Pornhub's Fight Against Online Exploitation | Kim Kelley, Solomon Friedman on News Talk Radio

So here's my mission: for the avoidance of doubt, I'm not marketing porn. I personally am not a consumer — I don't judge adults who are. But what I'm doing is keeping children out of porn. I think we can all agree on that. So what we're not doing is shaming any adult for doing adult things. What we are definitely drawing the line on is: it is not appropriate for children. Children should not be exploited. And consenting adults who enjoy adult content should not be inadvertently contributing to child harm.

Right. Well, there's a lot of stigma involved with it, and unfortunately the whole topic of child exploitation and adult sexual entertainment has become convoluted. So whether or not you consume adult sexual entertainment is none of my business. My point is: we should all be able to agree that children don't even belong in that conversation. There is nothing pornographic about a child. It is child sex abuse material, or CSAM.

So there's a lot of different ways harmful things can happen to children. Any form of child sexual abuse material is absolutely exploitation. It's not always the same thing as trafficking, but it is very much related to it. So protecting children on the internet goes far beyond the porn industry. But if all we can do with this dialogue is have a solutions-oriented approach to keep child pornography away from any sort of internet platform — and by the way, that's doable, this is a solvable problem — that in and of itself is massive, not only for this generation but for the ones to come.

Thank you so much for having me. It's a real pleasure to be here.

Sure. So just over a year ago, in March of 2023, my partners and I acquired a company called MindGeek, which owns and operates Pornhub. So we own Pornhub and many of your other favorite platforms. And we approached this with really a singular goal in mind — and that is recognizing, I think Kim said it very eloquently, adult entertainment isn't going anywhere. It's legal, it's constitutionally protected. But it needs to be done safely, and it needs to be done not only safe within the bounds of the adult industry but really to lead by example for the broader internet. And what Pornhub and all the platforms that we own have in common is really a world-class trust and safety system. And that begins from the moment an individual applies to upload content, all the way through the end moderation process that ensures that every piece of content is content for which the individuals featured in it are of age and consent, and that that content meets some very strict guidelines. And this is obviously an enormous investment, and I'm happy to talk about that and unpack that. But trust and safety is really our priority. And I think people sort of get surprised when they hear that a company that owns and operates Pornhub has trust and safety at the heart of everything they do. When you look under the hood and you learn more about this, you realize that this is a fight that everybody has a part in — nobody can shirk their responsibility. And we really, from top to bottom, have done an enormous amount to make the internet a safer place. And I really hope that all of our — first of all, our competitors in the adult space copy us, but so do the tech giants in the mainstream space, because protecting children is really everybody's responsibility.

