A lawsuit filed by more victims of the sex trafficking operation claims that Pornhub’s moderation staff ignored reports of their abuse videos.
Sixty-one additional women are suing Pornhub’s parent company, claiming that the company failed to take down videos of their abuse as part of the sex trafficking operation Girls Do Porn. They’re suing the company and its sites for sex trafficking, racketeering, conspiracy to commit racketeering, and human trafficking.
The complaint, filed on Tuesday, includes what it claims are internal emails obtained by the plaintiffs, represented by Holm Law Group, between Pornhub moderation staff. The emails allegedly show that Pornhub had only one moderator to review 700,000 potentially abusive videos, and that the company intentionally ignored repeated reports from victims in those videos.
The damages and restitution they seek amounts to more than $311,100,000. They demand a jury trial, and seek damages of $5 million per plaintiff, as well as restitution for all the money Aylo, the new name for Pornhub’s parent company, earned “marketing, selling and exploiting Plaintiffs’ videos in an amount that exceeds one hundred thousand dollars for each plaintiff.”
The plaintiffs are 61 more unnamed “Jane Doe” victims of Girls Do Porn, adding to the 60 that sued Pornhub in 2020 for similar claims.
Girls Do Porn was a federally-convicted sex trafficking ring that coerced young women into filming pornographic videos under the pretense of “modeling” gigs. In some cases, the women were violently abused. The operators told them that the videos would never appear online, so that their home communities wouldn’t find out, but they uploaded the footage to sites like Pornhub, where the videos went viral—and in many instances, destroyed their lives. Girls Do Porn was an official Pornhub content partner, with its videos frequently appearing on the front page, where they gathered millions of views.
read more: https://www.404media.co/girls-do-porn-victims-sue-pornhub-for-300-million/
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism
Which is why I dislike people who attack those critical of capitalism’s excesses for being hypocrites.
In the real world, most of us are hypocrites and part of the problem. That doesn’t mean we can’t try to be better or be critical of things that are bad about society.
Complaining about a system you’re stuck in doesn’t make you a hypocrite for being stuck in it
But there is something circular and self-serving about saying “it’s not me, it’s the system, and I can do nothing about that system.”
Notice how this offloads all the responsibility and blame elsewhere, forever, while requiring no change whatsoever of us?
That doesn’t sit well with me. There’s some truth in it but there’s also a lot of convenience in it.
Everyone can try to change the system, and you will need a lot of people to follow you to make that happen, which is not easy. So saying that “I can do nothing about the system” may not always be so untrue.
I would say, if you can’t do it alone, then start swaying others. But the reality is that anyone who wants to get involved will find the world is full of organizations already off the ground and doing important work. Find your fit and make your contribution.
“But I can only do a little - I’ll never be able to solve ALL the problems”
Better to light a candle than curse the darkness.
I’ll eat meat that comes from large scale animal torture, my taxes have paid for bombs to kill civilians, I’ve spent money on countless products that exploit an untold amount of people. My country is one that benefits from resource extraction of the third world.
I get to live in relative opulence while billions have a fraction of the quality of life I do.
At the end of the day, I just accept these things and continue to live my life.
I’ve always seen myself as a good person. But I figured I can’t be a good person and do all that. That mismatch in identity caused me to re-evaluate my position. Turns out I’m not actually willing to give up anything from above. So I’m probably a bad person.
That way there’s no hypocrisy.
The Bible actually brings this up in an interesting way. Rich man goes up to Jesus and asks how to get into Heaven. Jesus says sell all your belongings and give the proceeds to charity. Then follow me. Rich man cried.
We’re all going to hell.
We’re arguably all evil, yeah. If you let a kid drown, you’re evil. If you let a kid drown 5000 miles away, because you’d rather buy a pc game or something you don’t really need, than donate to charity, that’s also evil. If you donate 50 bucks at christmas, to prevent one kid from drowning, that doesn’t mean you’re not evil if you let another 100 drown during the rest of the year.
People have a really hard time accepting that they’re not good. Vanity is the Devil’s favourite sin.
But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t at least try to be better. It’s not because you and I eat meat, that we should also go kick a puppy to death. That puppy does matter. Stop kicking puppies to death!
Of course, I agree with you. I would never initiate an action with the intention of causing harm - like kicking a puppy to death.
