E559 Laila Mickelwait

Laila Mickelwait is the author of "Takedown: Inside the Fight to Shut Down Pornhub for Child Abuse, Rape, and Sex Trafficking". She is the Co-Founder/CEO of the Justice Defense Fund and the Founder of the #Traffickinghub movement. Laila Mickelwait joins Theo to talk about why she's taking on the biggest porn websites in the world, the issues of sexual crime and sex trafficking online, and what can be done to make the internet safer. Laila Mickelwait: https://x.com/LailaMickelwait https://www.instagram.com/lailamickelwait/ Her book “Takedown: Insight the Fight to Shut Down Pornhub”: https://bit.ly/3Cw18b3 (100% of author proceeds are donated to the Justice Defense Fund) Trafficking Hub Petition: https://traffickinghubpetition.com/ ------------------------------------------------ Tour Dates! https://theovon.com/tour New Merch: https://www.theovonstore.com ------------------------------------------------- Sponsored By: Celsius: Go to the Celsius Amazon store to check out all of their flavors. #CELSIUSBrandPartner #CELSIUSLiveFit https://amzn.to/3HbAtPJ BetterHelp: This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp — go to https://betterhelp.com/theo to get 10% off your first month. Shopify: Go to https://shopify.com/theo to sign up for your $1-per-month trial period today. Rocket Money: Go to https://rocketmoney.com/theo to cancel your unwanted subscriptions with Rocket Money. Valor Recovery: To learn more about Valor Recovery please visit them at https://valorrecoverycoaching.com/ or email them at [email protected] ------------------------------------------------- Music: “Shine” by Bishop Gunn Bishop Gunn - Shine ------------------------------------------------ Submit your funny videos, TikToks, questions and topics you'd like to hear on the podcast to: [email protected] Hit the Hotline: 985-664-9503 Video Hotline for Theo Upload here: https://www.theovon.com/fan-upload Send mail to: This Past Weekend 1906 Glen Echo Rd PO Box #159359 Nashville, TN 37215 ------------------------------------------------ Find Theo: Website: https://theovon.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/theovon Facebook: https://facebook.com/theovon Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thispastweekend Twitter: https://twitter.com/theovon YouTube: https://youtube.com/theovon Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheoVonClips Shorts Channel: https://bit.ly/3ClUj8z ------------------------------------------------ Producer: Zach https://www.instagram.com/zachdpowers Producer: Nick https://www.instagram.com/realnickdavis/ Producer: Cam https://www.instagram.com/cam__george/ Producer: Colin https://instagram.com/colin_reiner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Theo Von?

  I don't know what I'm doing. Need a break. Forget it, I quit.

• 0:03Speaker 01

  Escape to Pluto TV.

• 0:05Speaker 02

  This is objectively fantastic.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Relax into the movies and shows you already know and love, all for free. Shwing! Even our news is uplifting.

• 0:13Speaker 03

  You stay classy, San Diego.

• 0:14Speaker 01

  Watch Tommy Boy, Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, The X-Files, Wayne's World, and so much more.

• 0:20Speaker 04

  We're not worthy!

• 0:22Speaker 01

  The best things on TV really are free.

• 0:24Speaker 02

  You just have to know where to look.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  Escape to Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.

• 0:30Theo Von?

  Today's guest is the co-founder and CEO of the Justice Defense Fund. She also founded the Trafficking Hub Movement. She's been fighting against human trafficking for almost 20 years, and she just wrote a new book called "Takedown: Inside the Fight to Shut Down Pornhub." We want to let you know as well that this episode can be somewhat sexually explicit at times, so I want to give you that warning in advance. I'm very grateful for her time and her advocacy and her information. Today's guest is Lila Mickelwait.

• 1:21Theo Von?

  So "Takedown: Inside the Fight to Shut Down Pornhub for Child Abuse, Rape, and Sex Trafficking," this is your book, and I'm sitting here with Lila Mickelwait.

• 1:32Speaker 02

  Nice to be here.

• 1:33Theo Von?

  Is that the way to say it?

• 1:34Speaker 02

  You almost got it, Lila Mickelwait.

• 1:37Theo Von?

  Okay, so I didn't get it. Lila Mickelwait, how did your war against Pornhub start?

• 1:44Speaker 02

  Sure, I will tell you that story.

• 1:46Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 1:46Speaker 02

  So, in the context of years in the fight against sex trafficking, so I had been fighting sex trafficking. When this began, this began at the start of 2020. This is February 2020 when the fight to hold Pornhub accountable for rape, sex trafficking, and child abuse began. And that was in the context of over a decade in the fight against trafficking at that point. And I had been paying attention to the headlines, obviously, when sexual abuse stories, trafficking stories came up. You know, I was paying attention. And one of the stories that came up at late 2019... That really arrested my attention. It was a story of a 15 year old girl and she was from Broward County, Florida, and she was missing for an entire year and she was finally

• 2:29Speaker 02

  found when her distraught mother was tipped off by a Pornhub user that he recognized her daughter on the site.

• 2:35Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 2:36Speaker 02

  And she was found in 58 videos being abused for profit. These are monetized videos. Police, you know, were dispatched and they actually rescued her out of his apartment. She had been impregnated, you know, they got her out of that situation. But that was a story that had made some headlines and it was a horrifying story. At the same time, there was an investigation that was released by the Sunday Times, the London Sunday Times, and they had found dozens of illegal videos on Pornhub within minutes, even children as young as three. So these two particular stories were standing out. There was one other that was really horrifying at the time. It was about an adult, a woman named Nicole

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Adomondo, and she was from New York. And she was being abused by her partner. She was being raped and tortured. He was filming it and he was uploading it to Pornhub and then she ended up killing him in self-defense, but she was sentenced to life in prison, separated from her two young children. And thankfully, she had an amazing legal team and they fought that and they got it reduced to seven years and she's finally out today.

• 3:43Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 3:44Speaker 02

  But it was just a heartbreaking story. And so I, at the time, you know, I was really actually discouraged in my fight against trafficking. I had been doing it for a long time. I felt like we weren't making very much progress, but you know, it's not something that I can quit because I'm dedicated to this. But I was up late one night in, in early 2020, I think it was, let's see, January 31st, 2020, and I was consoling my own crying baby at that time because he was born, he had a birth complication. He was a very mad baby.

• 4:15Theo Von?

  What do you mean, oh, crying baby?

• 4:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, crying baby. Yeah, he was up, you know, I was up at all hours of the night.

• 4:20Theo Von?

  I thought you said crime baby. I was like, oh, what is a crime baby?

• 4:24Speaker 02

  No crying baby.

• 4:25Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so I was up late consoling him and thinking about that story of the 15 year old girl. And suddenly, you know, an idea came to mind. I just said, you know what? How are they vetting these videos? How is this abuse ending up on Pornhub? And an idea just flashed into mind. I said, I'm going to test the upload system for myself and I'm going to see what does it take? To upload content to Pornhub? So, put the baby down, got out my phone, took a video of the computer screen and the rug and the dark room. And I uploaded it to Pornhub and I found out what millions of people already knew. Because at that time, millions of videos were being uploaded every year. In fact,

• 5:10Speaker 02

  the amount of content that was being uploaded to Pornhub, if you put those videos back to back, just the amount of content they would upload in one year, it would take 169 years to watch. If you put those videos back to back, that's how much content was being uploaded.

• 5:24Theo Von?

  Uploaded or had been uploaded total, you mean?

• 5:27Speaker 02

  No, per year.

• 5:28Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  Yes. That's not even counting the images.

• 5:31Theo Von?

  Unbelievable.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  So I tested the, I found out, like I said, what millions of people already knew, and that was that all it took to upload was an email address. So in under 10 minutes, anybody with an iPhone, anywhere in the world can upload a video and they were not checking age, they were not checking ID to make sure that these are not children in the videos, they're not verifying consent to make sure that these are not rape or trafficking victims. And because of that, I quickly understood that Pornhub was not a porn site, it was a crime scene. Like it was infested with videos of real sexual crime.

• 6:07Theo Von?

  And so then the people would upload them and then make money, what off of advertising on them somehow?

• 6:12Speaker 02

  Yes. Yeah. So the, so the ones that were making money off of this content, because this is free porn, right?

• 6:18Theo Von?

  Right.

• 6:18Speaker 02

  Uh, free porn's not free, right? It is heavily monetized with ads. So they were selling 4.6 billion ad impressions on Pornhub every single day. So they were heavily monetizing this content. Now the people who were uploading were doing it mostly for free. Like 80% of people who are uploading were just doing it for social currency, like likes and clicks and comments and shares and all of that, the reason why people upload to social media.

• 6:46Theo Von?

  Right.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  Some of them were doing pay to download content where they could actually do profit sharing with Pornhub. That was happening as well. But most of the money made from free porn is actually made by the corporation running the site, right? And just to give you a little bit of context for how big Pornhub and its parent company are, who are making all of this money. So Pornhub at the time, so by December of 2020, they had capitalized on coronavirus. So they had done crazy stunts, like free premium to the whole entire world.

• 7:21Theo Von?

  Oh, I remember something like that.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, they had done some crazy PR campaigns at the time.

• 7:29Theo Von?

  Cause they people, they figure people are stuck at home, they'll watch porn?

• 7:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, it was that plus they were getting tons of bad press because trafficking hub movement had gone viral, starting at the beginning of the year.

• 7:38Theo Von?

  And trafficking hub movement was what?

• 7:40Speaker 02

  So I'll, okay, so I'll go back to the story. So, well, really quick, I want to tell you kind of just so you know what we're dealing with, like how big.

• 7:47Theo Von?

  Okay, yeah, how big Pornhub?

• 7:48Speaker 02

  Pornhub is, okay? So by the end of December 2020, so they had grown to be the fifth most visited website in the entire world. So not just porn site, website. They had 170 million visits per day, 62 billion visits per year. And like I said, enough content uploaded every year would take 169 years to watch. So they had 56 million pieces of content on the site by the end of 2020. And this was the year that trafficking hub movement began. So go back to the story. So I made this discovery.

• 8:25Theo Von?

  Oh my God, that's massive.

• 8:27Speaker 02

  I said, oh, I literally said, oh my God.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  This site is infested with videos of rape, trafficking, non-consensual content. We used to call it revenge porn, but we call it image-based sexual abuse. And I have to sound the alarm on this, I have to, you know, tell people what's going on. And so I did, the only thing that I could do at the time was I took to my, it was Twitter, right? At the time, Twitter. And I started to share this information, share the stories, share the, what I discovered about the upload process. And in a burst of inspiration, I shared the hashtag trafficking hub. And the reason why I did that is because per definition, so by definition.

• 9:16Speaker 02

  Any sex act that is commercialized and it's involving a child, or any sex act that's induced by force, fraud, or coercion, and it's commercialized, so it's for profit, like it's something of value is exchanged for that sex act, it is, per definition, an act of trafficking. So every child being abused on Pornhub, every adult who was non-consenting, who was raped and trafficked, those are instances of trafficking. I don't think people quite understand that, but that is per international definition and domestic definition. And so that's why I launched the trafficking of hashtag. And it slowly started to catch on. I had a few thousand followers on Twitter at the time, but people were horrified to find this out.

• 10:01Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah, well, I think when you hear trafficking, you kind of think like, I mean, I picture literally like a train, like people commandeered from other countries, or, you know, I guess younger people that have commandeered and kidnapped in like a train car going across the country in the night or something like, I think of it as a more like people like being smuggled across the border, or, you know, I don't think of it as, um, I guess the average person doesn't think of it in such a, a common kind of, I don't know if it's common is the word. I guess, yeah, the average person probably doesn't think of that it's that expansive.

• 10:35Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah, well, that's the way it's portrayed in Hollywood movies. And that's the way that it happens often, right? Sometimes, but, you know, the amount of trafficking going on, if you think about non-consensual, commercialized sex acts, this is massive.

• 10:53Theo Von?

  I can't, that's unbelievable.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, and so, uh, sound the alarm, launch trafficking hashtag, that started to catch on. People started to message me. Somebody said, hey, if you don't start a petition. Oh, then I wrote an op ed. So I said, okay, well, what else can I do besides just share this on social media? This has to get. Out to more people. So I wrote a, an op ed about what I discovered.

• 11:19Theo Von?

  An op ed means opinion.

• 11:21Speaker 02

  It's like an essay. Yeah.

• 11:22Theo Von?

  Right. I just want our listeners to know. Most of our listeners are just like me. They don't know. Yeah. So op ed means an opinion editorial. So, uh, like something that your opinion, you'd write it into like a publication that'd be published in a newspaper or something like that.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:35Theo Von?

  Okay, great. Just want our listeners to always know what that is.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  Exactly what it is. And so I wrote that with kind of the findings, highlighting some of these stories that had just been in the news, making the connections. And that really caught on, you know, people were sharing it and somebody who read it messaged me and they said, hey, you need to start a petition to shut down Pornhub and hold its executives accountable. And if you don't do it, I will. I said, okay, well, I'll do that. So I just went on change.org. I started a petition and instantly it started going viral.

• 12:02Theo Von?

  So on change.org, you started a petition?

• 12:04Speaker 02

  I started it there. Yeah. Now it's at traffickinghubpetition.com. And today we have 2.3 million people who have signed the petition from every country in the world.

• 12:14Theo Von?

  Let's go. We're gonna get more. That's, we gotta get more. It's traffickinghubpetition.com.

• 12:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. And this has been powerful to have this because as this was going viral, victims were seeing it and then they were starting to reach out to me. Um, sometimes on a daily basis, victims, I was exploited on Pornhub as a child, as a teen. I was raped. I was unconscious and I was raped on Pornhub and I begged to get those videos down and I couldn't, you know, all these stories started to come forward. Not only that, but whistleblowers from inside the company started to reach out to me and started to expose the inner workings of the company. Even the former owner of Pornhub actually reached out to me to say he wanted to help with all this. He had his own motives, but.

• 12:56Theo Von?

  Right. Probably trying to cover his own tracks.

• 12:58Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, he had, I discovered that he had some financial motivations, uh, for wanting to do that, but he did. And one of the things that was so important at this outset, uh, was we felt like, you know, this company, you know, trafficking is a transactional crime. All of this is being done for money. Like that's the only thing that these companies care about.

