SIO270: NYT's Kristof Duped by Christian Anti-Porn Group

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 270. I'm Thomas Smith and got a really interesting episode coming at you today. I'll let Eli Bosnick, who I'm sure most of you have heard and know and love, do the explaining. But Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times wrote an opinion piece about Pornhub alleging that there's a lot of child trafficking and also underage porn videos, all kinds of bad stuff. Eli will detail it. The problem is despite him being somebody that I generally respect and read, he seems to have been perhaps duped by a Christian anti-porn group, and it's really, really an interesting topic. I will note, you know, there's discussion of porn, there is discussion of sexual assault, at least insofar as it's alleged, and stuff like that.

0:01:23 Thomas: So, you now, if that's something you're sensitive to, you don't want to hear, we discuss terms and stuff. We don't discuss anything in gory detail or anything like that, but terms are thrown around that you can imagine. So that's a content note for you. But let's get on over to Eli and talk about this really interesting and perhaps. Really harmful article.

0:01:56 Thomas: And I am joined by Eli Bosnick. First time on the show. How you doing, Eli?

0:02:04 Eli: Serious somethings? Is this? There's an inquiry going on somewhere?

0:02:08 Thomas: Yeah. I don't know what podcast this is for. I just record stuff and then I make a new podcast for it later. So we'll see what podcast This Ends Up Being. Oh, how you doing buddy?

0:02:18 Eli: I'm good, I'm good. Now I want you to just put this on the shoosh.

0:02:23 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Well, at least they'll get something then. They'd probably love it. Right. So yeah, super amazing, natural transition to a disturbing topic. So December 4th, Nicholas Kristof, columnist that I've always admired on the New York Times op-ed section, he released an article called The Children of Pornhub, and the subtitle is, subheading is, Why Does Canada Allow This Company to Profit Off of Videos of Exploitation and Assault? And the article is really grim. Him. I would actually warn, you know, content warning on the article, just the, the, he talks about a lot of abuse and trafficking and, um, minors and, and rape and all, all kinds of awful stuff. Like all the worst stuff you could think about when it comes to a porn hub and what might be going on there.

0:03:13 Thomas: Um, and, uh, it's pretty disturbing. Like there there's, it's, it's a very alarming article. Reading it is not really fun. It's a, it's it's all around crap. All around disturbing crap. And it caused quite a stir and actually to the point, I'm sure you'll get to this, to the point where Pornhub actually announced they were going to do a number of things that Kristoff recommended in the article. But what's interesting is as grim as this all sounds, you brought to my attention on Twitter that it seems as though some of the sourcing on this is like really suspect. Why don't you go into it? I won't spoil the thing before you there.

0:03:20 Eli: So yeah I'll give the TLDR, and I, I want to give Kristoff the maximum amount of credit here. I wantto say that he has good, good intentions and did his absolute best in researching this article. I believe, and again, I will go into detail in all of this, but from my research and from the research I've been able to cull from the internet, and I've got tons and tons of links in my notes for Thomas to double check my sources and all that stuff, that what happened is Kristoff was accidentally fooled by a Christian anti-porn, abolitionist church called Exodus Cry into believing a bunch of anti-sex work talking points about Pornhub.

0:04:36 Eli: And he repeated those in this article, some of them baselessly, and I'm going to go into that. And the result was the loss of income for thousands upon thousands of sex workers with no recourse. This is, this is really, really bad what happened for sex workers. So there's a couple of things I sort of want to lay out at the beginning, right? The first is that if this article were legit, right, if someone had discovered that Pornhub, one of the most visited websites on the internet, was filled with child porn and videos of sexual assault, this article would have been made by a reporter not in the same section where Tom Cotton called for the death of peaceful protesters and where Bari Weiss called Dave Rubin the future of intelligence or whatever it is.

0:05:29 Eli: And I point that out not to be bitchy, because that's a super bitchy thing to say, but as I get going, hopefully as I reveal some of the sources and some of the sort of side angles that this information comes from, when you wonder how this possibly got past this it's because it's in the opinion section right It is, it is not something that's been put together by the New York Times journalistic team, and that really matters, um, for a lot of the claims that he's going to make. So that's that's the first thing

0:05:47 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, to clarify and jump off of that, I'm sure that most of the audience would be aware of this, but there is a major difference in the opinion section vetting and stuff like that versus the actual reporting. Is And Bad or wrong or something. It's just there is a difference there. And oftentimes when you see people complaining about like, "Ah, burn the New York Times, unsubscribe in the New York Times," usually they're ranting about, you know, Brett, Rhett Stevens, very justifiably, by the way, or somebody, you know, who publishes some crap opinion, you know, Ross Douthat or something. But like, that's a very different thing from the reporting side. And now that you mentioned it, it is a little weird. Like if this was a truly a sting operation to expose a ton of child porn on the most visited website in the world for one of them, you, it does make you wonder why that that wouldn't be a main headline, like a big news, actual story. Interesting.

0:06:50 Eli: Yes Absolutely, and it should be pointed out that a ton of other news organizations have reported this as the New York Times reported, which is very different than someone published a column in their opinion section that says X, right? And again, as a result of that, real financial legal decisions have been made that have, as I'm going to point out at the end, affected thousands and thousands of lives with no recourse.

Point number two, and maybe the most important point I want to make at the outset here is that I am not here to defend porn hub okay? Porn hub in my opinion, has done some absolutely terrible stuff. They have contributed to sex trafficking. They have knowingly harmed sex, sex workers by allowing piracy on their platform, but they have not done the things that Christoph claims they have done, right? The claims that Christophe makes are anti, anti-porn propaganda from a Christian group, which I'm going to get into. And they are aimed very specifically at being able to apply to any porn site or any site that hosts adult performers. And spoiler alert for the end of this, we can expect this argument to be used on other platforms like OnlyFans and ManyVids and, where you and I make our living and feed our our children thomas

0:08:15 Eli: Patreon

0:08:15 Thomas: Oh, don't tell them about. Oh yeah. Okay. Sorry. I thought you're going to tell them where, where to find all our picks.

0:08:16 Eli: Oh me and thomas's only fans that's right get it going we

0:08:20 Thomas: Yeah. It's the only way it's actually talking about conspiracies. We don't actually make any money from podcasting. It'S all from that.

