Tag: porn

Pornhub Admits To Profiting From Sex Trafficking, Agrees To $1.8 Million Settlement In Deal With Feds

Aylo Holdings, the owner of Pornhub – one of the largest adult content websites, has admitted to profiting from the sex trafficking, including minors, and has agreed to pay $1.8 million to the US government, as well as separate payments to women whose videos were posted without their consent, federal prosecutors in New York announced late Thursday.

The move comes months after the acquisition of Aylo (formerly MindGeek) by investor and Rabbi Solomon Friedman, who says he wants to turn the company’s image around following this and other scandals involving illegal content on the platform.

In addition to the $1.8 million and individual compensation to women harmed by trafficking, Pornhub must appoint an independent monitor for three years, after which the charges will be dismissed.

“It is our hope that this resolution, which includes certain agreed payments to the women whose images were posted on the company’s platforms and an independent monitorship brings some measure of closure to those negatively affected,” according to US Attorney Peace in a statement.

The company is estimated to have generated more than $200 million in 2022, with operating margins of nearly 30%. 

James Smith, head of the FBI’s New York office, said Aylo Holdings “knowingly enriched itself by turning a blind eye” to victims who told the company they had been deceived and coerced into the videos.

Prosecutors said Aylo has agreed to pay victims compensation, but details such as who is eligible and how they can apply will be forthcoming.

The charge stemmed from Aylo’s role in hosting videos and accepting payments from GirlsDoPorn. -CBS News

The operators of GirlsDoPorn, the now-defunct adult film production company, were charged with and eventually convicted of a range of sex trafficking crimes, including coercing young women into sexual acts on camera which were then posted on Pornhub and other adult websites.

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Capitol Police Investigating Second Sex Video

Capitol Hill police are reportedly investigating the existence of another explicit video taken by a former congressional staffer less than a week after Washington was rocked by the release of a video featuring a gay ex-staffer fornicating in one of the Senate’s most esteemed hearing rooms.

Semafor scooped that the House quietly launched an investigation regarding “purported, unbecoming behavior” by a former staffer for Congressman Dan Newhouse (R-WA). The effort, undertaken last year, ended with “no conclusive evidence.”

In an interview, the staffer denied participating in the video which made the rounds on Snapchat among congressional staffers and associates. In the video, a man is seen masturbating inside a House office building identifiable by standard Capitol Hill furniture and carpeting. Semafor obtained a screenshot from the video which showed two men engaged in a sex act in an office setting. The video was attributed to a user by the name “Adam J” with the handle “Anjackson2019.”

Rep. Newhouse said the video was brought to his attention in June of 2022 when he was told that one of the participants was a suspected member of his staff.

“As soon as the office was alerted, we immediately contacted the appropriate House entities to conduct an independent investigation,” the spokesperson for Newhouse said, adding that “the office will not be providing further comment on personnel matters.”

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Senate Staffer Who Was Fired for Having Anal Sex in the Senate Hearing Room in a G-String Jock Strap Blames Fallout on Homophobia

Democrat staffer Aiden Maese-Czeropski shocked the nation when video was posted of him and his partner having anal sex at the US Capitol in the Senate Hearing Room. Little Aiden was was buck naked except for a g-string jock strap as he straddled the Senator’s desk in the hearing room and smiled for the camera.

Aiden Maese-Czeropski , the Democrat Senate staffer embroiled in a salacious scandal in the Capitol has announced plans to pursue legal action against what he calls defamatory allegations and a politically motivated attack on his character.

As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, Maese-Czeropski works as a legislative aide for Senator Cardin, handling foreign policy, tax, and trade issues. He graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a B.S. in Society and Environment in 2020.

Maese-Czeropski has also worked for the Virginia Democratic Party as a field organizer and for the liberal environmental group Friends of the Earth.

Aiden was fired on Saturday after the video made the rounds on the internet on Friday night.

Now he is blaming the fallout on homophobia.

He’s the real victim.

