Is Pornhub blocked in Oklahoma? Adult site shuts down in states with age verification laws
Pornhub, one of the biggest pornography websites in the world, will no longer be available in Oklahoma after a new state law requiring age verification on adult websites goes into effect Friday.
The law, Senate Bill 1959, requires businesses that distribute material "harmful to minors" to block access to its website upon request by internet and cellular service subscribers.
#pornhub #pornography #adult #legal #ageverification #technology
The operators ofPornhub said theydecided to restrict access in the Sooner Statebecause of privacy concerns tied to obtaining the personal information of people who visit the site. It's unclear how many other websites will follow suit.
Several other states have passed similar age verification laws, and after they were enacted, Pornhub blocked online access to those locations, including Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Utah and Virginia.
What is Pornhub?
Pornhub is a site that offers free access to a vast library of explicit adult movies and clips broken down into categories. It was the 13th most-visited website in the world as of March 1 and the second-most visited adult website.
The site allows professional companies, porn stars and amateurs alike to upload their material, create fan clubs, and charge for premium content. Pornhub is owned by Aylo, recently renamed from Mindgeek, along with several other popular adult sites.
Aside from attacks from anti-porn groups, the company is also under fire for allowing anyone to upload anything, which drove many smaller adult movie companies out of business and also brought complaints about a surge of uploads showing revenge porn, child sexual abuse material and copyrighted movies. In December 2020, after a New York Times expose of non-consensual pornography and sex trafficking on the site, Pornhub deleted over 6 million videos and began allowing uploads only from verified users.
Why are states passing age-verification laws for adult websites?
Child safety advocates and state legislators argue that more needs to be done to keep children safe online and away from adult material. Age verification laws force adult sites to require some form of official ID verifying users are 18 or over before they're allowed to access the site's wares.
The laws levy hefty fees for noncompliance and leave the door open for punishing civil charges.
Free speech advocates and adult entertainment lobbyists say the laws are hurting adults who have the right to access such content and warn that the definition of "adult material" can be weaponized.
"Unfortunately, we’ve already seen how this designation has been weaponized to censor and ban LGBTQ+ literature, reproductive rights resources, sex education, art, and healthcare," said a statement from the Free Speech Coalition. "Sexual expression, online and off, has been and continues to be the canary in the coal mine of free speech."
Why does Pornhub block states instead of complying with age verification rules?
Pornhub has offered several reasons why it simply bans traffic from states with age verification rules rather than complying.
Such laws drive users from sites that comply to the thousands of websites that don't, many of them with far fewer safety measures in place.
Such laws reduce content creators' ability to "post and distribute legal adult content and directly impact their ability to share the artistic messages they want to convey with it."
While the Pornhub block reduces the ease of access, anyone with a VPN — a service that allows you to hide your computer's address and route you through locations you choose, including other states or countries, a useful security measure when using your computer on public WiFi networks — can easily bypass the bans.
A Fresh Start to Embrace Innovation, Diverse and Inclusive Adult Content, and Trust and Safety
Montreal, Quebec (August 17, 2023) – MindGeek, a technology and media company, owner of a large portfolio of adult entertainment properties, including Pornhub, Brazzers, Men.com, Trans Angels and Nutaku, is excited to announce its corporate rebrand and name change, driven by the valuable input from its dedicated employees, stakeholders and ownership group. The decision to rebrand the company as Aylo, comes in response to the need for a fresh start and a renewed commitment to innovation, diverse and inclusive adult content, and trust and safety.
Launched in 2004, the company has grown considerably, becoming an industry leader and tech pioneer. This growth, and the company’s newest chapter under the ownership of Ethical Capital Partners (ECP), meant that it was time for a new brand that aligns with the employees' values and aspirations. Our people, recognizing the importance of an updated identity, voiced their concerns and expressed the desire for a name that truly represents them and allows the company to re-focus its efforts to lead by example, through transparency and public engagement. Aylo’s strong foundation comprises the efforts made, innovations developed, and communities built by employees over the years. These sentiments have been echoed by stakeholders and are shared by ECP.
The new name, Aylo, symbolizes a fresh beginning, reflecting our dedication to being a global leading tech platform that empowers hundreds of thousands of creators to earn a living, that employs innovative employees, and that provides hundreds of millions of users worldwide with safe content. This rebrand not only marks a pivotal moment for our company but also emphasizes our commitment to our employees, the content creator community, and the millions of adult users who visit our sites every day.