0:08:26 Eli: Don't make any money it's all from our foot porn um

0:08:27 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. I didn't think about the fact that, you know, many sex workers, let alone at a time when I bet a lot more people due to our horrible society and Republicans not allowing any meaningful response to the pandemic, but a lot of people are probably out of work right now and might have been even more important than ever that people be able to make a living in this way.

0:08:31 Eli: Yeah So, to be clear, the suggestions that Christoph makes, uh, and the solutions that Pornhub has implemented will not reduce child porn, they will- we'll not reduce sex trafficking on Pornhub. What they have done, though, yeah,

0:09:07 Thomas: Well, that I'm a little skeptical of. Well, we should get to the details because I don't know if I, okay.

0:09:10 Eli: I'll get into the details of that. But what I will conclude is what they have done is they've taken, again, thousands of sex workers. They've taken away their income, their complete income, a couple weeks before Christmas and made those people incredibly vulnerable to sex trafficking, because now they are on a website without any way to get paid but with anybody's ability to contact them for the only thing they're known for on that website, which is sex work. So I'm gonna get back to that, but that's like the sort of, that's the top line, TLDR. Um, the next point I want to make is that Kristoff, again, I, I want to give him all good faith here, accidentally repeats multiple false claims made by a Christian anti-porn propaganda group that would never have been cleared if they were made about any other publisher or website, right?

0:10:06 Eli: So these claims are specifically designed to hurt sex workers and sex work in general, not Pornhub. And this play has been run before and will be run again. It's been run as the SESTA and FOSTA laws, which were, again, anti-trafficking laws that were, were touted in the very same way, this was about child porn, about trafficking. And the result was the loss of income for sex workers and the loss of protection for sex workers.

I, uh, the first point I want to make, and I've mentioned it a couple of times, times, is this Christian group, right, Exodus Cry, that I believe is behind most if not all of this article, uh, and I can go into why I believe that, but he references them, uh, three times in the main article and then two more times in the follow-up article he did the following week, um, without ever mentioning all of the stuff that I'm just about to talk about, and that I think will agree when I'm done sort of spelling this all out, is problematic, or at least really, really fucking weird. So the first reference he makes to trafficking hub slash exodus cry is a sentence early on in the article. He says, Pornhub profited this fall from a video of a naked woman being tortured by a gang of men in China. That's his quote. And the source he has for that is a tweet by a woman named Layla Micklewaite. Now, Layla's tweet has a few problems. First of all, it's four screenshots with a description that is not backed up by those screenshots, right?

In fact, she fails to mention that the men in the video are wearing military uniforms. And, again, I'm not here to defend any genre of porn that abuses women, but like it or not, the military has non-consensual sex with a prisoner is a robust genre of porno in Asia.

0:11:11 Thomas: Yeah,

0:11:56 Eli: It also contains no links or no evidence that that video is from Pornhub. Now, you might be thinking to yourself, oh, of course what you're going to do, link to a video of someone being assaulted. I want to talk about, unlike Kristoff, who I want to give all credit to, I want to talk to why Layla might lie, because when photo, when you check her Twitter profile, you see that she is the founder of traffickinghub.com, which, which is a swanky website that makes lots of similar claims to Kristoff's article, and I believe fed most of the claims that Kristoff makes in the article to him. But if we dig a little deeper, we can see that TraffickingHub.com, while it claims to be entirely separate, is entirely funded by a church called Exodus Cry.

0:12:42 Eli: Now, we could do an entire episode about Exodus Cry and the crazy shit they do, but I, I've included links to, like, if you want to go down the rabbit hole, in my notes about all the stuff that they do, but here's, here's the top line about Exodus Cry. Exodus Try does their best to pretend to be a non-profit dedicated to helping traffic women. Exodus Cried does their best to pretend to be a nonprofit dedicated to helping trafficked women.

But if you're unfamiliar with the practice of churches pretending to to be a thing externally while very much not being that thing internally, boy, oh boy, Exodus Cry is a place to start. Don't get me wrong, like, they aren't good at pretending not to be at church, and you don't have to take my word for this. If you go on their website, their website has a whole page about how you can pray away sex trafficking.

Um, but they are an outgrowth and, again, funded by the International House of Prayer, or IHOP, who listeners might remember for being sued by the pancake restaurant, but you also might remember them for funding and supporting the Kill the Gays bill in Uganda. Or maybe you've heard of their leader, Mike Bickle, who has claimed that gay people would face, quote, flaming missiles of the evil one, and has said that, quote, gay marriage agenda is, quote, rooted in the depths of hell. He has said that Adolf Hitler was a hunter sent by God to punish the Jews, and that Oprah Winfrey is a foot servant to the Antichrist.

Now again, Exodus Cry publicly has tried to distance themselves from IHOP for obvious reasons. But in 2018, and again I'm going to quote from the Daily Beast article here, I've included the link, Open Democracy reported that Exodus Cry has been listed as a related tax-exempt organization on IHop's tax filings in their most recent

0:13:45 Thomas: Yeah, right,

0:14:36 Eli: Returns, that both groups shared a director and that Nolo, the head of Exodus Cry, was listed as one of IHOP's prayer leaders until 2017, right? But, but don't worry, Exodus Cry isn't just connected, bigots actually are bigots. Exodus Cry made a stir a couple of years ago when they put, a and I'm using scare quotes here, documentary on Netflix about how Tinder leads to young teens being kidnapped. Their website, Exodus Cries website, also includes an FAQ page where they clarify that they are not bigots just because their founder said that he thinks marriage is between a man and a woman on his private social media. Normal 501c3s don't have those pages. They are also openly porn and sex work abolitionists.

0:15:21 Eli: So to be clear, they do not want safe porn. They do not want safe sex work. They, because of their belief in Jesus Christ, heaven and hell, want all sex work to be abolished. And the very first thing they ask you to do when you go to their website is take their pledge, which reads as follows. Quote, you support human dignity and realize and recognize people are never commodities to be bought and sold.

