PBD Podcast
"PornHub Is A Crime Scene!" - Laila Mickelwait EXPOSES PornHub Execs Shocking Child Abuse COVER UP! | PBD Podcast | Ep. 514
Fri, 29 Nov 2024
Laila Mickelwait joins Patrick Bet-David to reveal SHOCKING details about PornHub’s alleged illegal practices and their new owners, Ethical Capital Partners. From underage trafficking to hidden email exchanges and lawsuits involving high-profile companies like Mastercard and Visa, this interview dives deep into the controversies surrounding the world's largest porn platform. Discover the secrets they don’t want you to know. 📕 PURCHASE LAILA’S BOOK “TAKEDOWN”: https://bit.ly/3ZuJb5r ------ 🦁 50% OFF BLACK FRIDAY VT SPECIAL: https://bit.ly/3COGKSb 🧢 PURCHASE THE LIMITED EDITION VT BLACK OUT HAT: https://bit.ly/48lYfEY 🎄 VT CHRISTMAS COLLECTION: https://bit.ly/4hDCt3S 📕 PBD'S BOOK "THE ACADEMY": https://bit.ly/3XC5ftN 📰 VTNEWS.AI: https://bit.ly/3Zn2Moj 🎙️ FOLLOW THE PODCAST ON SPOTIFY: https://bit.ly/3ze3RUM 🎙️ FOLLOW THE PODCAST ON ITUNES: https://bit.ly/47iOGGx 🎙️ FOLLOW THE PODCAST ON ALL PLATFORMS: https://bit.ly/4e0FgCe 📱 CONNECT ON MINNECT: https://bit.ly/3MGK5EE 👔 BET-DAVID CONSULTING: https://bit.ly/4d5nYlU 🎓 VALUETAINMENT UNIVERSITY: https://bit.ly/3XC8L7k 📺 JOIN THE CHANNEL: https://bit.ly/3XjSSRK 💬 TEXT US: Text “PODCAST” to 310-340-1132 to get the latest updates in real-time! SUBSCRIBE TO: @VALUETAINMENT @vtsoscast @ValuetainmentComedy @bizdocpodcast @theunusualsuspectspodcast ABOUT US: Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller “Your Next Five Moves” (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
Chapter 1: What shocking details does Laila Mickelwait reveal about Pornhub?
If you know me as a family guy, I got four kids. Not a fan of this stuff that's out there, especially underage stuff and anything having to do with human trafficking. Many times when we think about child trafficking, we forget the fact that there's human trafficking above 18 years old or revenge porn, a lot of that stuff that's going on right now as well.
Layla broken down in ways that I had no idea. This is what she does 24-7 following these stories, even to the point that the previous owner of Pornhub that ended up having tax issues reached out to her to tell her issues that's really going on on Pornhub.
Again, I want you to watch this for yourself and be the judge of whether this website should stay up or it should be taken down because that's what they're trying to do there. And I think you're going to see some insight. If you enjoyed the previous one that we did, I think you're going to love this one here today. Again, with Layla McElwain.
She was from Broward County, Florida. She was missing for an entire year, and she was finally found when her distraught mother was tipped off by a Pornhub user that he recognized her daughter on the site. She was found in 58 videos on Pornhub. So this is an email from the CEO. Can we tell MasterCard that it just slipped through the cracks? They want to know what we do.
Chapter 2: What evidence is there of underage trafficking on Pornhub?
Oh, they're communicating amongst each other as employees.
They're saying, what should we do? She couldn't be older than 13 or 14, and the video was obvious. And they left it up.
Under new ownership or old ownership?
This was the old ownership. But old ownership is the same VPs and executives that are there today, right? But there's not enforcement.
And why are they not being held accountable?
There's not enforcement.
I don't get that, though. Who wouldn't enforce that law? It's kids.
I want to address something that Solomon and his... partner said on this show i mean you could play what he actually said it's a it's a complete lie they exploit and they harvest the data of every single user that visits their site they're currently being sued in a class action and i think we will see full criminal prosecution of the owners of pornhub and i hope that we do
We get no value to hate.