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Fired Aide to Democrat Sen. Ben Cardin Reportedly Under Investigation and May Face Criminal Charges for Filming Gay Sex Tape in Senate Building

Aidan Maese-Czeropski, a 24-year-old former aide to Democratic Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland, is under investigation and facing potential criminal charges after a sexually explicit video filmed within the Senate premises went viral on the internet, Daily Mail reported.

Aiden shocked the nation when video was posted of him and his partner having anal sex at the US Capitol in the Senate Hearing Room. Little Aiden was buck-naked except for a g-string jock strap as he straddled the Senator’s desk in the hearing room and smiled for the camera.

Aidan Maese-Czeropski asserted that the explicit behavior he was alleged to have been involved in within the Hart Senate Office Building was taken out of context and is now being weaponized against him due to his sexual orientation and political affiliations.

He is now planning to pursue legal action against what he calls defamatory allegations and a politically motivated attack on his character.

Maese-Czeropski wrote in his LinkedIn account:

This has been a difficult time for me, as I have been attacked for who I love to pursue a political agenda. While some of my actions in the past have shown poor judgement, I love my job and would never disrespect my workplace. Any attempts to characterize my actions otherwise are fabricated and I will be exploring what legal options are available to me in these matters.

As for the accusations regarding Congressman Max Miller, I have never seen the congressman and had no opportunity or cause to yell or confront him.

On Saturday, Aiden was terminated from his job.

“Aidan Maese-Czeropski is no longer employed by the U.S. Senate,” Cardin’s office told POLITICO. “We will have no further comment on this personnel matter.”

The Capitol Police are actively looking into the incident, which occurred in a Senate hearing room — a venerated location where Supreme Court justices undergo confirmation hearings. Sources close to the investigation have indicated that charges under consideration could range from trespassing to obscenity violations.

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UK porn watchers could have faces scanned

Porn users could have their faces scanned to prove their age, with extra checks for young-looking adults, draft guidance from Ofcom suggests.

The watchdog has set out a number of ways explicit sites could prevent children from viewing pornography.

The average age children first view pornography is 13, a survey suggests.

Explicit website Pornhub said regulations requiring the collection of “highly sensitive personal information” could jeopardise user safety.

Privacy campaigners have also criticised the proposals warning of “catastrophic” consequences if data from age checks is leaked.

A large chunk of the UK population watch online pornography – nearly 14 million people, according to a recent report by Ofcom.

But the ease of access to online pornography has also raised concerns that children are viewing explicit websites – with one in ten children seeing it by age nine, according to a survey by the Children’s Commissioner.

The Online Safety Act, which recently became law, requires social media platforms and search engines to protect children from harmful content online.

It will be enforced by Ofcom, who can issue large fines if firms fail to comply.

Ofcom has now outlined how it expects firms to become “highly effective” at complying with the new regulations, which come into force sometime in 2025.

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Just The Tip: AP Gave Dem Porn-Wife Heads-Up Before WaPo Scoop, Allowing Her To Delete Videos

Democratic Virginia political candidate Susanna Gibson, who was outed by the Washington Post for performing sex acts online for cash – and instead of owning up to it cried ‘sex crime!‘, was actually tipped off a week earlier by the Associated Press, which didn’t run the story – allowing her to delete videos before the WaPo piece hit, according to the Daily Wire‘s Luke Rosiak.

Gibson, a 40-year-old nurse practitioner and mother of two, streamed various sex acts on ‘Chaturbate,’ where more than a dozen videos of she and her husband were archived on a publicly available site, Recurbate, in September 2022 after she entered the race. The most recent were two videos archived Sept. 30, 2022, however it’s unclear when the live stream occurred.

Rosiak also reports that Gibson’s online sex acts could have exposed her to prostitution charges, lawyers say.

Virginia law states that “any person who, for money or its equivalent … engages in sexual intercourse” or other sexual acts with another person “is guilty of prostitution, which is punishable as a Class 1 misdemeanor.”

Shawn M. Cline, a former prosecutor and defense attorney in Virginia Beach who represents people charged with sex crimes, said in his view it’s a “chargeable offense.”