You oppose any legislation which seeks to legitimize pimping, brothel keeping, or sex buying. You recognize that ending demand for commercial sex, including pornography consumption, is the key to ending sex trafficking and prostitution. Side note, the opposite of that is true. You believe that every person should be free. I guess they mean everyone except the people who want to buy and sell sex. Um, and I want to do a little quick correction, that's actually not the first thing they ask you to do when you go to their website. The first thing they ask you to do when you go to their website is give them money. But they will also sell you an intervention manual bundle for your church for the low, low price of $300. Again, this is on Exodus Cry. That bundle teaches you how to, and again, their website, go to strip clubs and tell people that they are being human trafficked. They also have a whole bunch of videos on their website about why prostitution shouldn't be legalized. They've contributed to a bunch of, they have Trump ties, again, I have a ton of links that I will share with Thomas in

0:16:17 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, let

0:16:48 Eli: My notes

0:16:48 Thomas: Me jump in. I, even if you are completely, so my experience was, I read this article, I didn't click on anything, and and I want to highlight this because I imagine this might be what a lot of people would do in this situation, or it might be one of the reasons that this kind of thing could be wrong and nobody would care or think to challenge it. Like, people, you know, like me, might read this article, see all these claims of, like, here's an awful thing of a woman, blah, blah, blah, and I'm just like, well, I'm not clicking on that link.

Like, well, I don't, okay, I'll take your word for it. But now that you've said that about this first link, it is, I can't believe how absurd it is that this would be his source in a New York Times op-ed. Nicholas Kristof, I mean, this is a, again, a writer I really respect. He says, I just want to just emphasize what you've already said. Pornhub profited this fall from a video with the link of a naked woman being tortured by a gang of men in China. So that's the link.

You click on that and it is this person's account who you've made clear, this whole exodus, know, cry thing. God. And That's the screenshots show, as you say, men in military fatigues. But it's like it's a set. Like you can tell that like there's props involved, you Know, like there is.

0:17:21 Eli: Exactly

0:18:09 Thomas: So are you telling me that spontaneously men got in their military fatigues? And one guy's wearing it. By the way, you can see he has military fatigues, but also a really nice watch. You can see in one of the screenshots. And by the way they're blacked out. So if you're worried about like looking at this or something, there's sensor bars over stuff. But anyway, that strikes me as like maybe not believable. Like just – that is incredible that this would be in the New York Times. And again, like you say, that's why it's in the opinion section and not in the main paper. This is a horrible source. Like regardless – and I want to say I'm still agnostic about a lot of this. Like it might be – even if a lot OF these claims were right and maybe they are. Like even if – as you'll go through it, I remain kind of agnostic about this.

But even if there are a lot Of claims that were true, using this as a source and just just uncritically linking to a religious fundamentalist who's anti-porn and wants you to pray it away and all this stuff. Again, the proof for that claim, as you emphasized, screenshots that don't show Pornhub in it, I mean, maybe it is from PornHub, I don't know, that are obviously a staged thing.

0:18:22 Eli: No yeah

0:19:21 Thomas: There's no chance this is a real event and that's your source? I mean that's outrageous. That's what I expect from Tom Cotton's op-ed. Yeah

0:19:32 Eli: Um, and and look, I I want to give credit here. If he had just mentioned that once, okay, everyone makes mistakes, we all get the occasional Yik Yak deep cut callback, um, but he mentions them over and over again without ever acknowledging that they're a porn abolitionist church. So later in the article, he cites Traffic Hub's petition to shut the site down entirely. Even later he says, quote, "An organization called Trafficking Hub, led by an activist named Leila Mickleway, documents abuses and calls for the site to shut down," again end quote. He never mentions that these are churches, that they are porn abolitionists, ever, okay.

In the follow-up article, Christoph recommends Exodus Cry again, saying, quote, "Activist groups like Trafficking Hub are demanding action," end quote, this time with a hot link to their website, which, as I mentioned, does not mention that they are a church unless you are really looking for it. But this is where it gets super scary. Again, I'm going to quote. So this was my big revelation, and then when I was checking my sources last night, Daily Beast put an article that is this point. So I'm gonna quote the Daily article, but I found this first. Just

0:20:41 Eli: For the record

0:20:41 Thomas: You've all you've been telling me about this for about a week so I'll give you credit I'll be I believe you wait

0:20:42 Eli: Yeah yeah thank you So this, this is the quote from the Daily Beast article, quote, "In the immediate aftermath of Christoph's piece, Micklewaite, so this isthe head of Trafficking Hub, started a GoFundMe fundraiser to raise money for one of the women he interviewed, the page which he cited, which cited the article, set a twenty thousand dollar goal, promising that, quote, one hundred percent of all the funds will go directly to victims, end quote." Christoph links to this GoFundMe in his follow-up piece. Three days later, the campaign had raised $38,000, adjusted its goal to $50,000 and changed its phrasing to, quote, "all funds received will go directly to support victims and will be managed and dispersed by the Rebecca Bender Initiative, a leading organization dedicated to assisting survivors of commercial sexual exploitation and trafficking."

0:21:36 Eli: Notably, Rebecca Bender sits on the board of Exodus Cry. By so, by December 10th, the GoFundMe had raised 75 000 and amended the language to include an organization called Elevate Academy. The organization is also run by Rebecca Bender and is a partner of Exodus Cry. So here's the thing, their gofund me changed from "100% of all funds will go directly to victims" to now going to the, the Rebecca Bender Initiative, and Elevate Academy. So I checked out Elevate Academy. And Elevate Academy, again, like Exodus Cry, looks legit when you first visit their website. They claim that, quote, "our specialized school provides support and education so survivors of human trafficking can heal, thrive, and pursue their dreams."

0:22:24 Eli: Awesome. Love schools for survivors of human traffic. But do you actually go to their page of their website about their courses? The first course they offer is called Deeper Levels of Healing a faith-based course and When you go to their staff page, um, aside from the two mentors they have on staff, they also have Lauren Hall as their prayer director, because Elevate Academy is much like Exodus Cry, a church pretending to be something it's not. Right, as of right now, just to be clear, every penny that goes into that GoFundMe, right, for one of the victims of sex trafficking mentioned in this article, that is so horrifying, right, that money goes to that church. Or, at the very least, they will give some of the money to the victim and the church is going to get the rest. But

0:22:37 Thomas: Man.

0:23:15 Thomas: So by the way. So in the follow up article, and I'm sure some people have read this and were happy about it. It seemed cool to me. It's saying like, you know, it has the main girl who was the face of the the first article that he wrote. She was kind of the cover photo. And it says like, oh, she'll now be able she's in it. She's checked into a hotel, long term hotel because of this. Is that this fundraiser?

