LOS ANGELES (CN) — The owner of Pornhub on Friday asked a federal judge to dismiss a group of sex trafficking lawsuits by women who were minors when sexually explicit videos of them were posted on the site without their knowledge or consent, frequently by former boyfriends.
The plaintiffs accuse MindGeek — which operates pornographic websites like Pornhub and RedTube — of aggressively soliciting illegal child porn from its users and helping them to upload their videos with tags that would appeal to other users looking for child porn on Pornhub and the company’s other websites.
In addition, the victims claim, MindGeek has failed to take down videos with children that it was made aware or allowed them to be uploaded again after they were removed.
Arameh Zargham O’Boyle, an attorney for MindGeek, argued at the hearing in downtown Los Angeles that the plaintiffs’ claims are barred by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a federal statute that shields websites and social media platforms from liability over content posted by third party users.
“MindGeek is not a content provider,” she said. “MindGeek had no real role in creating and uploading this content. They were illegal the moment they were created.”
U.S. District Judge Wesley Hsu, however, wasn’t persuaded because, he said, the plaintiffs claim that MindGeek employees —not just the users — add titles, tags and categories to the videos in order to drive traffic to the child porn postings and generate advertising revenue for the website.
This, the judge said, goes beyond providing neutral tools for users to upload their content as was the case in other lawsuits where defendants successfully argued they were protected by Section 230 from claims by trafficking victims.
“I don’t know that I can ignore that,” Hsu said. “Shouldn’t they at least have some discovery to find out if they’re wrong?”
Lauren Tabaksblat, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, added that MindGeek moderators actively edit the videos and add tags and that they collaborate with the posters to upload their content.
The complaints pertain to MindGeek’s business practices from 2013 to 2023, when Bernd Bergmair was the majority owner of the company that is incorporated in Luxembourg and run from Canada. In 2023, MindGeek was acquired by Ethical Capital Partners, an Ottawa-based private equity firm, and rebranded as Aylo.
The same judge is also overseeing a class action lawsuit on behalf of tens of thousands of women who were victimized when sexual videos of them when they were minors were posted on Pornhub and other sites owned by MindGeek. The judge who previously presided over the class action in 2023 denied the company’s bid to dismiss that case.
The plaintiffs in the individual lawsuits before Hsu have opted out of the class action to pursue their own claims for damages.
One of them — the only one who didn’t sue anonymously and who was featured in 2020 New York Times expose of child porn on Pornhub — said in her complaint that she was just 13 when her then-boyfriend coerced her in making a sexually explicit video.
She then learned that the boyfriend had uploaded the video on Pornhub where it immediately went viral and was viewed by students at her school and others in her community.
“In response to the viral dissemination of the video, Serena was bullied and harassed,” she says in her complaint. “Classmates demanded that Serena send them sexually explicit videos of herself and threatened to disclose the sexually explicit video to Serena’s mother or to her school if she did not comply.”
MindGeek employees, she claims, reviewed the video since the company repeatedly has claimed that to do that for every video uploaded to Pornhub, and the title, “13-Year Old Brunette Shows Off For The Camera,” and were aware that this video showed child sexually abuse material. Nevertheless, she argues, consistent with MindGeek’s business practices, it was posted on Pornhub and categorized, tagged and optimized for user preferences, depicting a 13-year old girl.
The video and the bullying, she says, set her on a downward spiral, leading to depression, drug use, suicide attempts and homelessness. While she was still a minor, she became involved with an older heroin user and she became addicted to heroin herself for three years.
To fund their heroin habit, the older man manipulated her in to making new sexually explicit videos that ended up on Pornhub, she says. Again, MindGeek knew that these videos were child porn as was clear from users comments that she looked underage, she claims.
“Nevertheless, MindGeek incorporated the [child sexual abuse material] video into its algorithmic playlists and suggestions; uploaded the video to its other tubesites; and associated the video with advertisements from which it earned revenues from impressions, engagements, and conversions,” she says.