Over the past year, Pornhub has faced plenty of controversies. Last December, it was revealed that the pornographic website was under investigation by Visa and Mastercard after accusations surfaced that the adult site was filled with child pornography and non-consensual sexual violence. Within a matter of weeks, Pornhub responded to the accusations by facilitating a heavy filtering of the website — much to Fredo Bang's chagrin — and removed all of its unverified content.
Now, only a couple of months after the Pornhub CEO's mansion was burned down, reports reveal that a huge civil lawsuit has been brought against the controversial porn site. According to CBS News, 34 women have joined a lawsuit against MindGeek — the company behind Pornhub and countless other popular adult websites — and accused the company of running a "criminal enterprise."
The women behind the civil suit allege that Pornhub has been exploiting and profiting from a vast number of graphic videos that depict rape, revenge porn, underage sexual acts, and even child abuse. According to CBS News, one of the women in the lawsuit says that it wasn't until she was settled into college that she learned that a private sex tape she had filmed when she was 17 years old had garnered hundreds of thousands of views on Pornhub.
"Immediately, I knew it was me. I mean, my face, my outfit — immediately. My heart dropped into my stomach," the anonymous woman reveals. "The view count on the video will forever haunt my dreams. Just knowing that that many people saw it really messed me up."
Michael Bowe, the lawyer representing the women in the civil suit, has touched on the case, stating, "The law prohibits what they’re doing. The law has not been enforced. This case is not about porn, it's about rape. This is a legitimate industry that consenting people have every right to participate in. It just needs to be done legally and not with illegal content."
While Pornhub’s parent company MindGeek has been adamant that it has successfully all of the "illegal content" in one of "the most comprehensive safeguards in user-generated platform history," CBS News reports that an anonymous former MindGeek executive has spoken out, saying that the company knew about the illegal content and previously saw it as "good" for business.
Stay tuned as more updates on this civil lawsuit against Pornhub are sure to come in the coming weeks and months.
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