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Chapter 3: What legal actions are being taken against Pornhub?
Then I started looking into what she's done, the interviews she's done, and I have, again, more questions about Pornhub. I thought it was the right thing to do to bring her here to give us a different perspective, not from the owner's perspective, but from the other side saying we need to do something about Pornhub. So with that being said, it's great to have you on.
Thank you so much for having me.
Of course. So tell me, when you watched it, what was it when you said, I'm going to reach out to Pat, I want to have a conversation? What part of the interview prompted you to want to do that?
From the beginning. I mean, from the beginning, it was clear that you were going to ask really good questions. And I want to give you credit for what you did as an outsider, looking at the situation and being able to go deep into the important questions. But what I realized is that you weren't getting the answers, that there was deflection, that there was lies.
And I said, look, we have to set the record straight because there's nothing more important than the truth. The truth is what is really going to set people free. It's what's going to bring change in this situation. It's what's going to bring justice. And I said, look, we need to actually tell the truth. And so that's why I reached out.
Fantastic. Now, for the audience to know the outcome of Traffic and Hub. So I went and read what the outcome is. Rob, if you can go up a little bit so we can read that.
Traffic and Hub is a decentralized global movement of individual survivors, organizations, and advocates from across a broader spectrum of political faith and non-faith, economic and ideological background, all uniting together for the single purpose of shutting down Pornhub. So it's not... getting them to use better technology like Yodi.
100%.
Tell me why. It's not to shut down the entire porn industry. It's to shut down... a corporate trafficker, Pornhub, because, like you just said, they have globally distributed and profited from the trauma of countless victims since 2007. And what justice looks like in this situation is not a slap on the wrist. A slap on the wrist does not deter future abusers.
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Chapter 4: What changes have been made under Pornhub's new ownership?
The Children of Pornhub.
Exactly. Yeah. So this is the article that is disturbing to read, but I want to read it to you because I think it's stuff that we need to... I got four kids, and I openly talk to my kids about this kind of stuff to prepare them for them because they're 12, 10, specifically to the 12 and 11-year-old, but the 8 and 3, soon I'll be talking to them as well. I want to read this to you.
So if you can zoom in, Rob, and we can read through this article together... So this is an article that they wrote. Exact date, Rob, if you can go a little bit higher.
2020.
Okay. So Pornhub prides itself on being the cheery, winking face of naughty. The website billboard a time score and provides snow plows to... Boston, okay, great. Next, the supposedly wholesome Pornhub attracts 3.5 billion visits a month, more than Netflix, Yahoo, or Amazon. This is when Yahoo was relevant that you would even mention it.
Pornhub rakes in money from almost 3 billion ad impressions a day. One ranking lists Pornhub as the 10th most visited website in the world. And then as you go lower, you'll see this. Yet another side of the company, its site is infested with rape videos.
It monetizes child rape, revenge pornography, spy cam videos of women showering, racist and misogynist content, footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags, a search for girls under 18, no space, or 14YO, no space. leads in each case to more than 100,000 videos. Most aren't of children assaulted, but too many are.
After a 15-year-old girl went missing in Florida, her mother found her on Pornhub and 58 sex videos, sexual assaults on a 14-year-old California girl were posted on Pornhub and were reported to authorities. I can go on and on and on reading this entire article. It's very disturbing. When this came out,
There's a story that came out on how Pornhub reacted to this, which if I'm not mistaken, they took down 10 million videos.
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Chapter 5: How does Pornhub's business model contribute to exploitation?
Of the things that you said the company has changed, oh, we no longer do that, oh, we no longer do this, oh, we no longer do that, great. How many of the old executives and management team that was there when this was happening are no longer there, that you came in, you cleaned house, you fired them, and they're still there? What do you know about the old executive team versus the new one?
I thought that was a brilliant question because when they purchased a hastily concocted pop-up private equity firm that called themselves Ethical Capital Partners, purchased a distressed asset in March of 2023. That was Pornhub and all of its sister sites. I want to, first of all, tell you that Pornhub is owned by a parent company that used to be called MindGeek.