The new brand identity will be implemented across all company communications, marketing materials and digital platforms. In March 2023, MindGeek was purchased by ECP.
Quotes
“While you won’t find “Aylo” in a dictionary, we see this as an opportunity to infuse our new corporate name with meaning. Our goal is for “Aylo” to be synonymous with our core principles: innovation, diverse and inclusive adult content, and trust and safety. We wanted a fresh start, so we opted for a name that gave us that freedom, so that our team and our new owners could define it how we want. Thank you to all employees for their unwavering commitment over the years and for their valuable input throughout this rebranding process.”
“My colleagues and I are proud to work at Aylo, and we are eager to build this brand as a tech leader. The Pornhub team is excited to be a part of Aylo and will continue to provide a safe space for verified content creators and the entire adult entertainment community to share, monetize and enjoy content. Under this new banner, we will continue to commit to our core values of consent, freedom of sexual expression, authenticity, originality, and diversity.”
“Since March 2023, as the new owners of MindGeek, now Aylo, we committed to meeting with employees and external stakeholders. We heard from our colleagues that they needed a fresh start. At the same time ECP, also committed to be more present in conversations that impact Aylo’s business, along with plans to correct misinformation and public perception about the company, who they are, and how they present themselves to the world. This new public mission requires a new public brand. This is but a first step, we will continue to communicate our efforts to position Aylo as a leader in innovation, diverse and inclusive adult content, and trust and safety.”
Quick Facts
Aylo is charting its own path forward separate from other companies in its space. We separate ourselves by doing things no other company does.
Aylo pioneered the initiative to ID verify every single person who uploads content.
Aylo has engaged with more than 70 non-profit organizations globally to combat CSAM and NCC.
Aylo is among the first adult content companies to register and report to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), a leading non-profit organization whose mission it is to reduce child exploitation and prevent child victimization. According to NCMEC’s reports, Aylo’s platforms are some of the few adult platforms self-reporting instances of potential CSAM and among the fastest in actioning reports received from the CyberTipline
Related products
Aylo Brand Book
About Aylo
The intersection of technology and culture
Launched in 2004, Aylo is a tech pioneer offering world class adult content platforms. The company provides trusted environments to enable a safe online user experience, and to empower its communities by celebrating diversity, inclusion and expression. Aylo holds a number of widely popular and diverse online adult entertainment and gaming properties. Its portfolio includes Pornhub, YouPorn, Brazzers, Men.com, Nutaku, and more, all of which maintain robust trust and safety protocols.
About Ethical Capital Partners (ECP)
Unlocking value through ethics-first investing. Ethical Capital Partners (ECP) is a private equity firm seeking out investment opportunities in industries that require principled ethical leadership. ECP invests in projects which focus on technologies, and have legal and regulatory complexity. ECP was created in 2022 by a multi-disciplinary team with legal, regulatory, law enforcement, public engagement and finance experience. ECP’s philosophy is rooted in identifying properties amenable to our responsible investment approach and that have the potential to create attractive returns over a compelling time horizon. For more information visit EthicalCapitalPartners.com.
Pornhub owner to pay victims $1.8m in sex trafficking case
Aylo, the porn website's parent company, agreed to pay $1.8m and compensate victims after a court case.
Pornhub's parent company has agreed to make payments of $1.8m (£1.42m) to the US government to resolve allegations of profiting from sex trafficking.
US officials said Aylo had "[turned] a blind eye" to reports that women were deceived and coerced into videos appearing on the site.
#pornhub #sextrafficking #fine #unitedstates #government #pornography
The charges stem from its hosting of content and accepting of payments from a third party, Girls Do Porn (GDP).
Aylo said it "deeply regrets" hosting the content.
According to court documents, Aylo continued to accept money from the GDP channel even after it was aware of sex trafficking allegations from some of the women appearing in the videos.
The women said that GDP coerced them in to having sex on camera and lied about how the material would be shared.
Aylo, then known as MindGeek, settled with 50 women out of court in 2021. It owns other popular sites such as Youporn, Brazzers and Redtube.
There were more than 400 victims in total, and in 2021 GDP producer Ruben Andre Garcia was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for coercing women into appearing in sex videos.
