“130 Million Daily Users” - PornHub Owner On Moderation, Sex Work & Morality | PBD Podcast | Ep. 484
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Get it all at maersk.com slash insights. Were you aware that these kinds of things was happening on Pornhub? On Pornhub? I mean, these are things that...

We're not really unfortunately able to talk about because these are about ongoing litigation. In every Western democracy, it's constitutionally protected. It could not be outlawed, even if you wanted to. There is no way you're working there and you don't know this is out there. We are doing more than any other platform to keep it safe. I'm not going to make that mandatory, though. Who's they? U.S. government. Why not? We think they should. We think they should tomorrow.

You think they should make it mandatory to opt in? But I see where you're trying to go. No, no, it's a good question. Why are you worried, though? No, not worried. So are you a man of faith? I am a man of faith.

Are you ever conflicted? What a ridiculously insecure method and totally violating of the privacy of 130 million people a day. It's sounding confusing, Rob, what my ask is, because I feel like I'm delusional right now. Do you understand what I'm requesting? I do. If you did do that, your traffic will drop 90%. But go ahead. Come on, that's a ludicrous assessment. You'll see when I say this. Go ahead. Did you ever think you would make it?

I feel I'm supposed to take sweet victory. I know this life meant for me. Yeah, why would you bet on Goliath when we got Bet David? Value payment, giving values contagious. This world of entrepreneurs, we get no value to hate us. Now they run, homie, look what I become. I'm the underdog.

So today we have with us Solomon Friedman, who him and his organization, I think ethical, what is it called? Ethical Capital Partners decided to buy Pornhub out of all the companies. We're going to talk porn today.

And we also have somebody who's been with them since 2013, Alexandra, if I'm not mistaken, who's here to teach us how to work at a Pornhub type of company while still having HR. I don't know how you do that. We're going to ask those questions as well. I got a lot of weird questions for you. You know, I'm a family guy. I got kids. So some of them is going to be uncomfortable for you. We have a lot of viewers that listen to this as well and watch us as parents. But with that being said, appreciate you guys for being on the podcast. Thank you for having us. So out of all the businesses you guys could buy, why did you guys target buying Pornhub?

Yeah, so we saw an extraordinary opportunity. You know, the fact that it's newsworthy or noteworthy that we've made the acquisition, that should tell you that this is a space that has not had mainstream investment, right? That it's a space, I always said, you know, when we looked at the business,

It's a business that's legal. Not only is it legal, but in every Western democracy, it's constitutionally protected. It could not be outlawed, even if you wanted to, but it doesn't have that legitimacy. And one of the reasons for that, and as we started to examine the business further, was that nobody wanted to say, we are the owners of a major adult company, right? Everyone, they sort of, they wanted the benefits of owning a major adult company. It's a profitable business, but nobody wanted to be outlawed.

and engaging with other tech businesses, with government, with law enforcement, with regulation in that sort of way that the modern tech industry has to. So we saw in that this arbitrage opportunity, right? Where if people who come from, you know, the mainstream professional networks, whether it's law, law enforcement, tech, finance, et cetera, this is an opportunity to really bring this industry into the 21st century. We saw a lot of people

an extraordinary opportunity to do that with this jewel of an asset, Pornhub, but obviously with the entire company. I love it. He said jewel of an asset. So I'm gonna give you some stats here that we see. So one, it says 2018 Pornhub alone witnessed a jaw drop in 5.8 billion people

hours of content consumption, which by the way, it's kind of strange because most men should only be watching for a minute or two, right? But this is like when you hear 5.8 billion hours. No, Patrick, our average visit is about 10 and a half minutes. They probably got off the computer and left the website on, but there's a different story there. So that's nearly 665 centuries of material over a single platform in just one year. Here's another one for you. The world was flocking to Pornhub in 2018 with a whopping 63,992 new visitors per minute. Is that true?

63,992 new visitors per month. That doesn't sound unreasonable. 33 and a half billion visitors. Insane, right? And the most popular day to visit Pornhub is Sunday. You guys got all these different stats. And you even put up a stat recently on which state...

who consumed the least while the election was going on and who was committed to it. So you're also involved in the election stuff that's going on, right? But at the same time, you got a petition. I think something came out that says more than 2.2. Thank you so much, Kelly.

More than 2.2 million people have signed an online petition to shut down the site. Why do you think that is? Well, I think that the topic of pornography has always been a divisive one. I think it has to do with the topic of sexuality in general, right? There are always going to be different views about human sexuality and pornography is just emblematic of those. In fact, it's a little more public. It's more in your face. That's the nature of it. It's

It's sex for the public. So you're going to have people who have really deeply held convictions about the proper place of sex in our society. And that's a good debate. There's nothing wrong with that debate. But you take two and a half million signatures, we have 130 million daily active users. So people have voted with their mice and with their feet in terms of where they're going to go. But of course, it's going to be a subject of public debate. How do you handle that? How do you handle that when these 2.2 million, I'm assuming some of these guys are

Is this the one? Shut down Pornhub and hold its executives accountable for aiding trafficking, right? So what site is this on, Rob? If you can show me what site. Well, it started at change.org petition. And then apparently so many people signed it, they changed it to traffickinghubpetition.com. And let me ask you, so what does this do? What if they get $5 million? What if they get $10 million? What if they get $20 million?

Does it mean anything and can they do anything to you to shut down the website? Well, I say this, you know, I'll let Alex from the ALO perspective, the company itself, I'm obviously in the ownership group, but it's based on false premises, right? It's based on a conflation of...

Consensual, legitimate sex work with trafficking. And, you know, even using that terminology, trafficking hub, what that does is it robs people of agency. We believe in self-determination. Individuals have the right to make free choices about their body and to monetize those choices as responsible adults on a safe platform. And yes, there will always be those who ideologically believe that that is wrong, but...

We disagree, whether it's 2.5 million or however many signatures. But, you know, Alex has seen that for a decade plus, obviously. Unfortunately, that's exactly right. So there is this continuing conflation. And I think that it's really important to...

to clarify the fact, right. That like sex trafficking and consensual sex work, they don't even exist on a spectrum. These are two very different things, right? Like we're talking about something that is against the law and putting people in a lot of danger. And then like what Saul was saying, it's people that are just trying to make a living and pay taxes, right. When we're talking about legal consensual sex work, right.

So what we do at Pornhub specifically is we offer a platform that is safe, that is leading in trust and safety, that is leading in compliance. And we offer a platform where people can do exactly that. They can express themselves. We're very big on freedom of expression. That's one of our core values as a brand. One of our core values is also consent.