“The statute is very clear, you cannot for money or its equivalent perform sex acts,” Cline told The Daily Wire. “It doesn’t matter who’s paying for the act, if it’s an observer or the recipient. You can’t receive money.”

“It would definitely be a chargeable offense,” Cline said. -Daily Wire

What’s more, she could be busted for deliberately causing hotel workers to see her performing sex acts.

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FSC Secures Preliminary Injunction Against Unconstitutional Texas Law

Free Speech Coalition and our co-plaintiffs, a coalition of major adult platforms and creators, have been granted a preliminary injunction against the Texas antiporn law, HB1181. Texas is blocked from enforcing the law while the case is litigated.

“This is a huge and important victory against the rising tide of censorship online,” says Alison Boden, Executive Director of Free Speech Coalition. “From the beginning, we have argued that the Texas law, and those like it, are both dangerous and unconstitutional. We’re pleased that the Court agreed with our view that HB1181’s true purpose is not to protect young people, but to prevent Texans from enjoying First Amendment protected expression. The state’s defense of the law was not based in science or technology, but ideology and politics.”

The Court agreed with FSC and our co-plaintiffs on nearly every argument:

  • The law violates First Amendment rights of creators and consumers
  • The law has a chilling effect on legally-protected speech
  • Parental filters are a less restrictive and more effective method of protecting minors
  • The state does not have the right to compel speech in the form of health warnings

HB 1181 required sites with adult content to force their visitors to provide digital IDs or other official proof of age, as well as display pseudoscientific “health” warnings. Free Speech Coalition and our co-plaintiffs argued that the requirements are unconstitutional and expose consumers to significant privacy risks.

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Talking About Sex Online Shouldn’t Be Illegal

Kayden Kross, an adult film entrepreneur and a former business partner of mine, sent me a text message a few months ago. She was excited—she was seeing a community of straight dudes gather on Deeper, the power exchange and BDSM-themed website she owns, to discuss their sexual preferences, turn-ons, and other various tastes. And she was seeing this across other platforms too. This felt rare to her, and groundbreaking to me. 

When I asked Lucie Fielding, a mental health counselor in Washington state, how many spaces she was aware of for straight men to have these conversations, she said “Oh, not many—unless we’re talking incels—there’s got to be stuff on Reddit, but apart from that, these are such important forums. Because there’s such a societal pressure for men not to be talking with one another about these things.” But on platforms like Deeper, PornHub, and other online providers of adult videos, the comments section is just that sort of conversation.

Kross described the communities as having creeds of acceptance, giving examples such as “The ‘don’t yuck my yum’ thing. It’s agreed upon that so long as you are not saying something that is a political minefield, it is not OK to dog on someone else’s expression of what they’re there for. And when people do, even if it’s something where you can’t imagine anyone would be into that, you’ll see people rush to that person’s defense. There’s very much this understanding that in order for this to work, everyone has to agree not to add shame to the pile.”

And it isn’t just sexuality being shared. Someone might say, according to Kross, “‘My dog died today.’ And then someone else will chime in with, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ And then the person will say, ‘I had no one,’ and ‘I’m alone.’ And then someone else would be like, ‘Well, I would have given you a hug if I was there.’ We all know, there’s this kind of idea of traditional masculinity, and the expectations are that men don’t really talk about their feelings. And the fact is, in the comment section, when you’re anonymous, you’re not subject any longer to expectations, right? That’s why we have trolls. But it’s also why you end up with these kinds of conversations that, you know—otherwise, who would you have them with?”

But these conversations, like so many others, are at risk of being censored out of existence. New state laws requiring verification of consumers’ ages threaten to wipe out small producers and scare off subscribers concerned about threats to their own reputations in the event of a data breach. Laws like SESTA/FOSTA have made promotion of adult entertainment—already an uphill battle—even more starkly difficult, reaching as far as those Reddit communities Fielding mentioned and causing many subreddits about sexuality to shutter. And payment processors and banks have been denying adult workers access to financial infrastructure for decades.