Later that year, the women won the rights to the videos they appeared in and Garcia had to pay $18m to them in restitution.
The most recent settlement with Aylo is known as a deferred prosecution agreement, which means the company has agreed to be prosecuted if it breaks the terms of the deal in the next three years.
It can be monitored by authorities and assessed on factors such as its moderation policy, content screening and the amount of resources it puts in to filtering out illegal videos from its sites.
"This deferred prosecution agreement holds the parent company of Pornhub.com accountable for its role in hosting videos and accepting payments from criminal actors who coerced young women into engaging in sexual acts on videos that were posted without their consent," United States Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement.
Mr Peace added: "It is our hope that this resolution... brings some measure of closure to those negatively affected."
‘Hands Off My Porn’ Campaign Pushes Voters Toward Kamala Harris
A coalition of pornography producers, distributors, and “performers” runs ads online, encouraging porn users to vote for Kamala Harris.
The pornography industry often makes headlines related to human trafficking, child sexual exploitation, or social media regulations, but this time it’s in the news for running political ads. With less than a month to go before the presidential election, a coalition of pornography producers, distributors, and “performers” is running ads online, encouraging porn users to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.
#pornography #kamelaharris #election #handsoffmyporn #video
The $100,000 “Hands Off My Porn” campaign claims that former President Donald Trump will ban pornography if elected again. The claim is based on policy recommendations in The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which Trump has repeatedly disavowed.
Senior Trump campaign adviser Danielle Alvarez responded, “Since the Fall of 2023, President Trump’s campaign made it clear that only President Trump and the campaign, and NOT any other organization or former staff, represent policies for the second term.”
Project 2025 authors and “Trump allies” are labeled “weirdos” in the ads, which claim that Trump will imprison porn producers. Holly Randall, a porn producer and “director” involved in the ad campaign, claimed that the pornography coalition has not coordinated with the Harris campaign or the Democratic Party but intends to increase their advertising budget.
Despite Randall’s protests, Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow at the Family Research Council, observed that the Harris campaign must at least be aware of the advertising venture.
“It is now legal for outside groups to coordinate expenditures with presidential campaigns,” Kilgannon noted. She continued, “While the fact of the porn expenditures themselves is shocking, the messaging around Project 2025 and the targeting of swing states would lead one to believe that these ads are coordinated with the [Democratic National Committee] and the Harris campaign.”
She continued, “Is this all the sitting vice president of the United States has to offer those who use pornography—empty threats that porn will be banned if she loses? Does she hope to distract the young men in this demographic from the very real prospect that in a Harris-Walz administration, they will be drafted for military service and shipped overseas to die on foreign soil?”
‘The Children of Pornhub’
In a lengthy reported piece for the New York Times out today, columnist Nicholas Kristof tells the stories of children who were raped or sexually abused and who had videos of their mistreatment uploaded to the Internet pornography site Pornhub. From Kristof’s reporting:
Its site is infested with rape videos. It monetizes child rapes, revenge pornography, spy cam videos of women showering, racist and misogynist content, and footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags. A search for “girls under18” (no space) or “14yo” leads in each case to more than 100,000 videos. Most aren’t of children being assaulted, but too many are.
After a 15-year-old girl went missing in Florida, her mother found her on Pornhub — in 58 sex videos. Sexual assaults on a 14-year-old California girl were posted on Pornhub and were reported to the authorities not by the company but by a classmate who saw the videos. In each case, offenders were arrested for the assaults, but Pornhub escaped responsibility for sharing the videos and profiting from them.
Pornhub is like YouTube in that it allows members of the public to post their own videos. A great majority of the 6.8 million new videos posted on the site each year probably involve consenting adults, but many depict child abuse and nonconsensual violence. Because it’s impossible to be sure whether a youth in a video is 14 or 18, neither Pornhub nor anyone else has a clear idea of how much content is illegal.
Unlike YouTube, Pornhub allows these videos to be downloaded directly from its website. So even if a rape video is removed at the request of the authorities, it may already be too late: The video lives on as it is shared with others or uploaded again and again.
