Inside the Shady Sex-Work Abolitionist Group That Gutted Pornhub

On Monday, Pornhub, one of the largest porn distribution platforms in the world, announced that it would remove all content submitted by unverified users—effectively disappearing some 10.6 million videos in a single day. Over the weekend, the MindGeek subsidiary hosted a library of 13.5 million videos. By Tuesday morning, that number had dwindled to just 2.9 million.

The overhaul came after a controversial opinion piece earlier this month from New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. The column, titled “The Children of Pornhub,” highlighted several victims of statutory rape and their experiences with the platform, calling for “search engines, banks or credit card companies” to demonetize it. The article prompted Mastercard and Visa to investigate Pornhub for illegal material, and subsequently to cut ties with it, along with MindGeek’s other properties, including Brazzers, Redtube, and XTube.

Part of Kristof’s case against Pornhub rested on the work of an activist campaign called #Traffickinghub. “Concerns about Pornhub are bubbling up. A petition to shut the site down has received 2.1 million signatures,” Kristof wrote, referring to a petition circulated by the campaign. “An organization called Traffickinghub, led by an activist named Laila Mickelwait, documents abuses and calls for the site to be shut down.”