Why does freedom of speech and freedom from shame matter in this context? According to Fielding, “Shame tells us that we are bad. That our desires are bad, that our pleasure isn’t valid. And the relationship between shame and isolation is that when we feel that we are bad or that there’s something to be ashamed of, we withdraw because we don’t want to share that.… That leads to social withdrawal.… It means that folks are trying things in very risky ways, because they don’t have the community around them.” One example is choking—without proper safety and risk-informed consent, this risky activity can turn deadly with alarming ease.

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“I Just Want To Sell Titty Pictures”: Sex Workers F**ked By Crypto

Sex workers – who frequently face financial discrimination, losing access to payment apps and banking apps such as PayPal, Venmo and CashApp due to their profession – began using cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin as an alternative for payments, which bypass traditional banking systems and avoid service fees from platforms such as OnlyFans.

According to data by the Free Speech Coalition, 2/3 of sex workers have lost access to a bank account or financial service, with 40% having an account closed within the last year, Wired reports.

“I just want to sell titty pictures,” said Allie Eve Knox, a professional dominatrix and fetish performer. “I never wanted to be an expert in financial discrimination.”

…

Given the systemic discrimination throughout the banking sector, many sex workers have turned to cryptocurrencies as a means of both storing wealth and accepting payment. For a while, things were great. Digital currencies allowed customers to pay discreetly without supplying personal information, while sex workers now had a way to bypass the banking system entirely.

Knox, for example, began accepting crypto in 2014 – holding up a QR code through which viewers could tip her in crypto.

Another sex worker, former escort-turned-porn star Lira Roux, told the outlet that she began to accept crypto in 2015 at the request of clients. Initially, she would exchange the crypto for dollars, however when new laws came into effect – after which many adult-friendly advertising sites were barred from accepting regular money – she began to pay for ads with crypto too.

“By and large, crypto is useful for people that aren’t being taken care of properly by the government,” Roux said. “For sex workers, who aren’t well-served by banks, it becomes a useful option.”

Now, thanks to regulatory scrutiny which has gone into overdrive since the collapse of crypto exchange FTX, sex workers are ‘bumping up’ against limitations – and are finding that ‘decentralized’ crypto is no more detached from the banking system than traditional currency – as sex workers are finding it increasingly difficult to convert crypto into dollars. Typically, this is done via an exchange, which then allows one to withdraw to a traditional bank account. Sex workers are now being banned from crypto exchanges.

“You get on an exchange for as long as you can, until they shut your ass down,” said Knox. “You quickly [run out of exchanges], so you sit on a lot of useless money. The whole ‘crypto is permissionless and censorship-resistant’ thing is a bunch of bullshit.”

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Texas Dept. of Health and Human Services Refuses to Answer Questions About Anti-Porn Law’s Mandatory ‘Warnings’

The Texas Department of Health and Human Services has declined to confirm or deny whether the “health warnings” mandated by the state’s recent anti-porn age verification law are supported by any official documentation or statement produced by that office.

As XBIZ reported, the Republican-authored HB 1181 was passed by the Texas legislature with bipartisan support in May and will go into effect September 1.

The new Texas age verification law — part of a state-by-state campaign by religious conservatives and anti-porn activists to outlaw all sexual material online — compels adult websites to post pseudoscientific anti-porn propaganda disclaimers declaring that “pornography is potentially biologically addictive, is proven to harm human brain development, desensitizes brain reward circuits, increases conditioned responses and weakens brain function.”

HB 1181 is a much-augmented version of Louisiana’s age verification law and its many copycats, and echoes the debunked “porn addiction” language of faith-based anti-porn groups.

XBIZ asked the Press Office of the Texas Department of Health and Human Services if the department could provide any documentation or statement pertaining to those warnings, and clarify whether the language of the warnings has its basis in any documentation or statement produced by the Texas Department of Health and Human Services.

After requesting several days to provide a reply to the query, Press Officer Tiffany Young declined to answer, deflecting the questions with an invitation to contact “the authors of this bill for information about how it originated.”

XBIZ also contacted Texas Department of Health and Human Services Chief of Staff Kate Hendrix and the bill’s main sponsor, Rep. Matt Shaheen (R), but received no reply to the same questions.

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