• 13:19Theo Von?

  Right.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  And in order to, you know, make a difference here, we have to hit them where it hurts. We have to go after the money. And so we said, we have to go after the credit cards, um, to cut ties with Pornhub. And when the owner reached out, he. Confirmed that he said, listen, the only thing they care about is money. If you you go after the credit cards, that's the Achilles heel of Pornhub.

• 13:41Theo Von?

  So you're saying if Visa and Mastercard, they will say, we will not allow our credit cards.

• 13:45Speaker 02

  To be used. That would be the worst thing that could ever happen to Pornhub. Yes, because they, you know, they need those.

• 13:51Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 13:51Speaker 02

  In order to sell ads, premium memberships, all of that. So reached out, tried, you know, credit card executives, did letters, you know, organizations were signing on. So all of this was building momentum. The petition was gaining steam. And that's why lots of media articles started to be written about this.

• 14:11Theo Von?

  What like were some of the crimes that you see like saw happening? What were some specific instances that you were like, oh, my God, this is just?

• 14:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, OK.

• 14:20Theo Von?

  I mean, is it OK to share those or no?

• 14:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course. And I think it's important to share because I think a lot of times people want to just dismiss it and say, you know, you, what you saw was just consensual. You just didn't really understand that it was, you know, these were obvious.

• 14:37Theo Von?

  Yeah, it's vague until you make it specific, I feel like a lot of times.

• 14:40Speaker 02

  So for example, and I'll tell you some, I can tell you some victim stories. I can tell you some of the things that I saw myself on the site. I mean, one of the worst things that I saw on the site was an instance where it was a young Asian woman. And she was drugged so completely that she was, her body was completely limp. She was unconscious and there was a masked assailant who actually to prove to the camera that she was unconscious. He was lifting her eyelids and touching her eyeballs to prove that she wasn't responsive because, and then tickling her feet and doing things like that. And then the title was in Chinese.

• 15:22Speaker 02

  And so what I did was I took the title and I put it into Google Translate and the title was, dead pig. Unconscious after being drugged. And it included eyes half open after being drugged. Like, that was the actual title of the video. And then, of course, because there's the algorithm, right? They have set up the algorithm to make sure if you see one video like that, they're gonna assume that you like that content. So then they're gonna take you on a crazy rabbit hole. I call it like, you know, just hellhole of rape. Like, that's what it was. And then you go and they'll show you more and more of the same kind of thing.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  You know, in my book, I do describe these videos. I don't really hold back because I want people to know what actually was taking place, what these victims were going through on the site. And one of the things that victims have shared that I think is also really important to know is that when those videos are uploaded, they had a download button so that anybody in the world could actually download and possess that child abuse, the rape, all of that on their devices, and then re-upload it again and again and again and again. And so victims actually call this the immortalization of their trauma. So they say, you know, it's one thing to be raped, but then it's filmed,

• 16:51Speaker 02

  and then it's uploaded, and then it's monetized for profit and pleasure, and people are actually getting pleasure out of the worst moment of my life. And it'll never go away because, once it's on the internet, it's out of control. And it's just like this whack-a-mole game where they're constantly just trying to find it and then beg for it to come down. And then even if they can, it just gets uploaded again. And one victim said, "My abuser put me in a mental prison, but Pornhub gave me a life sentence."

• 17:21Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 17:22Speaker 02

  And that was really powerful, but...

• 17:26Theo Von?

  And were all these like foreign, were they domestic? It was everywhere?

• 17:29Speaker 02

  It was everywhere. So here's one story that I'll share with you. Serena Fleitis. So Serena Fleitis, she's from Bakersfield, California. She was an innocent 13-year-old girl. And she had a crush on a boy a year older than her. So she, uh, you know, she, at the time, she'd never kissed a boy before. She was a straight A student. And he convinced her to send him some nude images and videos of herself. Which she did because she wanted to impress him, right? This is like very common today, sexting, all that. And then he shared it with classmates. And then the classmates uploaded to Pornhub, where it began to get millions and millions of views.

• 18:09Speaker 02

  So she would then reach out to Pornhub and beg for them to take the videos down and they would often ignore her.

• 18:15Theo Von?

  And she's an adolescent.

• 18:16Speaker 02

  Yes, she's a child. Like, she's a young teen, right? Um, and then if they did answer, they would hassle her. Prove that you're a victim. Prove that you're underage in these videos. Now, remember, nobody had to prove age and consent to upload. But if you want to get it down, she's testifying, she's testified this before Canadian Parliament, she's suing Pornhub right now, um, that she would have to, she would be hassled to prove that she's a victim. Then if she did get it down, then it would just get re-uploaded again, right? And so this sent her on a spiral of trauma and despair. She ended up dropping out of school because she was being bullied. She got addicted to drugs to try to numb the pain. She tried to kill herself multiple times. And then she wound up homeless, living out of a car.

• 18:59Speaker 02

  And that was her story, right? And like, that could happen to any young teen.

• 19:06Theo Von?

  Yeah, I could imagine that a lot of people in that instance, you almost end up taking, wanting to take your life or consider suicide because your life isn't even yours anymore.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, because it's like that immortalization, the trauma, it's like, I'll never escape this because, you know, even if I can find healing, I can, you know, do whatever, trauma therapy. But then it's like, it's almost like a wound and then a scab just gets peeled off again and peeled off again as those videos keep getting uploaded along.

• 19:32Theo Von?

  It's like something you would hear about happening in hell.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. And actually, to your point, the stats on ideations of suicide for victims of this kind of abuse, I mean, it's 50%. Who have suicidal ideations after going through this and not just child sexual abuse. I mean, that includes, you know, when videos are consensually recorded, but then non-consensually uploaded and the shame and all of that that comes along with that. I mean, this is the stats for victims of this kind of abuse. And so.

• 20:05Theo Von?

  So obviously, once you start hearing these stories, the fuel has to really ignite you. I would imagine that at that point, you're just like, this has become like a life purpose almost. Were you letting go of a day job? Were you like, did you?

• 20:18Speaker 02

  No, I mean, this was my, I've been in anti-trafficking just all, you know, for years and years.

• 20:24Theo Von?

  So you're already in that world?

• 20:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. It is my world, but then it became that I realized, okay, we're going to go after a mega predator here. And to that point, how big are they? So it's not just Pornhub, right? Pornhub is owned by a parent company that all of this kind of I learned over the last five years, so called MindGeek.

• 20:47Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  Now, MindGeek has a monopoly on the global big porn industry. So we call it big porn because there's big porn, just like there's big tobacco, there's big pharma, there's big porn, and it's dominated by one company. That company was was called MindGeek. They rebranded to ILO to try to escape their reputation as peddlers of crime. But they, so with a $362 million loan from a hedge fund called Colbet Capital and 125 secret investors who were outed as including JP Morgan Chase and Cornell University, they had basically rolled up the entire global porn industry under one company.

• 21:28Theo Von?

  So they owned it, MindGeek?

• 21:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, so they owned, you know, they were managing Playboy, Digital Playground, Wicked Pictures, Browsers, Reality Kings, pay sites, subscription sites, and then the tube sites. So they, so Pornhub and its sister sites, so Pornhub, YouPorn, RedTube, TubeAid, GayTube, XTube, you know. All, I, I could go on and on.

• 21:55Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  They own the most popular tube site.

• 21:58Theo Von?

  Vegan Tube, is that one? That's, no time for jokes. Um, and who owns MindGeek?

• 22:04Speaker 02

  So MindGeek was owned by a secret share, majority shareholder. So, nobody knew who the owner of MindGeek was when all of this began.

• 22:14Theo Von?

  And were they in America?

• 22:15Speaker 02

  No, we found out, so we found them. You know, through the course of this, there was a, an investigation called Hunt for the Porn King.

• 22:22Theo Von?

  So they're, they're not an American company. So you started on the hunt for the porn king?

• 22:25Speaker 02

  Right, so we discovered who was the secret majority shareholder of the company. And his name was Bernd Bergmeyer. And he was in Austria and he lived part-time in Hong Kong.

• 22:33Theo Von?

  Bernd Bergmeyer, let's bring a picture of him up.

• 22:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can.

• 22:36Theo Von?

  I just want people to know who he is.

• 22:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:38Theo Von?

  Bernd Bergmeyer. And let's look at his Wikipedia, I just wanna get a little. He grew up as a son of farmers in Ansfelden, attended grammar school in Linz, transferred to, he studied at University of Linz, wherever that is. He worked at Goldman Sachs in New York. He became the owner of porn site RedTube in 2013. He sold to the site Manwin, now known as Alio. He was a former majority owner of Pornhub and MindGeek. Okay.

• 23:07Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 23:08Theo Von?

  Just wanna make sure we see him.

• 23:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was the majority and then Farah Santun and David De Sello were the CEO and the COO. And they were the minority shareholders. And they had kinda hidden themselves from the public as well for a really long time.

• 23:20Theo Von?

  Okay, and are these guys all from Austria? Are they all from a specific place?

• 23:24Speaker 02

  So Canadians, so the company is an international corporation. They are headquartered in Canada, so they have most of their employees in Canada. But they have offices in, now they have an office in Texas, they had one LA, Cyprus, Romania.

• 23:39Theo Von?

  MindGeek has offices everywhere?

• 23:40Speaker 02

  Everywhere.

• 23:41Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 23:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, so they are a multinational corporation, huge corporation, hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Multi-billion dollar corporation with a monopoly on the global big porn industry.

• 23:53Theo Von?

  And how much money was that, was it bringing in a year? Do, is it?

• 23:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're estimated about half a billion, um, per year. It's, the value of the company is multiple billions of dollars. Um, and, you know, Pornhub was a flagship site, so this was the cash cow of the company. This is how, not only are they making money on 4.6 billion ad impressions every day and all of the traffic that they're getting, but they're advertising their pay sites on. The free sites, right?

• 24:18Theo Von?

  Right.

• 24:18Speaker 02

  So they kind of have this ecosystem where they advertise browsers on Pornhub and drive traffic to all of the other websites that they own.

• 24:26Theo Von?

  I thought it was browsers, which is crazy, but also, I don't care. I mean, it's, either way, it's bad.

• 24:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:32Theo Von?

  The start of the new year is the perfect time to get organized, to set goals and prioritize what matters most. For me, a top priority is my financial wellness, which feels more important than ever. Thanks to Rocket Money, my goals feel achievable. They show me all of my subscriptions right in one place and help me easily cancel ones that I forgot I've been paying for. That's where they help me the most. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps you find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Rocket Money has over 5 million users and has saved a total of 500 million in canceled

• 25:17Theo Von?

  subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when using all of the app's premium features. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to rocketmoney.com/thoe today. That's rocketmoney.com/theo. Rocketmoney.com/theo. I will tell you that before we used Shopify, we was doing things a little bit more freelance. We had a fellow over there in Akron, my buddy Kevin, and he was putting our merch together and slanging it out of the basement over there with his brother, who was dealing with alcoholism.

• 25:59Theo Von?

  But, things changed over time and we loved working with them, but now we love working with Shopify. You can upgrade your business and get the same checkout that we use with Shopify. Yes, you can. Nobody does selling better than Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. And the not-so-secret secret with Shop Pay that boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning way less carts go abandoned and way more sales going.

• 26:34Theo Von?

  Upgrade your business and get the same checkout that ALO and Allbirds uses. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com/THEO, T-H-E-O, all lowercase. Go to Shopify.com/THEO to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com/THEO.

• 27:00Speaker 02

  So, this is the company, this is who we're kind of coming up against, right? And so, all of this started to take off and go viral and victims are coming forward, whistleblowers. I told you about the former owner who came forward. His name is Fabian Tillman and he was called the Zuckerberg of porn.

• 27:18Theo Von?

  Okay, let's bring him up. I just want to get a lot, I want to put a face to these guys. Fabian Tillman.

• 27:25Theo Von?

  He looks Danish, huh?

• 27:26Speaker 02

  It's T-H-Y. Yeah, there you go.

• 27:31Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 27:32Theo Von?

  Fabian Tillman?

• 27:33Speaker 02

  He's the one that put Pornhub on the map. You know, he kind of had this vision for...

• 27:38Theo Von?

  The German entrepreneur who once built the biggest adult entertainment company in the world. Let's see him. That's him. Uh, Fabian.

• 27:49Theo Von?

  Okay, so he is, he's one of the guys schlepping it.

• 27:53Speaker 02

  So, he, yeah, so he's the one who actually revealed to me who the secret majority shareholder was that he sold the company to. So, that's how we found out who he was.

• 28:02Theo Von?

  Okay, so the movement's getting bigger, right? Uh, so you have the traffic hub.

• 28:06Speaker 02

  Yep, trafficking hub, it's taking off. So, we're even out protesting on the streets outside of MindGeek headquarters in Montreal and London and LA, you know, sharing all, tons of viral victim stories are happening. And then, one of the things, we're going up through, having all these meetings with the credit card companies executives, trying to present evidence and evidence and more evidence to them and saying, "Listen, you have to stop monetizing this content because actually, it's even illegal to knowingly benefit from trafficking in the United States."

• 28:38Theo Von?

  Right, so at that point, if they, if you put the knowledge on them that they're benefiting from it, then that becomes a crime against them.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  Then they're knowingly benefiting from trafficking and trying to bring this to them and saying, "Listen, you have to stop." But they were resisting, right?

• 28:51Theo Von?

  Why? Because it's so much money, you think?

• 28:52Speaker 02

  Um, I think there's multiple reasons. I think it's because one, it's this, they feel like this is a slippery slope. If we do this here, we might have to do it there.

• 29:00Theo Von?

  Right.

• 29:01Speaker 02

  And they just don't want to take action unless they're forced to take action. So they're like, we're really concerned. This is so concerning. Thank you for bringing this to us. Give us more information, more information. I give more information. They want more information. Anyway, they're resisting, right? Um, then, um, so I reach out and, uh, get the attention of Nick Kristof from the New York Times. So Nick Kristof has a history of really compassionate reporting for victims of human trafficking, and sex trafficking specifically. So I, I was thinking if there's anybody in the world that could cover this story in a really meaningful way, it will be Nick Kristof. And so he got engaged and he started a six-month investigation.

