Petition launched to close major porn site for ‘aiding trafficking’
By Danielle Jarvis
February 22, 2020
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A petition that has been launched to close a major porn site has had close to 214,000 signatures.
The
petition claims that in the last few months, there have been several shocking
cases of sex trafficking and child rape films that were hosted on Pornhub. A
15-year-old girl who had been missing for a year was finally found after her
mother was tipped off that her daughter was being featured in videos on the
site — 58 such videos of her rape and sexual abuse were discovered on Pornhub.
Her
trafficker, who was seen in the videos raping the child, was identified using
surveillance footage of him at a 7-Eleven where he was spotted with his victim.
He is now facing a felony charge.
Porn is
serious business, but Pornhub is different to most sites. It is like the
Youtube of porn, in that anyone can create a user account and upload their
videos. The owners of the site are not responsible for the upload; the public
is.
Faithwire
reported that the world’s largest free pornography website which draws more
than 110 million visitors every single day. Yes, that is every day. If the site
could be viewed by Americans only, that is a third of the nation watching porn –
daily.
“In
recent news was the case of 22 women who were deceived and coerced by Michael
Pratt, owner of GirlsDoPorn, into performing sex acts on film that were
subsequently uploaded to Pornhub,” the petition states. “These women sued
GirlsDoPorn and won a $12.7 million lawsuit against the company. According to a
federal indictment, Pratt and his co-conspirators produced filmed child rape
and sexual abuse content and trafficked a minor. Pratt reportedly fled the
United States for New Zealand and is currently wanted on a federal warrant.
“But
there are other individuals who should also be wanted by law enforcement — CEO
Feras Antoon and COO David Tassillo of Mindgeek, the company that owns Pornhub.
You see, Pornhub is complicit in the trafficking of these women and minors and
probably thousands more like them.
“Pornhub
is generating millions in advertising and membership revenue with 42 billion
visits and 6 million videos uploaded per year. Yet it has no system in place to
verify reliably the age or consent of those featured in the pornographic
content it hosts and profits from.
“In fact, all that is needed to upload pornography onto Pornhub is an email address. No government-issued ID is required, not even to become “verified” with its trusty blue checkmark that makes everything seem a-OK.”
Just a few days ago, a couple were caught filming a sex scene in a Santa Monica public library to be uploaded to Pornhub. The petition is looking to obtain 300,000 signatures, however in the society we now live in, even 100 million signatures wouldn’t be enough to alert authorities to the fact that there needs to be urgent changes to people being able to freely view pornography.