of $5 million per plaintiff, as well as restitution for all the money Aylo, the new name for Pornhub’s parent company, earned “marketing, selling and exploiting Plaintiffs’ videos in an amount that exceeds one hundred thousand dollars for each plaintiff.”
The plaintiffs are 61 more unnamed “Jane Doe” victims of Girls Do Porn, adding to the 60 that sued Pornhub in 2020 for similar claims.
Girls Do Porn was a federally-convicted sex trafficking ring that coerced young women into filming pornographic videos under the pretense of “modeling” gigs. In some cases, the women were violently abused. The operators told them that the videos would never appear online, so that their home communities wouldn’t find out, but they uploaded the footage to sites like Pornhub, where the videos went viral—and in many instances, destroyed their lives. Girls Do Porn was an official Pornhub content partner, with its videos frequently appearing on the front page, where they gathered millions of views.
read more: https://www.404media.co/girls-do-porn-victims-sue-pornhub-for-300-million/
This is strictly a civil lawsuit against Pornhub (Aylo) AFAIK
I guess stuff could turn up in this trial that leads to criminal charges, but from what I understand nobody at Aylo was involved with the GDP activities. They were simply a popular channel on the site.
The people behind GDP did get charged and convicted with a long list of criminal charges including rape, sexual assault, fraud, sex trafficking, etc. Some got charged with like 20 years. Pratt, one of the founders went on the run and was on the FBI wanted fugitive list. He was arrested by Interpol in Madrid eventually.
Pornhub was/is a video hosting platform and the lawsuit is because they didn't react quickly enough to remove the videos. Legally speaking, they aren't responsible for the content assuming they make a good faith effort to remove it should it be found out it was illegal.
The law exists in this manner because otherwise social media sites wouldn't exist. At any point any user can post something illegal and then the website would be liable for criminal charges.
They had 1 moderator responsible for checking 700,000 videos. The plaintiffs are claiming that this means they weren't making a good faith effort to remove these videos.
IANAL but I think they have a legal argument although we'll have to see what happens. It'll be interesting to see how the ruling goes. Other social media websites are definitely watching with interest.