Kristof’s piece is hardly the first time that the website has faced public scrutiny for the content it hosts. A little more than a year ago, PayPal cut off services for Pornhub, refusing to allow users to use the service to pay for subscriptions. And earlier this year, Senator Ben Sasse (R., Neb.) called on the Department of Justice to investigate Pornhub for having “made content available worldwide showing women and girls that were victims of trafficking being raped and exploited.”
Today, Sasse doubled down on that call, telling the Daily Caller that “the Department of Justice needs to open an investigation into the scumbags who run [Pornhub parent company] Mindgeek.”
“Sexual exploitation and human trafficking are abhorrent, period. A decent society should be working to end this,” Sasse added. “It is completely unacceptable that Pornhub and its parent company Mindgeek make money from rape, sexual abuse, and the exploitation of minors. They need to be investigated, and the DOJ needs more urgency about building cases against creeps.”
Kristof’s article also comes almost exactly one year after a group of Republican congressmen urged Attorney General Bill Barr and the Justice Department to more vigorously enforce existing laws against obscene pornography, as we reported exclusively here at National Review.
“The Internet and other evolving technologies are fueling the explosion of obscene pornography by making it more accessible and visceral,” the four Republican representatives wrote in their open letter. “This explosion in pornography coincides with an increase in violence towards women and an increase in the volume of human trafficking as well as child pornography."
Pornhub Block Expands to Alabama: How to Watch Anyway
Pornhub is now blocked in Alabama amid a battle over the states' age-verification laws.
It joins Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Utah, where the adult site is also blocked—unless you try to get around it with a VPN (more on that below). It's also poised to happen in Florida, where an age-verification law goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2025.
In Alabama, access to Pornhub was blocked ahead of an age-verification law that goes into effect on Oct. 1, AL.com reports. Under HB164, adult sites must use "reasonable age verification methods" to confirm that people are over the age of 18 and display warnings about porn being "potentially biologically addictive" and harmful to "human brain development"
In Indiana, SB17 went into effect on June 27, and requires sites that offer adult content to "use a reasonable age verification method to prevent a minor from accessing an adult-oriented website." Detractors argue that it could have a chilling effect on free speech since people may fear having their identities exposed should a site like Pornhub ever be breached. The California-based Free Speech Coalition and a group of adult platforms, including Pornhub parent company Aylo, have sued, arguing that "laws like SB17 have effectively functioned as state censorship."
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, however, says "children shouldn't be able to easily access explicit material that can cause them harm. It's commonsense. We need to protect and shield them from the psychological and emotional consequences associated with viewing porn. We look forward to upholding our constitutional duty to defend this law in court."
In Kentucky, House Bill 278 is similar and applies to sites where more than one-third of its content would be considered harmful to minors.
At issue in Texas is HB 1181, which requires adult sites to verify that visitors are of age. It was set to go into effect in September 2023, but Pornhub sued and secured an early victory. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appealed and got a temporary reprieve in March, allowing the state to enforce HB 1181. Pornhub responded by blocking access to its site in the state a few months ago.
As noted by CBS Austin political reporter Michael Adkison, those who visit Pornhub in Texas are now met with a message that argues the Texas law is "ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous."
"We believe that the only effective solution for protecting minors and adults alike is to verify users' age on their device and to either deny or allow access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that verification," the message adds.
Pornhub further argues that this type of legislation will only drive people to less scrupulous sites, which "put minors and your privacy at risk."
"This is not the end. We are reviewing options and consulting with our legal team," Alex Kekesi, VP of Brand and Community at Aylo, said following the Texas ban. (These bans affect all sites run by Aylo, formerly MindGeek—which includes YouPorn, RedTube, Brazzers, and more.)
This battle kicked off almost a year ago when Pornhub blocked access in Utah over a similar age-verification law. As more states adopted these laws, Pornhub blockades followed. By early 2024, it was also blocked in North Carolina, Montana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Virginia.
In North Carolina, House Bill 8 is a larger education bill that also covers things like adding a computer science requirement for high school graduation. But it also imposes the age-verification check for adult sites. In signing the bill in late September, Gov. Roy Cooper said those age checks are "important...to help protect children from online pornography."
HB8 requires sites to use "a commercially available database that is regularly used by businesses or governmental entities for the purpose of age and identity verification or...another commercially reasonable method." Sites that fail to comply could face a civil action from the parents of kids who viewed pornography or anyone whose data is unlawfully retained.
