Internal emails from internet porn giant Pornhub — and parent company MindGeek — revealed in a legal discovery show the executive team discussing the company’s shockingly weak policy on reviewing questionable videos, which was to only review a video if it had over 15 flags for criminal content. Such videos include revenge porn, underage girls, and even child rape.
“These e-mails between the CEO/Owner of P*rnhub/MindGeek and his executive team were uncovered in legal discovery and made available to the public yesterday in redacted form,” Traffickinghub founder Laila Mickelwait wrote in an X post on Saturday, sharing purported screenshots of the emails. The emails were produced during discovery in a class action lawsuit titled Doe vs. Mindgeek.
These e-mails between the CEO/Owner of P*rnhub/MindGeek and his executive team were uncovered in legal discovery and made available to the public yesterday in redacted form.
This is the CEO/Owner discussing the fact that:
1. The official P*rnhub policy was to only review a… pic.twitter.com/f7IkdQ6Cq0
— Laila Mickelwait (@LailaMickelwait) September 2, 2023
Mickelwait went on to explain that the emails show “the CEO/Owner discussing the fact that” the “official Pornhub policy was to only review a video if it had over 15 flags for criminal content,” and “there was a backlog of over 700,000 flagged videos.”
Moreover, “they had ONE person working only 5 days a week to try and review flagged videos,” Mickelwait added, and they also “state plainly they are trying to hide these facts,” she said.
PornHub (Flickr/Marco Verch)
In the internal Pornhub emails, an individual — whose name was redacted — informed the company’s executive team that one person “reviews between 50 and 500 videos per day that are flagged in order to address any video with more than 15 flags.”
“We have 1 person responsible to review flags on a daily basis (5 days/week),” the individual in the email added.
Another email shows an employee replying with, “So basically a video with 15 flags is never viewed…”
In another email, the CEO of Mindgeek wrote, “706,425 videos that are active and have at least 1 flag (between 1 and 15 flags).”
“My fear with a % number instead of 15 might look like we want to on purpose profit from a popular high viewed video. 1 million views at 1.8% flags is 18,000 flags. Unless we have a 2 fold rule: +15 flags or 1.8% whichever hits first,” another employee expressed in the internal emails.
Another email response shows an employee saying, “I wouldn’t mention the threshold of when we manually review a flagged videos being 15 flags.”
Another reply reads, “If we’re dividing by the same number for each video it’s the same as just using count flags, it’s obvious we are just trying to hide that it’s a minimum number of flags.”
“To say this another way… If a victim of child rape on P*rnhub flagged their rape video FIFTEEN times it would NEVER EVEN BE LOOKED AT FOR REVIEW. This policy was ‘good and reasonable’ according to P*rnhub’s owner/CEO,” Mickelwait wrote in a follow-up X post.
To say this another way…If a victim of child rape on P*rnhub flagged their rape video FIFTEEN times it would NEVER EVEN BE LOOKED AT FOR REVIEW. This policy was “good and reasonable” according to P*rnhub’s owner/CEO #Traffickinghub
Shut it down!https://t.co/DbAIRF7qxb
— Laila Mickelwait (@LailaMickelwait) September 2, 2023
As Breitbart News previously reported, Pornhub has been wrapped up in lawsuits with several states, which are trying to pass legislation mandating that visitors to the website verify their age.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.