Pornhub’s parent company fined $1.8 million over sex trafficking charges -Gudstory

Pornhub’s parent company, Aiello, is facing a $1.8 million fine and victim compensation after admitting that it made money from content featuring victims of sex trafficking. The company was sued Thursday in Brooklyn federal court on charges of “engaging in illegal money transactions involving the proceeds of sex trafficking.”

Aiello, formerly known as MindGeek, will settle the charges by entering into a deferred prosecution agreement with the US government. Under the terms of the agreement, Aiello must pay $1.8 million to the US government and compensate victims who appeared on its porn sites. It will also have an independent monitor for three years, who will evaluate Aylo’s “content screening and monitoring processes” and ensure it properly addresses illegal content.

The federal government alleges that Aiello “turned a blind eye” to victims of sex trafficking by hosting videos created by GirlsDoporn, which first appeared on Aiello’s websites, including Pornhub, in 2009. While the operators of GirlsDoporn were convicted in 2019 of raping dozens of people. The US government claims that Aiello had prior knowledge of this illegal activity in the case of indecent filming of women.

In addition to receiving “numerous content removal requests” between 2016 and 2019, Aiello also reportedly learned that several women who appeared in Girlsdoporn videos filed a lawsuit against the owners of the production company in 2017. However, Aiello “did not independently verify consent” about the content in question and did not begin removing the content until the 2019 GirlsDoporn trial concluded. Prosecutors allege that Aiello also did not take action against unofficial Girlsdoporn content and failed to remove the company’s official channel until 2020.

“This deferred prosecution agreement holds Pornhub.com’s parent company accountable for its role in hosting videos and accepting payments from criminal actors who recruited young women to engage in sexual acts on videos posted without their consent. Compelled,” Breonna Peace, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.

Pornhub and other adult sites are currently facing increasing scrutiny from the US government and the European Union. Several states across the US, including Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas, have passed laws requiring age verification to access porn sites. The European Union has also designated Pornhub as a “very large online platform” under the Digital Services Act, meaning it will be legally obliged to follow strict age verification and content moderation rules.