0:23:15 Eli: No.

0:23:39 Eli: Apparently not I mean I I don't know what what I know is that gofundme has to tell you who the money's going to and what gofund me tells you right now when you click on that link is that it's going to the Rebecca Bender Initiative and Elevate Academy.

0:23:40 Thomas: Oh, OK.

0:23:53 Thomas: So I click on that fundraiser. It's up to ninety three thousand. And yeah, so I mean, at the very least, she's gotten some of the money at least. So that's good. But but yeah, I would I would have assumed she got all of it. I didn't know this was going to a church. And then also.

0:24:01 Eli: Yeah, I hope. I think most casual readers will assume she's getting all of it. The picture is of her. Ithink most casual readers and contributors to that GoFundMe would be very surprised to find that a church slash porn abolition group is receiving any of the money from that Go Fund Me. Ithink it's fair to say. Um And in my experience, again, just reporting on what churches do, I would bet on my left nut, the one that makes boys, that the church school sees the majority of those funds, and that the young woman who they're supposed to be going to sees an incredibly small percentage, right?

0:24:28 Thomas: Yeah.

0:24:48 Thomas: Yeah. I mean, she's not in any position to know much about what's going on or complain one way or the other. You know, like this is someone who has been horribly disenfranchised, was living in her car, you know, dropped out of school at a young age. I mean, so this is what I'm saying is I don't know for sure the setup here, but this is someone who it strikes me would be in be in a very a vulnerable position and it wouldn't surprise me if, you know, it was kind of easy for bad actors to take advantage. Oh my God, this person's in Sacramento. Sacramento. Layla McElwain. That's the, that person. Who was that? Which one was that

0:24:56 Eli: Yeah that's that's the head of exodus cry and trafficking hub

0:25:27 Thomas: The head of Exodus cry is in Sacramento. Oh my God. Okay. I'm going to go find her.

0:25:30 Eli: Okay yeah get a counter interview um So that's a little background on Exodus Cry and Elevate Academy and a lot of the source and sort of information behind this story. But maybe you're listening to this podcast and you're thinking, okay, I agree that uncritically citing a Christian psyop is a bad thing to do, but what about the actual points he makes? So I want to get into the actual points. He makes right. The ones that you are agnostic about, right? So antidote, so with the exception of the few anecdotes that make up the faces of the article, which are admittedly horrifying, right, Christoph's main point in the article is that he personally does not know which videos on porn hub are child pornography, therefore porn hub is filled with child porn. Now the problem is, we actually do know how much child porn was found on porn hub by the agencies and workers who research this stuff and fight it.

0:25:35 Thomas: Yeah.

0:26:31 Eli: And so does Kristof, because he mentions that in his article. Quote, again, this is towards the end of the New York Times op-ed piece. Quote. Facebook removed 12.4 million images related to child exploitation in a in a 3-month period this year. Twitter closed 264,000 accounts in six months last year for engaging in sexual exploitation of children. By contrast, Pornhub notes that the Internet Watch Foundation, an England-based non-profit that combats child sexual abuse imagery, reported only 118 instances of child sexual abuse injury on its site over three years, end quote. And instead of accepting those numbers, Kristoff, again, without evidence, evidence assumes that means that there is more child porn on Pornhub that these third-party NGOs just haven't found.

0:27:25 Eli: Again, quoting from his article, the Internet Watch Foundation couldn't explain why its figure for Pornhub was so low. Perhaps it's because people on Pornhub are inured to the material and unlikely to report it. But if you know what to look for, it's possible to find hundreds of apparent child sexual abuse videos on Pornhub in 30 minutes, end quote. So I want to be clear. Kristoff's claim there is that the third party group whose job it is to find child porn only found a hundred and, 118 pieces of child porn over 3 years on Pornhub. But he, Nick Kristoff, found hundreds of videos in 30 minutes. More importantly, we do know why those numbers are so low, and again, I am not looking to celebrate porn hub okay, porn hub does a lot of bad stuff, but this, this is what porn hub does right, and I want to talk about what porn hug does right, because it's what Exodus Cry is attacking, right? So first point, the reason, and there's links to all of this in my notes, which, which Thomas can pass along.

0:28:26 Thomas: Yeah. I'll just, I think I'll have to publish all of them. Yeah,

0:28:27 Eli: Yeah. Yeah. You will not be violating my copyright, just so you know, if you publish my notes. So let's talk about the things that Pornhub does right, because this is what sex work positive websites should be doing.

0:28:44 Thomas: Can I, can I pause you there? I'm sorry. I, how, how is Pornhub a sex work positive thing? I mean, you've mentioned that a few times, but, uh, and, and I just don't know. I don't, I don'T really use Pornhub personally. Um, do they, can the users make money off that? Or I thought, or do they get a share like of the ad revenue or something?

0:29:01 Eli: Yes. So verified users can create fan clubs, which is kind of like an OnlyFans, Uh, directly on Pornhub, and since it is the largest porn website in the world by a huge margin, it is where a tremendous amount of their, um, income comes from comparably. So to use a metaphor that you and I would understand PornHub is Patreon and they make some other money on like OnlyFans which for us would be like PayPal right you would probably get a couple of PayPal donations a month right Right. So, so that's, that is the service that Pornhub provides for sex workers. Um, and this is the stuff they've done, right? Again, I'm going to get into the stuff They've done wrong, but this is the Stuff They've Done Right. One, the reason why there is so little child porn on PornHub and Christophe does not see fit to mention this. PornHub is the only big media platform that has human moderators screening every video for child porn before they publish it. A human being watches that video on Fast Forward before it goes up on Pornhub

0:29:07 Thomas: Okay. Okay. Okay. Gotcha.

0:30:06 Thomas: Jeez.

0:30:06 Eli: For every video on Pornhub. Yeah, imagine that job. Two, PornHub has a team of trusted flaggers, which allows NGOs to flag multiple pieces of content at once, and more importantly, and this is a quote from PornHub's website, effect immediate disabling of all valid URLs reported pending review, end quote. What that That means is, their trusted flagger program, which consists of anti-sex trafficking NGOs, get to take down content before Pornhub reviews it, which is vital. These policies were in place before Kristoff's article. Three, PornHub has a content removal request form for revenge porn or non-consensual content on every page, every picture, every video on their website, as well they should.