Chapter 6: What are the implications of the recent takedown of videos?
They recently renamed it to ILO because they're trying to distance themselves from their toxic reputation as peddlers of crime.
Back in the day, so was MindGeek prior to ethical...
Yes. Then they renamed it. But this is a history. This is the trajectory of Pornhub from the beginning. So they started out as Mansef. When their owners got in trouble, it was over $6 million.
Mansef, Manwin, MindGeek.
Yes. Then they got in trouble with the law. Then they had to sell it. They sold it to a German entrepreneur named Fabian Thalmann, who actually is one of the people that came forward to help hold Pornhub accountable.
Former owner of Pornhub.
The former owner of Pornhub, Fabian Tillman. He's called the Zuckerberg of porn. So he purchased Pornhub, a distressed, sorry, a mansef. And then he purchased it. And his vision was to dominate the global porn industry. So what he did, he got a $362 million loan from Colbeck Capital. And he rolled up the entire porn industry under one company that he called ManWin.
Man Wynn dominated the global porn industry.
Fabian Thillman? Fabian, exactly. Okay, please continue. I'll follow. Man Wynn.
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Chapter 7: How does the moderation system at Pornhub work?
They lost Visa, MasterCard, Discover, PayPal, all cut ties with the site because they confirmed it was infested with videos of real sexual crime. They lost all mainstream advertisers and partners. Even KY Jelly and Weedmaps will not advertise on Pornhub anymore anymore. They were kicked off.
KY Jelly will not advertise on porn.
No, they will not because of what happened, because of the exposure that happened. Okay. And then they got sold again to Ethical Capital Partners, who has now renamed MindGeek ALO. So you could see a pattern. This is kind of what has happened over the years with Pornhub as they get in trouble. They try to rebrand. They get in trouble. They try to rebrand. And now this is the latest iteration.
But when...
When you say that, what is the pattern? The pattern is who the buyers are or the pattern is the new people come in and they're turned on by how much traffic these guys are getting and they try to clean it up and nobody can. What is the pattern?
It's not that they can't. They don't want to because of the business model. But I do want to go back to your question because the question was whose heads rolled? Who actually got fired from the company? Who left the company? And it was the CEO and the COO who are the minority shareholders, David Tassillo and Firas Antoon.
again two men that had hidden themselves from the public for so many years until they were finally exposed and had to face the public in a parliamentary inquiry in 2021, but they were forced to leave the company. And they're the only ones.
Why were they? Just because when a new company... Well, because of everything.
It was a disaster for them.
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Chapter 8: What needs to change for better protection against abuse on Pornhub?
Okay, they didn't do that.
When Elon Musk bought Twitter, let's just kind of use a case study. He bought Twitter at a time where Twitter was censoring, silencing, and doing all the things that America, even election was affected by some of the roles that Twitter played. And then we found out later on that the communication that we're having with the White House Elon buys it. They have 7,500 employees.
The next day he fires 50%. They're down to 3,750. The next week, 1,250 quits. So in a week or two, he went from 7,500 employees to 2,250 employees. So first thing you got to do. So I asked the question, who was there? So what percentage of the old employees and executives and directors and VPs that were there prior to ethical partners buying them to now?
Most of them are still, the only ones I'm aware of that are gone are Ross and Toon CEO, the COO, David Tosillo, and then Frank Mancina, who was the CFO.
Did you ever try to talk to those guys or no?
I mean, if you read this, they attacked hard. They were not interested in Congress. They did not want to solve the problem.
Tell us about it.
They wanted to attack those who were raising the problem. Not only me, but victims. Well, really quick, I just want to finish that point about the executives, because I think it's really important to know that today, the same men, I mean, the CPO, Kareem El-Marazi, so he was there from the beginning. He was there. He was promoted by Firas himself to his position.
Matt Colicci, where we have emails here that were uncovered in Legal Discovery talking about the way that Matt was discouraging taking down illegal content from the site when they were discovering it.
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