In Montana, SB 544 requires sites to verify age by having people provide "a digitized identification card" or access a "commercial age verification system" that checks a government ID or uses some other sort of "commercially reasonable method" to verify someone's age.
In both states, sites are covered by the laws if at least 33.3% of its content is adult in nature.
Porn star Phoenix Marie sues Pornhub owners Aylo $80m after co-star overdosed on set
Melissa Hutchison, a top adult film actress, is suing Pornhub owners Aylo and a director for $80 million after she was allegedly forced to continue with an orgy scene after her co-star overdosed on set. Hutchison, who performs as Phoenix Marie, claims bosses tried to blacklist her and she was subjected to a smear campaign following the 2023 incident, the Daily Mail reported.
#pornography #pornhub #lawsuit #drugs #melissahutchinson #adultfilm #aylo
According to the lawsuit, she says her ordeal began when he co-star, an actress named Zaawaadi, ingested too much lithium during a shoot in Barcelona. However, director and fellow porn star Martin, aka Danny D, is said to have forced her to carry on with a scene despite her castmate nearly dying and refused to call an ambulance.
The lawsuit says: “Danny D forcibly grabbed Hutchison and forbade her from leaving the set demanding that she finish the scene [...] she was forced by Danny D to have sex despite repeatedly saying no.” Danny D is also accused of throwing her “onto the floor saying, ‘we need to get our story straight’”.
She also claims executives tried to pin the lithium on her, by falsely painting her as an “unhinged, grieving mother” who had become reliant on the drug to medicate following the death of her daughter in 2019. The trauma of the situation, she said, left her with “anxiety, panic attacks, sleepless nights, and sexual dysfunction”.
Hutchison, who has 20 years in the industry and is believed to be one of the highest continually paid porn stars, says she refused to accept a $60,000 NDA payoff and claims this prompted to Aylo harm her financially. She also claimed conglomerate cancelled shoots and signing events and untagged and buried her in videos on Pornhub and other sites they own.
This led to Hutchison being isolated from her friends and colleagues who fear retaliation from Aylo, so much so that she cannot find a makeup artist willing to work with her, according to the lawsuit. The smear campaign has also resulted in her losing out on big brand deals with the likes of sex toy maker, Fleshlight.
According to the lawsuit, Aylo dominates the online pornography distribution market, overseeing an estimated 90% of all content production and distribution. This gives the company a monopoly, allowing it to hurt actors easily with little effort, as stated in the legal documents.
Hutchison claims that Aylo's activities have resulted in losses of nearly $2 million since the incident, with projected future losses reaching tens of millions due to ongoing manipulation of her search algorithm and harm to her brand. Additionally, Hutchison's law firm stated that she is experiencing PTSD from a sexual assault by Danny D., which has had devastating personal and professional impacts on her.
Hutchison's lawyers filed a suit in Nevada in February, but it has since been moved to federal court by defendants' request over jurisdictional issues. The original complaint seeks $30 million, but her lawyers say they plan on filing for $80 million, according to the Daily Beast.
Her law firm Kerr Simpson said: “Melissa saved a girl's life on set and was rewarded by Aylo and Ethical Capital Partners with physical intimidation, sexual assault, humiliation, alienation, substantial financial losses, and a smear campaign unconscionably centered on her dead child.
“We're looking forward to helping Melissa get justice not only to reclaim her daughter's memory, but also to hold the Aylo-Ethical Capital Partners Big Porn conglomerate accountable and stop them from continuing to wield their unregulated monopoly power to destroy people's lives.”
A spokesman for Aylo said: “Out of respect for the integrity of court proceedings, our policy is not to comment on ongoing litigation. We look forward to the facts being fully and fairly aired in that forum.”
Phoenix Marie
BornSeptember 21, 1981 Los Angeles County, California, USA
Height 1.75 m (5 ft 9 in)
Pornhub owner settles with Girls Do Porn victims over videos
A group of 50 women sued MindGeek over a sex-trafficking operation by Girls Do Porn.
Pornhub's parent company has settled a lawsuit brought by 50 women who said they were victims of a sex-trafficking operation.
The women said that Girls Do Porn, an adult content provider, coerced them into having sex on camera and lied about how the material would be shared.