And when Pornhub is made aware of non-consensual content or revenge porn, anything like that, they tag it on four different digital systems so that it can't be re-uploaded to their site, right? Right. Again, not a fan of Pornhub, but these are good, useful policies that protect sex workers and were in place before Kristoff's article came out. These policies are what stop child porn, not the suggestion Kristoff makes later. The suggestion Kristoffs makes later were probably suggested to him by Exodus Cry and will do, as I've said, more harm. Yeah

0:30:54 Thomas: And Interesting. Interesting. Well, so just want to know before we get too exhausted from padding Pornhub on the back. I mean, those are all a result of lawsuits I met. Like they probably, because early on, I don't think they did any of this stuff and there was like revenge porn and all these problems and they got sued and, you know, so it's not like they're saints, but it sounds like they already had some protections in place before this article.

0:31:46 Eli: Again right again so to be clear I am not saying porn hub did this out of the kindness of their heart. Porn hub is a bad company that has done bad things, and sex workers have been asking them not to do it for years and years, and they've been ignoring it, right? These are safe procedures they had in place, right, that are best in class industry standards that every website that works with sex workers should have in place, and they are the reason why there was that little child porn on Pornhub when it was reviewed by a third-party thing.

0:31:58 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, It's that part of the article stood stood out to me as well, that you mentioned earlier, where he was like, oh, for some reason they only found like 118 or whatever it was, and I don't know why, but anyway, here's the rest of my article. It seemed a little weird, like if anything, it's got to be, I mean, because the ones they're flagging on Facebook and Twitter, you know, like that's a weird, I don't, that's a ton, nobody's complaining, well, maybe people are complaining about that, but like, that was a, that was the number, was was so much larger than the Pornhub hub number, um, it is weird for him to just brush that off like, well, I guess people aren't looking or something. Yeah.

0:33:00 Eli: Well, and I'll tell you exactly why he brushes that off, because it would be ridiculous to say MasterCard, Visa, and Discover should sever their financial connections to Facebook because there were 22 million pieces of child porn on it. But because this is a porn site, and Kristoff is an older guy who's not particularly internet savvy and almost certainly was given some of these points by a church group pretending to be a non-profit, right? It's just safe to assume in Kristoff's mind that, oh, of course there's child porn on Pornhub. It's a porn site. Who abuses children? Pornographers, right. That's a bias that's very easily played into.

0:33:13 Thomas: Yeah and and so much what do you think happened

0:33:42 Eli: I

0:33:42 Thomas: Because so much of the article is like I search, you know, you search for like under 18, all these search terms, you know, and then he's like, oh, a hundred thousand video times. Is it just because, like, I know obviously people make these videos that you, while there's obviously going to be abuse and non-consent somewhere, and in porn at all times, um, there's also a lot of people making these videos with the intention for them to appear as though they're younger girls or whatever, for the sake of the the viewers who have this fetish or whatever. So is he just pulling up that kind of video and thinking it's actual kids or something? What do you think is happening here?

0:34:18 Eli: Have to assume that the answer is yes. So I'm going to read the actual quote that you just mentioned. Quote, a search for girls under 18, no space, or 14YO, leads to in each case more than 100,000 videos. Most aren't of children being assaulted, but too many are. End quote. So we know, again, over the last three years, 118 of those videos have been children being assaulted. What he's implying with that sentence is that when you search for girls under 18 you get a hundred thousand results, some of which are child born, right? I searched for underage girls on allrecipes.com, it yielded 38 results. It would be criminally insane to suggest some of those videos are child pornography right and again as he admits a search on Google for underage girls yields 50,200,000 results.

Again, it would be nuts for me to write an article about Google saying the children of Google and then end that sentence by saying most of the videos on Google aren't of children being assaulted, but too many are, right? He later says, quote, it is a site, its site is infested with rape videos. It monetizes child child rapes, revenge pornography, spy cam videos of women showering, racist and misogynist content, and footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags. End quote. These are huge claims. Huge claims, right? Which, by the way, are illegal, and you would think would be picked up by the main news team over at the New York Times. I'm not even going to say that he's necessarily wrong,

0:35:16 Thomas: Yeah

0:36:03 Eli: Right, I'm gonna say, here's what I'm going to say, all right, the problem, I'm gonna come at this from a couple angles. The first is, uh, there are lots of things on Porn Hub that are labeled one thing when they are not that, right? And Kristoff does seem to understand that for certain content, uh, and the example that I will use for that is incest.

If you go to Porn Hub right now on your phone or on your computer, I guarantee you at least two of the videos as you you scroll will be stepsister or stepmom or mom or sister, something like that, right? And yet Kristoff doesn't mention that Pornhub is filled with incest videos. Now incest is illegal in most states, weirdly not in New Jersey, right, and it's definitely illegal to make pornography of, right? There's a ton of laws about making incest pornography on the books, but kristof but But Kristoff doesn't mention that because he understands that the people pretending to be brother and sister in videos on Pornhub are not related. He seems not to understand that the videos of people pretending to be assaulted or pretending to assault people or presenting to, as he says it, asphyxiate women with plastic bags are also fictional. He appears, and again, I want to give him the most credit possible. He appears to think that the footage he has found of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags on Pornhub is not porn, but videos of assaults and maybe murders.

0:36:57 Thomas: Jeez I didn't know that yeah Even know what to say because, like, I-I-I think that, like, there's no doubt that there's a ton of problematic shit going on in porn, like, there and I think we should maybe sidestep that a bit like I don't t think we're here to like say that all porn is fine or whatever, but but it's absolutely true that it, it strikes me as has very hard to believe that when he's searching for this crap and he's coming up with some videos of all that stuff that any meaningful percentage of them are actual snuff films that are have been uploaded, you know, to like a made the major porn site, you know, that would be like like criminals Would upload their video, I'm sure it's happened, I know, actually I know it's happening uh handfuls times, but it's also happened on uh Facebook and Twitter. I mean, people have live streamed massacres on these sites. Um, so

0:37:47 Eli: Yeah, absolutely. Well, Right, right.