• 29:46Speaker 02

  Of course, he found out exactly what we were saying was happening on the site. I was connecting him with victims as they were coming forward, so he could be speaking to victims and whistleblowers. And he ended up releasing this groundbreaking article called "The Children of Pornhub", and it was featuring Serena Story, the girl I just told you about.

• 30:05Theo Von?

  Frighted, frightened?

• 30:06Speaker 02

  Flatus.

• 30:07Theo Von?

  Flatus?

• 30:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, Serena Flatus. And many other victims like her, who were children abused on the site.

• 30:13Theo Von?

  And had you been meeting, were more people coming forward at this point?

• 30:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, all the time. So many victims. And I, you know, personally engaged with so many victims of Pornhub. And thankfully, attorneys were also coming forward, saying, "We want to help." Really amazing, hard-hitting, top-notch attorneys. Um, you know, one of the ones I, I speak about in my book, who, um, you know, he had done the biggest hedge fund insider trading case in history against SAC Capital and Stevie Cohen. His name is Mike Bowie from Brown Rutnick. And he cared about trafficking and he came forward, he became Serena's attorney. And he started representing, now he represents, um, I think 200 victims.

• 30:56Theo Von?

  Let's bring that hero up. Bring a picture of him up.

• 30:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, Mike Bowie. There he is. Yeah.

• 31:00Theo Von?

  Mike Bowie.

• 31:01Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 31:02Theo Von?

  Thank you, Mike.

• 31:03Speaker 02

  Son of a firefighter. Wanted to be a firefighter, ended up being a

• 31:07Theo Von?

  He's fighting huge fires now.

• 31:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 31:09Theo Von?

  I mean, that's one of the biggest fires in the world. It sounds like. Human trafficking.

• 31:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:13Theo Von?

  Taking advantage of people's sexuality.

• 31:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. So.

• 31:17Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  Back to the story. So Nick Kristof does this investiga- he releases the children of Pornhub. And one of the things he does in his article is he calls out the credit card companies. And when this is released, I mean, I couldn't believe the impact that it had. It started to like thousands of follow on articles. The pressure was on. Justin Trudeau in Canada was responding to the article saying how horrific what was going on was Canadian Parliament was up in arms demanding an investigation. And the pressure was on the credit card companies. And within days of that article being released, Visa, Mastercard and Discover joined PayPal in cutting all ties with Pornhub, leaving them only with cryptocurrency as a payment option.

• 31:56Theo Von?

  Incredible.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  This was the worst thing that could happen to Pornhub. Okay, right? And so

• 32:02Theo Von?

  They must have lost it.

• 32:04Speaker 02

  In a panic, in an absolute panic. This is the worst thing that could happen to them. So they did basically the unthinkable for their business model, which relies on massive amounts of content because content is king for the porn tube sites. You have to understand this, that it's about getting unrestricted massive amounts of content so that they could get picked up in Google search results so that they can drive massive amounts of traffic. So they can sell all those ad impressions and make hundreds of millions of dollars a year on free porn. Okay? Worst thing they could do is take content down from the site. But they started to delete millions of videos. They deleted 10 million videos and over 30 million images, basically in 24 hours.

• 32:49Speaker 02

  And what Financial Times called probably the biggest takedown of content in internet history. They deleted all of their unverified videos because they had no idea who was a child and like who was 16 and who was 18.

• 33:01Theo Von?

  Right.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  Who was, what was rough sex and what was rape? They had no idea what was consensually recorded and non-consensually uploaded, right? And so they took down that much content.

• 33:14Theo Von?

  Cause they're worried about the money.

• 33:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. They wanted to woo the credit card companies back.

• 33:18Theo Von?

  Right.

• 33:18Speaker 02

  As they said, okay, we have to, we have to do this. They basically deleted their site. Uh, they, uh, well, 80% of it at the time. Sadly, I found out that, so then there's global headlines, right? Hundreds of headlines all over the world, Visa, Mastercard, you know, the big takedown. I found out, an insider came to me months later and said, you don't know this. But two weeks after the credit card companies disengaged with Pornhub, they quietly snuck back to the advertising arm of Pornhub called Traffic Junkie, because they have their own ad arm, right? And that's how they make most of their money. So business is going on as usual. And I said, oh my, this is like the worst thing that I could have ever. I can't believe that this is what happened.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  I said, how, what are we gonna do now? Like, how?

• 34:06Theo Von?

  And how wouldn't a CEO of Visa or one of these companies be like, yeah, we're just not gonna do this anymore?

• 34:11Speaker 02

  How would they?

• 34:12Theo Von?

  Why wouldn't they just say, we would stop, this is bad, this isn't good, you know? Is, at that point, is it because they're also worried about free speech and stuff like that, do you think?

• 34:21Speaker 02

  This is not about free speech. I mean, I think, I think it has to do with money as well, because one thing you have to know is like, these are high-risk transactions.

• 34:30Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 34:30Speaker 02

  They charge more per transaction for high-risk transactions, which are porn transactions.

• 34:35Theo Von?

  I see, so there's big money.

• 34:36Speaker 02

  So there's money, right?

• 34:39Theo Von?

  Big money.

• 34:40Speaker 02

  And they went back. And so it was another two-year battle to try to get them to finally disengage, which happened. Because Serena sued Pornhub, not only Pornhub, she sued its individual owners and its executives, and she sued Visa for monetizing her abuse.

• 35:00Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 35:00Speaker 02

  And she sued the hedge funds for funding the whole enterprise.

• 35:04Theo Von?

  Did she win?

• 35:05Speaker 02

  And so what happened was Visa lost their motion to dismiss the case, because they had filed a motion to dismiss, they lost it. And at the same time, we were able to put the pressure on publicly. So Bill Ackman was one of the heroes in this story. I mean, he knew the CEO of Mastercard, and so he was making phone calls.

• 35:26Theo Von?

  That's Bill Ackman right there.

• 35:27Speaker 02

  So he got him and I on CNBC Squawk Box, and we called out Al Kelly, who was the CEO of Visa. For 17 minutes on the show, and this was right when Visa lost their motion to dismiss. So the pressure was on for multiple angles.

• 35:41Theo Von?

  And a motion to dismiss is what?

• 35:42Speaker 02

  So they say-

• 35:43Theo Von?

  Oh, they want to say dismiss the case?

• 35:44Speaker 02

  Dismiss the case, we're not involved, like this had not, you know, nothing we could do about this. We're not part of this problem.

• 35:51Theo Von?

  And the court says, hold my gavel, brother.

• 35:52Speaker 02

  In a damning decision. And it wasn't just a decision. It was a, like, they, the judge actually said that Visa gave Pornhub the very tool through which to complete the crime of benefiting from child trafficking. Like, those were his words in his decision.

• 36:08Theo Von?

  Fuck, yeah.

• 36:09Speaker 02

  And so, the pressure was on, and then, so then Al Kelly said he did kind of an unprecedented thing.

• 36:16Theo Von?

  Who is Al Kelly that's a s-

• 36:17Speaker 02

  He's the CEO of Visa.

• 36:19Theo Von?

  Okay, so the CEO of Visa, Al Kelly, then?

• 36:21Speaker 02

  Then he says, okay, fine, we're gonna cut them off once and for all. And he made a personal statement. He said, "I'm a father, and I, you know, don't approve blah blah blah. And so we're cutting off Pornhub," and then, of course, Mastercard quickly followed, Discover. Now, they've lost it, totally. So, and today, so we found out, they kept deleting content, right? So today, they have actually deleted 91% of the entire site. So they went from 56 million pieces of content in 2020 when this started to 5.2 million pieces of content today. And we're not done, because they still have unverified content on the site.

• 36:58Theo Von?

  Right.

• 36:58Speaker 02

  So, yeah, fight's not over yet.

• 36:59Theo Von?

  Wow, congratulations.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  But-

• 37:01Theo Von?

  That's fast, I mean, congratulations.

• 37:04Speaker 02

  Thank you. I mean, it's been not just, I have to pass that on, you know, that congratulations to any victims who might be watching this, because it's through their courageous testimony and them, you know, stepping forward amidst backlash and, you know, everybody who's been involved. We had 600 organizations that were involved in this, and the lawyers, and the journalists, and the whistleblowers, and so many people came together to make this happen.

• 37:33Theo Von?

  Did you guys, um, what was the one C, what was the CEO? What was that transaction that kind of occurred, where he was like, where he reached out the previous CEO?

• 37:43Speaker 02

  No, he was the owner. So.

• 37:45Theo Von?

  Oh, he's a previous owner.

• 37:46Speaker 02

  Fabian Thillman, the Zuckerberg of porn.

• 37:48Theo Von?

  Fabian Thillman.

• 37:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, he reached out in summer 2020 to say he wanted to help. And so one of the things that he did was he exposed the secret majority shareholders name. And he said, go after the credit card companies. As the, as the former owner, he said, if you want to make a difference here, you go after the credit card companies to cut ties. And so that was, now, what, what I didn't realize at the time, I was suspicious, right? Why is he wanting to help? And I kind of later found out that he had intention to try to buy back the company. So he kind of wanted to make a killing again. So I think he wanted to help take it down, buy it.

• 38:28Theo Von?

  And then find a way to do it back, probably with crypto or something on a, on a different chain.

• 38:32Speaker 02

  I don't know what he was thinking, but he wanted to buy it back, which I found out later on. But the CEO and the CEO, COO and the CEO were forced to resign as well. And today they're being sued by nearly 300 victims in 25 lawsuits, including multiple class actions on behalf of tens of thousands of child victims. And they're doing amazing in the courts. So much more evidence has been uncovered in legal discovery. So discovery is this amazing tool. When you engage in a civil lawsuit, the, the court gives you permission to get behind your opponent. So you can get their text messages, you can get their emails. You can get, and so much has come out of the complicity.

• 39:17Speaker 02

  Like you just couldn't believe the things that we've found out just through legal discovery process.

• 39:23Theo Von?

  Like, what are some of the things, like just involved, like just?

• 39:26Speaker 02

  Okay, so here's an example. We found out that they only had one person. So they had 1,800 employees. They hired one person, five days a week. To be reviewing videos flagged by users as terms of service violations, including rape and trafficking and child abuse. One person. They had a policy where they wouldn't even review a video unless it was flagged 15 times. Now, think about this. You're a victim. Say there's a child victim like Serena. She would have, she would have to flag her video over 15 times because it had to be over 15 for it to be reviewed in order for that to even

• 40:07Speaker 02

  be put in queue for review. And they had a backlog of 706,000 videos.

• 40:15Theo Von?

  That were just waiting for this one person to review them?

• 40:17Speaker 02

  Yes. And they had, like, we've discovered now in a recent filing in December of 2024, we found out specific instances of prepubescent child victims who had their videos on there for years and they would have like 14 flags, 13 flags. And they just like, that was the policy. And then the CEO and the executives-

• 40:41Theo Von?

  All of this on Pornhub?

• 40:42Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. On Pornhub, yes. And so I'm just so, I'm just grateful that we're having this conversation because I bet most of the people who are listening to your show had no idea-

• 40:57Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 40:57Speaker 02

  That this was happening, that it's ever happened, that this is an issue on user-generated free porn sites. And-

• 41:06Theo Von?

  And they keep it up because it's content, right? Like you're saying-

• 41:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:09Theo Von?

  The more content-

• 41:11Speaker 02

  Yes. Content is king.

• 41:12Theo Von?

  Right?

• 41:13Speaker 02

  They don't want to remove content because that's how they have inventory. So here's another like egregious example of how they did this was, so, you know, there's one case that I talk about in my book where there was a case of a clearly prepubescent child who is being anally raped in a video and she is being tortured. The tags on the video, so the type, like the titles and tags were describing her abuse, that she was young, that she was being tortured, all of this. And we reported the video. We tried to get it down. Weeks go by. It's not coming down. Video view counts going up, up, up. We reach out to the FBI. They demand that it comes down.

• 41:55Speaker 02

  So they connect with the National Center on Missing and Exploited Children, who confirms this is a child. So they demanded the video come down. Okay. And then what they did was they took the video down, but they left that black box up that said, "Removed at the request of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children." And they left the URL live, the tags, the titles, the views, all of that. And they did that with so many videos. Why would they take the video down, but leave all of that up? And it's because it's inventory. It's the click, it's the URLs.

• 42:32Theo Von?

  It still shows like an ad company that they're going to sell to. It still says, "Well, we have this many videos."

• 42:37Speaker 02

  So you could search that, right?

• 42:38Theo Von?

  We have the most videos.

• 42:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, the tags, the titles, like they'll drive, they'll still come up in Google search. Then you'll get to the site. You won't find that particular video, but the algorithm will then direct you to others that are similar. And it will advertise to you, right? You'll get that, those ad views. So that's why.

• 42:55Theo Von?

  Did you have any victims that showed up to thank you in person? Like you've had experiences like that, kind of?

• 42:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm still in touch with victims on a regular basis. They don't feel though, that like justice has fully been served yet.

• 43:08Theo Von?

  I'm sure.

• 43:08Speaker 02

  So Pornhub was criminally charged by the US federal government in December 2023 for intentionally profiting from sex trafficking.

• 43:18Theo Von?

  And they're still allowed to stay open?

• 43:20Speaker 02

  But they were offered a deferred prosecution agreement, which is just unbelievable to me that that happened, where basically they said, "You pay $1.8 million in a settlement and you have a monitor over your company for three years and you can get out of going to trial." So that happened, but that was related to a case, like a specific case of a 100 trafficking victims from California. So they were part of the Girls Do Porn trafficking operation. The guy that was exploiting them, his name is Michael Pratt. He was on the FBI's Most Wanted List, 10 Most Wanted List.

• 43:57Theo Von?

  Michael Pratt. Let's get a look at him. I just want to put faces to these people. So that they're not just names that pass by.

• 44:04Speaker 03

  You said Pratt, right?

• 44:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, Michael Pratt. On my, uh, actually on my Twitter, I just posted about him.

• 44:09Theo Von?

  This is him?

• 44:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's, uh, he is FBI's 10 Most Wanted. And he was running a trafficking operation and over a hundred victims were, uh, exploited by him.