Well, I think number one, you know, we all want to live value-driven lives. So I think we've got to start there, right? I think the vast majority of Americans — I'm Canadian, I think we share a lot of the same core values, Western liberal democracies — that we want to protect the vulnerable, we want to take responsibility for our choices, we want to enable adults to express themselves freely as a matter of self-determination. So number one, you've got to lead with your values. But I agree with you completely. I've always had the view that there is no tension between safety and profitability. And in fact, nobody wants to support or engage with a platform that is harming individuals, that is promoting harm. I think that people want to gravitate towards products which are safe, which promote safety, which have trust and safety at the heart of everything they do. So when it comes to our platforms, we really start at the very beginning. First of all, and I invite any of your listeners to try this out — it is impossible to upload content to Pornhub or any of our other platforms until and unless your identity is verified. So it's not like YouTube or Reddit or Twitter or Facebook where anyone can just post, start an account, and start posting really whatever they want. Individuals' identity, their consent, their age has to be verified. We do this using both automated means — that is, AI means of verifying documentation being authentic — but also using a team of human moderators. And then if you send me your application, I'll get you on the team, but I've got to tell you there's a 90-day training period before you have any access to live content. You're tested for 90 days. We have staff that works in shifts 24/7. First of all, they're verifying age, identity, and consent of anyone applying to upload. So you can't just upload. And once that application is accepted, every single piece of content is first put through about a dozen automated engines that scan it against databases of known child sex abuse material. So we subscribe to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the Internet Watch Foundation's list, Safer by Thorn, Google and YouTube have some tools — we subscribe to every database we possibly can to check, in an automated way, all submitted content against these databases. And then only then, if it passes those levels of approval, it's reviewed by a human — in its entirety, looking not just for the law. And this is really important in terms of how our company views our responsibility. I always say: complying with the law is like putting your pants on in the morning — you don't get a medal for it, that's basic-level stuff. It's important to us that we go above and beyond that, and that includes as well moderating for content that might be legal but we consider harmful and therefore will not allow on our platform. But that can only happen with human moderation. Now, Kim talked about the commercial side — is this expensive? Of course it's expensive. Our company — we're not a Google tech giant — and in the adult world we're pretty large. The company employs about 1,400 or 1,500 people; a full 20% of them work in trust and safety. So that's an enormous investment in people and resources. So when it comes to the uploader verification and the moderation, we take that responsibility very seriously. But it actually continues beyond that. We have a banned word list — banned words and terms — about 40,000 words right now in over 30 languages, that when an individual searches them or enters them as a proposed title or a search term, they receive a result showing no content, but also explaining that this work is prohibited. But for people searching for illegal material — we know that people will come to anywhere on the internet to search for illegal material — they're not going to find it on our site. But we actually have partnered with a number of organizations in the United States to try to direct people looking for illegal material to get the help that they need. We can't just stand back — I think, as a company with our reach — and say, 'Well, they're not going to find that material on our site, we say it's prohibited, and that's the end of that.' But we actually have partnered with these organizations to try to get people the help they need. And my view is: if one person takes advantage of that help and it saves one child from a lifetime of suffering, then that's reason enough to do it. But you really have to be serious about this. And we hope to lead by example, not just for the adult world, but for the broader social network world as well.

Yeah, so in January 2021 — that's two years before we acquired the company — they rolled out the verified uploader program for all content. In other words, nobody could upload content unless they were a verified uploader with their age, identity, and consent. The rest of the — just call it what it is — the rest of the porn world said, 'You guys are dumb. Nobody is going to jump through all those hoops in order to upload content. Nobody's going to trust you with their ID.' And over 600,000 verified uploaders later and 130 million daily active users later, my view is: the free market has voted. And they have come out overwhelmingly in favor of these types of measures. One of the things that I'm really proud of — and I know it's like a little joke, nobody goes to Pornhub to read the articles — but you should spend some time reading some of the articles, including our twice-yearly transparency report, where we set out in detail everything that I'm talking about today. And some people kind of scratch their head and say, 'You're giving away your secret sauce? You're telling people all the measures you employ, all the software you use, all the metrics that guide your removal of content?' And I say yes. I want it to be copied by our competition. I want every adult platform to copy us and to do exactly what we're doing. And you know, if we do that, the internet is going to be a safer place. So frankly, I don't look at this as a competitive issue. And if our competitors are skeptical about it, my view is the results speak for themselves. We all have a responsibility to keep the internet safe. It's not a matter of competition or commercial advantage.

I'd love to stick around. Thank you.

Yeah, it's a great question. So first of all, there were lawsuits which were filed before Ethical Capital Partners acquired the company. This is about conduct and trust and safety practices that existed years before we bought the company. And to echo what Kim said, just to add to it: the U.S. Department of Justice conducted an investigation — it was actually a 30-month investigation — in which they concluded — this is the DOJ, the U.S. Attorney's Office — concluded that they did not find evidence that the company had committed the federal offenses of sex trafficking or the dissemination of child sex abuse material. That doesn't mean people can't make allegations and lawsuits — of course they can. What's really important is that we get just outcomes for those. But those are allegations. The federal government has investigated and obviously have released what I just said. Now, when it comes to, you know, it's an interesting word — 'paying people off' — when a company or any person does wrong, whether intentional or otherwise, individuals are entitled to compensation. There's nothing wrong with that. This is how you learn from mistakes, this is how you get better. I think there are really two ways to look at this: either you can put your head in the sand and decide to kick and scream and say 'PornHub is bad and porn is bad and I hate the whole industry,' or you can say: are you serious about learning from the challenges? Because I can tell you this — the criminals are serious about improving their ways of exploiting not just adult platforms but the internet as a whole. And I believe that we have to learn from past challenges. So I'm actually very proud of the work that the company has done. And when any company sees an opportunity to improve or a reason to compensate or to right wrongs, that's what you have to do. That's what a responsible company does. And there's absolutely nothing to be ashamed of in that regard.

