An undercover video purports to show multiple employees of Pornhub’s parent company Aylo, formerly known as MindGeek, admitting that the corporation’s pornography websites are easily accessible to children and that gay and trans porn can help LGBT kids find their “kink.”
Sound Investigations published a video and report on its website this month featuring one of its undercover journalists discussing children’s access to Aylo’s pornography websites with two of the company’s employees. The Aylo employees who appeared in the undercover video were Production Coordinator Sylvain Fernandez and Dillon Rice, senior scriptwriter.
A spokesperson for Aylo denied the allegations in a statement to The Christian Post, stating that the company’s platforms are “by adults and for adults, and it would be factually inaccurate to say otherwise.”
“The person who was illegally filmed in this video is very clearly speaking of converting free users into paid subscribers, and any insinuation otherwise is disingenuous, reckless, and hurtful,” the Aylo spokesperson said. “It is egregious for a journalist to misrepresent this information in order to push outlandish and harmful conspiracy theories.”
In hidden camera footage of Fernandez filmed in June, the production coordinator is heard saying that users don’t have to do much to access the company’s porn sites. Fernandez, production coordinator for Aylo’s gay internet porn website, Men.com, is shown saying in the video that Pornhub has “educational aspects to it … especially with boys.”
The Aylo production coordinator agreed with the investigator when she asked whether kids go on Men.com, speculating that all a minor would need to do is check a box asking if they are 18. At one point, the Sound Investigations reporter asked if Aylo’s site help “LGBTQ kids … find themselves,” and Fernandez appeared to agree, saying that pornography shouldn’t be restricted to heterosexual users.
“I mean, they’ll find their kink in there, I’m sure,” the Aylo production coordinator said.
A separate undercover video recorded on June 24 shows Rice, who serves as a senior scriptwriter for TransAngels and other Aylo sites, agreeing with the undercover reporter that the content viewed on pornography websites can help shape sexual attitudes.
“Let’s say you are 12-years-old. You’re still figuring out your sexuality, maybe even your gender,” the senior script writer said. “Wouldn’t it be helpful to see not a celebration but just like maybe a normalization of something that you think is what you want? You know? Probably helps a lot.”
Rice stated that the company needs “to try to push stuff that’s more, less, and less accepted. Like putting a trans male or a trans female in a scene,” adding that “you wouldn’t get that on a normal mainstream site.”
He also suggested that adding trans content like this may help “convert” someone who has never searched for material like that but may “find it interesting” after clicking on it. Rice noted that the same thing could apply to bisexual or gay content.
On June 25, the undercover journalist asked Pornhub Technical Project Manager Mike Farley during a separate undercover video how minors can view the company’s content.
“Just go to the site,” Farley said.
Farley appeared in another undercover video released by Sound Investigations in October, which purportedly showed the technical production manager saying that users can bypass Pornhub’s age and consent verification process for uploading sexually explicit content if the faces are not visible in the videos.
The porn company worker alleged that rapists and sex traffickers monetize these videos, using the loophole to “make a lot of money.” Farley also claimed that the managers of Pornhub are aware that abusers exploit this loophole, but they do not try to close it because doing so would be “counterintuitive to the business.”
In response to Sound Investigation’s undercover video, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost and 25 other state attorneys general wrote a letter to Aylo, calling on the company to explain what steps it has taken to address the loophole.
“As you are aware, various Federal and state laws forbid the creation and distribution of [child sexual abuse material],” the letter stated. “We are concerned that Aylo and its subsidiary Pornhub, and possibly other subsidiaries, may be proliferating the production and dissemination of CSAM through the ‘loophole’ identified by your employee.”
Samantha Kamman is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: samantha.kamman@christianpost.com. Follow her on Twitter: @Samantha_Kamman
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