So we're very proud to have a platform where people can do exactly that. They can express themselves and they can monetize their legal work. Okay. So is there any underage porn on Pornhub? No. Absolutely not. Zero. Zero. And how do you verify? Like, how do you know out of all the...

uh, porn that's on Pornhub that nobody that ever shot the video at the time was under 18 years old. Sure. Yeah. We can both answer that one. Go ahead, Alex. Um, but I think it's really important that people understand that to upload content to Pornhub, it's actually, um, it's,

it's quite difficult. And that's by design. It's not just like, okay, I can kind of like you do on Instagram or on social media where I have something on my phone. I just want to throw it up there for public consumption. It's quite the opposite. So in order to be able to upload anything to Pornhub, you first have to become verified. So that means you have to go through a program where you have to scan an ID. You have to make sure that there's a likeness test that matches the ID of the person that's on there to the face that's

of the uploader. Only once you've gone through that process and that's been verified by a third party that we use called Yodi, can you then get to the point where you're actually able to upload. And then again, there's a number of different checkpoints that a piece of content has to go through before it ever goes live. So these are things like verifying the consent and identity of every single person that appears in a scene. We then scan the content against a number of different databases that contain hashes. So to make sure that there's no known

illegal content of any kind. So that could be... How do you know how old the person was in the porn when it was shot, at the time that it was shot? Because somebody could give you the porn and today I'm 19 years old, but when the girl shot it, she was 15 and a half. How do you regulate that? So the ID has to be current of the time that the...

that the paperwork is submitted. I know, but how do you know when the video was shot, when the porn was shot? Because there's... Do you want to talk about 257? It's important to understand the legal regulations that are behind this. So first of all, for any adult content that's produced in the United States,

the regulations require that prior to the shooting of the content, that there is a form filled out that has age, identity, consent, and rights release for the use of that content. What many people don't know about Pornhub is that all the content is moderated.

So unlike YouTube or X, you can't just upload something. It has to be reviewed by a moderator. And the moderator is looking at number one, the documentation, but this is just to understand that the scale of this effort, right? I always say there's a company that really puts its money where its mouth is when it comes to keeping the platform safe. This is not cheap to do this. We're in an age now where trust and safety is being reduced on many of the major platforms. We're investing, I can say this from the ownership perspective, we're investing more heavily than ever.

But how do you do that, though? Like what I want to know is, you know, and by the way, just so you know, I'm right now while I'm speaking to you, I'm looking at stories that's coming up. So like right now, I just typed in this my first time ever going on this thing called traffic, trafficking hub. After I saw that, I saw the two point two point two million people here based on what's on Wikipedia. Right. So if I go over here, then a story comes up with.

New York times, the children of Pornhub, right? Okay. So I clicked on that. So this story right here, right? Can you, can you zoom in Rob? What's, what's this story about that New York times wrote? Do you guys know? Of course. I mean, that's the story. That's the story by the way, that gave the opportunity to purchase this company because it led to some really significant reforms. So prior to the publication of this opinion piece, and that's what it is. It's not a news piece. It's an opinion piece by, by Nicholas Kristof. Um,

Pornhub did not require the ID for all uploaded content. Within weeks of the publication, this is well before we acquired the company, the company took a pretty dramatic step, which is it removed 8 million pieces of content where they didn't hold the ID for the uploader. So

The rest of the industry, which continues on, by the way, doing exactly what was happening pre-2020, said, your site's going to die. Nobody is going to upload content if they have to provide their ID, where every single uploader has to provide an ID. And in fact,

Pornhub transformed the user-generated content industry as a result of this and other challenges, which is, by the way, exactly what should happen in the tech industry. Problems should be identified. So I don't hold any grievance against the identification of problems and challenges. That's how you get better, right? And what happened, this is my description, it's only my opinion, is that you had the content creator revolution, which has changed the internet. It collided.

with the adult entertainment industry, neither were really ready for each other. So from the content side, the creators said, "We're gonna get eyeballs and monetization." The adult industry said, "We're gonna get content." And figuring out how those two go together with the kind of safeguards that we have now,

That took time to happen. I think we really, as the system exists today, not historically, not a 2020 New York Times article, how it exists today on the ground is an example for the rest of the content creation industry. So if you go a little lower, because I still want to figure this out. So go up, Rob, let me see what it says. Is suing Visa the best way to shut down Pornhub?

B.O. Logs versus targeting credit card companies in a war against online sex trafficking have pushed too far, can cause unintended harms. Go a little lower. The story that I still want to get to, zoom in, right? Okay, second paragraph. The article denied a firestorm protest and litigation that deeply impacted a

online pornography industry, survivors and anti-trafficking advocacy organization. Many have ties to Christian right and anti-pornography efforts of the 1970s and eighties gather more than 2 million signatures. Okay. We just read that. And survivors of the anti-trafficking legal claims of Pornhub's parent company, mind geeks seeking millions of dollars in damages, notably Serena, uh,

who was 13 years old when her ex-boyfriend uploaded a sexually explicit video on Pornhub, brought a novel trafficking lawsuit against Visa. She alleged that the credit card company who's provided MindGeek its payment networks knowingly monetized these images for profit. So, Alexandra, you've been there since 2013, right? When you were there, were you aware that these kinds of things was happening on Pornhub? This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Shopify.

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I have a pulse. You're going to be okay. Dr. Odyssey, Thursdays, 9, 8 central on ABC and stream on Hulu. On Pornhub, I mean, these are things that...

We're not really, unfortunately, able to talk about in too much detail because these are about ongoing litigation. So what I'm able to comment on is limited. So there's an active litigation going on right now. There's lawsuits that relate back to how the site used to be prior to the acquisition. And I'm asking you because you've been there since 2013. So I'm kind of glad you're here because how much have you noticed culturally the place changing? Because...

There is no way you're working there and you don't know this is out there, right? You would know if you're working there that this is out there. I mean, what I can tell you is that I've seen a tremendous evolution in Pornhub since I've been there. I've been there, like you said, since 2013 in very different capacities. Like when I started there, I was working in social media and customer service.

So I can say that I'm very proud to work for a company where I was able to grow in the way that I have up to an executive level today. But during that time, more importantly, like, yes, like Saul said, there's been colossal evolution in the way not only the adult industry moderates itself and how trust and safety has evolved, but also social media in general. This is a topic that we're really...

um, that we're, that we're dealing with as a larger society, right? Like how do we keep online spaces safe? And I really do believe that we are pioneering a way that what that can look like in a very manageable. And you have, you look like you have a question. I do. You guys bought it in March of 2023, March 23rd, if I'm not mistaken. Okay. How many people from Pornhub

employees and executives and directors and VPs who for sure knows at the time that these types of content was there have been fired. So...