• 44:19Theo Von?

  And let's look at Wiki, where's he from, this guy? Who is this guy?

• 44:24Speaker 03

  I think they have a Wiki for this guy.

• 44:26Theo Von?

  Okay. Pratt is charged in a 19-count indictment with sex trafficking, production of child pornography. Unbelievable.

• 44:32Speaker 02

  And he had, so Girls Do Porn was one of the most popular partner channels on Pornhub. So they had over 760,000 subscribers. And they had over 600 million views on the videos of these women's trafficking.

• 44:48Theo Von?

  And most of them were trafficked, you think?

• 44:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, oh, it's not, I think, I mean, they've been convicted, like, his accomplices are in prison.

• 44:54Theo Von?

  And this was in Spain, it says it was happening, why, the law is different there?

• 44:57Speaker 02

  He ran away, so he was a fugitive. So he was doing this in San Diego. This is where it all happened, was in San Diego. Uh, 62 of those women have recently filed lawsuits, 50 of them filed lawsuits and settled those lawsuits. But they, uh, so this channel was one of the most popular on Pornhub, and that was what this criminal prosecution was related to. It was about these specific, you know, over a hundred victims of this particular crime ring. But there's so many others out there.

• 45:25Theo Von?

  But he's not in jail, this guy?

• 45:26Speaker 02

  Well, they captured him, he's, it's in process, like, they're, they're working on his prosecution right now.

• 45:32Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 45:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, but his accomplices, the others that were involved with him are already prosecuted. It was just that they have more recently found him. And so he's going through the process of being convicted.

• 45:42Theo Von?

  Understood. Is pornography causing a problem in your life? Do you find yourself watching porno for longer periods of time and having trouble stopping?

• 45:54Theo Von?

  Is porn affecting your relationship or dating life? Well, you're certainly not alone. Watching pornography has become so commonplace today and oftentimes men use porn to numb the pain of loneliness, boredom, anxiety, and depression. Shame and stigma prevent men from talking about these issues and getting help for them. I want to introduce you to my friend Steve. Steve is the founder of Valor Recovery, a program to help men overcome porn abuse and sexual compulsivity. Steve is a long-term sexual recovery member and has personally overcame the emotional and spiritual despair of abusing pornography and has dedicated his life to empowering men to do the same.

• 46:40Theo Von?

  Steve is an amazing person and he is a close friend of mine. I mean that. Valor Recovery helps men to develop the tools necessary to have a healthier sex life. Their coaches are in long-term recovery and will be your partner, mentor, and spiritual guide to transcend these problematic behaviors. To learn more about Valor Recovery, please visit them at www.valorrecoverycoaching.com or email them at [email protected]. Thank you. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp.

• 47:22Theo Von?

  BetterHelp is the group that's encouraged a lot of people to check on their mental health, especially when it comes to their relationships in their life. And just examining those relationships, looking for green flags and red flags and learning how to operate within those relationships, whether you're dating, married, building a friendship, or just working on yourself. It's time to form relationships that love you back.

• 47:51Theo Von?

  That's the truth. BetterHelp is fully online, making therapy affordable and convenient, serving over 5 million people worldwide. Access a diverse network of more than 30,000 credentialed therapists with a wide range of specialties. Easily switch therapists anytime at no extra costs. Discover your relationship green flags with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com/THEO to get 10% off your first month. That's better H E L P, betterhelp.com/THEO.

• 48:27Speaker 02

  Victims are so grateful for all that's happened so far, and they've been a big part of it. You know, I remember when the big takedown happened, and the most meaningful thing that happened was that victims were calling and they were crying tears of joy because for the first time, their rape and trafficking was finally off of Pornhub after fighting for so long. But they just feel like justice hasn't been fully served yet because they're still waiting for restitution. The site is still online. You know, it's been purchased now. They're trying to do this whole rebrand. So it was sold as a distressed asset to a company that they created themselves to buy Pornhub. And they are called Ethical Capital Partners.

• 49:12Theo Von?

  Wow, what a name. Ethical Capital Partners. And who is the, who are the main bigwigs in that company? Do we know?

• 49:18Speaker 02

  Yes, we do. They have themselves online. You know, the guy that's out there kind of trying to do this whole rebrand of Pornhub, like we're Ethical Capital Partners. His name is Solomon Friedman, and he is a criminal defense attorney.

• 49:32Theo Von?

  Is he really? A Jewish guy from where? Where's he from?

• 49:35Speaker 02

  Uh, Canada. He's from Canada. Yeah.

• 49:38Theo Von?

  So he wants to rebrand and just make it more ethical?

• 49:41Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, that's what they're saying, right? They're saying they called themselves Ethical Capital, yet at the same time... The the videos that are on Pornhub right now are still unverified, mostly unverified. So that 5.2 million left, they had verified the uploaders, right? But not the individuals in the videos. So that doesn't work because often the abuser is the uploader. And I'll give you an example. So there's a man named Rocky Shay Franklin out of Alabama. And he drugged and he overpowered and he raped a 12 year old boy. And he filmed those assaults and he uploaded 23 of those videos to Pornhub with titles that indicated this was abuse.

• 50:25Speaker 02

  Like young, it said like Uncle Secret. I mean, I won't say the worst things, but it was clear, right? He was put in prison for 40 years for what he did. Police reached out multiple times to Pornhub to try to get those videos down. They were ignored for seven months. Those videos stayed online, getting hundreds of thousands of views. That boy is suing Pornhub today. So he's one of those many victims suing Pornhub. But Rocky was a verified uploader. He had shown his ID and he

• 50:56Theo Von?

  They know who he is.

• 50:57Speaker 02

  They know who he is, but they didn't verify clearly, right? Like who's in the video, right? So even today, you know, as of 2024 Pornhub had to produce a report. They sent it into the European, there's a European law called the Digital Services Act. And in 2024, in four and a half months, they had to take down 3,770 child sexual abuse videos from the site and over 8,000 non-consensual and rape videos from the site. Okay.

• 51:27Theo Von?

  But they're having to be legally asked to do this, right?

• 51:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, to disclose what they're doing. So that's all under ethical capital partners, right? Okay, so that's, you know, they didn't

• 51:38Theo Von?

  So ethical capital partners, there's still, there's still stuff out there that's not supposed to be there.

• 51:42Speaker 02

  Yes, they still haven't actually implemented their preventative policies.

• 51:46Theo Von?

  So what's ethical about it?

• 51:48Speaker 02

  It's just a farce. I mean, it's just, you know, and that's why I think it's so important to sound the alarm on this rebrand because from a victim's perspective, like this is also a miscarriage of justice for them to go out there and try to resuscitate Pornhub's brand to say, oh, we're ethical capital. Listen, the same men who made all those decisions that the one person that was verifying videos, they had 30 moderators, 30 moderators moderating the millions of videos on Pornhub. Now compare that with Facebook's 15,000 moderators and they still don't have enough. These moderators, they were viewing between 800 and 2,000 videos per shift, clicking through those videos with the sound off, just clicking through

• 52:32Speaker 02

  them, guessing. Like I call it the underage guessing game. Like this is a game of Russian roulette with people's lives. They're trying to guess who's 15 and who's 18, who's 16 and who's 19. Like, nobody can do that on a, like even a pediatrician can't do that.

• 52:46Theo Von?

  Yeah. And what happens to your brain at a certain point after seeing so much traumatic stuff that you were even like, that should be a crime and putting a employee through that.

• 52:56Speaker 02

  Well, I, and I've spoken to those and some of those employees I call friends today because they-

• 53:01Theo Von?

  Really? Have they said that they've seen some, it's been really intense?

• 53:03Speaker 02

  Their conscience was pricked.

• 53:04Theo Von?

  Oh, I'm sure.

• 53:05Speaker 02

  And they came forward and I've spent hours and hours in person and, you know, online and on the phone, speaking to them, trying to understand how all of this worked. And one of them is especially dear to me. And he told me that it was so hard on him to do this job, but he needed the money. And he was abused as a child. He was sexually abused as a child.

• 53:27Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 53:28Speaker 02

  So it was especially hard for him to do this. But I think that's why-

• 53:32Theo Von?

  He almost wondered why he went and did it. It's like you could find something else to do probably.

• 53:36Speaker 02

  I mean-

• 53:36Theo Von?

  Not calling him out, but it's like, maybe there's some weird thing that's created there too, that like, you know?

• 53:41Speaker 02

  I don't know. But I appreciate what he did in coming forward. But to say like the executive, so back to ethical capital, it's like the men who made that decision to have 30 moderators just guessing what's rough sex and rape guessing, and they guessed wrong all the time. They were skipping through 2,000, you know, thousands of videos per shift. And they're still running Pornhub today. So they're still on the sixth floor Aquamarine Montreal Tower of that corporation, running Pornhub today. Yes, the CEO and the COO were forced to resign, but they have the same CFO. They have the same CLO.

• 54:15Theo Von?

  Who's the CFO? Let's see.

• 54:16Speaker 02

  Eddie DeSanto.

• 54:17Theo Von?

  Eddie DeSanto, bring him up.

• 54:19Speaker 02

  I don't know if you'll find him. They try to.

• 54:21Theo Von?

  They try to hide his face?

• 54:21Speaker 02

  They try to, but some of them, I mean, you could find Ryan Hogan, Matt Colicchi. So you can look up Kareem Al Marazzi. He is the CPO and he's running it today.

• 54:32Theo Von?

  Kareem Al Marazzi.

• 54:34Speaker 02

  So that's him. And so he's there today, right?

• 54:37Theo Von?

  Yep, about him from Canada. As an integral part of the mobile broadband team. Telecommunication engineering, went to University of Montreal. Hmm. So they're still running, they're just trying to rebuild this company and still make money.

• 54:54Speaker 02

  Well, so I mean, what I'm saying is like ethical capital, right? If they were coming in and saying like, we're going to rebrand, we're going to do this new thing. Why would you still have the same men responsible for the decisions that destroy the lives of countless victims? Just running the site today. That's why I, it's like, it's just a farce. Like it's not real.

• 55:11Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 55:12Speaker 02

  And even if it was real, it doesn't mean that they escaped justice being fully served. Um, because what's important is victims receive the justice they need for healing. Um, and to be a deterrent if you're abusers. Like one of the most things, most important things in the fight against trafficking is not just to rescue victims, right? And to rehabilitate them. That's important. But to prevent it from happening in the future and how do you prevent it? You have to increase risk and eliminate profitability. You have to make the risk of continued exploitation greater than the benefit that these executives get by maintaining the status quo. And then when you do that and you end impunity for these abusers, you become a deterrent

• 55:57Speaker 02

  to future abusers.

• 55:58Theo Von?

  Okay, explain that little part to me again.

• 55:59Speaker 02

  So, so you want to hold these companies fully accountable to the full extent of the law. To me, that means Pornhub gets shut down. Like, we go from 91% to 100%. They do not exist anymore because they have been destroying the lives of countless victims since 2007 when they came online.

• 56:18Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 56:18Speaker 02

  And when that happens, other websites owned by other executives will say, "We don't want to end up in that position."

• 56:24Theo Von?

  Right.

• 56:25Speaker 02

  So, let's just clean ourselves up because we can make a lot of money on legal content.

• 56:29Theo Von?

  Right.

• 56:29Speaker 02

  We don't have to monetize illegal content. We can do this in a way where we're not distributing sexual crime, and they'll do that because they want to avoid losing the credit card companies. They want to avoid litigation. They want to avoid criminal prosecution.

• 56:43Theo Von?

  Just greed at a certain point is some type of, obviously, sick.

• 56:45Speaker 02

  It's risk benefit, right?

• 56:47Theo Von?

  But a sickness too, to think that you would be able to know that that's happening, right?

• 56:51Speaker 02

  Right.

• 56:51Theo Von?

  And keep going. That's in, it's like, what type of sickness exists? You know? I mean, it's, it's almost like a hell, you're like, you're like a slave trader of people's, like, solitude and peace, you know? But no, you know? I don't know. I just can't, I can't, I can't even, I can't imagine that. I can't fathom that someone would be like, "Yeah, this is okay." I'm not gonna, that, that's not gonna be the first thing I'm gonna worry about with my company, right?

• 57:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:23Theo Von?

  So, so just, I'm just fine tuning to my, my view here. So, a lot of your combativeness is not against pornography. It's against the sex trafficking, the, like, people illegally filming people, filming drugged people, no verification of age, all of these crimes, basically.

• 57:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, sexual crime.

• 57:47Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 57:47Speaker 02

  Being distributed online. In fact, some of the most helpful allies in this fight have been those in the porn industry. Like, at one point, you know, I had those who were producing their own porn on Pornhub, and they were doing this in a professional sense, and they were reaching out to me because they said, "Listen, we need to take this company down because I'm sick and tired." I was spending two hours a day scouring Pornhub and its sister tube sites trying to get my own stolen illegal content off the site because they were not only rape and trafficking, right? This is copyright infringement content like

• 58:21Theo Von?

  So there's no protection for that either?

• 58:22Speaker 02

  No, they're just uploading, they're just pirating and uploading all of this content. So, so those in the porn industry kind of hated MindGeek already because the free porn tube sites were exploiting the legally produced content of these, those in the industry.

• 58:37Theo Von?

  Yeah, because even with YouTube, there's like, there's like metadata and stuff that they could, if they want to, they can make sure that someone can't do it without it being claimed or known, you know?

• 58:46Speaker 02

  Right. And so they, well, they could do these DMCA takedowns. So that's what they would do. So she was spending hours a day, multiple of them, doing that. But as she was doing that, she was coming across child abuse, rape, trafficking, and then they were sending the links. And that was one of the things that was crazy that was happening is that as this was all going viral and there's all these stories, people around the world who were on Pornhub, who would find an illegal video would be sending it to me. And so I was in, and so it was just kind of a really intense

• 59:19Theo Von?

  Right, because then you're looking at it, seeing what's going on, and you're like, well, what am I supposed to do here?

• 59:22Speaker 02

  And then I have, you know, the responsibility to report it, to, you know, take care of, you know, witnessing what's happening and then trying to help bring justice to the victims.

• 59:33Theo Von?