I also try to help when not too inconvenient for me. I typically give spare cash to homeless whenever they show up in front of me. I try and tip service workers well. I donate to a few non-profits, although they are mainly open source projects and is admittedly more ideologically driven than ethically. I try to be kind and polite and compassionate to the people in my life.
I’m just not about to dedicate my life to feeding the homeless or caring for orphans. I don’t care enough besides giving a few bucks here and there. I’m simply just more concerned about myself and my family.
Having said that, of course we can do better and we should try. For example the animal thing. If lab grown meat was at a comparable quality and price, I would prefer it every time. If I can choose the option of less harm without lowering my quality of life I would in a heartbeat. But I actually won’t lower my quality of life, at least not significantly.
It’s a similar story with environmentalism. The only real way to lower carbon emissions to a level where the climate isn’t at long term risk is for billions of people to stop using so much energy, stop eating so much meat & carbon heavy foods (almonds, avocados, etc), stop driving cars, stop using A/C, stop buying items that get sent on cargo ships all across the world, etc.
We can reduce it with renewable energies and plastic substitutes and reducing personal usage, carbon taxes… whatever. But nobody is actually willing to go back to the 18th century. Any modern society at such a scale that we have will inevitably change the climate. The Unabomber had it right 50 years ago and nobody wants to admit it.
For example even renewables. To build solar panels requires a supply chain with a massive amount of carbon being released into the air. You can’t escape it. Just like I think you can’t escape evils against humans in our society. The machine is cold and uncaring. The gears will not slow down just because a child (or a million) gets caught inside of them. It will keep spinning unrelentingly as if nothing happened, crushing without feeling.
Maybe I’m just cynical, I don’t know.
I like that quote you give, vanity is the devil’s favorite sin. Question, are you a believer? Do you believe in a God? The Christian God?
The first honest comment I’ve seen here.
The main problem with criticisms of capitalism Is that they don’t include “trying to be better.” As in: practical solutions. I think many of us use “capitalism” as a dark hole we can shove all the blame into. But no one ever has any realistic suggestions for change. There are plenty of fantasy ideas. Anarcho-syndicalism will save us if we overthrow the world order tomorrow!
I understand it’s a deeply embedded system and not simple to do away with. But just using it as a scapegoat constantly without any actual plan or will to depart from it is in fact an empty approach.
Eh, I think that’s just hivemind talking. Every discussion I’ve ever had about the ethics of capitalism has some talk of how you, as an individual, can be better. Buy less, live humbly, vet sources, and if you’re in the position to make an actual IMPACT, do what you can.
For the individual, pretty much the only real effect we can have is doing what I just said, and spreading the idea to anyone who will listen.
Indeed. You can know that your own life is dependant on the exploitation of others whilst working to make that less so.
I have to. The alternative is death.
I find this word brought out all the time and used as a scapegoat for us to pile all our sins onto and then stone it to death. It’s not us, it’s capitalism!
It’s not about piling your sins on a scapegoat, it’s about being realistic. One CANNOT live ethically if you consider the sins of whatever company they’re buying from the sins of the consumer.
The broader goal of saying there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism is saying, “hey this system is flawed, and we’re all perpetuating it. Let’s acknowledge that so we can work together better it.”
I have seen this argument a few times lately but I’m not sure i understand it completely.
Is the argument that person 1 trades with company 1 which is seemingly run ethically. Company 1 trades with company 2, 2 with 3 etc.
And then eventually company x trades with x+1 which is some human rights breaking company. And then all seemingly ethical companies have this link or trail of trade partners which eventually end up at some unethical company?
Pretty much. The idea is that capitalism forces companies to create goods at the cheapest possible price. Eventually, this means the company will rely on outsourcing labor to a country with less-than-stellar human rights conditions. For instance, we all know how shit most Chinese factory labor conditions are. Now think of just how many things you find are “made in China” stamped.
At the most undeniable level there’s that. You can also take the approach that any kind of profit that a company is making, they’re only making off the labor of their workers. That profit, thus, should belong to them, not the capital owners. This position is a bit tougher to argue, but it’s also valid.
Alright, that makes sense, thanks for the info :)
No problem, friend. I’m not an expert by any stretch, but any further questions, I’ll do my best to answer them.