I do. I've got three teenagers.

Well, 100%. I mean, you know, I don't think you need to have kids to want to protect young people. But certainly for those parents out there, protecting young people is essential to us. One of the things that I'm really proud of — change that occurred after we acquired the company — is that now anytime somebody goes to Pornhub or any one of our adult platforms for the first time, the first thing they see before any explicit content is a link to parental controls. I'm a big believer that parents are an essential part of the solution when it comes to protecting young people from accessing adult material. And I want to be very clear: we as a platform, of course, we have a zero-tolerance policy for child sex abuse material. But we also do not want young people accessing our platforms. Pornography is adult entertainment — it's for adults. It's not sex ed, it's not for young people in any way, shape, or form. So for that reason, it was important to us that before seeing any explicit material, parents have the tools at their fingertips. And I invite your listeners to try that out and to take a look at the parental controls. You can see we post a list of resources — you can block it at the browser level, you can block it at the router level, the internet service provider level. It's very weird, by the way, for a website to provide a list of how to block us, because we want parents to have that control. That's part of being a responsible platform on the internet.

Yeah, that's a great question. So the deterrence messaging that I referenced before — that is, providing resources to individuals who are searching for illegal content, even though they won't find the content on our platform — we actually provided all of the data related to that project to the University of Tasmania. It was important for us to be open and transparent about it. They published a full report. You can find it on the Internet Watch Foundation's website — just search for 'Retink Chat.' That's what the project is called. And it records thousands of interactions — this is the deterrent chatbot — and then almost 100 people found real-world help. So that's on the deterrence side. It comes to — yeah, it's important to really provide this data so, like I said, others can copy us. We also publish in our transparency report — once again, it's available on Pornhub.com in the Trust and Safety Center, please take a look at it — where we go through the amount of content that has been removed and reports made to law enforcement, specifically the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Just this year, NCMEC — that's the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children — they released their annual report, and when I read it, it didn't surprise me, but it surprises many, many people. So they received from Meta over 20 million reports of suspected child sex abuse material — that is, people attempting or actually uploading. Reports from Pornhub and its related platforms — the number of reports that it got was about 2,500. And the reason for that, people ask, 'How's that possible, that there are so few reports made?' And by the way, that's not material that made it on the internet — that's material that was submitted to us for review, and then we turn it over to NCMEC — suspected exploitative material. And I say: when you get the name and ID of every single uploader, verified for real — it takes a special kind of stupid to, after giving your real government ID and verifying your identity, to try to submit illegal content. Yeah, they're off to the next platform. Yes, absolutely. And at the same time, NCMEC also reported of how much material — illegal material — they found themselves, not reported to them, but they found. So for Meta, it was a couple of hundred images or videos. For Pornhub's platforms in 2023, it was zero. That's incredible — not two, but zero. So the proof is in the pudding. You know, when one of the — the last person who messaged asked about saving children and talk is cheap — I agree, talk is cheap — but the proof is in the pudding. NCMEC says in 2023 we found zero on the platform, and zero is our goal year after year, and should be the goal of every website and platform online.

I'd love to. It's been a real pleasure speaking with you.