In terms of major personnel changes, so prior to the acquisition, this is probably the biggest one, tells you about a difference in direction. Well prior to the acquisition, a few months prior to the acquisition, the previous two owners who were owner-operators, they were the CEO and the COO, they departed the company. Change was required.

The CEO and who else? And COO. They were also the minority shareholders of the company. Were they fired or they were bought and they just stepped away? They departed prior to the acquisition. Prior to, so you guys bought in March. When did they depart? Summer. Okay, so 2022. Okay, I got it. But once again, when we were acquiring the company, we were looking at the executives. Two dollars on MyGeek, a parent company in Portland, have resigned. Allegations that the site does not immediately or significantly remove content involving non-concessional underage sex.

MindGeek confirmed the departures of CEO Ferris Antun and CEO David Tassilo. Can you see what their background is, Rob? I'm just curious to know what their background was prior to doing this. Okay, so they stepped away June of 2022, resigned, after these stories are kind of getting public.

Yeah, I mean, look, they had their reasons for stepping away. I can tell you that in terms of the executive group, when we evaluated this opportunity, we spent time evaluating the company and the executives, including executives like Alex, but the leadership group. They had really taken the company in a different direction in the years prior. And we wanted them to continue taking the company in that direction, but we wanted to invest in them.

to provide them with the resources to do this kind of work, full moderation, full verification of age ID consent of all uploaders and people appearing in content. You know, the company needs to evolve. It needed to evolve. And our view is that under our ownership, they're going to continue to evolve. So who else do? I mean, I've ran, I've been in business for many years. You got C-suites, you got VPs, you got directors, you got a lot of people that are involved that know this kind of stuff. So-

Who else that was aware that this kind of stuff existed got fired after you guys bought them? So I just want to be very clear. It's important to make a distinction here. Okay.

Every single online platform that allows for user-generated content is going to have criminals who try to exploit it. Facebook is going to have criminals who try to post illegal things for sale, who do. We're going to post death threats. We're going to post non-consensual, intimidating imagery. That is the nature of an online platform. It is. Platforms, of course, need to take reasonable steps to guard against that.

We can have a discussion about what those reasonable steps look like. I think our steps that we take today are go above and beyond anyone else. That's not to say that in 2020, this company was not taking reasonable steps. That's the subject of litigation that will get a just outcome one way or another. So I don't want for a moment to leave you with the impression that our views, we look back on this and say, oh, it was just the wild west back then, because that's not true. Even back then,

Pornhub was doing moderation, was working with child protection NGOs, was scanning all content against lists of known bad content, but they were grappling with- That's not possible though, because you're saying you guys removed 8 million pieces of content, right? If you're dealing with moderators-

No, but just to be clear, that doesn't mean those 8 million pieces of content were problematic or illegal or underage at all. Why would you remove them then? Because we did not have the, because we, it was before we acquired the company, because the company did not have the ID of every single one of those uploaders.

That's why. So it's important. It's very easy, especially if you come from a position where you want all porn gone. And you saw, even in that article, how these groups are described. I just want to be very clear. The group that became Trafficking Hub used to be called Morality in Media, and they were protesting against sex shops in New York in the 80s and 90s. So they have an ideological perspective, which is they don't want any porn to exist. I don't have a problem with that. I actually don't have a... You have to realize you're not talking to a guy

That is this square guy that I'm, you know, I was the, you know, I was an atheist till 25. My past friends who know me, they know, but I was an adult that, you know, I'm interested in, you know, whatever I'm consuming. My concern is purely one thing.

It's underage. So then you and I and Alex, we have exactly the same concern. There's a difference. I know you say this and it's like the right thing we have to say. However, this place had underage stuff for many, many years until now. So even when I'm asking the question, it's still not been answered because I'm still trying to find out how it's mathematically impossible. How can you.

Get a video to know the person when they shot it wasn't underage to allow that video to be uploaded. I understand you're asking me.

for my ID today, but how can you verify? There is no, we understand there's deep fake and that's one side, but how can you be able to authenticate to say when you shot this, you were over 18? How do you do that? - So a couple of, there are technological solutions. I'm happy to talk about some of the trusted safety. There are actually ways, whether it's examination of metadata or looking at cues in the video, but at the same time, what a platform has to do is take reasonable steps.

Okay. Will a criminal, like it's like, imagine where it's funny, we're in a bank vault today. Imagine you walk into a bank and you say, can you guarantee me that this bank will never be robbed? Say, well, no, we've got alarm systems. We've got security. We've got armed security. We've got, you know, sensors, everything.

We're fighting the criminals every single day. The same is true on our platform. We have an extraordinary security system that goes above and beyond. In fact, one of the things that we did as new ownership, and I'd be happy to do this with you or anyone from your team, is we walk people through the back end. We actually show off the trust and safety. We don't show all the alarms. We don't show where all the sensors are, but we show that we are doing more than any other platform to keep it safe. Let's ask Instagram, for example.

Okay. Instagram can let you post all kinds of sexy content. They have to have ways of ensuring the age ID consent of people appearing, right? They have to. There's a difference though. So in other words, what I'm getting from you, I asked three times now, there is no way to verify at all. There is no 100% proven way to verify if any of the porn that is on porn up is

isn't under age at the time that it was shot. - There are many ways, many ways to verify. We have humans who watch every video. Let's start there. - You can watch a video and you won't be able to tell if somebody's under 18 or not. - Of course, you certainly can. You can tell if somebody is well under, you can tell if somebody is of age. We can look at the ID, we can look at the time of upload. - You can't do that, buddy. - We can look at the circumstances of the making of the video. - Mathematically impossible for you to be able to know

If at the time that the video was shot, the person was underage. If you tell me there is a software that is known, that the world knows about,

that is able to detect it, I will say, great, let's give it credibility. But if everything else is for me to watch and say, guys, I think this is risque, let's not put this one up and let's not approve it, that still makes Pornhub the god of deciding if this video was shot at a time where the person was above age or underage. Well, it's not about being the god. It's about, you know, any kind of reasonable approach to trust and safety means that you must protect the platform. You must keep things that are unprotected

you know, let's start with like a spectrum. Clearly unlawful, of course, those go. Then you have ones where we identify risk characteristics, we ask for additional documentation. That's something we do all the time. If there are suspicious circumstances about video or ID or documentation, we ask for further documentation. We hold material, we remove material.