0:38:28 Eli: They've

0:38:28 Thomas: Yeah, yeah,

0:38:29 Eli: Live streamed their suicides and yet he would never put out an opinion piece saying that Facebook monetizes suicides. I

0:38:39 Thomas: That's interesting. I mean, it's, I guess it's a little less direct, know, it'S cause Pornhub does run ads specifically on their video. I don't know. It's a, is it, is It any different? Do you think it's different or not?

0:38:49 Eli: Mean, ads are ads. Right. I mean, it is, it is not a lie to say that Facebook has monetized the live stream of a suicide. Right. Similarly, it is not a lie to say that That Pornhub has Monetize child porn because those hundred and eighteen pieces of child Porm were on it. But I think most readers, most casual readers, do not read that and think, "Yes, despite having these practices in place, Pornhub made it on child porn, made it onto PornHub, and PornHub has ads on their website." I don't think they think that. I think the picture they get in mind is of Porn Hub allowing child pornographers to sell child porn on their website, is which is a very different image that it conjures in people's mind. To your point about porn conveying non-consent, I actually think that's worth discussing very briefly, right, because this worth discussing, because it is the region for this article, right, and and And we need to get out there and discuss it, right?

0:38:51 Thomas: Yeah.

0:39:45 Eli: Which is that significantly too much mainstream porn made by consenting adults for consenting adults portrays rape without acknowledging it. I'm not talking about videos where they say, "Hey, this is consensual non-consent. We are role-playing a rape right now." I'm saying that if you watch a random sampling of videos on Pornhub, they show sexual coercion, they show sexual blackmail, they show out and out rape, like their videos have titles like "it slipped in," right, and silly as that seems, that is depictions of rape and that is porn normalizing it, right?

0:40:24 Thomas: Yeah.

0:40:25 Eli: Which is bad, and again I am very against that kind of stuff, I think it's a problem that porn really needs to deal with, I'm not saying that that's a minor problem, I'm not minimizing that. Between saying, hey, porn normalizes this, and I have found videos of people being raped, those are two very, very different things, and Kristoff very clearly makes the second claim, not the first. So, I want to talk about the results of this article, right? So, here are the suggestions that Kristoff made, and I'm going talk a little bit about the problem of them.

Quote, "I don't see any neat solution, but aside from limiting immunity so that companies are incentivized to behave better, here are three steps that would help: one, allow only verified users to post videos, two, prohibit downloads, three, increase moderation." So, in spite of everything we've talked about, problems with this article, and in my opinion some of the just like outright lies that are in this article, Pornhub has not only implemented all three of those safety measures, they have removed all unverified content from their website. They went from 9 million videos down to 2.9 million videos. It is now only verified content.

The problem is, as helpful as I'm sure Kristoff hopes those suggestions are, they do not stop child trafficking. They don't even stop child trafficking on Pornhub. The very first story that he tells is of an underage girl who went missing and her mother saw her porn videos on Pornhub.

0:42:01 Eli: When you click that link, you will find that the user that uploaded those was verified. Now, before this article came out, this was the policies for verified users, and it's on their blog, it's been there forever, right, which is that you need to submit your ID, they check your ID, and if you have someone else in your video, you need submit an ID for them as well if you're a verified user. The fact that it made it onto this verified user account means that there was a fake ID involved and that it made it past the verification process. Kristoff admits this in his follow-up article, in his followed article he's like, "Yeah, they've implemented this stuff, but there are fake IDs, so it can still pass their verification process." So his first thing, again, it may be trying to help, but it will not stop child pornography on the site, the things I talked about Pornhub doing earlier, sure.

0:42:53 Thomas: I mean, I'm all for things might just reduce it. I mean it's one thing to say it won't 100% stop something, but it might reduce the ability for people to do it.

0:42:57 Eli: Right No, again, all safety measures are good measures, but Kristoff's point is, "Hey, I have the solution," and it's it's not the solution. The things that Pornhub were already doing were the solutions, the reason why their numbers were so low. Um, and he uses someone getting past the verification process as his very first example, example of child porn on Pornhub, which is pretty problematic, right, when that's what he's going to suggest later on in the article. Two, when it comes to prohibiting downloads, again, he admits in his follow-up article, "Yeah, you can screen record." So if someone wanted to download a video, you couldn't really stop them by prohibiting uploads. Again, helpful, right, that there's not a download button that you can just push and instantly have that video, but it doesn't stop the problem. These are not actual fixes.

0:43:54 Eli: These are changes made to the website Pornhub. And then three, increasing moderation. As I've already said, Pornhub has a human being look at every single video that ever goes up on Pornhub. So I don't know what he imagines more moderation is going to do. Right, more importantly than all of that, right, towards the end of the article he says, like, "I don't know why Mastercard and Visa and all these credit card companies work with Pornhub when it's so obvious it's filled with child porn," and as a result, Mastercard, Visa pulled the plug on Pornhub and Discover followed shortly thereafter. So disastrously all the sex workers who have fanclubs, which are, again, like OnlyFans, on Pornhub, overnight lost their income, right? If this article had been made about Patreon, and I want to be very clear, every claim that is in this article could be made about Patreon, right, there are adult performers on there, and Patreon goes through less verification than Pornhub does, there's not a moderator looking at every video that goes up on Patreon on the adult actions apps

0:44:31 Thomas: Wow. Yeah. Yeah, thank God a human doesn't have to listen to every podcast we post on there.

0:45:04 Eli: Absolutely But again, there is nothing stopping Kristoff and groups like Exodus Cry from making writing an article like this about Patreon. And we need to imagine, this might not be as sympathetic to our listeners who probably don't live off Patreon, but overnight their living disappeared. If MasterCard and Visa and Discover dropped Patreon tomorrow, our incomes would vanish, the way we feed our families would vanish, right? And that and I want to point out that, like, when you actually ask sex workers, the Sex Workers Outreach Project Behind Bars has called this a war on sex workers, right? And this is what they said about that, they say, quote, "We say war against sex workers because the damage they do does not impact the labor as much as it affects the laborers who depend on platforms to earn a living.

0:45:57 Eli: Violence against sex workers includes the societal and institutional violence that has led to the shuttering of our online platforms that give us a measure of safety and allow us the critical resource that is the ability to access banking." Now, end quote. Now, I want to be clear, I don't care about Pornhub, all right? Pornhub is still making money off of their ads, right? Right? And off of the people who visit their website, the people whose income has been and I'm sure Pornhub's taking a hit because they can't get their fan club money but the people who are, who will be most affected, who'll be devastated by this, are the sex workers on Pornhub. And you can go online and read the articles in the Daily Beast where sex workers talk about having made thousands of dollars a month on that website that is now just gone.