Yeah, so I don't mean to be a stickler for terminology, but I hate the phrase 'child pornography.' You know, in general, what police and intelligence agencies are using these days is 'child sex abuse material.' And the reason for that is it makes it so clear that children should have nothing to do with pornography whatsoever. Pornography — call it expression, call it art, call it whatever you want — but kids can't consent, so they can't be involved in pornography. The question that you're asking about where it's prevalent: it is a global problem. And it's one of the reasons why we work with over 50 NGOs along with some leading law enforcement agencies around the world. Like anything internet-related, it's not confined to one geographic location. It is a global problem, and global problems require global solutions.

Yeah, so remember — we're not an advocacy organization, we're not an NGO. We don't report on other platforms; we report on our own, thoroughly and transparently. In fact, we call it the transparency report — it goes through detail by detail every category of content that we block, how many users we banned, really in very granular detail. What I would recommend for your listeners is that they go check out NCMEC — the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. There's a clearinghouse for reports about child sex abuse, about internet child exploitation, and they publish a report every year. They publish a number of reports and they rank, by all sorts of categories, every social media platform that reports to them, as well as adult platforms. That's a really good place. There's all sorts of methods for encouragement — you can have, I speak as a parent, you got positive reinforcement and you got negative reinforcement. There are certain statistics you don't want associated with your brand. NCMEC in the United States, and then the Internet Watch Foundation, based out of the United Kingdom, publishes similar metrics for some European platforms. Really, really helpful numbers. I think that'll open the eyes of many in the public.

Yes, so it's the website for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. We call it NCMEC. And NCMEC is a non-governmental agency but really the clearinghouse for reports of child exploitation. So police report to them, they send reports out to police. That's MissingKids.org. And on that website you're going to see really fantastic resources for keeping young people safe. You'll also see a link to a program there called Take It Down. I'm really proud of that. Take It Down is a program where, let's say, a young person has been exploited, or has been convinced or coerced, or just made a bad decision and produced a nude image of themselves — took a photo or a selfie or a video — and they lose control of it. A bully gets it, an ex gets it, and they're threatening to disseminate it. So NCMEC — MissingKids.org — has a program where individuals can have a signature, it's called a hash, taken of that piece of content. And then our platform, along with some other social media platforms, we scan every single upload against that list — the Take It Down list — to ensure that it could never be uploaded to our platform. Just one of the initiatives that require working together with organizations like NCMEC.

Yeah, that's a great question. So I'll talk first of all about the audiences where we've found them to be really, really receptive, and those are the professionals. So I've been invited to speak at a number of conferences of law enforcement and prosecutors. We're talking about hundreds of cops who devoted their life to eradicating child sex abuse material and internet child exploitation, along with the prosecutors that prosecute those offenses. I've spoken to those organizations, I've made presentations, I've offered our resources to them. Just to give you a — I'm a detailed guy, it comes with being a nerd — but one of the things that I told this group is: make sure if you get a report that somebody is trying to upload illegal material and you come to our platform with a request, make sure that you also request all of the identifying details that we hold about all of our uploaders, because we can give you this material, you just need to ask for it. We want law enforcement to know: ask for this material so we can give it to you to help in your investigation. So I'm finding a lot of receptiveness from law enforcement, prosecutors — really the pros who know what the problem is and know what the problem isn't. At the same time, I will speak to any group, governmental or non-governmental, that will have me. All I want to do is both share our experience, but I also want to listen. I approach this task with a lot of humility. I'm not the expert, be-all, end-all. I'm doing my very best in this role to learn and to assist the company in implementing best practices.

We want to learn, so we're partnering with Kim, who is both an expert by training and by lived experience. We recognize we don't have all the answers — we need experts to assist us. We also partnered with the Internet Watch Foundation in the UK and produced best practices for adult platforms in combating child sex abuse material. It can be difficult to get an invite — people see PornHub and their mind shuts off. But we're persistent. I'm a persistent guy, Ethical Partners is a persistent group, and we're knocking on as many doors as we can because this work is too important to be squandered. I will go anywhere I'm invited, whether religious, not religious, or ideologically opposed. I would speak to an anti-porn conference if invited. I'd say: look, you don't like porn, I disagree, so we disagree about that. But what we agree on is that children deserve protection. Let's talk about what we agree on, because we agree on far more than we disagree on, and let's get the work done.