Right. Because as a platform, we have to take reasonable steps. The other side that we haven't discussed here at all, which is essential and very, very different from what was characterized in that New York Times article, is our policy now with respect to removal, which is we have a ask. We have a take down first, ask questions later approach. Anyone who identifies I'm in this material and either.

I was not of age or it's non-consensual, we take it down immediately. I don't say that. Which Facebook doesn't do, which Instagram doesn't do. Okay. So this idea of holding porn to an impossible standard, I reject that premise. First of all, you have to realize, I'm literally trying to think from compliance standpoint, from a guy who's been in the financial industry since the day before 9-11,

building an insurance agency with 60,000 agents, dealing with Department of Insurance and regulators from every single state because we were in every single state that we had to deal with that and with FINRA and with NASD and with SEC. I dealt with everybody, right? So you have to know how to prevent certain things happening in the financial industry. The real only way to have this being done is...

for there needs to be while the video is being shot, there needs to be someone saying, before we do this scene, this is what it is.

I am at this age. We're shooting it at this age. Here's how old I am. And here's how old he is. I am 22 years old. He is 24 years old. I'm 21 years old. He's 19 years old. This is what's about to happen. Then you could say, yes, 100% we know. And then you have to see, is that ID being verified on an ID website to be able to...

The ability to check. So let's go back to the other question. What is the business model of Pornhub? I don't know what the business model of Pornhub is. How do you guys make money? It's an ad-supported platform primarily. So it's not a membership. It's an ad-supported. That's right. So ALO as a company, we have Pornhub that's ad-supported, and then we have subscription-based sites like Browsers. So you guys are going to do roughly $500 to $550 this year, give or take.

We can't disclose our private company. So, I mean, that's the number I saw online. So if it's you can't disclose it, I get it. Half a billion is a real number that is plastered all over the place. Let's say somewhere on that number. And that's advertisers. So outside of advertisers, there is no membership. There's nothing else. There's no membership economy. For Pornhub specifically.

For Pornhub specifically. But the company has other brands which are subscription-based. And is it porn or it's... It is a studio-produced content, yes. So the ones that are membership-based, how different is that than Pornhub? So those are seen... So we're talking about the flagship brand for that would be Brazzers. So that's studio-produced professional-grade content. See, for that, to me, that's something where it's like, hey, here's professionally done. This is the age. So Pornhub...

Is it like the YouTube for porn to kind of? Yeah. So basically what's happening right now is that exactly the process that you just described, that's pretty much what happens on a porn set. On the browser site. On a professional set. But now because so much content is being produced at home, we're seeing a time where that is becoming the norm. And this is exactly the methodology that we've adopted on Pornhub, which is why we require all of these checks. We require IDs. We require. There's no way you're able to do it though.

- I'm sorry? - There's no way you're able to do it. There is no technology to be able to tell if somebody was under age of 18 or not. There is no way you can 100% guaranteed verify at the time of the video being shot, the person was under 18. - But the point is like you set this impossible standard that applies only to adults. - But then tell me based on, you tell me the 100% that you can do it based on technology. - What you need to do is you need to have a reasonable level of assurance that this is legal, consensual, informed consent content.

So we start, you start with having the age ID consent of every single person who appears in content. That's wild. When I tell you that we do that, no other adult platform or mainstream platform comes close to that. Think about that for a moment. You upload a video, has three people, has four people in it. It cannot go live on the site until we on the trust and safety side have verified the age ID consent of everyone appearing in there.

Now, you raise this other scenario. Like, well, what if you have all that, but one of the people have lied to you about when the content was actually shot. We're like, okay,

But we have already guaranteed more than anybody else in terms of the fact that this content is completely legitimate. That doesn't mean anything. It's just lip service, right? No, it's beyond lip service. It's a huge financial investment. Listen, what I'm saying, guys, I play devil's advocate with everything you do. We don't take it personally at all. What I'm saying to you is this is an everyday, if you're friends with me or your family with me, my family and people who have been in business with me, they're like, this is how we have lunch every day. So it's just a conversation. So browsers, okay? Yeah.

Everything is shot professionally. Everything goes through, I'm assuming like, hey, you have to show me your HIV test that you just did, that you don't have any sexual transmitted. I'm assuming it's that level of professionalism similar to Vivid or some of the other guys that do it. Yes? Is that what Brazzers is? Correct. But what I'm trying to impart here is that this is the model that is being adopted because, like Saul said, the creator at home industry is

has collided with the professional. And we're seeing this across the board, right? Across all types of entertainment systems, right? Where you could say arguably that people that are creating YouTube programming at home, very similar to someone that's watching a morning show, right? There's a big difference though. I mean, that's different though, because YouTube programming at home, I'm not showing penetration and I'm not getting out there and saying, hey, you know, we're going to do this. And, you know, no, I'm sitting to give my opinion on something.

And if it's... Oh, I hear what you're saying. There's a big difference between the two. There is. But because this is an industry that is under a lot of scrutiny, understandably so for the reasons exactly that you mentioned, these are protocols that people are adopting at home as well. I think it's really important to get away from the idea that it's just someone with a webcam that wants to throw

or something. So what is the process for me to upload a porn video on Pornhub? What's the step-by-step process? We'll start with, you need to verify your age and ID as the uploader. How do you do that? Okay, so we use first a third-party provider, then we verify it with a moderator. So that involves three things. Number one, a scan of real government ID from your country of origin. That's verified

It can't be a screen cap, can't be whatever, compliance measures. Like you're used by banks, insurance companies, governments around the world. Got it. Then a biometric scan of the face that requires movement to create what's called a photogrammetric measurement to make sure you're a real 3D human being and not a picture. Then a comparison between those two done by the software compares the face-

That's been verified as being real with the government ID and then a match between the two. That gets you level one. If you pass all of that, you then get handed off to our

in-house moderation. So we don't, unlike most social media companies, we don't outsource any moderation. We have a full-time staff working, verifying identities and moderating content. That moderator has to review that, ensure that you haven't been previously banned, which we would know because we hold ID, obviously, ensure that you are who you say you are, that you're not from a country that raises flags, that all of this has been verified. Now you are eligible to attempt to upload content, not to upload. Okay. How long is that process?