And Kristoff and Exodus Cry and the people who fell for this article are not coming back, right? Much like SESTA and FOSTA, which marched in on the idea of protecting children and marched out putting thousands of sex workers out of work and putting them in legally vulnerable positions.

0:46:18 Thomas: Yeah.

0:47:04 Eli: That is, unfortunately, the end of this story. Pornhub has lost its ability to take credit cards. People's incomes have been destroyed. And Kristoff's next opinion piece will be like, "How to Make the Perfect Chicken Dinner for Your Christmas This Year." So the long-term effects of this, I just want to be super clear, are: one, we've established a precedent by which accusing a sex-selling website baselessly of being filled with child porn is not only allowed but will get exactly the results you want, right? And if you think that Exodus Cry and the other churches they're affiliated aren't going to set up for OnlyFans and ManyVids and all the other websites next, I got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. All right, what is actually going to happen is that we have and I mentioned this at the beginning thousands of sex workers who lost their income weeks before Christmas are now in vulnerable position. I guarantee you that this action of MasterCard and Visa and Discover pulling their money from Pornhub will result in more sex trafficking, in a more dangerous world for sex workers.

And that the the changes that have been made to PornHub, I hope they improve things in the future, do not outweigh the damage that has been done and will be, and has been immediately forgotten. Our sex workers are abandoned, they there is no one coming to save them, right? We can hope, hope that MasterCard and Visa comes back for their sake, that they wait for this news to die down and they come back so that they can get that fan-cum money back.

0:47:42 Thomas: Yeah.

0:48:40 Eli: But in the meantime, they have no other outlet. They have no other platform. Yeah, they can tell people, "Hey, follow me on OnlyFans," or "Please support me on Patreon," but those platforms may very well be next, because we know what standards it takes to shut down their living and remove their income. So this is dangerous Christian porn abolitionist propaganda. I'm disappointed it made it into the New York Times. And I want to encourage everyone out there, if you support sex workers or you haven't supported them financially yet, all of them, and I do mean all of then, really need your support now. So if you haven't signed up for an OnlyFans or a Fan Centro or just giving someone money on a cash app who you like for sexy reasons, get on it, because they're they're hurting in a way that we can't fathom right now, and no one is going to help them.

0:49:34 Thomas: I don't even know what to say. It it's so disappointing. That, I mean, the the part where so much of this is built on a fucking idiot church that wants to destroy all porn and is just linked uncritically by Kristoff, that really just blows my mind. I mean, I I want to, but I want to be very careful because, like, the stakes are very high with this, um, obviously, uh, you know, like some of the examples he talks about are things things like, you know, this person was abused at 15 and it was filmed and uploaded on Pornhub, and they took it down, but blah, blah, bla. You know, so, like, what do you make of some of those examples? I mean, is there something to be done about that? And I want to note that, like, I don't you know, when I read that, I'm thinking, like, "Oh my God, this is horrible." Like, obviously that gets my heart rate up and makes me feel like something terrible is going on.

And for anyone listening who who is, who read this article and was like, "Well, yeah, I mean, okay, there's some negative side effects, but it sounds like there's, you know, there was some horrible shit going on that maybe now there will be less of that going on." You know, what do you make of that?

Because it feels like not everything in this article, from my reading, was based on this church, um, it seemed like he was in contact with real victims, at one point he said police least confirmed, et cetera, et cetera, etc. So, you know, this can't all be bullshit, right?

0:50:14 Eli: No No, and I want to clarify, the reason why I have talked about this the way I have is I don't want to deny any of these victims' experiences or stories, um, the difference is if he had instead reached out and asked for stories from victims whose videos of their assaults had been uploaded to Facebook, it would not make sense to make an article called Children of Facebook to talk about how Facebook monetizes child porn.

0:51:20 Thomas: Yeah. Even though that's actually a big problem, I read an article and I wish I could remember. It's been too many months now, but there was one about it. It's one of the worst things you could imagine, you know, like child abuse that then also gets filmed and lives on for a long time. It's truly horrible. And that's why, again, the stakes are so high on this. It's a really tough thing to to talk about.

0:51:48 Eli: Absolutely.

0:51:48 Thomas: But like The problem was was that in this article, it was being shared among, um, you know, because Facebook messaging is encrypted and it's being shared through Facebook messaging, um, a lot of times like these child porn collecti People are like exchanging files that way and they tried to get like, "Hey, can Facebook do any monitoring of that?" And they're like, "Well, no, the whole deal is it's supposed to be end-to-end encrypted so nobody can know what's going on." And it's like, everybody, everybody seems to be fine with that, you know, and it's, and it's like, there may be way more abuse going on there, but because Facebook is ostensibly for something else, you know, we're not going to see the same op-ed from, from Kristoff about that.

0:51:49 Eli: Yeah, Absolutely.

0:52:31 Eli: Or anyone else, by the way, right? You know, we see articles every year. YouTube had the article a couple years ago about the lollipop challenge, right, Right. Monetized channels that made compilations of young girls licking and sucking things. Right. So that people could use it as pornography. Right. These were monetized channels. Someone actively looked at and said, "Oh, the lollipop channel." Click. "Let's give them the version of the YouTube version of a blue check." Right. You know, but again, no one would say, "Let's get rid of YouTube." Right. Let's shut down YouTube, or let's stop letting people upload videos to YouTube unless they have the driver's license of everyone in the video because there was child porn on youtube

0:53:18 Thomas: Well, I'll be honest though. I actually would. So what I was going to say, I was surprised that you said this because I didn't know if they had this. I actually kind of think maybe the stakes are so high for porn that maybe you should be required to, you know, verify every identity of everyone who appears in the film. And I didn't realize they already did that.

0:53:18 Eli: Yeah I am yes that what's important is verified channels already had that process in place now as of

0:53:40 Thomas: Well, no, I don't Think there should be unverified channels then. Like maybe this is such a high stakes thing that it's not worth the added ability for unverifed users to upload stuff that other people can see, you know?