  That must have been insane, huh? And it's, I mean, yeah, it's real, it's, so this is all real vile, real stuff that was happening and being uploaded?

• 59:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. Real, real sexual crime.

• 59:43Theo Von?

  So, so what do you think kind of like the solution is at scale, you know, when you think about that, Lila?

• 59:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, so yes, it's one thing to hold one particular company accountable, and that's important. But the question then becomes, because Pornhub's not alone, right? I want everybody to understand that it's not like you go, okay, well, Xvideos must be fine. They're a free user generated porn site that was operating in a similar way of not verifying age and consent. And there's, Nick Kristof did an investigation and found, you know, reported on the victims who were on Xvideos. And there's Xhamster, and there's all of these X and XX, right? And there's others that operate in a similar way. And so the question is, well, how do we stop this across all of these sites, right? And that goes back to the source of the problem is not verifying age and consent. We have to demand

• 1:00:34Speaker 02

  Third-party age and consent verification for every single person in every single video that is uploaded to a user-generated porn site. And when that happens, we're going to make a huge difference in stopping that illegal content from being uploaded. But that's a huge task, right? So it's not just governments who have to do this because this is an international problem. These sites operate internationally. So if the US does that, well, they're still in Canada and they're in, you know, every country in the world. So the solution at scale becomes the credit card companies implementing that policy. Because we know they're highly motivated by money. And if Visa says, "We don't do business with user-generated porn sites that don't verify

• 1:01:16Speaker 02

  the age and consent of every person, every video," well, all of these companies are going to comply. And they're going to do it quickly. So that's the solution.

• 1:01:24Theo Von?

  So how do we, because you would think at this point, they would just go on ahead and say that because it's like, it's obviously the next right thing to do.

• 1:01:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:01:34Theo Von?

  And in a moral sense, it would feel like.

• 1:01:36Speaker 02

  Well, a lot of companies don't operate from...

• 1:01:39Theo Von?

  Right. Business doesn't have emotions.

• 1:01:41Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, and it comes from pressure, right? And so that's where I see the litigation being important, where these survivors, dozens of survivors have sued the credit card companies, right?

• 1:01:52Theo Von?

  So now they're facing some of it, right?

• 1:01:54Speaker 02

  Right. So they're feeling that pressure. And at some point, they go, "Listen, it's better business to just..."

• 1:02:00Theo Von?

  Let it go.

• 1:02:01Speaker 02

  "...implement this policy." Just like we have anti-money laundering policy, we're going to have anti-online sexual exploitation policy, and we just don't do business with user-generated porn sites that don't verify age and consent because it's too risky for us, right?

• 1:02:13Theo Von?

  Right. Because then, yeah, it hits their wallet with that.

• 1:02:15Speaker 02

  Exactly. It's like Big Pharma. It's like, you know, litigation made a huge difference in reform in the pharmaceutical industry. We saw it in hedge fund insider trading cases when they had big litigation and criminal prosecution, and it forced those changes to happen. So I think that could be...

• 1:02:34Theo Von?

  That's where we're hoping to get to next.

• 1:02:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's where we need to go.

• 1:02:37Theo Von?

  And who supports legally supports you guys is like the legal costs?

• 1:02:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, that's where, I mean, these firms, a lot of them are working on a contingency basis where, you know, they're working with victims. Some do pro bono. They have like different kinds of arrangements. And then we support victims as well, have the Justice Defense Fund to help them get connected to lawyers, to support them along that journey. It's a hard thing to do, to take on an abuser. It's a hard thing to go into litigation and they need, you know,

• 1:03:07Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:08Speaker 02

  therapy, advocacy, like all the ways that they need to be supported. And so, yeah, that's our mission is to support survivors, to pursue justice in court, to get that healing and to implement those preventative policies to make sure it doesn't happen again. Now, MasterCard has come a little ways, so they implemented a policy where they say, you have to verify uploaders, but that's not far enough. Like you have to verify those in the videos.

• 1:03:37Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:38Speaker 02

  So.

• 1:03:38Theo Von?

  And do you think there's like backroom dealings between my, between these companies and the like, uh, credit card companies where they're like sending them extra cash or me, you know, like they just know each other, the owners know each other and it's like, we'll let you stay open, that type of thing?

• 1:03:51Speaker 02

  I haven't seen that. I don't, I don't, I haven't seen that happen. I don't get that sense. I think that, you know, this is just one of many industries that they can make money on and they will maintain that position until.

• 1:04:05Theo Von?

  Yeah, I was wondering if there's lobbying by the actual owners of the companies towards the, towards the credit card companies, you know, of the banks.

• 1:04:14Speaker 02

  Possible. Definitely possible.

• 1:04:16Theo Von?

  You start to figure that that's where a lot of things really kind of happen.

• 1:04:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:19Theo Von?

  And then it bubbles up to the surface of what we can.

• 1:04:21Speaker 02

  Follow the money.

• 1:04:22Theo Von?

  What we can see.

• 1:04:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:24Theo Von?

  Um, what, what state, cause I've noticed like, you know, I've watched pornography before. I've had issues with pornography addiction kind of, or I just, I use it as an escape, like especially like in my twenties, like, um, You know, I found pornography when I was, you know, at a, at a age where I was probably maybe thirteen or fourteen. And so then I would use it to make me feel good. It was like one of the only ways I felt like when I was young that I could feel good. You know, I had really low self uh worth and so, once I realized pornography. And porno and everything, I was like, oh dang, I can control, I have a control. Basically lever on my body as to how, when I can feel okay, right?

• 1:05:03Theo Von?

  And so, um, it was magazines and then I guess as staying, you know, then it became like video online, stuff like that, you know, um, over time. Um, but it certainly has been something where it's like, I don't feel good about myself. I feel down about myself. What's the one way I know to feel good? And would be to uh, watch pornography, you know, or use it to masturbate, you know, things like that to make myself. And then you get a, you get a hit of dopamine crazily and so then you, part of you feels good for a while, you know, um. So that's been, you know, that was kind of my story with it, except it got to, it got to like, I would notice. Instead of going and meeting girls or trying to like, like, well, part of my spirit started to suffer because.

• 1:05:46Theo Von?

  I was taken out like a important part of like my soul and my physiology by um ejaculating or like. Just like abusing that part of me and it, then I didn't have. You know, I think that part of you is supposed to kind of build up inside of you and help you have like some, um, it pushes you to talk to women and to. Want to go on dates and things like that. And so for me, I think it started to weaken some of that over time. It was like, well, why go. Meet a girl or ask a girl out when I could just masturbate, you know, that was some um. Uh, that was kind of what happened, I guess, in my head at some times.

• 1:06:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:20Theo Von?

  Um, yeah, and I've, I've been in like recovery groups to talk about that, you know, I'm in recovery groups where there's like. Multiple things that people have dealt with, you know, a lot of, for me, it's just been like intimacy stuff, you know, because. If you're looking at pornography, it creates, it, it, it skews the way you look at intimacy. Because you start to think of like um sexual activity just in like frames and certain um, like. You don't really think of connection because you don't see a lot of connection in porn. You know, it's not like you watch a forty five minute porn and it's people, two people getting to know each other. You know, at a park or something, you know, so or splitting a diet soda or something. So it's like, you know, that part is all, you know, things get super. I think things get kind of convoluted in your psyche sometimes.

• 1:07:06Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, and it's driven by an algorithm now. It's like, you know, it's people's sexual preferences and their their sexuality. And today, you know, this internet porn saturated world that's driven by an algorithm. The algorithm is driven by executives who want to get as many views and clicks. And add impressions as possible. And then, you know, that's kind of shaping the content that's being seen on the sites. And what's especially alarming to me, and you know, it's what you experienced, right? Because you, when you were thirteen years old, when you were first exposed exposed to porn, is that children, you know, are just en masse being exposed to not Playboy, right?

• 1:07:50Speaker 02

  Not the centerfold that used to be, but the free porn tube sites. Because, you know, it's free.

• 1:07:59Theo Von?

  They have access. Do you guys know that children are accessing those? Like, is there is there statistics behind it?

• 1:08:04Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, I mean, you know, I think, you know, one study from twenty twenty two was saying that seventy five percent of thirteen to seventeen year olds have viewed internet porn. I mean, I think it would probably be more than that. And this, every kid has a device, you know, there's five year olds that could click through. The internet filters are not doing a good job. And, you know, parents who, you know, may not even know how to implement internet filters for their kids. And even if they do, you know, they can't control all the time. So they can't be at school and, you know, other places when they go to their friend's house or whatever. It's just everywhere.

• 1:08:39Theo Von?

  What filters are they using? Are you are they because they're the ones that you suggest kind of that people use?

• 1:08:43Speaker 02

  Um, I don't have any particular brands that I would suggest, but you know, there's like so many different apps that people can install. You can get like routers that could actually block. The content at the router level.

• 1:08:54Theo Von?

  Oh, that's awesome. I didn't know that.

• 1:08:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so there's stuff like that out there, but.

• 1:08:58Theo Von?

  I know states are stopping people from, like, a lot of states are pro, you have to upload an ID now.

• 1:09:04Speaker 02

  Well, there's like this whole movement in the United States right now. That is saying, look, we understand that kids are accessing this content. And we want to protect kids from viewing. And I call it a form of secondhand sexual abuse, right? For kids to be witnessing this kind of content. And from my perspective, I know how much of this content isn't just hardcore, right? It's actually criminal.

• 1:09:31Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:09:31Speaker 02

  Where they could be watching a real rape as their sex education as an eight-year-old child. And, you know, they call it the creation of a sexual template, right? So it becomes like, what is your sexuality about? And what is, you know, arousing to you? And if they grow up on this kind of content, I mean, it could do so much damage to an entire generation.

• 1:09:56Theo Von?

  Well, especially, I think it's, I think a lot of that's already happened. I think you've seen, like, a lot of the effects of pornography on, you know, marriages. Like, you know, people get addicted to porn and then they're no longer expressing attraction to their spouse. And because it's being hijacked, basically, by this algorithm, by the, by the websites, by this addiction. And then marriages fall apart and then families fall apart.

• 1:10:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. And another implication of this is actually children who are acting out on other children. So we've seen, so I was just reading the Amicus, should call it Amicus briefs. So these are briefs that were submitted to the Supreme Court. So as these states across America are implementing age verification to protect kids from viewing porn online.

• 1:10:43Speaker 02

  The porn sites are not happy about this. So Pornhub and its partners are suing those states. So for example, they sued the state of Texas to not have to abide by this age verification law. And it's gone now. They've appealed it. They lost. They appealed. Now it's at the Supreme Court. And on January 15, the justices actually heard oral arguments for whether or not we can have states enacting age verification to keep kids off porn sites. So they're going to have a decision by June. But some of the briefs submitted are so compelling. And one of them was this nurse Heidi Olson. And she's a sexual assault. She's a pediatric sexual assault nurse.

• 1:11:24Speaker 02

  And she was talking about her experience with over 1,500 cases of sexual assault that she had to document and assess. And she saw that 50% of those cases were children who were assaulting other children. And the number one perpetrators in that group were 14-year-old males who were then assaulting

• 1:11:49Theo Von?

  Females?

• 1:11:50Speaker 02

  Other females. Yeah, children.

• 1:11:51Theo Von?

  And you're saying that a lot. You think that-

• 1:11:53Speaker 02

  And they're citing pornography as-

• 1:11:55Theo Von?

  Being the influence.

• 1:11:56Speaker 02

  The reason why they're acting out, right? Because you just, that's how, that's human nature, especially with kids.

• 1:12:03Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah. You see something, you mimic it, or you-

• 1:12:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, like my, like, son, he's like, you know, watch Spider-Man or something, and he's like, jumping off the walls and, you know, pretending that he's Spider-Man. They're acting out what they see, right? And so, you know, if they're watching porn and they're watching, potentially actually watching sexual crime on these free porn sites-

• 1:12:22Theo Von?

  Right, then how do they know?

• 1:12:22Speaker 02

  And they're, you know, kind of acting out what they see. And so it's not surprising that that's happening, right?

• 1:12:27Theo Von?

  It's sick. It's literally being in a spiral of sickness, kind of. I mean, it's almost like what you would feel like people would describe as like some sort of a hell, you know? One of the wildest things that happens on porn sites is-

• 1:12:41Theo Von?

  How they, I don't know if this is targeted or what the goal is, but you talk about it ruining families. Some of the videos are like, uh, stepson, mom.

• 1:12:52Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:12:52Theo Von?

  Dad, son's girlfriend. Like shit that's like, you're putting things into people's, just even to

• 1:12:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:59Theo Von?

  Put that seed into somebody's psyche. People don't realize, or we don't realize, that when we're watching something, that's, that we become, we're a sponge, right? We might say, oh, I'm not really, I'm watching this, but I'm not, it's just, I'm watching it for a brief second, I'm using it, right? But it's also, whatever it is, it's also using you, right? It's, everything is a, it's a back and forth relationship.

• 1:13:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:21Theo Von?

  So.

• 1:13:22Speaker 02

  And teen was, I mean, one of the most popular categories on Pornhub was teen. Uh, and teen, right? Like teen could be eighteen and nineteen, but it also is thirteen and fourteen and fifteen and sixteen. And so many of that, those videos are, you know, where they could be someone who's of age, but they're intentionally made to look underage with the pigtails and the flat chests and the braces and the no, no makeup and all of that. And they're you're mixed in with videos of real teenagers who are being abused. And then this is being pushed, right? It's one of the, they were, you know, Pornhub was tracking down to the dollar, how much they would make monthly on those teen

• 1:14:04Speaker 02

  categories, um, on their site. And it was one of, you know, one of the most popular, uh, that they had. And so whatever is making the most money, you push that forward, right? And so maybe it's they're getting more clicks because people are like horrified by it. Or maybe, you know, I, I don't know, you know, exactly what um, is happening there, but whatever it is that gets the most clicks and views, they, they'll push the algorithm, right?

• 1:14:27Theo Von?

  Well, of course.

• 1:14:28Speaker 02

  Push that forward.

• 1:14:29Theo Von?

  But it's like, why, why, I wonder how that even starts if they say like mom, son porn, you know what I'm saying? Like where does something like that demand, like that idea even start?