To get approved, it takes between 24 to 72 hours. So I can have a video up within 24 hours? No, we're not there yet. We're just talking about to get approved so you're at a status where you're even able to upload. How long after that can I upload a video? Okay, depends on the content. So the next thing you do, once we've verified the identity, you can then submit content for review, not upload. There is no auto upload. It cannot happen, okay? That content, so let's say you submit a video. First of all, if it's more than just you in it,

We need the same age ID consent for everybody appearing in the video. Then we run it through automated processes. So we use, I think now about 13 automated tools. We work with any organization government who will give us a list of content that they have flagged as being problematic so we can scan all the content against it. We have our own in-house tools. Another reason we made this acquisition was because of the tools that the companies developed of content fingerprinting, identification and tagging. Very interesting area that we wanted to be part of.

If it passes all of those checks, it then goes to a human moderator for review. A real life person who is trained to review content, not just for age ID consent, but we have many, many rules. 100% of the videos is watched by somebody. 100% of the videos is watched by someone. How many people work at Pornhub right now, full time? About 1,500 employees. 1,500 employees. Yeah. Got it. And how many videos are uploaded daily on Pornhub?

Submitted for upload. No, no. I'm talking get to the point that somebody has to watch for upload. It's a couple thousand. Couple thousand. Yeah. And the average video is how long? It varies, but you know. But I see where you're trying to go. No, no. It's a good question. Wait a minute. Why are you worried though? No, not worried. We're not worried at all. So how long does it, if it's 2,000 videos that somebody has to watch, what is the average length of a video on Pornhub? It's between five, 10 minutes. Okay. Let's say 10 minutes. Let's do some math. For sure. So if we do, if we do 2,000.

Times 10 is 20,000, right? Minutes. Yeah, I did 2,000 videos times 10 minutes. Yep. Okay.

How big is the department that monitors this? - So it varies, but hundreds. - Okay. - Obviously one of the things we change depending on how many videos are in a queue, what our needs are, right? - And you guys watch 100% of the video. - 100% of the video now, just to be very clear. - In addition to an AI transcript of the audio that's happening in the video. So the important thing,

And that's why I kind of was preemptive as far as... I'm a math guy. I'm just trying to do the math. Super fair. But the thing is, it doesn't matter if there's a million videos or five videos. The important thing to sort of take away from this is that a video will not go live unless

until it has been reviewed by a human so that means if that video has to sit in a queue you know we're not just trying to crank it out there to make people happy we keep it in the queue until it has been reviewed so so that means of course um we go through periods where there's backlogs and sometimes creators get frustrated with us because they say you know i put all this work into a video it's been three four days why isn't it live and we understand that frustration but

But we don't make exceptions. We have to wait until it has the chance to be human moderated before it's still live. What's the fastest somebody uploads a video that'll upload? There's no, like, I can't really give a number on that because it really- Can it happen same day?

Very rarely. Very rarely. But also it depends, like if it's a 25 second clip, just, you know, one individual showing themselves and what they're up to, that's an easy one, right? Like that's quick. And it's one person and there's not co-performers because that's the thing. It's like we need the paperwork and the IDs and consent for everybody. So I think where your mind goes, which is where my mind went when I learned about this, is this is an enormous scale, right? So one of the reasons that you want to talk about, go back to your first question, why do we acquire this company? Okay.

Okay. Because they have developed processes both on the human side, but also on the software that we think the rest of the internet is going to need. Yeah. That we are three years ahead of where social media has to be. And we are looking forward to not just setting an example. Social media is different than you though. That's a very different, like an...

But okay, let me- So actually, it's not so different. The problems might be a little different, but whether it's threats to violence or incitement or hate speech, there are always gonna be material that as a society we've decided are just unacceptable. So for example, if you go on a rap, can you type in the Wikipedia child pornography laws, right?

If you go on here, Supreme Court of the United States has found child pornography outside of protections of First Amendment of the United States. So child pornography is outside of U.S. jurisdiction. Federal Sentencing Guidelines on Child Pornography. U.S. laws distinguish between pornography and images of actual minor realistic images that are not actually non-realistic. The latter two categories. Child pornography first became illegal, strange to say this, the year I was born, 1978.

I'm surprised it wasn't before that. With the enactment of the protection of children against sexual exploitation of 1977, before the law of 1978, child pornography was illegal in only two states. The 1978 law was subsequently strengthened in 84 with the passage of the Child Protection Act. It was a goal of the Reagan administration to crack down on child pornography with...

With then-President Reagan stating the following in 87, the administration is putting the purveyors of illegal obscenity and child pornography on notice. Your industry's days are numbered. Okay. For example, is there a website that's doing a petition to shut down OnlyFans? I'm sure there's hundreds. Is there like, what's the most signatures OnlyFans got? The only reason I say this is because I think OnlyFans...

total users on OnlyFans what is the total numbers on you holy so you said 130 million with you guys right so watch this this is the comparison OnlyFans has got 238 million users okay generates a yearly revenue of two and a half billion dollars

And Blac Chyna, don't know who that is, was the highest paid OnlyFans creator in 2023, earning approximately, damn, $20 million monthly with a subscription price. Are you considering a career change? I'm seeing it on your face here. But you know what the difference is? Here's what the difference is. The OnlyFans process is what? Is 18 and up.

Right? It's very, you're 18 and up, you want to do it. And there is no millions of petitions to want to shut down OnlyFans. But there's two and a half million people that want to shut down. I'll just, we got to cut to this. Give me both of them. We got to cut to this, okay? Because the problems that...

the creator industry faces. Yeah. OnlyFans faces a strong, every question that we can talk about, every moderation issue. The difference is that our trust and safety staff reviews every single piece of content that doesn't happen on OnlyFans. It just doesn't. That is not their process. We are also exclusively 18 plus. Now the difference is. Who's the girl that had to wait till she was 18 to get on OnlyFans? What was the girl's name, Rob? Oh,

We talked about it on the podcast. Bad Barbie? I think Bad Baby. Bad Baby. Okay, so Bad Baby. Bad, oh, B-H-A-B-I-E, right? So Bad Baby had to wait until she's 18, OnlyFans. She made what? Um...

million dollars on day one on only fans but she had to wait till she's 18 okay so one could say i mean look she's made 57 million dollars since 21 she's about 18 years old so my only concern with pornhub in this sense is underage that's the difference why maybe there's not two and a half million people trying to shut down pornhub versus trying to shut down um

Yeah. I would happily go toe to toe when it comes to trust and safety between us and OnlyFans. In fact, just so you understand, like these are issues that are discussed in the industry. I've been on panels. I don't want to finish. I've been on panels at law enforcement conferences, invited to speak me and OnlyFans and talk about our processes. We're very proud of them. Right. And we are second to none when it comes to the resources we put into ensuring age, ID and consent. Since you guys bought them? We,

We wouldn't have bought the company otherwise. All I can speak to is the company from March 2023, that system we look like, that we acquired. We bought that. We didn't buy anything in the past. Let me show you a clip. Let me show you a clip, Rob. This is June of 2023. This is three months after you bought them, right? Yep. This is production coordinator Sylvain Fernandez from MindGeek ALO.