#pornography #girlsdoporn #aylo #pornhub #lawsuit #mindgeek
The 50 women had sued Pornhub, alleging the firm knew of the allegations but continued a partnership anyway.
Terms of the settlement were not made public.
In a statement, Pornhub parent company MindGeek said it had zero tolerance over the posting of illegal content on its platforms.
"The Parties reached a mutual resolution to resolve the dispute and the terms are confidential ," Brian Holm, the lawyer who represented the women said in an emailed statement.
Girls Do Porn was a part of MindGeek's partner programmes until October 2019, when the US Department of Justice effectively shut the porn producer down by arresting and charging its senior staff with sex trafficking and other offences.
It had uploaded numerous explicit videos to Pornhub and other public websites. Pornhub removed these videos after charges against Girls Do Porn were filed by US authorities.
'Modelling' jobs
Girls Do Porn allegedly operated by advertising modelling jobs. Young women who applied were later told the work in fact involved making pornographic videos.
They were allegedly told that the job would be anonymous and that their videos would not be posted on the web, but were being made for DVDs of private collectors or far-flung markets. However, the videos were later distributed publicly via sites including Pornhub according to US Attorneys.
In the complaint for damages against Mindgeek it was alleged that victims had sent the company "complaints detailing the fraud and coercion they were subject to by Girls Do Porn" but the company had not ended the partnership. The first court case on behalf of victims was lodged in June 2016.
"MindGeek has zero tolerance for the posting of illegal content on its platforms, and has instituted a comprehensive, industry-leading trust and safety policy to identify and eradicate any illegal material from its community," MindGeek said in a statement.
"We are committed to remaining at the forefront of internet safety, and taking every measure to prevent bad actors from posting illegal content online."
Women cited in the lawsuit were referred to by the pseudonym Jane Doe and a number. They were each seeking more than $1m (£739,000) in damages and had demanded a jury trial.
Several of those involved with Girls Do Porn have since been convicted, including Ruben Andre Garcia, who worked as a recruiter, producer, and actor for Girls Do Porn, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in November.
"This defendant lured one victim after another with fake modelling ads, false promises and deceptive front companies, ultimately devolving to threats to coerce these women into making sex videos," said Acting US Attorney Randy Grossman in a statement issued at the time of his conviction.
The FBI is currently seeking to arrest former co-owner of Girls Do Porn, Michael James Pratt, who allegedly coerced young women into filming sexually explicit content for the site.
Earlier this month, the bureau increased its maximum reward for information leading to Mr Pratt's arrest to $50,000 (£36,450).
The FBI has said it believes his alleged victims number in the hundreds.
We can’t rely on the government alone to stop Big Porn
It’s time for concerned citizens to hold payment processors responsible
The world’s largest online purveyor of self-described “quality adult entertainment” was recently investigated by the US government for crimes related to sex trafficking and child exploitation. While the charges were dropped, the company’s apology for dealing with the criminally-sanctioned “GirlsDoPorn” organisation may signal a turning point in the effort to expose the violence of pornography. But to truly scrub this harm from cyberspace will require each of us to look in our own wallets.
#goverment #bigporn #pornography
The company under investigation, rebranded a few months ago from MindGeek to Aylo, is no stranger to the courtroom. Hundreds of women have sued its flagship website, Pornhub, with 50 complainants against the site settling last year over the site’s hosting of “GirlsDoPorn” videos. After a lawsuit this year by another brave survivor, still ongoing, the feds finally took notice. To avoid criminal charges, Aylo pledged reforms.
But it’s not plausible to reform an industry so thoroughly committed to degradation that, as another lawsuit launched against Pornhub in California in November alledged, tagged videos with phrases such as “less than 18” and “middle school girls.” The judge in that lawsuit described Aylo as “willfully blind to the unimaginable suffering...allegedly inflicted.”
The harms of pornography, especially to young people, have been documented in over 500 peer-reviewed studies. Still, many kids view porn before they reach their tenth birthday. In fact, much of Pornhub is free, requiring no registration. In most countries, a child doesn’t even need to click on a cursory I’m-over-18 button.
Thankfully, the legal momentum against this industry is growing. The Online Safety Act, which received Royal Assent in October, will soon require porn sites to verify that users are not children. Several states in the US have done likewise, which the industry predictably challenges. These laws are a good start. But we need to also pressure the entire ecosystem that profits from this abuse, including the banks and credit cards you probably use every day.
