#956 - Laila Mickelwait - How Pornhub Became The Internet’s Biggest Crime Scene

Modern Wisdom

Chris Williamson

Society & Culture, Health & Fitness

4.7 • 4.6K Ratings

🗓️ 19 June 2025

⏱️ 78 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Laila Mickelwait is an anti-sex-trafficking activist, founder, and an author. One of the most visited websites on the planet is more than just a site; it’s a crime scene. As Pornhub rose to global dominance, a lack of regulation allowed thousands to be exploited against their will. Now, Leila Mickelwait is leading the charge to expose the truth, demand justice, and bring real accountability to an industry built on harm. Expect to learn why Pornhub isn’t just a porn site but a crime scene, the story of Pornhub across the years and where it all went wrong, the major significance of the #trackinghub hashtag, what the most uncomfortable truth people ignore about online sexual abuse is, why regulators decided not to act despite obvious red flags from the site, the fallout of trying to get Pornhub shut down, what changes need to occur in tech regulation to stop abuse from occurring are, and much more… Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period from Shopify at https://shopify.com/modernwisdom Get the best bloodwork analysis in America at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular Flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Pornhub is not a porn site. It's a crime scene. What's that mean?
0:05.3	It means exactly what you just said. So what I discovered about five years ago was what millions of people already knew.
0:12.7	And that all it took to upload to the world's YouTube of porn. So this is user-generated porn, the biggest porn site in the world at the time.
0:20.7	Actually, it was the fifth most traff porn site in the world at the time. Actually, it was the fifth
0:21.7	most trafficked website in the world at the time. I made this discovery that all it took to
0:27.5	upload to Pornhub was an email address that anybody in under 10 minutes could upload to the site
0:32.5	and they were not verifying ID to make sure that these were not children and they were not
0:36.5	verifying consent to make sure that these are not rape or trafficking victims.
0:40.9	And because of that, the site had actually become infested with videos of real sexual crime.
0:47.5	So we're talking about child abuse, child sexual abuse material, we call it.
0:52.1	This is child rape.
0:53.3	It's also self-generated child sexual abuse material where we call it. This is child rape. It's also self-generated child sexual
0:55.7	abuse material where children would be, you know, filming themselves and sharing it. And then that
1:01.5	would get uploaded to Pornhub, which is completely illegal to be viewing and distributing that
1:06.0	content. To adult rape, you know, unconscious women completely drunk, non-consenting, to all the way to
1:15.4	what we used to call revenge porn. So this would be imaged-based sexual abuse. So all kinds of non-consensual
1:21.5	content and even copyright, you know, violations where this is illegal content because it was
1:27.3	stolen material that was being
1:29.2	uploaded to the site. So that was the state of Pornhub. And, you know, they had at the time,
1:35.4	they had 6.9 million videos that were uploaded in 2019. And this was, you know, my fight to hold
1:42.9	them accountable for these crimes started in 2020.
1:46.5	And at that time, they had 56 million pieces of content uploaded to the site.
	...

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