Takedown: Inside the Fight to Shut Down Pornhub for Child Abuse, Rape, and Sex Trafficking

with Laila Mickelwait

Pornhub was once recognized as the largest and most popular porn site in the world. The site made it easy for users to upload and download content, which is desirable in other contexts. However, these features pose significant threats when applied to freely accessible user-generated, homemade pornography. Reports suggest that without adequate safeguards, there was a rapid increase in uploads of questionable, illegal, and violent content, including instances of nonconsensual sexual acts. More troublingly, such content became widely viewable and could be downloaded onto private devices. Laila Mickelwait is the author of the new book Takedown: Inside the Fight to Shut Down Pornhub for Child Abuse, Rape, and Sex Trafficking. She is also the founder and CEO of the Justice Defense Fund, a non-profit organization that seeks to help bring justice to survivors of online sexual crimes. In our interview, she told us that she was a new mother when she saw precisely the toll Pornhub was taking on victims, such as suicide attempts after torment by others or navigating persistent harmful thoughts. Worst of all, in many instances, it appeared that the victims were underage.