• 1:14:39Speaker 02

  Well, I think it's, so I've spoken to some porn producers who've talked to me about this. And the way that there's been like a trajectory from like Playboy into more and more kind of extreme forms of porn in different situations. And they're saying like, they're just told to create the most extreme thing you can think of because you need more shock value. There's this idea of, you know, kind of desensitization for people where they want to, kind of, in order to get the same dopamine hit, with porn, it's not necessarily that you need more, it's that you need different.

• 1:15:18Speaker 02

  And you need something, yeah, more extreme to kind of get that same dopamine hit.

• 1:15:25Theo Von?

  What is porn do to our brains? Do you have anything on that? Trying to see just the psychological effects. New research sheds light on the global impact of problematic pornography use. Okay, I'll look at this a little bit, but after this, I want something more about the actual effects on our brain. A comprehensive international study involving tens of thousands of participants from dozens of countries suggests that problematic pornography use might have a prevalence rate as high as 16.6%. So that's saying that 16.6% of people, per this study, have problematic pornography use. Problematic pornography use refers to a condition where individuals experience an uncontrollable urge to consume pornography, leading to significant distress or impairment in their daily functioning.

• 1:16:10Theo Von?

  First, most people use pornography, but only a small group of them develop problems with it. So we wanted to see how many people may experience such problems worldwide and whether there are any country, gender, or sexual orientation-based differences, as most previous studies focused on really specific populations, i.e. men from the United States. I think one of the most important takeaway messages from our study is that problematic pornography use seems to be as common as other mental health issues, i.e. depression. So we need to better understand this problem and provide appropriate care for people experiencing this issue. Probably the most surprising finding of the study is that only 4% to 10% of individuals with problematic pornography sought help for this issue, with an additional 20% to 40% wanting

• 1:16:54Theo Von?

  to, but did not do so for various health reasons.

• 1:16:58Speaker 02

  Well, part of that is shame, right? And that's why I am so grateful. I'm sure so many of your listeners are grateful that you talk about it.

• 1:17:05Theo Von?

  Oh, well, I'll say this, I'll say this exactly and specifically. When I, um, you know, we actually, a friend of mine, um, started a, a program called Valor Recovery. And it's for porn addiction. And I know, I met this guy in different, uh, recovery meetings and he's a friend of mine. And so I'll go to the meetings and, um, and I'm excited to go to the meetings and I'm helping. We're, we're helping kind of work to try and make this thing bigger, right? To make it bigger. And one of the things I noticed when I took, when I had the most time I ever had off of pornography, the shame I had disappeared.

• 1:17:45Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:17:46Theo Von?

  There was still some shame at certain moments, but it, I was able to finally notice it. Cause before I'd just been in this circle of shame. Cause I would masturbate, I would feel ashamed of myself. I would start to feel a little bit better. Um, but I would be like, had some, but then when I needed to, when I needed to feel okay, when, if I started to feel a little shaky or needed to feel okay again, I would be right back to the pornography. And then the shame, you know, the shame of it.

• 1:18:11Speaker 02

  Cycle.

• 1:18:12Theo Von?

  Oh, it was, and I didn't realize, I, I was stuck in it probably for a decade. I was still going dates and being relationship stuff, but it ruined a lot of those.

• 1:18:19Speaker 02

  Are you like free today from that?

• 1:18:22Theo Von?

  I wouldn't say I'm free, but I'm definitely on parole.

• 1:18:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:26Theo Von?

  You know what I'm saying? Like it's a different, uh, I have tools and stuff now in place to like battle against it. And, um, so.

• 1:18:36Speaker 02

  What helped you the most to?

• 1:18:38Theo Von?

  Going to meetings, recovery, 12 step recovery.

• 1:18:41Speaker 02

  Community.

• 1:18:42Theo Von?

  Community, yeah. Getting in groups and you'll start to see in groups, I've been in groups where men at first can't, were scared to even talk like in the groups. And then like three months later, you see that like their wife has moved back in. They're spending time with their kids. They're not watching pornography. They're not acting out in these certain ways with, um, you know, uh, escorts and, uh, prostitutes and all of that. But the biggest thing I noticed for myself was shame. I just noticed that it started to disappear because I'd always had this heavy shame. And I'd never really noticed that it could have had to do with, um, really the masturbate, just the part of like, if I need to make myself feel good, then I'll use masturbation, you know?

• 1:19:18Speaker 02

  Do you think that there's, I mean, could be like two sides to shame, right? Shame could be really destructive and unhealthy because it causes you not to seek help or get community or be able to talk about it. And so then you push, push the problem down and then it becomes then, you know, worse, right? Because then you're trying to alleviate that pain.

• 1:19:38Theo Von?

  Okay, say it one more time for me.

• 1:19:39Speaker 02

  So, you know, could, could the shame have two sides to it? Where there's kind of like a healthy shame where it's pricking, pricking your conscience and saying like, this is not who I am. I can do better than this and it inspires you to overcome. But then there's the other side of shame, which keeps people kind of hiding it, pushing it down, not be, not being able to get community, not being able to talk about it, which then could cause the problem to be worse, right?

• 1:20:06Theo Von?

  For me, yeah, the, the, I agree. Both of those things can happen. I think some of them kind of happen at certain moments for me, but I think overall it was just, I didn't want to be doing it anymore.

• 1:20:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:16Theo Von?

  And I kept doing it.

• 1:20:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:17Theo Von?

  And so then it was this constant like, um, like I don't have any willpower.

• 1:20:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:23Theo Von?

  And so that made me ashamed of myself.

• 1:20:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:26Theo Von?

  It wasn't, it, sometimes the act itself would like definitely like I would watch pornography on the computers or something and I would immediately close it.

• 1:20:33Speaker 02

  Did you ever feel like you were encountering potentially non-consensual content?

• 1:20:39Theo Von?

  I never felt like I was, I never felt like I saw anything like that.

• 1:20:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:42Theo Von?

  But I do think that I've, this is how I've long, I've long thought this. I believe, cause sometimes you see like a lot of like people get compromised, right? It seems like a lot of times in our society that, uh, like freedom seekers or people that want to change the status quo, that want to like rise up, do something different. And at some point, some of them get, it feels like maybe they get compromised and they're, I don't know if money hits them or there's some opportunity that's presented to them. This is all, this is a lot of conspiracy, temple hat stuff. But, and then they change their tune or their tune weakens or their goal, their agenda like kind of curbs a little bit. And you think, oh, somebody got to them.

• 1:21:23Theo Von?

  I think that a lot of these sites record somehow secretly these days can record the user watching porn. And so then that they are able to use that against.

• 1:21:36Theo Von?

  Users like say like, cause I think everybody's probably watched some type of pornography, maybe I don't know. Everybody that I know has watched it. But I would guess anyway, like if you had a tickle and be like, tell me if you watched it, they would do, they would admit it. But um, but that's what I've always thought. I'm like, man, I bet some people, it's like they use that. That's something like, cause you always wonder what's that tool that like, once people get like, some power or something that what's the tool that they use to keep them down? And it would either be like, well, we're gonna assassinate you or we have this video of you masturbating. That would be like, oh, it's too much shame for me to handle, you know?

• 1:22:12Speaker 02

  Well, and even if it doesn't actually happen, the fear of that, right?

• 1:22:16Theo Von?

  Yeah. That'd be a risky card to say, you know what? I'm not gonna call your bluff. That'd be crazy, you know?

• 1:22:21Speaker 02

  Well, there is where some of the opposition to user age verifications coming from probably is from users who are afraid that they are going to have to identify themselves.

• 1:22:32Theo Von?

  Oh, for sure.

• 1:22:33Speaker 02

  When they're going to those sites, but I would assure people like that is actually not a real fear in this situation because we have ways now with technology and there's third party companies. So I would never want anybody to actually have to give their ID to Pornhub. Because I would never trust them in a million years with that content. Cause they exploit dat- like they're being sued right now in a class action for data exploitation. You know, they gather so much information already.

• 1:23:01Theo Von?

  And then they sell it to people?

• 1:23:02Speaker 02

  They sell it to advertisers. So like, when you go to Pornhub, you think that it's all private, right? And but they're gathering like the IP address, they can find out your zip code. From your zip code, they can probably find your income level. They're looking at your sexual preferences. They're determining if you're a, you know, a male or a female. You know, what language you speak, what browser you use. I mean, they're gathering so much information about everybody.

• 1:23:27Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:28Speaker 02

  And so there's that, but there's third party companies that can verify age safely, effectively, with respecting privacy. In fact, they don't even have to actually take your image. So it's biometric scanning. So there's a company called YOT where they actually will in one second, they can determine your age ninety nine, over ninety nine percent accuracy with a facial scan, but using AI that's trained on, you know, thousands or millions of images. And so, and they just look at pixels and numbers. They don't actually even store the actual image of your face.

• 1:24:03Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:24:03Speaker 02

  And then they erase that. So that's, you know, that's how they can verify. So anybody who wants to oppose age verification for the reason of privacy concerns, which is what Pornhub is shutting itself down in states across the United States right now. They're, they're shutting themselves down in opposition to age verification.

• 1:24:25Theo Von?

  Right. Okay. So they're saying instead of having people verify their age to watch, we would rather shut ourselves down?

• 1:24:32Speaker 02

  Yes, because it costs them money. And we have their senior-

• 1:24:35Theo Von?

  Oh, because they have to hire a third-party company to verify?

• 1:24:37Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:24:37Theo Von?

  They're not allowed to age verify?

• 1:24:39Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, it's not that they're not allowed to. I don't think that they can. And I don't, and I don't think anybody would ever want to like hand their ID over to Pornhub. So there's this third-party sites that have that technology that can at scale, you know, verify. So they're used by Meta, TikTok, you know, other companies who do this.

• 1:24:58Theo Von?

  But they're saying, oh, it's too much. It's not cost-effective anymore.

• 1:25:01Speaker 02

  They're saying, like Pornhub is out there and the media saying, we're protect, we're shutting ourselves down because we care about user privacy, because we don't want people handing over their personally identifying information.

• 1:25:12Theo Von?

  They care about your privacy, then they would care about protecting people who are un-

• 1:25:17Speaker 02

  Non-consenting, right?

• 1:25:18Theo Von?

  Right, non-consenting, but that's the most privacy, it's the most-

• 1:25:21Speaker 02

  But not only that, it's like the same company also runs pay sites that are collecting credit card information, right? With your name, your, you know, when you put in your billing address, your credit card details.

• 1:25:32Theo Von?

  So it's all, it's all a facade?

• 1:25:34Speaker 02

  It's all just a facade. And so that's why I, it's important for people to know the truth about what is the opposition to age verification? What is, what's really going on behind the scenes here? And it's really about money. And we even have their senior community manager who, you know, publicly admitted in a Reddit thread, she was having conversation, and she says, um, age verification would basically devastate their traffic. And it costs us money to verify, and that's why it would be a disaster for them, is because it costs them money. And so that's really what this is about. It's about money.

• 1:26:06Theo Von?

  Yeah. Yeah. When people say that, like, how do you respond to that argument that people say like, oh, we are this, you're limiting freedom of speech, right?

• 1:26:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, I mean, I would just, well, from the-

• 1:26:15Theo Von?

  Or responsibility of the person, right? So both of those things, maybe.

• 1:26:19Speaker 02

  Well, there's two sides. So there's, you know, so we're talking about those who are in the videos. Then we're talking about who's viewing the videos and I would just, you know, over and over. And this has been, judges have said this too. It's like, you know, child sexual abuse is not an expression. It's not an idea, like rape's not an idea. Like, these are actual crimes as contraband being distributed.

• 1:26:38Theo Von?

  So anybody that's saying that, fuck them, really.

• 1:26:41Speaker 02

  Basically.

• 1:26:42Theo Von?

  To be honest, because it's just a messed up. It's like, what are you saying here? You're saying that, because if you know that these sites are doing that now, and then you're, then you can't really argue freedom of speech for them, because they're not.

• 1:26:53Speaker 02

  It's not speech.

• 1:26:54Theo Von?

  Right, it's not speech.

• 1:26:54Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:26:55Theo Von?

  Right? In fact, it's the fact that somebody can't speak up for themselves.

• 1:26:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:26:58Theo Von?

  And even when people do, they have to be, videos have to be flagged so many times, or they don't have proper people in place to help those people who are trying to speak up for themselves.

• 1:27:07Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah. So that, so there's that on that side. But then on the other side, you know, they're, they're trying to argue this is limiting free speech, right, for us to implement age verification. And again, it's like, no, you know, this is not limiting anybody's ability to access this content, or anybody's ability to express themselves on these sites. It's simply like a one-second age verification biometric scan using, you know, the safest, you know, privacy protection that you can. And it's no different than if you go into a physical store and they're selling alcohol, or right? And then the bartender would do like, you know, look at you and determine, do I think that they're of age or not?

• 1:27:52Speaker 02

  Let me see your ID. Take a moment. Make sure you're an adult and on your way. Like, that doesn't restrict somebody's ability to get what they want. They still can go in the bar and they can get the alcohol. Anybody can still go to a porn site and access porn if they want to. They just have to take these few steps in between.

• 1:28:11Theo Von?

  And it helps keep it out of the hands of children. If a kid gets on there also too, a lot of times the fear of something, you get on something like 18 or older, you have to verify yourself. As a kid, I remember you, if you even would have clicked something like that, and then it opens to another page, you get so scared sometimes, you close it down. You know, you'd be like, oh my God, they're gonna know, my dad's gonna... You know, there was just, there was a lot of that kind of fear.

• 1:28:29Speaker 02

  But now there's just like, the "are you 18?" click-through button. They didn't even have that.

• 1:28:34Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:28:34Speaker 02

  At, in 2020. Finally, now if you're like on a mobile device, it'll be like, "are you 18?", and then you could just click, "yes."

• 1:28:40Theo Von?

  But some of them now have a thing where you have to have identification.

• 1:28:43Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:28:43Theo Von?

  What state? Level government are doing the best to help support um the the the battle against I guess porn or dirty porn, you know, or

• 1:28:55Speaker 02

  Like illegal content?

• 1:28:57Theo Von?

  Illegal content.

• 1:28:57Speaker 02

  Illegal, yeah.