Some months ago, Pornub’s parent company was acquired by Ethical Capital Partners, a Canadian private equity firm registered in the British Virgin Islands. The firm boasts of its “ethics-first investing,” yet peddles sexual violence.
For example, Pornhub caters to deviant interests, among other things, through its Teen, Babysitter, and School categories. Many of its female performers frankly look like girls rather than adults. Pornhub, too, features an incestuous “Step Fantasy” category and promotes racial stereotypes such as “hijab hottie” and “hood hoes.” Violence flourishes on the site. Its many key phrases include “do anything money,” “rough slapping,” and “no mercy.”
Surely, you may be thinking, no respectable bank would do business with any company that romanticises sexual violence. Think again. Visa and Mastercard did cancel business with Pornhub following a 2020 exposé of children who appeared on the site in violation of the 18+ requirement Pornhub has in place for performers. The two firms later stopped payments to MindGeek’s advertising arm, TrafficJunky, after a lawsuit accused Visa of “knowingly providing the means through which MindGeek monetises child porn”, through MindGeek’s recklessness in age verification checks. But these and other mainstream financial institutions continue to profit from Pornhub.
Should you wish to purchase a premium account on Pornhub, your personal bank will happily make an electronic transfer. Or you can pay with more than a dozen cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, which are available from crypto exchanges such as Kraken or NASDAQ-traded Coinbase. The former accepts PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Sofort, and iDeal; the latter, Visa and Mastercard.
You can purchase branded merchandise, including Christmas ornaments, from the online Pornhub Apparel shop, which prefers Visa and Mastercard. The site processes payments through Quickpay, based in Denmark, which conducts business with American Express, Diners Club, and JCB.
Aylo’s own online payment platform, ProBiller, accepts PayPal, Diners Club, Discover, Visa, and Mastercard. You can also use the latter three on other Aylo porn sites such as Reality Kings, Brazzers, and SpiceVids, and several of its sexual webcamming platforms. Some of these sites contract with Vendo to process payments. In addition to doing business with ordinary banks and credit cards, Vendo also accepts PayGarden, which allows users to make purchases – say, porn – with ordinary gift cards from major international retailers, including popular clothing brands.
Pornhub, too, relies on cloud hosting services and domain name registrars. Pornhub works with fashion brands, well-known media companies, and has an app on Google’s Android platform. You can also readily find Pornhub or other Aylo companies on Facebook, LinkedIN, YouTube, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), Reddit, and Discord.
Many still see Pornhub as an innocuous pastime. But not survivors, who are leading the charge against the sexual abuses rampant in pornography. Age verification legislation, and the rising number of lawsuits, are a step in the right direction. What we need to do now is hold accountable the mainstream financial and other companies that make this harmful ecosystem possible, including the credit cards that are in your pockets and purses.
Valsoft, a Constellation copycat led by Pornhub co-founding investors, raises US$170-million in growth capital
The Montreal company has bought up dozens of small, slow-growing but stable software vendors around the world
Canadian investment fads come and go – think income trusts, cannabis and junior mining – but one trend never goes out of fashion: the rollup. There have been many successful sector consolidators (Alimentation Couche-Tard ADT-T, Constellation Software CSU-T, Open Text OTEX-T and Stella Jones SJ-T), but also several flameouts (Valeant Pharmaceuticals, Loewen Group and Philip Services).
#pornhub #valsoft #funding
The latest serial acquirer to rise to prominence is Valsoft Corp. The nine-year-old Montreal company, led by two entrepreneurs in their early 40s, Sam Youssef and Steph Manos, are trying to emulate Constellation’s successful playbook. Valsoft has bought up dozens of small, slow-growing but stable software vendors around the world that dominate a range of modest industry subsectors. Valsoft owns nearly 100 companies, generates upward of US$450-million in revenue and earns about 25 per cent to 30 per cent operating profits, the company says.
On Friday, Valsoft said it had raised US$170-million in debt to fuel further acquisitions in a deal led by U.S. investment giants Viking Global Investors – which bought a minority stake in the company for US$150-million in 2022 – and Coatue Management LLC. The company also has a line of credit of between $150-million and $200-million with a syndicate of Toronto-Dominion Bank, Bank of Montreal and National Bank of Canada.