Rob, go ahead and play this clip. So it gives you some educational aspects. Go ahead, Rob. To get on, what do you have to do? To get on porn, what do you have to do? I'll be that much, yeah. How easy is it for like an underage person to view the site? Go to the site. Let's say you're 12 years old. You're still figuring out your sexuality, maybe even your gender. 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. Let's say I was 12 and I saw like Trans Angels, I saw all these different sites. It would help me figure out what I do like and what I don't like.

try to push stuff that's more less accepted. Like putting a trans male or a trans female in a scene, you wouldn't get that on a normal mainstream site.

So test it out. See if you get a bigger audience with it. See if you can convert somebody, right? Like maybe somebody who's never looked for anything like that might find it interesting and click on it. Same thing for buy stuff, same thing for gay. If you've seen our previous undercover releases, you may be familiar with Mike Farley, the current Pornhub product manager who became one of Pornhub's first employees over 10 years ago. And Dylan Rice, the senior script writer for Pornhub's parent company, MindGeek, now

Wow, is this a change of people or somebody else?

Is this James O'Keefe or somebody else? Somebody else. While states are currently enacting laws to require IDs to prevent children from entering porn sites, these three men talked to our undercover reporter about children viewing pornography on MindGeek sites, including PornHub and TransAngelsAndMen.com, which are MindGeek sites featuring studio-produced transgender and gay-focused pornography. How easy is it for an underage person to view the sites?

You can pause it right here. This is 15 months ago, right? That this has taken place. And it's not like people that have just been there for six months. It's a guy that was there for, who was it? He was a product developer or whatever his name was, the main guy.

It seems to be like a regular day at Pornhub. And this is three months after you bought them when this was recorded. I'm going to disagree. Go ahead. Respectfully. What you have here, you have employees who think they're on a date with a woman. That's the context of the creation of these videos. And they are not properly representing the truth about trust and safety. Although there's like three different topics mixed in. So it's important that we're very clear. I'm a clear guy. I like to always get to the truth and the point of something. So number one,

Every single video is reviewed by a human. We have age ID consent for uploaders, everybody appearing in content. There is absolutely no incentive to do otherwise on our platform. I always make that point. Like from a business perspective, there's no incentive to do anything but the highest standards of trust and safety. So you have a company with 1500 people, you're gonna have

People who are saying nonsense. Technical product manager? So I have to say this. This is not someone, obviously when I'm reviewing the company and I look very, very carefully at it, including spending time, none of these, these are not trust and safety staff. These are not moderators. These are not people in compliance.

They whatever idea they have, although it's very interesting. We learned something from these videos. We actually learned a very important lesson, which was you can have a company of 1500 people and you'll have graphic designers and you'll have salespeople and customer support. All of them need to be educated on our trust and safety system. So we actually the company in response, and I think it was absolutely the right thing to do now, whether you doesn't matter if you're the janitor.

at ALO. You will have mandatory training so you'll understand what's happening, even though it's a job that has nothing to do with you, but so you are absolutely educated on trust and safety because it became clear to us that that was something important. Not that it became clear that it reflects on what the reality is, but

But, you know, these people were woefully misinformed about the truth of trust and safety. And then I think the other thing that's being referred to here is the issue of children accessing the site, right? Which is something that we've been talking about a lot. This is an issue that, you know, we take quite seriously. And the fact that we've mentioned a couple of times as well that our sites are strictly adult entertainment. We have a zero chip. I have no problem with that. It's adult.

It's the minor.

- We also don't want minors viewing the site. So that was the question that was asked there. It's important, I mean, we can focus on- - He said, how easy is it to get on the site? - No, he meant get on to watch. - He meant to visit it, yeah. - To watch. - This has nothing to do with uploads. This is about- - Patrick, you gotta understand that distinction. He was being asked- - Wait a minute, that's also a problem. - Totally a problem. And we are fighting hard every day to fix that. I can tell you what we're doing. What we want to have happen, what we want the adult- - Your traffic will drop dramatically if you have to ID everybody. - Okay, no.

Let's think about it this way. Let's talk business for a second. I always say there's two reasons we don't want young people on the platform. One, we think it's wrong for young people to watch. We think it's wrong. Kids cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality. I'll give you a guarantee. You say that, I'm gonna listen to you, but I'm gonna tell you something. Your traffic will drop 90%, but go ahead. Come on, that's a ludicrous assessment that 90% are. You'll see when I say this, go ahead. So that's number one. Number two, from a business perspective,

Think about it this way. We are an ad powered platform. Our advertisers can only sell products and services to adults with adult credit cards or other similar adult sexual services. So for them, just think about it from a cost per click perspective, every person who clicks an ad who's underage gets them zero benefit and costs them money. So from an ad marketplace,

Nobody wants young people on the platform. So do you know what we're doing every single day to actually change this? What's that? We are pushing for something called device-based age verification. We want it to be the law that every single operating system, Google, Apple, Microsoft, by default blocks adult. I want to think about that for a second. We want- Blocks what? Adult. Adult.

It should block porn. We want to be blocked by default. And the only way to be able to access adult is that on your device, you have age assurance built in there. So in other words, instead of like nowadays parental controls, you have to opt into them. We want them to be that you have to opt out of them. That is Pornhub's position.

We want to be blocked by default because we don't want a single minor to be able to access the site. Now, at the same time, we totally reject this idea that you're going to hold up your ID and give it to every porn site on the internet. There you go. Because it's nonsense. It's nonsense. But that's the only way to make sure kids don't log in. No, in fact, that will make sure kids do log in to all of the non-compliant platforms. How? Because it goes like this. Let's say we've tested it. Sure. State of Louisiana. Uh-huh.

Okay. We are the only major adult platform that's actually complying with the law in Louisiana. Right. So we take what's called LA Wallet. That's a Louisiana state ID. We accept it. We don't ever get the identifying information. We just get a thumbs up or thumbs down. Okay. Within 24 hours of implementing that, we had an 80% drop in traffic.

