Aylo’s Deferred Prosecution Agreement Will Make Pornhub A Much Safer Platform. Here’s Why. 

Legal Issues

from the corporate-responsibility dept

Aylo Holdings, the parent company of Pornhub and some of the largest free and premium porn sites in the world, agreed to a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) to help resolve a Federal Bureau of Investigation probe into the platform’s conduct related to a sex trafficking scheme.

According to documents provided by the Department of Justice (DOJ), Aylo and its affiliates will be subject to an independent monitor for a total of three years. Aylo is also required to pay the U.S. government over $1.8 million in fines and must pay restitution and settle with the victims of the GirlsDoPorn sex trafficking scheme and any others.

After reviewing the 76-page deferred prosecution agreement, the compliance and independent monitoring provisions will augment the company’s already-overhauled trust and safety program that was implemented when ownership of Aylo changed hands to an ownership group of lawyers, former law enforcement executives, and criminal justice academics.

Consider the following, found throughout the deferred prosecution agreement: 

The company (Aylo) represents that it has implemented and will continue to implement a compliance and ethics program throughout its operations, including those of its affiliates, agents and joint ventures, and those of its contractors and subcontractors. …

In order to address any deficiencies in its policies and procedures, the company represents that it has undertaken, and will continue to undertake in the future, in a manner consistent with all of its obligations under this agreement, a review of its existing policies and procedures regarding its compliance with federal criminal law relating to unlawful monetary transactions and other federal criminal offenses relating to content posted online. If necessary and appropriate, the company will adopt new or modify existing internal controls, policies, and procedures in order to ensure that the company maintains a system of internal controls and compliance codes, standards, and procedures designed to detect and deter violations of such laws. 

The independent monitor must be approved by the Office of the Deputy Attorney General of the U.S. Department of Justice. Aylo has to retain the independent monitor for a period of three years from the execution of the deferred prosecution agreement. The company cannot be affiliated with the monitor or employ them for a period of two years after the DPA period ends. Basically, terms relating to the independent monitor are governed by regulations and guidance issued by the DOJ for companies and corporate entities charged with criminal activity, including unlawful financial enrichment. Aylo as an entity was charged with unlawful monetary transactions involving sex trafficking proceeds. The company admitted wrongdoing when it announced the DPA weeks ago.

Aylo published a press release on November 10 announcing the agreement between the company and U.S. federal prosecutors. Aylo explained, “We were troubled to learn that a production company used criminal means to produce its content and submitted consent documentation that we now know was obtained by fraud and coercion. … We are pleased that, after a thorough 30-month investigation, the government did not conclude that Aylo violated any federal criminal laws prohibiting sex trafficking. Aylo also did not engage in any illegal activities relating to material involving the sexual exploitation of minors or child pornography, and the government has not charged Aylo with doing so.” This is evidenced by the charge Aylo faces. However, the concept built into the DPA is meant to mitigate against the platform from intersecting with organized criminal activity in such a scope. In my own reporting on the GirlsDoPorn sex trafficking scheme, it was found GirlsDoPorn falsified records.

18 U.S. Code 2257 requires record-keeping for every single adult 18 years or older to be kept and maintained by studios through a custodian of records. Custodians of records are typically lawyers or experienced executives who’ve dealt with government compliance. It was revealed that the GirlsDoPorn sex trafficking scheme used fake identities for their custodians of records and retained records that were unlawfully amended or completely falsified. These actions carry significant criminal penalties. 

Several years ago, Pornhub’s parent firm, known as MindGeek at the time, had what they call a content partnership with a now-defunct pornography studio called GirlsDoPorn and a network of premium related websites like GirlsDoToys and MomPOV. In 2019, it was revealed the company that owned these popular imprints was actually a front for an organized criminal enterprise that capitalized off of the heinous victimization and exploitation of dozens of women. 

This revelation was a big deal in the industry, especially in the corners of the industry dealing with free and freemium content distribution. Michael Pratt, the ringleader of the GirlsDoPorn sex trafficking scheme, quickly fled and was placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. In 2022, he was arrested while hiding out in Spain and is awaiting extradition to the US. 

Anti-pornography campaigners saw this as a systemic issue across the entirety of the industry. The vast majority of the adult industry wants to show industry outsiders – including critics who want to censor and completely outlaw content that is overwhelmingly legal, consensual, and protected by the First Amendment – that a few criminals don’t define the whole sector. Tube sites, such as Pornhub, are extremely controversial in the adult entertainment industry. Until recently (a few years ago), Pornhub and its sister tube sites (RedTube, YouPorn, and the defunct Keezmovies) were rife with content uploaded by unverified users, copyright infringers, and the sites were full of content that was exploitative, criminal, and downright horrendous to human eyes.

In December 2020,  Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times published his “The Children of Pornhub” column. That Kristof column was used by many to justify claims that the entire industry was engaging in illegal behavior. The New Republic staff writer Melissa Gira Grant published a few days later a column entitled “Nick Kristof and the Holy War on Pornhub.” 

Grant explained that Kritof’s column failed to differentiate between unlawful activity and lawful activity, referring to another anti-porn activist named Laila Mickelwait. Mickelwait “has said porn is a root cause of sex trafficking, which it isn’t. For years, porn performers have tried to draw attention to the exploitation at the heart of the tube site business model—YouTube clones, which now dominate an online porn ecosystem that, not long ago and like much of online media, once offered independent creators more control over their work,” Grant writes. 

There is a clear distinction between legal and consensually produced pornographic materials and the illegal material that a criminal enterprise like GirlsDoPorn produced and profited from. It is a very ugly truth that Pornhub, under previous ownership, turned a blind eye to the activity of Pratt and his associates. However, there has been a significant change that these anti-pornography campaigners continue to overlook and dismiss.

Even though the criminal elements in this case were excised like a malignant tumor, Pornhub and its affiliated properties are now setup to prevent a repeat of that activity. In fact, this has been a key focus ever since the Kristof fallout. Shortly after Kristof’s column, they removed unverified uploads on the platform – millions of photos and images. They started reporting to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and the organization’s CyberTipline. With Aylo’s porn platforms in the past few years, they started reporting voluntarily to CyberTipline. Aylo supports the NCMEC’s TakeItDown program, which allows minors and adults who are the victims of image-based sexual abuse to work with the center and law enforcement anonymously to remove the non-consensual material. The site is also a sponsor of StopNCII.org, which is a similar tool that caters to removing non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII). They also go as far as openly supporting sex workers’ rights and reform in porn. 

Some evidence of Aylo’s reform efforts can be actually be seen in the filings of the New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez. He recently sued Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, for widespread child sexual abuse material and exploitation. In a filing with a federal district court, Torrez says that Pornhub and OnlyFans do more to curtail child sexual abuse material than the most popular social networks in the world. Detractors of the online pornography industry will not recognize this, though, because they are still obsessed with censoring legal material that is, in fact, protected by the First Amendment. What troubles me most is the fact that anti-pornography campaigners simply target a singular brand. There are platforms that are much worse than Pornhub and lack the overhauled trust and safety program that Aylo has instilled. 

Michael McGrady covers the legal and tech side of the online porn business, among other topics. He is the politics and legal contributing editor for AVN.com.

Filed Under: adult content, deferred prosecution agreement, doj, porn, trafficking
Companies: aylo, girlsdoporn, mindgeek, pornhub