That's a great question. We're at the forefront of prohibiting deep fakes or generated content that appropriates someone else's image. You may recall the digital images of Taylor Swift that spread like wildfire over mainstream social media. Those images, if submitted to PornHub by an uploader, would not have passed even the most cursory review. The moderator would say: here's the image you submitted, are you Taylor Swift? No, I have your ID — that's not who you are. This goes no further. It's interesting when a porn company is at the leading edge of avoiding digital exploitation. Going further, our platform treats digitally created child sex abuse material like real child sex abuse material — we have an equal zero tolerance policy. It doesn't matter if it's an image of an actual young person, someone role-playing as a young person, or a digitally created image — zero tolerance. That is child sex abuse material, entirely banned. We report it to NCMEC if someone attempts to upload it. Policy must keep pace with technology. The trouble is so many lawmakers and policymakers don't have a grasp on current technology and don't want to be educated. That's why a tech company like ours, with about 500 engineers, is solving these problems — detecting deep fakes, ensuring every piece of content is of a real person who has given authentic consent.

I'd love to. At the heart of our consent policy is that consent has to be ongoing. We don't believe someone should consent once and lose control of their image in perpetuity. On the bottom of every page on every platform is a link to the Content Removal Request Form. An individual fills out the form indicating firsthand knowledge that someone depicted in content has withdrawn or not provided consent. What we do then — and when people hear this from big tech companies they lose their minds — we take it down immediately, automatically, no human intervention required. I call it "take down first, ask questions later." We then investigate. If the person confirms their identity, we keep it down and provide resources to remove it from other platforms. But most importantly, we take it down immediately. That should be the gold standard. An individual can consent, make a totally voluntary adult decision, but then change their mind. I believe in freedom of expression and self-determination — a person has the right to make free choices about their body and image, but also the right to change their mind. At PornHub, they can withdraw consent from any content on our platforms.

I'm not a publicist. I have no training in PR — I'm one of the owners of the company. You can think porn is bad, that's fine. Adults make free decisions — don't make porn and don't consume it. But what we all agree on is how important it is to protect children. The Supreme Court has reaffirmed time and again that you can't ban porn even if you wanted to, which means it's here to stay. We have a decision: either call it bad, stigmatize the people involved, and allow evil to flourish — because that's what happens in the shadows — or say it's here to stay and support efforts to make it as safe as possible. Opening our eyes like grown-ups: porn isn't going anywhere. For as long as humans have existed, we've been drawing naughty pictures on cave walls. We have a responsibility to protect the most vulnerable, whether you love porn or hate it. I'm not offended by that question. I invite those who don't like porn — that's fine — but support the efforts to protect the vulnerable from exploitation online.

By requiring uploader verification and getting real details of all uploaders, we promote accountability because we can provide all that data to law enforcement. We want spaces safe from exploitation. Regarding driving pedophiles underground — we know that when someone simply doesn't find what they're looking for, they'll go elsewhere, go to the dark web. That's why deterrence messaging is so important, and why we partner with mental health associations in the US, Canada, and virtually every jurisdiction where we operate — to get these people help, bring them out of the dark, and connect them to real-world resources. PornHub is not a mental health expert. We partner with organizations who are. It'd be easy to turn a blind eye — that's simply not good enough. My hope is that when you use Google, Facebook, or Instagram and search keywords related to illegal content, they copy our deterrence messaging strategy word for word. I'm presenting this around the world. I'll be in Australia in August presenting this program to a security and defense intelligence conference, because I want it copied. We need to stop these people in their tracks — that's the only way to keep kids safe.

I hope so too. Thank you so much for having me — it's been a real pleasure. Have a great afternoon.