Not because 80% of the people are young, but because 80% of the people are like, I'm not giving my ID to a porn site. Yeah. And they're not wrong. So instead, I always say this, the device should be the key to the internet. We will be the lock.

That means that it will actually prevent young people from accessing adult content because the point of entry, that is the device itself, will be prohibited from accessing adult. And we are pushing for that at the state level, at the federal level. Can I give you the counter to it? I'm not a lawyer, but I like to argue and debate because it's fun to do, right? Sure is. So when you told me earlier the process to upload a video, I had to not only...

show you the ID through this outside website that you guys use, third party, right? Then I have to do the whatever the Apple is to make sure I'm not a picture, right? I'm doing this to know 100% who is getting access to it, right? You can do that as well for people that are watching the content. Sure. But if you do, you will lose 90% of your traffic. The point is, the technology exists. But you will lose 90% of your traffic. The technology exists to do it, to verify age. Sure, why don't you do it?

If we do it, and we have tested it out, we've tested it out in France and Louisiana, people just go to noncompliant sites that don't, by the way, do what we do when it comes to child safety. Who cares? Who cares what they do? Because the difference is if you're going to noncompliant sites, there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of adult sites that exist out there. I disagree. I think here's what will happen. I think what will happen is the following. Okay. So...

You're making the argument of legalizing marijuana and making it so expensive will make people to go buy illegal weed from bad quality. That's the argument you're making because what will happen is if I'm the other side and if I want to eliminate all of the noncompliant sites, right? These guys have to find a way to make money.

And I merchant services I'm very familiar with. If you can't get merchant services to accept payment, you know, right now Visa used to have a hard time with chargeback 3%. Now they're at 1%. They want to be a 1%, if not even less than 1%. You know exactly what I'm talking about because I've dealt with Visa, you know, MasterCard, all these guys.

So if all of a sudden these guys don't have a method of getting paid, so what if they're going to a non-compliant website to watch porn? Those guys will be shut down soon as well. They're not going to be though, because the issue is the enforcement is not happening. Why don't you do it? Who cares what they're doing? We do it. We do it. Why don't you, why don't you have everybody do this and do the ID to watch porn? Because if we're talking about everybody, again, that's millions of websites, who is going to go and make sure that every single website. Be the pace setter, be the pace speeder, be the trailblazer. But think about it this way. No, no, it's, it's,

You can either stop it at the source. Am I sounding confusing, Rob, what my ask is? Because I feel like I'm delusional right now. Do you understand what I'm requesting? I do. Can you repeat what I just said? I'm just curious. Why they're not using the verification system. Which verification system am I asking about? The ID. And...

And a face that they do this. Yeah, I don't know the term for the head nod. It's a biometric scan. Biometric scan. Okay, so if you're doing a biometric scan to upload a video, why can't you do a biometric scan on who watches it so kids don't watch it? But don't you realize, you can either do it, have 100,000...

or a million sites doing this and taking people's ID, or you can have three operating systems do it one time, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and you have locked down that device to be able to either access adult or not access adult. I mean, that is a no-brainer. And we're not the only ones saying this. Mm-hmm.

Meta has come out and said that device-based age verification is the way to go. In fact, the French government just came out and said that. Anybody who understands the way the internet works says, look, either you can go give your ID to every single porn site you visit. And look, we are responsible. We take privacy seriously. But I always said this, like if this was the law that every site had to take ID, I'd stop running a porn site. I'd just go run an identity fraud site. And I,

And I'd say, well, I'd love to show you some porn, but first I need your ID. What a ridiculously insecure method and totally violating of the privacy of 130 million people a day. If you did do that-

90% of people who watch it would never go on your website and you will lose ad dollars. That's what would happen. - No, but we want it to happen on the device. We want it to happen on the device. - But kids can get access to it from different places. They don't just go watch it through the phone or a person can go on the internet and, you know, computer and watch porn and say, here's what I'm doing. I'm over 18 years old. - No, no, we have operating systems now that almost exclusively require a login, a user account. And what we are saying is that the default for every user account, I want you to understand this,

Every user account cannot see porn. You buy a new computer, it cannot access adult. It's important that you understand that. You upload, you update your iPhone to the new version, like that, it can't access adult until...

You verify on that device with all your other secure tokens, your credit card, your health information, and then that becomes your key to the adult internet. Like, this is obvious. Of course that's the way to do it, to do it from one device to be the key to all, as opposed to having to tell every platform, randomporn.com, to take people's ID. Your impression is that if you do that, it prevents what? Kids from watching porn? Yes. Yes. First, so why do you then do...

the verification of when people upload videos, their face and their ID. - Because these are people that are monetizing their content with us. These are people that are business people that are uploading adult content to our site. And for that reason, it's of course important that we're verifying the consent and identity of those people. It's very different than a private citizen trying to watch content. - If you were to do the same standard to people that are watching porn so kids wouldn't do it, what percentage of your viewership would drop?

It's interesting. That exact question was considered in Texas when we challenged the constitutionality of this law. Okay? And we took this to court because we said private individuals in the United States who have a first amendment right to see this should not have to identify themselves to the platform, which the government could get access to. And you know what the judge in Texas said, by the way, who was a Ronald Reagan appointee, not some namby-pamby liberal judge. He said...

That if somebody, for example, wants to go see gay porn in Texas, totally illegal, they have to give their ID to that platform, have it verified by the government, the same government that 20 years ago, not 200 years ago, 20 years ago, tried to outlaw being gay in Texas. Like we don't want to live in a society where you have to give your ID every single time you go to look at legal content.

Having it locked down on the device avoids all those privacy issues. I think you're assuming that if you do that, kids still won't be able to watch porn. Under 18 kids will not be able to watch porn. No, I'm saying that's the biggest step that you could take to ensure that young people cannot access adult content. I think there would be a bigger step than that. I think that is a step to not have to lose 90% of your people that are trying to consume the content.

Because that'll be like, for example, the other company that was called what? Brazzers? Brazzers. Brazzers. Brazzers. Is it members only or is it open to everybody? It's members only. Yeah.

Okay, so that means I can't see anything until if I, what would be equivalent of a browser? Is that like the Netflix of porn? It's a Netflix of porn. So you're paying 10 bucks a month and I can consume whatever I want. And if I'm buying it, you're going to see my age and what I am anyway because I got a credit card. Yeah. Okay, got it. That model to me is straight up. Great. Makes sense. Go do your thing.