• 1:28:59Theo Von?

  And then porn in general.

• 1:28:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:00Theo Von?

  Because at some point it becomes also, it can be a moral or ethical, I don't know if ethical, it could be a moral choice for a population at a certain point. Do we want to continue to consume this?

• 1:29:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, from my perspective, you know, I think that we could come into agreement about children. Like, I think that that could be pretty easy.

• 1:29:17Theo Von?

  Yeah, I think that's easily done. I I think that's true. It's just, obviously, some people don't care.

• 1:29:21Speaker 02

  So, yeah, the states that are doing the best to protect kids from access, I would probably say, I mean, the one that's just kind of taking up the fight is Texas. Like, they have, they're going, they're in the ring, right? They're at the Supreme Court trying to battle this out with the big porn um companies and to to implement age verification. So I think, you know, but there's multiple other states. And I would just say, like, this is bipartisan. So there's people from both parties that are in agreement that kids should not be accessing online porn.

• 1:29:53Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:29:53Speaker 02

  That's true. Um, and then on the other side of the screen, you know, I mean, we've had several bills that have been introduced in the United States since 2020 that would require age and consent verification. But they didn't pass. There's efforts in the UK, there's efforts in Canada, because this isn't just a US issue, right?

• 1:30:12Theo Von?

  Right. But why aren't they passing? More than a dozen states have passed new laws that led to restrictions on pornography. Now the Supreme Court will weigh in, right?

• 1:30:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:20Theo Von?

  Yeah, you mentioned that, right? This is, but what's?

• 1:30:23Speaker 02

  But we need the other side, too. Like, we need our government not just to implement age verification for users, but also for those who were in the videos.

• 1:30:32Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:30:32Speaker 02

  And that just, but here's the thing.

• 1:30:34Theo Von?

  But has that bill gone to them before and they didn't pass it?

• 1:30:36Speaker 02

  It just didn't, it kind of, you know, uh,

• 1:30:38Theo Von?

  Was attached to other stuff?

• 1:30:38Speaker 02

  It was at the end of, it was like at the end of a session and then it kind of died and then you have to reintroduce it. But here's the thing. We don't really have to enact that law in order to rein in these big porn companies because we have laws that govern Studio produced porn, like the brick and mortar porn valley, you know pornography has always been highly regulated and they've abided by those regulations. Like one of them is called USC two, two, five, seven, and that's been in place since 1988.

• 1:31:10Theo Von?

  It's a law?

• 1:31:10Speaker 02

  It's a law in the US. It's a crime to distribute or to produce porn. If you don't verify the age and consent of those who are in the videos. And that has been in place for decades and it has been complied with. The only problem is in the internet age, when it became user generated content, then these sites say, well, we get a pass because guess what? We're not the ones that are producing the porn.

• 1:31:36Theo Von?

  We're just hosting it.

• 1:31:36Speaker 02

  We're just hosting it. We're just, but in the case of Pornhub, they've tried to make that argument. It doesn't really hold because not only is it about producing, it's also about distributing. It's transferring and they had that download button on every video where from their servers, they were transferring this content to the devices of millions of people around the world.

• 1:31:58Theo Von?

  And that's illegal. I mean, isn't it true if somebody, if they find child pornography on someone that they can go to jail?

• 1:32:04Speaker 02

  Possess it. I mean, victims couldn't even possess their own videos of abuse. Like I had to be meticulously careful.

• 1:32:11Theo Von?

  But then these sites can like, can transfer so much.

• 1:32:14Speaker 02

  Possessing it on their servers is actually, it's actually legal and they, we now in these recent litigation, there's employees who are going back and forth in their messages going, I just had to download one of the worst child abuse videos that I've ever witnessed. I need to see a therapist for what I just witnessed. Uh oh, I forgot to delete it. Am I going to get, I could go away for a long time for this. Like, these are the conversations that are turning up from Pornhub employees in discovery that they are doing this.

• 1:32:44Theo Von?

  So if you're concerned, right, if they're concerned at that level.

• 1:32:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. So there's laws, like we already have laws that can be implemented to like, you can't distribute child pornography, USC two, two, five, seven. It's just, they have to be modernized and applied today over the modern way that we distribute porn on the internet.

• 1:33:04Theo Von?

  It's funny. Sometimes it seems like our government is kind of the la, like, once something has come through and made all of its money and ruined so many lives, then they'll help with it.

• 1:33:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:33:12Theo Von?

  That's why I'm always like, how complicit is our own government sometimes in a lot of these things? Cause that's what it feels like. It's like, oh, after this wave of. Has ruined the lives of a million people and made half a billion dollars, then we'll shut it down, you know?

• 1:33:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, that's why I am like-

• 1:33:27Theo Von?

  Not if everybody's had their grift or their hand in it.

• 1:33:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's why I'm really hopeful about the route of, you know, strategic civil litigation, empowering survivors in that way to hold the financial institutions accountable.

• 1:33:38Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:33:39Speaker 02

  Because I think that could go way faster.

• 1:33:41Speaker 01

  I don't know what I'm doing. Need a break. Forget it, I quit. Escape to Pluto TV.

• 1:33:47Speaker 02

  This is objectively fantastic.

• 1:33:48Speaker 01

  Relax into the movies and shows you already know and love, all for free. Shwing! Even our news is uplifting.

• 1:33:54Speaker 03

  You stay classy, San Diego.

• 1:33:56Speaker 01

  Watch Tommy Boy, Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, The Ex-Files, Wayne's World, and so much more.

• 1:34:02Speaker 02

  We're not worthy!

• 1:34:03Speaker 01

  The best things on TV really are free. You just have to know where to look. Escape to Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.

• 1:34:11Theo Von?

  Which credit companies are still accepting payments for pornography websites?

• 1:34:16Speaker 02

  None. Oh, pornography websites. Um, well, all of them except American Express.

• 1:34:20Theo Von?

  Okay, so American Express is the only-

• 1:34:22Speaker 02

  Like, they've never been involved in online or like pornography at all.

• 1:34:26Theo Von?

  So, American Express is the only-

• 1:34:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:34:29Theo Von?

  Credit card company-

• 1:34:31Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:34:32Theo Von?

  That doesn't, will not allow its information to be used on pornography websites.

• 1:34:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, period.

• 1:34:38Theo Von?

  Okay?

• 1:34:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I'm not suggesting that that has to be the position of like the other credit card companies because-

• 1:34:44Theo Von?

  No, but if they're not gonna say that we're not gonna verify things-

• 1:34:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. That, well, that, that's the easy route here is for them to just say, like we have anti-money laundering policy, we have this anti-exploitation policy, and you have to verify age and consent if you want to do business with Visa.

• 1:35:03Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 1:35:03Speaker 02

  That's it. Like, and that will, that'll, that'll take place instantly and globally. Like, it'll apply everywhere.

• 1:35:09Theo Von?

  So, what can we say then to the companies? Like, if we were to put out a clip, it's like, hey, this is what, right now, credit card companies are allowing transactions-

• 1:35:19Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:35:19Theo Von?

  On pornography websites-

• 1:35:21Speaker 02

  That are not verifying the age and consent.

• 1:35:23Theo Von?

  That are not verifying the age and consent of-

• 1:35:26Speaker 02

  Every individual and every single video.

• 1:35:28Theo Von?

  Every individual and every single video.

• 1:35:30Speaker 02

  And they need to stop that.

• 1:35:31Theo Von?

  And they need to stop that right now. The only one who doesn't do it is American Express.

• 1:35:35Speaker 02

  Right. Because they just have like this blanket policy against all of it.

• 1:35:38Theo Von?

  Because they have a blanket policy. But the other ones, um- So you could so hypothetically, someone could be watching a pornography video on a website that the user is uh being coerced or trafficked under the influence.

• 1:35:55Speaker 02

  A child, minor.

• 1:35:56Theo Von?

  Or a child or a minor.

• 1:35:58Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:35:59Theo Von?

  And the websites are not verifying that that isn't the case. There's no verification.

• 1:36:05Speaker 02

  At the point of upload. So like, what they try to say is, okay, let anybody upload, right? And then later on, you know, if somebody complains, we'll try to take it down quickly. And sometimes, you know, they didn't use even take it down quickly, right? Um, or our moderators will view it. But no, before, so this is like prevention because there's that immortalization of trauma, right? One hour is too long on a site that's getting 170 million views per day.

• 1:36:33Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:33Speaker 02

  You know, and even if they can't download, you can screen record. Like, you can.

• 1:36:37Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:36:38Speaker 02

  So like, any minute is too long. We have to stop it before it gets uploaded. And the only way to do that is to agent consent verify before it's uploaded. And they, because of the technology that we have, like, they can do that at scale, like, they can do that on a massive.

• 1:36:54Theo Von?

  But they don't because.

• 1:36:55Speaker 02

  But they don't because money, because friction. Because when you introduce friction to uploading, you get less uploading, right? You get less people who will do it. And so that goes against the whole big porn, free porn business model because they need massive amounts of content.

• 1:37:12Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:37:12Speaker 02

  So anything that you would do that would diminish the amount of content on these sites, they don't want to do.

• 1:37:18Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 1:37:18Speaker 02

  They have to be forced to do it. And actually, as of September of 2024, Pornhub, after being criminally charged, right? And have have this monitor over their site, they're finally saying that we're going to start verifying the agent consent of those who are in the videos as of September of 2024. Um, however, they still have millions of videos that were uploaded prior to that time. That they don't know.

• 1:37:42Theo Von?

  They don't know.

• 1:37:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:43Theo Von?

  And Visa and Mastercard and those companies are still accepting payments on those sites?

• 1:37:47Speaker 02

  Well, no, not on Pornhub.

• 1:37:48Theo Von?

  Oh, not on Pornhub?

• 1:37:49Speaker 02

  Not on Pornhub or any of the MindGeek, ILO-owned tube sites.

• 1:37:53Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 1:37:54Speaker 02

  They will not.

• 1:37:54Theo Von?

  So they're on those, they're not?

• 1:37:55Speaker 02

  They are done. Yeah.

• 1:37:57Theo Von?

  And that's for the consent of the people in the videos too?

• 1:38:00Speaker 02

  Yes, so they they need to verify age and consent of those.

• 1:38:04Theo Von?

  But what I'm saying is is Pornhub currently accepting Visa and Mastercard payments at all?

• 1:38:09Speaker 02

  No, they can't. They would, they would like to, but they can't. Yeah, no, they've been cut off from that.

• 1:38:16Theo Von?

  But Pornhub is still not, as of September 2024, they said they were gonna start verifying the age of consent.

• 1:38:22Speaker 02

  Of those individuals.

• 1:38:24Theo Von?

  From then on, but not prior. We don't know yet.

• 1:38:27Speaker 02

  No, for sure they're not. They haven't deleted the content that was uploaded prior to that where it's only the uploader that was verified, right? And it's not just like Rocky, she Franklin. I mean, there's multiple other victims who are currently suing Pornhub because they had verified uploaders uploading their trafficking, their rape and abuse.

• 1:38:47Theo Von?

  Got it.

• 1:38:47Speaker 02

  So that's, you know, so that's the way to land. That's the solution going forward. And it's a matter of like public pressure. So I believe like this conversation is so valuable to this fight because we're introducing not only the problem to so many people who probably never heard that this was an issue before, but also the solution so that we can pressure those in positions of power to implement the solutions to make the internet a safer place.

• 1:39:14Theo Von?

  Right. So who do we pressure though? Like who do I, when if I have them in here?

• 1:39:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39:19Theo Von?

  Who do I ask and what do I ask them?

• 1:39:21Speaker 02

  Okay, so if you have like the CEO of Visa or Mastercard or the VPs there, that's why do you not have this policy in place? And what will it take to get you there?

• 1:39:34Theo Von?

  The policy of say.

• 1:39:35Speaker 02

  Age and consent verification for every single person and every single video on a user generated porn site. Like that, it's not gonna stop at 100%, but it's gonna stop it a lot. It's gonna really, you know, just help make, like I said, like the internet an actual safer place.

• 1:39:53Theo Von?

  Oh, I wish that 15 years ago I would open it up and like a fuck, I can't even get in this thing. I can't even do it. Fuck it. I'm gonna go outside. I'm gonna go take a walk or I'm gonna go do something. I'm gonna respond to one of my buddy's text messages that was asking me to go do something. I'm gonna go do something positive, more positive for myself. I did a lot of positive things. I'm not saying like woe is me or anything like that. But when it came to a lot of like, uh, relationships and intimacy type shit, I was more like, it was, I, it was just uncomfortable. And so using pornography was easier, but then that started to kind of like.

• 1:40:27Theo Von?

  Fray like the part of me, I think that even cared about building a relationship because it, I didn't nurture that part of me at all. Part of sometimes it didn't, it didn't even grow. How would it grow if I'm not sitting there, you know, nurturing it or paying attention to it?

• 1:40:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:40:42Theo Von?

  You know, the only part of this, that dopamine fricking, you know, my dopamine thing was just leaking or whatever, you know, because I'm just sitting there, just watching all this slurp lord stuff on there. It's just trash. It's just, but anyway, whatever.

• 1:40:54Speaker 02

  Well, one of the things that's also happening is not just like intimacy and relational issues.

• 1:40:59Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:59Speaker 02

  Cause that happens, right?

• 1:41:00Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah, dude.

• 1:41:02Speaker 02

  But it's also, um, men, young men are having kind of an epidemic of what they call porn induced erectile dysfunction.

• 1:41:11Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:41:13Speaker 02

  And yeah, P I E D where so there was a study in Canada. And it was the Journal of Sexual Medicine and they had found a third of young men between sixteen and twenty-one had issues with porn induced erectile dysfunction.

• 1:41:29Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah, buddy.

• 1:41:31Speaker 02

  And they're young.

• 1:41:32Theo Von?

  Yeah. Well, it's heartbreaking. And then here's that creates a ton of shame and a lot of that's just nervous energy. And then here's the thing, if you get used to watching porn, then you finally earn an instance with a woman or the, is this some sexual activity or whatever? It's so foreign to whatever. The part of your brain that watches a screen and the part of your brain that engages with someone are toot. I don't know this for a fact, but to me it feels like two totally different parts. Um, one of them is very active and feels very visceral and real. And one of them feels very passive and, uh,

• 1:42:08Theo Von?

  um, transactional almost in a way. Like I'm going to give this my attention and I'm going to get some reward out of it. But that's all this is. Whereas over here, this is a field of communication and connection.

