She took on world's largest porn site for profiting off child abuse. She's winning.
She took on world's largest porn site for profiting off child abuse. She's winning.
Pornhub was one of the most popular websites in the world in 2020, attracting billions of visits each month. It has faced a reckoning since.
Never, ever, EVER trust ANYONE who says they're doing something "for the safety of children". The war against porn and sex work has been co-opted by christian fascists.
Make no mistake, there is a hysteria around "child trafficking" nowadays, and that hysteria is being harnessed to pass laws that suppress our freedoms. SESTA/FOSTA has put the lives of countless sex workers at risk by forcing them back into the shady world of pimps and back alleys. The Texas ID law is pure government surveillance, and Project 2025 explicitly linked any trans people's mere existence as "pornographic" and thus subject to all anti-porn laws.
Human trafficking is real. Child abuse is real. And it needs to be fought against.
But never EVER trust anyone who goes to the media and starts shouting about "our children". It's a fucking scam, and it's usually making things worse for the people they claim to want to protect.
NCOSE, the organization that co-sponsored Traffickinghub, was previously known as Morality in Media, and used to rail against sex shops, push abstinence education, and once boycotted Disney for offering partner benefits to gay couples. The group’s president, Patrick Trueman, has served at multiple far-right organizations designated as anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Laila founded Traffickinghub while on staff at Exodus Cry, an anti-trafficking organization that describes porn as a public health crisis. Its founder once called homosexuality an “an unspeakable offense to God.” One of its tax filings described a mission of “abolishing sex trafficking and the commercial sex industry,” which would seem to include porn.
Fuck this bitch. Did she help some children? Maybe. But that's not why she did it.
Wow, great article, but it has even more info pointing out that this is a far right attack on sexuality that is using "trafficking" as its trojan horse:
Laila founded Traffickinghub while on staff at Exodus Cry, an anti-trafficking organization that describes porn as a public health crisis. Its founder once called homosexuality an “an unspeakable offense to God.” One of its tax filings described a mission of “abolishing sex trafficking and the commercial sex industry,” which would seem to include porn.
Helen Taylor, vice president of impact at Exodus Cry, told The Independent in an email that the group seeks to neither demonize LGBTQ+ people nor end legal pornography, and that it works to defend queer people, who are often singled out as victims of sexual exploitation.
“Exodus Cry has no campaign to bring down the porn industry,” she said. “We focus on identifying instances of sexual exploitation in the porn industry and calling for change, recognizing that Big Porn needs regulation.”
The questions over Mickelwait’s associations are likely to persist. The 2022 990 tax form for her new group, Justice Defense Fund, filed in late 2023, has the names of three of its four main officers “withheld for security reasons,” and lists only one contributor, their name also “restricted.”
These partnerships, as well as Mickelwait’s penchant for describing Pornhub in terms like calling it a “terrorist” organization, made her efforts seem counter-productive to some, painting the industry as irredeemable and evil rather than imperfect.
Never forget that the IRS spearheaded the biggest CSAM takedown in history by taking down a site called "welcome to video" they even caught a boarder patrol agent. So whenever someone says they want to protect children, remind them that we should be funding investigative agencies like the IRS and OSHA.
[...] it was about a 15-year-old girl who was missing for an entire year, and she was finally found after a Pornhub user had tipped off her mother that she was on the site, and her mom found her in 58 videos being raped for profit on Pornhub
That's dark
It's kind of insane how this can just fly under the radar. I don't think I've ever seen any sus stuff on big tube sites. Was this before amateur purge?
I don't think it's that unbelievable. There used to be so many amateur videos with like 1-5 views.
In case readers wants a journalist’s take instead of the subject themselves, link below. I think anyone noticing the hyperbolic way she spoke in the interview would quickly be seeking out a non-first-person perspective. The interviewer didn’t even allude to the pre-existing controversy around this lady, what terrible journalism.
This anecdote from the article is technically hearsay, but I for sure buy that a person who uses language like she does is the same kind of person who’d write this:
Aylo also shared a screenshot with The Independent of a post it said Mickelwait shared then deleted on X, describing her husband as a “trained sniper who can consistently hit a target 1360 yards away.”
who can consistently hit a target 1360 yards away
Hell, depending on the size of the target, I can do that too
Yeah, if you make the target "Florida", I think I could just about manage it too.
I've been skeptical of her work. She makes a lot of valid points about PH's shortcomings and things they need to fix, but she was also a prominent voice in spreading misinformation about at least one actress that I'm aware of, going hard into very serious accusations all based on a single tweet from some random person, causing pretty significant damage to the actress's career as now many platforms are afraid to host her content. To the best of my knowledge, she's never recanted the claims, although just about every media outlet that reported on that story has deleted their articles on it.
She seems to put about as much work into fact-checking herself as PH puts into protecting their users. And when you're dealing with a subject as intense as producing CSAM, you really shouldn't be loosey-goosey with your vetting process. I feel like she's doing this more to get eyes on her book deal than to actually help people.
Which actress?
Ellesclub. Mickelwait had spread this claim across a few of her Twitter accounts that Ellesclub was a trafficking victim and was underage in the videos on PH at the time. Most of the proof she refers to doesn't actually exist, though.
The most concrete proof she's put out was Elles' stated age on her social/content profiles. Because apparently Mickelwait can't think of any reason why a pornstar's bio would say she's been 18 for ten years straight.
The whole article reads like a pathetic plug for her new book.
When trying to click on the authors web page, Ingtid Jaqcues, the link is broken. To me, the whole article gives the gross vibe of being written as a favor.
Seems like pornhub really need to step up their game wtf
Pornhub is just one of maaaaaaaany websites. They're just the most famous.
Sure. It's applicable to all of them.
PresumablyHopefully they have since they had the mass deletion of unverified content a few years ago.Cut one head, another takes its place.
PresumablyHopefully they have since they had the mass deletion of unverified content a few years ago.
She probably hasn't visited Motherless.
If she thinks pornhub it's evil she is just a noob tbh..
Edit: BTW what happened to lolita airlines logs? Let me guess: nothing..
She wants to cancel pornhub voting for pedo politicians.. good joke.
Didnt pornhub block Texas because they wanted age verification? Like theyre very publically against it.
I think pornhub has some explainIng to do. A lot of explaining to do
That is a separate issue. The Age verification law is for viewers. PornHub doesn't want to store, or be responsible for, your Driver's License info.
I happen to side with PornHub on this one. It's a privacy issue, and the age verification is just an initial step in the direction of censorship.
Now verifying identity/ages of the performers, supporting the fight against sex trafficking and the predation of minors, that is worth putting restrictions on PornHub.
I think you're thinking of users' ages not posters' age. They don't verify the age of people watching videos and they are publicly against that. I don't know how they feel about validating the age of people in videos.
They realized it would get their asses handed to them a while back. They at least supposedly have some sort of verification system now and they've cut out a lot of videos because of their new verification requirements.