(LifeSiteNews) — A individual identified as an employee of MindGeek, the parent company of prominent pornography website “Pornhub,” said in an undercover recording that rapists and traffickers are using a major “loophole” in the site’s verification process to circumvent government regulation and turn a profit.
On Wednesday, journalist Arden Young with investigative journalism outfit Sound Investigations released footage she described as an undercover interview with a man identified as Mike Farley, technical project manager at MindGeek, now known as Aylo.
BREAKING: Pornhub Exec Reveals Rapists & Traffickers Use Pornhub “Loophole” to “Make a Lot of Money”
C-Suite won’t fix “They would lose a lot of money”
Says government doesn’t “know sh*t… not qualified to identify the loophole”#PornhubTapes pic.twitter.com/2TaUBbkAgr
— Arden Young (@arden_young_) September 13, 2023
In the video, the man identified as Farley told the undercover reporter that Pornhub allows anyone to upload content to the site so long as they submit a valid form of identification like a driver’s license.
However, he said the photo ID often cannot be used to effectively verify the identities of the people engaged in the explicit content since it’s common practice for their faces to be entirely concealed.
He said the discrepancy enables uploaders to use content involving other people, including unwilling participants like victims of rape and human trafficking.
“A lot of people are making thousands but never showing their face,” Farley said. “I look at that, and I’m like, ‘that’s stupid.’ But everybody’s just kind of rolling with it.”
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The MindGeek staffer said he and his colleagues have previously flagged the issue to company officers but were told to “shut up.” He said higher-ups are aware of the problem but are unmotivated to do anything about it because they’re confident they won’t get caught and it would cost too much money to bring the content into compliance.
Farley said he recorded a video of himself raising the concerns to his boss for use in court in case “the s*** hits the fan.”
Asked who exploits the discrepancy in the verification system, he said nearly “everybody” since “you make a lot of money.”
He suggested that the government likely wouldn’t do anything to solve the problem even if it became aware of the issue “because they’re not qualified to identify the loophole. They already did their investigation. They were satisfied. They technically checked and said that it’s all good, so they can’t really go back on that.”
“We’re supposed to not worry about the compliance and legal side,” Farley said of himself and his coworkers. “We’re supposed to operate within the guidelines given to us by [the government]. But if they f*** up, we’re not supposed to, like, help them regulate us.”
The staffer said he and his colleagues have been briefed by company lawyers to evade questions about the inner workings of the company, though he hasn’t personally had to testify.
MindGeek did not immediately respond to LifeSite’s request for comment.
This is far from the first time Pornhub has faced serious accusations concerning its content. The site is currently facing a class-action lawsuit by sexual abuse victims whose assaults were recorded and trafficked on Pornhub.
Writing for LifeSiteNews, Jonathan Van Maren pointed out that Pornhub “has been exposed … as a company that has featured graphic sexual violence, torture, and criminal sexual assault for the viewing pleasure of the public, leading to government inquiries and companies such as Visa cutting ties.”
Last year, MindGeek CEO Feras Antoon and COO David Tassillo resigned from their positions after news broke that Pornhub had hosted “sexually explicit nonconsensual videos — including those with children — for years,” Variety reported.
Pornhub has also been forced to quit doing business this year in a number of Republican-led states including Utah due to age-verification laws that require pornography sites to verify that viewers are over the age of 18.
A Common Sense Media report released earlier this year found “73% of teen respondents age 13 to 17 have watched pornography online—and more than half (54%) reported first seeing pornography by the time they reached the age of 13.” Another study found that “10% of pornography views are by children under the age of 10.”
Pornography, which the Catholic Church teaches “offends against chastity because it perverts the conjugal act” and “does grave injury to the dignity of its participants,” has also been shown to warp the neural pathways of children and adults, contribute to divorce, facilitate the international sex-trafficking industry, and trigger sexual dysfunction and gender confusion.