• 1:42:22Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:42:23Theo Von?

  So, um, so yeah, I wanted to watch this right here. Watching pornography. This is a from neuroscience news. Watching pornography rewires the brain to a more juvenile state. That's interesting. Um, pornography has existed throughout recorded history. I'd love to get someone to come in and talk about just the whole history of it. Hundreds of

• 1:42:44Speaker 03

  At the bottom here, we have the impact.

• 1:42:46Theo Von?

  Okay. "In the long term, pornography seems to create sexual dysfunctions, especially the inability to achieve erection or orgasm with a real-life partner. Marital quality and commitment to one's romantic partner also appear to be compromised. To try to explain these effects, some scientists have drawn parallels between porn consumption and substance abuse. Though through evolutionary design, the brain is wired to respond to sexual stimulation with surges of dopamine. So if you get sexually stimulated, your brain gives dopamine. And that makes sense because we're creatures that are supposed to reproduce, right? And have attraction. This neurotransmitter, most often associated with reward anticipation, also acts to program memories and information into the brain.

• 1:43:31Theo Von?

  This adaption means that when the body requires something like food or sex, the brain remembers where to return to experience the same pleasure. Instead of turning to a romantic partner for sexual gratification or fulfillment, habituated porn users instinctively reach for their phones and laptops when desire comes calling. Furthermore, unnaturally strong explosions of reward and pleasure evoke unnaturally strong degrees of habituation in the brain." Dang. That's wild. I could definitely see that. Yeah, and then it's like, and then you feel ashamed, you know? Like, what parent wants to go and talk to their son and wish him goodnight if he's been mastered? I'm sure that's a weird, you know what I'm saying? Like, I don't know what that's like, but I'm sure that there's some shame there. It's like-

• 1:44:12Speaker 02

  Well, that's where I think that one of the important things that we can do is create, like, actually shame-free zones where kids-

• 1:44:21Theo Von?

  Like the kitchen or whatever?

• 1:44:22Speaker 02

  I don't know. I mean, like, your household, right? Like-

• 1:44:25Theo Von?

  Oh, I see what you're saying. Oh, okay.

• 1:44:27Speaker 02

  You know, like, where you can feel like you're in a relationship that is safe to talk about the things that you would feel ashamed talking about.

• 1:44:36Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:44:36Speaker 02

  You know, because then you don't just stuff it down.

• 1:44:38Theo Von?

  Well, that's what recovery meetings, that's one thing that's why I think 12-step meetings are great. Because it's like, and if people are wondering, well, how do I get into a meeting? There's slaa.org, I think it's called, if you want to look at that up next and see.

• 1:44:51Theo Von?

  But yeah, but you can look up SLAA online and that's just you can find meetings. And then once you get into a meeting, you could talk to people. Now you're not a weirdo. Now you get in a program, you kind of get some things organized. You create a basically a set of principles for yourself. And then you have a new kind of design of for living.

• 1:45:07Speaker 02

  I wonder too, though, like in all of this and the recovery and all the ways that you can help yourself and people who are struggling with this. You know, does hearing this truth about the victims who are on the other side of the screen? I've had numerous people and men and women who have struggled with compulsive porn addiction that they didn't want, but they couldn't like kick it. They just really struggled with it. And when they heard about the victims who could be behind that screen on these sites, right, which is the primary way that porn is distributed today.

• 1:45:46Speaker 02

  They felt like it finally gave them the like fortitude or the motivation to just be like, I don't want to participate in somebody else's trauma. Like, I don't want to participate in their suffering. I don't want to give money. I don't want to give clicks and views to a big porn corporation who's making a living off of the devastation of real victims' lives. And that is actually what gave them the, I guess, like the ammunition to just finally like be like, no, like, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna do that.

• 1:46:22Theo Von?

  Yeah, what were some, well, I certainly think you're right there. It's like I have some friends that work in porn and that sort of thing. And it's not like, I don't think what they're doing is bad. I don't think that for me porn isn't good, right? It's not a good, it's not, it hasn't been a tool that I use properly or whatever. And I don't think it's good for me, right? It may be good for some people, it might be good for them. But I'm not damning the people that work in it or anything like that.

• 1:46:47Speaker 02

  No, neither am I. I mean, I like it to each his own.

• 1:46:50Theo Von?

  For sure. But the kids should be able to access it. I think I don't think it's good.

• 1:46:54Speaker 02

  No, kids is where you draw the line. Because they can't choose. Like, they need to be able to. Get to adulthood before they decide where they can make that decision. And also, it's that prefrontal cortex of the brain where it's like that decision making center of the brain. It's not even developed, so they can't like

• 1:47:13Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:47:13Speaker 02

  Reason, like, should, is this gonna be good for me? Or do I want to do this? Or what are the consequences of me? You know, and they just don't have that yet. And so like, they definitely need to be protected. But once you're an adult, you know, you can make decisions. Like, you should have the freedom to make whatever decision you want. And I, I take the position of like, what, you know, if, if consenting adult, like, that's their business, right?

• 1:47:35Theo Von?

  Yep, I agree, but they'd also be, we also have this, like, imagine if you opened your door and there was just a bunch of porn there. That's really what it's like. It's like, you know, I mean, the internet's just our front porch now. It's like, so you open your door and everything is there. Everything is there. So if you, as a parent or as a country, kind of can't decide maybe what should and shouldn't be there, sort of. And at a certain point, you see enough proof.

• 1:47:58Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:47:58Theo Von?

  Well, ninety percent of this many, this much percentage of people maybe get addicted to this. It ruins this many marriages, hypothetically. Like, at a certain point, you might think, this isn't for our society. This just doesn't help society that much overall. I'm not saying that, I don't know if that's true, but...

• 1:48:15Speaker 02

  At least we can all, I mean, everybody can agree that, like, step one, let's just keep kids away from accessing it. And then, you know, because they will get a, they will get that compulsive porn use when they

• 1:48:28Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah, no doubt about that, I think we get it, huh?

• 1:48:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:48:31Theo Von?

  Yeah. Yeah, la la, I think that's, yeah, I think there's no doubt about it. I, I would be hard to hear, listen to anyone's argument against that.

• 1:48:37Speaker 02

  Well, it's, I mean, they're not arguing that kids shouldn't watch porn, but they're arguing against the ways that we can prevent them from doing it.

• 1:48:45Theo Von?

  Which is kind of the same thing, isn't it?

• 1:48:47Speaker 02

  I mean, it's just a different, yeah, I guess it's a different way to say it, but, yeah.

• 1:48:51Theo Von?

  And who are the people that are arguing against it?

• 1:48:53Speaker 02

  The porn, the big, the people who profit from it, right? Which is the, the big porn industry. But yeah.

• 1:48:59Theo Von?

  Crazy.

• 1:49:00Speaker 02

  If you had a politician sitting in front of you, you know, I think probably you could just ask them, look, we need to introduce preventative laws to help keep victims from being abused on these sites across the internet. And that is, again, age and consent verification for every individual. And I don't think there would be resistance to that. Like, I don't even think that the porn industry itself has a real legitimate, you know, way to resist that, or they would, because they have been complying with USC 2257 for so long, like since 1988.

• 1:49:34Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:49:35Speaker 02

  That standard has been like brick and mortar, studio porn.

• 1:49:38Theo Von?

  But they've been doing it. The internet just hasn't.

• 1:49:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. So they're just, it's just evolving with the internet. And so we just need-

• 1:49:42Theo Von?

  And the government's always behind the times.

• 1:49:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. So they just need to get up, get up with the times.

• 1:49:46Theo Von?

  It's the gap in between when the government is behind the times and when you-

• 1:49:50Speaker 02

  When people get hurt.

• 1:49:51Theo Von?

  Right. Oh, yeah.

• 1:49:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:49:52Theo Von?

  Just like this recurring.

• 1:49:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:49:54Theo Von?

  It's this recurring market that continues to happen. Just the, uh, the gravity is different. The source of the gravity is different. Um, we certainly appreciate your work and appreciate you coming through here to share about this journey and what it's like to take on, um, something like Pornhub.

• 1:50:16Speaker 02

  Well, thank you for shining a light on this. Thank you for caring about it. Thank you for talking about it. Um, thank you for being vulnerable about your own journey.

• 1:50:24Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah. I think, I mean, what I am is just a fucking mule for my own bullshit at this point, or mule for my own problems.

• 1:50:31Speaker 02

  I mean, I think it's so valuable because I think that it helps like normalize that conversation so that people can actually feel like they can talk about it and get help if they want to get help. I think-

• 1:50:42Theo Von?

  Well, I've been in a relationship for one time. I was just like, I'd watch pornography instead of hook up with my girlfriend or have some sort of intimacy with my girlfriend. And I, man, I feel horrible about that years later, you know? I just didn't have, uh-

• 1:50:56Theo Von?

  I didn't know how to do it there, you know, I just was kind of, I don't know. I think I was, I didn't, I was, I didn't want to talk to her about stuff and so I just, it was easier to do that.

• 1:51:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:51:06Theo Von?

  Then, uh, like engage with her and.

• 1:51:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:51:09Theo Von?

  You know, but it's just, it, you know, just all comes at a cost. At the time, I didn't think that it was, you know, I don't know what I thought. I don't think I was thinking. I think just, I was like, oh, this is the easy way. And I wasn't kind of brave enough to take the tougher work, the tougher route of like, let's lay here and talk and see what's going on and then maybe build up some intimacy.

• 1:51:29Speaker 02

  But even to just recognize that is like, so awesome.

• 1:51:32Theo Von?

  I was outsourcing a lot of my intimacy, you know, just to this screen that didn't care about me really.

• 1:51:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:51:37Theo Von?

  And then to potentially the people on the other side of the screen, you're saying they don't even know, you know, it's like, it's a really pretty twisted, you know, both sides, if you, say if like there's somebody who's masturbating to a video of something that they, the person didn't want to be in it, right? They're being exploited. This person's doing it just because out of addiction or shame, you know, or addiction, they're stuck in this cycle that this is how they do to make themselves feel okay. Then you basically have this.

• 1:52:00Speaker 02

  Exploitation cycle.

• 1:52:02Theo Von?

  Yeah, neither one of them wants to be doing anything that they're doing. And it's just this magnet of just.

• 1:52:07Speaker 02

  Lack of freedom here and lack of freedom here. Cause they're doing what they don't want to do and they're being forced to do, you know, they're being exploited here. Their freedom is being taken away. And just like, we need freedom, freedom on both sides, right?

• 1:52:19Theo Von?

  Yeah, it's in a, I mean, being alive is a, it's in a, it's a journey.

• 1:52:25Theo Von?

  But yeah, thanks for coming and, and, and sharing some of that information with us.

• 1:52:29Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:52:29Theo Von?

  Yeah. And also just to not, also if you like pornography and you can use it in a way that's okay for you, then that's your world too. I don't want everything to be a Debbie Downer, that everything is horrible and this and that. Um, we're not looking at that. You know, if you can casually jerk off or whatever, touch your body or whatever, then that's good for you, you know? But I think this is when it maybe gets out of control. And then at certain ages, people look at pornography differently, too, I think, you know? I think when you're 17 or something, you're like, just, you know? You're just fricking rabbiting around the town, you know? You can, you know, you're not even thinking about a bigger picture of things.

• 1:53:06Speaker 02

  Literally not thinking because they don't have that reasoning center developed till you're like mid twenties.

• 1:53:11Theo Von?

  Oh, you're just fricking

• 1:53:12Speaker 02

  Right?

• 1:53:13Theo Von?

  Serving jerk chicken all around town anyway. But, um, yeah, what, what can people do to help, uh, support?

• 1:53:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, so easy thing they could do is sign the petition, right? Which is traffickinghubpetition.com. Um, they can read the book, Take Down. A hundred percent of all proceeds from, author proceeds from that are donated to the Justice Defense Fund to support victims in their pursuit of justice and healing.

• 1:53:38Theo Von?

  Amen.

• 1:53:39Speaker 02

  And the book, it like, it will, um, it's written in first person, present tense, where you go on a journey of discovery with me, where you go from that night I described in early 2020, all the way through this fight, you meet the victims, you meet the whistleblowers, you, you know, go through this day to day with me. And so at the end of it, you really would feel like you are immersed in it. You understand it really deeply at like a heart level. You know, that was my goal for writing that book was that it wouldn't just be like information that people get, but they would go on this journey and they would, um, come out of it feeling inspired and activated to take action. And, um, on that note, like they could join Team Take Down. We've created Team Take Down.

• 1:54:22Speaker 02

  And so you can go to takedownbook.com and you can join there and all of that. So, yeah, we're gonna just keep at it until, until justice fully prevails.

• 1:54:31Theo Von?

  Yeah. Yeah, and it's, you know, it's like, yeah, once you start to put the light on something, it grows, you know? And that's such a nice gift that you gave us here. The truth is like a lion, let it loose, it will defend itself. Saint Augustine, that's really cool. Um, Take Down, Inside the Fight to Shut Down Pornhub. Thank you so much, uh, for your time today. I really appreciate it.

• 1:54:51Speaker 02

  Thank you so much for having me. It was really an honor.

• 1:54:53Theo Von?

  You bet.

• 1:55:20Speaker 01

  I don't know what I'm doing! Need a break! Forget it, I quit! Escape to Pluto TV!

• 1:55:25Speaker 02

  This is objectively fantastic.

• 1:55:26Speaker 01

  Relax into the movies and shows you already know and love, all for free. Shwing! Even our news is uplifting.

• 1:55:32Speaker 03

  You stay classy, San Diego.

• 1:55:34Speaker 01

  Watch Tommy Boy, Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, The X-Files, Wayne's World, and so much more.

• 1:55:40Speaker 04

  We're not worthy!

• 1:55:42Speaker 01

  The best things on TV really are free.

• 1:55:44Speaker 02

  You just have to know where to look.

• 1:55:45Speaker 01

  Escape to Pluto TV. Stream now? Pay never.