Pornhub’s parent company wants to fix porn. Here’s how | Spotlight

And Solomon Freedman joins me now from Ottawa thank you so much for being here appreciate it well thank you very much for having me you know before your team acquired pornhub’s parent company it had been through a a very rough patch a New York Times investigation found that PornHub hosted child porn and

Non-consensual content dozens of women sued mindgeek shortly after that saying that the company’s profits uh off the exploitation of women uh what made you want to buy a company with that kind of track record well what we did obviously before acquiring it was we we we took a very

Deep and comprehensive look at the nature of the company itself right we we put aside what we had read in media what I think all of us had read um and we went into to look for ourselves um you know particularly with me my background as criminal defense Council I took that

Job very seriously and my focus was to look at the company as it existed at this point right we’re talking about 2022 into 2023 and and to look at what was it about what was its values um and more importantly what were it trust and safety processes like and and what we

Found I have to say you know and I speak I speak for the for the ownership team you know really really surprised us that there was this massive Gulf this huge disparity between the public perception and the truth as we found it um which you know has now really been

Corroborated as as as the platform has continued to be a leader in trust and safety we found a few things uh first of all the platform had implemented it’s called the verified uploader program which means that no person can be eligible to upload content and until their age ID and consent has been

Verified they use both uh automated biometric means it’s then reviewed by human beings just to be able to be eligible to upload right and you imagine that in contrast like a Facebook or or a Twitter where anyone can create an account with an email address or a phone

Number in some cases and there’s no accountability uh in terms of uh uploading content and ensuring agid and consent that was just a starting point uh we then looked at the the moderation program uh this company employs a substantial team of fulltime moderators no content goes live on the platform

Until and unless it is reviewed and approved by moderators once again compare that to the mainstream video sharing platforms or content sharing platforms you know nobody would use Facebook if they couldn’t immediately upload say you know a picture of their aunt’s carrot cake that doesn’t happen uh on alos platforms full moderation is

Required so when we saw this these are processes that don’t exist anywhere now it’s very interesting because in many ways the rest of the internet the rest of the social media world is starting to catch up as they’re starting to understand the need for trust and safety for moderation to keep abusive and

Hateful Material off the platform in our view Alo was really ahead of the curve and we saw great potential there we saw great potential to use these tools that had been developed for trust and safety on platforms like PornHub uh to use them to assist law enforcement to use them in

Assisting other Platforms in scanning and detecting illegal content so we saw a real diamond in the rough it just required an examination of what was actually going on uh adult entertainment carries a longstanding stigma of Shame uh how do you navigate that with one of the most recognizable brands in the

Industry yeah I think that’s a that’s a it’s a great question you know and I I look at it as follows and maybe I bring my legal background to this as well um adult entertainment content is not only legal in Canada uh it’s also constitutionally protected it’s constitutionally protected but what

Needs to happen is it has to be done right um and I think that when it’s talked about openly publicly and transparently and us as a new ownership group are very much willing to do that we engage with media we engage with politicians we meet with Regulators uh

We meet with law enforcement then that shame starts to dissipate right shame comes from a place of of of stigma and silence and the more open you are about it the more we can have really productive conversations you can’t have productive conversations about the future of Regulation about protecting

Young people about protecting the vulnerable about working hand inand with law enforcement and advocacy organizations unless you’re willing to speak about it publicly and that was a real see change I think for the industry and we’re seeing the the signs of that now the benefits that we’re able to have

These open conversations in my view for the benefit not only of the users of the uploaders of adult platforms but for the benefit of of the internet as a whole the federal government recently taed an online harms Bill part of which targets pornography platforms like PornHub uh

You know if pass this would require sites to take down content like child sexual abuse material or content posted without consent how does your company plan to meet those requirements so let me be clear about this I do not see this as legislation that in any way targets uh legal

Pornography sites uh it regulates them in a very positive way in our view by the way just the first step in regulation we already meet or exceed every single proposed piece of legislation uh that’s contained in that bill which is a number of pieces uh we already report all suspected illegal

Content we already take down material uh that is identified as being potential child sex abuse material in fact I’m proud to say that on the bottom of every single one of our pages on PornHub is and all of our content sharing platforms is something called a Content removal

Request form as of today and this has been in in the in in place now for some years prior to our acquisition even as of today any individual who identifies content as potential child sex abuse material or potential non-consensual intimate imagery all they have to do is

Identify it as such and it is taken down immediately pending review and I want to be very clear about that that’s not a flag that we’ll get to it when we get to it not at all this is take down first ask questions later there is more that

Needs to be done from a regulatory perspective our industry is not worried about regulation I can speaking on behalf of ethical Capital Partners we own Alo uh the parent company of PornHub we welcome it there and we have been being very clear and active about this speaking to politicians speaking to

Regulators that more steps are required in order to keep the internet SAFE Federal conservatives have also proposed requiring age ver ation on porn sites to prevent miners from viewing adult content uh what are your thoughts on that because the similar laws have already come into effect in several us States including Louisiana and

Utah so obviously we do not want any young people able to access our platform something else that I’m very proud of since the acquisition of ethical Capital Partners today when you go to Pornhub for the first time in Canada uh before seeing any explicit content you get a link immediately to our parental

Controls we have made that front and center but more has to happen we support age verification that is effective at protecting children now what has been proposed you know in bills in other jurisdictions and in the private members bill in Canada um is age verification where individuals have to give their ID

To millions of porn sites in order to access content we know that’s ludicrous we know it doesn’t work we’ve tested it in other jurisdictions we know that adults won’t provide their IDs to to uh pornography sites they will simply go elsewhere what we are supportive of and

And some people are very surprised to hear the ownership group of PornHub saying this our is that age verification has to be done at the device level let me be clear about that it’s our proposal that every device we’re talking about devices made by Apple Google and Microsoft the uh operating system

Manufacturers that can basically control access to the entire internet should be blocked against accessing adult by default the default when you have one of those devices that they can’t access adult unless and until uh the user has verified their age on that device device-based age verification works the

Technology is available today we just need a little legislative will and social will to make it happen Mr fredman appreciate your time that is Solon Freedman joining us from Ottawa my pleasure

Solomon Friedman, partner and vice-president of compliance at Ethical Capital Partners, the owner of Pornhub’s parent company, discusses the measures they’re taking to develop trust and safety on the platform. Friedman says there is more that needs to be done from a regulatory perspective to make online adult content safe.

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