0:53:41 Eli: Right absolutely and I will add to that the major thing that sex workers have have talked to Pornhub about for years that they have ignored, which is why I'm not defending PornHub, is that unverified users often upload pirated content. And if you're a sex worker and someone uploads your pirated contact, and you can't have it taken down because it's not non-consensual content, it's not revenge porn, right? That's a huge problem for your business, right.

0:54:07 Thomas: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

0:54:20 Eli: So, and PornHub has been, until they got called out about it, terrible about that. So this implementation of the verification process is not a bad thing. I'm not speaking out against it, it is a good thing, it will not stop child porn and sexual objectification and sexual trafficking, um, and more importantly, the results of this article, of taking away those people's income, is going to cause significantly more sexual sex trafficking than it stops, quote unquote just by by taking away these these sex workers income. What I want to say also to the stories that are mentioned in the article, because my intention is to absolutely respect the stories of the victims who came forward, how difficult it must be for them to share their stories, how horrifying it must be for then to have gone through that process and gone through that trauma. But one thing I will say is if you read these stories, the one thing they all have in common is the shame around sex work that destroyed their life and

0:54:50 Thomas: Wow. Yeah. I was going to note that too. Like culturally, that seemed to be a big part of the problem. It was it was shame around not just sex work, but just the fact that a girl had had sex or had done anything, you know, like and that that's something as a society I wish we could fix, you know, like, yeah, go ahead.

0:55:45 Eli: The well and it should be pointed out that trafficking hub is a part of that problem right They are contributing to, they are funding the culture that shames women for being sex workers, right? They want to sell you a 300 bundle on how to go to a place where sex workers work and tell them that Jesus loves them and they are being trafficked, right? This is a huge part of the problem that Kristoff doesn't acknowledge. Kristoff doesn't acknowledge the shame around sex work or how hard it is to get paid for sex work legally thanks to SESTA and FOSTA, and now thanks to his article, he never mentions, that he doesn't mention how, you know, the documentaries that Exodus Cry makes, like Hot Girl Wanted, although that might be a different church, but the documentaries the churches make called Hot Girls Wanted or Life After Porn that

0:55:50 Thomas: Hmm. Well,

0:56:36 Eli: Portray porn stars as, you know, being part of non-consensual relationships or that all porn is sex trafficking or that all porn is extreme and non- consensual and horrible. You know, these are church created things around the sex industry to shame sex workers and make it harder to be a sex worker, right? And Nick Kristoff, rather than reaching out and condemning them, links to their website and a GoFundMe that's going to put money into their pockets. Again, there's no way to follow this money until, you know, Elevate Academy files its taxes later this year, and I'm guessing they're a religious charity, so I'm guess that there will be no way to follow the money from this GoFundMe. But if I were to guess, I would say that some of the money from this article that is intended for a victim of sex trafficking is going to go directly to the churches that make the problem worse. And that's super heartbreaking to me.

0:57:34 Thomas: Well, on that depressing note, you've made a hell of a case, Eli, and also it strikes me that, but this seems like the exact kind of thing that would be a big blind spot for Kristoff and our society. You know, like it's still unfortunately religion and churches still have a ton of currency in this country. And I think this, it makes sense to me that this could be kind of a combination of a number of blind spots for people, like, OK, well, this sounds horrible. You know, obviously Pornhub, probably their bias is like Pornhouse probably doing terrible stuff and there's probably sex trafficking and, you know, like it's a church group, but churches, you know, they're, they're legit. So I'm not going to look too much into that, you know, and it also seems like there's almost no incentive for anyone to critique this piece.

0:58:21 Thomas: I mean, it's got to be a huge uphill battle for anyone that's not an obscure podcast that used to have atheist in the name to critique this kind of thing.

0:58:32 Eli: Yeah, and again, I just want to clarify, I am not defending Pornhub. I am so happy for Pornhub as a whole to go into the garbage because, many, and for many, many reasons, Pornhub the company, company belongs there. But the problem is Pornhub is not hurt by this. Pornhub is still getting its ad monies. The sex workers who were using this platform to feed their families are, who are going to be hurt by this, um, and so it's move that, like, it's importante to know that, like, Kristoff and everyone who reads this article is going to move on, right? They're going to move with Pornhub slap on the wrist. No one is coming back for the sex workers who this does real, demonstrable harm to, um, and the reason I wanted to talk about this is not to fucking come to Pornhub's defense. It's to come to the defense of the, the sex worker's who no one is thinking of, um.

0:59:26 Thomas: Yeah.

0:59:26 Eli: And we, we need to get out there and support them. Any way we can pay for your porn go buy buy your porn subscribe

0:59:29 Thomas: Yeah I guess go buy some porn everybody this is just a really long-winded way of eli saying go buy someporn yeah

0:59:35 Eli: To me and thomas's foot only fans it's just a long ad for our only fans

0:59:37 Thomas: Yeah yeah That's right, that would be a hell of a way to do it. I think that would make him, make him go through a 65 minute deep dive first. I like it, that's our, that's the kink that our customers have though, so it works. All right, thanks so much, Eli, as always always, yeah, put a pin in this for later, well, now Andrew's in on it, yeah.

0:59:46 Eli: We'll put a pin in that in our porn hub andrew's deep dives oh absolutely are you kidding that little tamale I'm gonna get him in here

1:00:07 Thomas: We're gonna make a killing on this, all right, you know what, we don't want to put all the other sex workers out of work, Eli, maybe we shouldn't do it, it would just, it was just, yeah All right, thanks again for coming on, wow, this is,

1:00:15 Eli: That's true that's sure we would destroy the competition precious little Cinnamon bun filled with cream, thanks.

1:00:25 Thomas: You there's no way you're gonna stop, I, I better just stop recording, thanks again, uh, best to you and a little muffin, and uh, thanks for coming on

1:00:34 Eli: Stop. For having me thomas

1:00:44 Clip: Thank you so much for listening to Serious Inquiries Only. If you like the show, the absolute best thing you can do is support us at patreon.com/seriouspod. The second best thing you can do, is please share it on social media or by word of mouth. Speaking of social media, follow me on Twitter at Serious Pod. If would like to be Facebook friends, send me a request at facebook.com Thomas podcast. If not up for that level of intimacy, that's fine. Maybe you want to join the discussion at facebook.com/groups/SIO members. Thank you again for listening. We'll see you next time.