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Pornhub’s parent company Aylo Holdings will reportedly pay $1.8 million to the US government to resolve a charge of profiting off of sex trafficking. According to a report in TechCrunch, the company, formerly known as MindGeek, will enter a deferred prosecution agreement, which means that a monitor will be appointed to oversee Aylo and its compliance efforts for three years.
Pornhub and other adult content sites owned by Aylo are said to have come under fire for a history of negligence in moderating third-party uploads of adult content. In some cases, victims of sex trafficking are reportedly portrayed in these adult videos against their will, or even without their knowledge.
The report said that the probe by the Eastern District of New York’s Attorney’s Office focuses on a network called GirlsDoPorn (GDP), which has been posting videos on Pornhub and other Aylo websites since 2009. The authorities wrote in a press release that Aylo “knew or should have known” that it was hosting videos wherein many women did not know they were being filmed, or didn’t know that these videos would be shared with the masses. The release further added that many of these women had submitted complaints to Aylo between 2016 and 2019, which states that the videos were posted without their consent. But it wasn’t until several months after GDP was found guilty of sex trafficking that the network’s videos were removed from Pornhub and other Aylo sites.
“This resolution will not only provide oversight over one of the largest online content distributors in the world and ensure the company’s lawful behavior, but it will also develop industry-wide standards for safety and compliance,” said U.S. Attorney Breon Pearce in a statement.
PornHub went through a major restructuring in 2020
In 2020, Pornhub announced several major changes on Tuesday to its website, including banning video downloads and only accepting video uploads from verified accounts. “Effective immediately, only content partners and people within the Model Program will be able to upload content to Pornhub,” the site said in a statement. “In the new year, we will implement a verification process so that any user can upload content upon successful completion of identification protocol.”
The company faced a tough next few years. MindGeek was sold to a brand new private equity firm, the strategically named Ethical Capital Partners, and before that, MindGeek’s CEO and COO both left the company.
Pornhub and other adult content sites owned by Aylo are said to have come under fire for a history of negligence in moderating third-party uploads of adult content. In some cases, victims of sex trafficking are reportedly portrayed in these adult videos against their will, or even without their knowledge.
The report said that the probe by the Eastern District of New York’s Attorney’s Office focuses on a network called GirlsDoPorn (GDP), which has been posting videos on Pornhub and other Aylo websites since 2009. The authorities wrote in a press release that Aylo “knew or should have known” that it was hosting videos wherein many women did not know they were being filmed, or didn’t know that these videos would be shared with the masses. The release further added that many of these women had submitted complaints to Aylo between 2016 and 2019, which states that the videos were posted without their consent. But it wasn’t until several months after GDP was found guilty of sex trafficking that the network’s videos were removed from Pornhub and other Aylo sites.
“This resolution will not only provide oversight over one of the largest online content distributors in the world and ensure the company’s lawful behavior, but it will also develop industry-wide standards for safety and compliance,” said U.S. Attorney Breon Pearce in a statement.
PornHub went through a major restructuring in 2020
In 2020, Pornhub announced several major changes on Tuesday to its website, including banning video downloads and only accepting video uploads from verified accounts. “Effective immediately, only content partners and people within the Model Program will be able to upload content to Pornhub,” the site said in a statement. “In the new year, we will implement a verification process so that any user can upload content upon successful completion of identification protocol.”
The company faced a tough next few years. MindGeek was sold to a brand new private equity firm, the strategically named Ethical Capital Partners, and before that, MindGeek’s CEO and COO both left the company.
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