But it's different if somebody just can come on Pornhub, log on, watch whatever they want, and they're 12, 13 years old. - Which is why having device-based age verification,

People have individual devices. They have individual user accounts. It would lock it down by default. And the funny thing is, this has very little to do with porn. Porn's the example here. But we need to secure the internet. Both we need to secure adult spaces from kids coming in. But here's the real revolution. We need to keep kids' spaces safe from adults. We need age assurance methods on the internet. The idea of doing it like scattershot, having every site with a different platform

protocol for verifying age when we have three operating system manufacturers who already have the tech built in, by the way. Apple will let you store your IDs and use them for all sorts of purposes. It already has it into your device. So the device would just become the key to all the spaces that we want to be age segregated. Has that already started or not yet? Oh, it's happening. It is absolutely happening. We're pushing for it every day. When you're saying it's happening right now, what are you saying? You're saying that right now,

kids are not consuming content and porn on porn. What I mean is the tech exists. The tech has been built. Google has their version. Apple has their version and Microsoft has their version. Who's using it right now? But they're not mandatory. That's the difference. They're opt-in. Parents have to turn them on. And I say this, right? Like I look at my kid's family link on Google. How does family link really know how old my kids are? Because it's opt-in. If it was opt-out, that means I would have to have ID. They're not going to make that mandatory though. Who's they? They're not going to make that mandatory.

U.S. government. Why not? We think they should. We think they should tomorrow. You think they should make it mandatory to opt in? That adult content cannot be accessed on any device unless the age assurance is satisfied. Who's pushing that? Who's pushing that today? So it's actually interesting. If you would have asked me eight months ago, I would have said we're the only ones. That's changed because now the other social media companies, this is where we share the same issues. You know, Mark Zuckerberg goes in front of Congress and gets lambasted.

with, you know, Instagram's trust and safety. They're coming around to, we do need to keep kids out of these spaces or to have different degrees of access. The only way to do that is with age assurance. And the only way to do age assurance properly is at the device-based level. They have now joined that. And, you know, there's a chorus and it's growing because we realize we need to age control access to the internet in a way that works and protects people's privacy. The only way to do that is at the device level.

Okay. So let me ask you this. Can you tell me about the chairman of your company, Ethical Capital Partners, about the company? Sure. Who's Rocco Meliambro? Sure. So Rocco, he's our chairman. He's a finance guy from Canada. There's nothing you can find on the guy. There's lots you can find on him. How did you make his money? Started out in financing mining and then went into the regulated cannabis space, right?

Which is actually how a number of us met in the regulated cannabis space in Canada. Canada is federally legal recreational cannabis since 2018. Before that, it was medicinal. Rocco took public one of the largest cannabis companies in Canada. Got it. So there is no background with Rocco and any kind of porn companies? Nope. Not with any of us, actually.

We don't come from the industry. We come from outside the industry. Got it. So Cannabis Canada is how you guys met. That's how you guys made your money and then you guys decided to buy this company.

so I come at from the legal side. I did a lot of work, uh, doing advisory work for regulated businesses, including cannabis, uh, our head of law enforcement engagement. He was the former chief superintendent of the Royal Canadian mounted police. It's like our FBI, but they have horses. Uh, he also came from, uh, after law enforcement to regulated cannabis. Um, and we thought that this industry shares a lot of the same struggles, uh,

needs legitimacy, needs security to be a priority. Ever since you guys bought it, have you noticed it going up or going down, revenue-wise? It's doing well. It's doing well. You should run for office. You're in the wrong business. You should run for office, man. Your answers are very good. But the only reason I ask that question is because, and maybe I'll answer it in this way, if your revenues are down, that means you're doing something right.

You know what? Actually, it's interesting. I disagree. To me, and we have this discussion. We had this discussion in the acquisition phase and when we talked to the executives. I get why the people that are there will agree with me. And I get why you would disagree with me because-

No, no. Let me explain why. Because they're going to be like, well, look, you guys came and became a pain in the ass and all this regulation back in a while, while West days, you know, we could do everything and anything. And now you're saying we can't do this. That's why we're down 42%. This is also why we're, we're being more transparent than ever because

Because what you're talking about... That's why I'm saying if you're down, that means you're doing something right. What we're talking about also is we've introduced what could be called friction, right, to the upload process. So when you're talking about content creators who are business people that are using our platforms to monetize their content, like I said earlier when we were chatting, it's hard, right, to get content up onto Pornhub. And...

Part of the work that I'm doing is going out and speaking with people and listening to their grievances on that front. And sometimes those are uncomfortable conversations where they're saying like, you know, it does take me a couple of days to get my content up there. You know, it is taking me more time to go through the process of getting all this paperwork up there. But these are things that we just we are not able to negotiate on because we just can't.

we can't take steps backward on that front. But there's two business cases to be made here, okay? Because that's how I look at it from the ownership perspective. Number one, people want to go to a platform where, and I think it's true in sex more than anywhere else, where they have this assurance that what I saw is okay. In other words, it's like-

it's legal, it's consensual, it's voluntary. So we want to provide that platform where people are as sure as anyone can possibly be. That's business case number one. Business case number two is we want to take the processes and the software we've developed here and to deploy them outside of adult. Like that,

That's actually the opportunity in this business is to look at an industry that has made tremendous strides, but that is applicable to many other adjacent industries. I always say this is our first investment. It's not our last investment because we see a lot to do. So you're going to get into more porn sites. No, that's why. That's interesting. I don't know if we could get into more. I don't know if there are more. You got a family, you got kids? Yeah.

- How old are your kids? - Sure, so I've got two 19 year olds and a 16 year old. - How you talk to them, do you guys run this? - First of all, I don't run it. I'm very proud of the people who do. We bought it, there's a difference. But Patrick, before I did it, before I did this acquisition, I sat down with them and I laid out the plan.

I said, this is what I want to do. This is what my interest is. And obviously I wear the compliance hat in the ownership group. I want to raise the standards here. I want to invest in trust and safety. I want to keep kids off the platform from viewing it.

And you know, it's funny, my kids have been raised by a criminal defense lawyer. That was my first career, 15 years in criminal defense. And my daughter said to me, she said, hold on, you defend people who are legitimately doing wrong things. You do that as a defense lawyer. You know, my kids know why I do that. They understand probably more about the criminal justice system than most. And here you have a company that wants to get it right, that wants to improve. Why wouldn't you do this? Like it was just a no brainer. Maybe the wisdom of the young there.

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Every family has a different dynamic, but I will tell you this. Have you watched the recent Vince McMahon documentary? Haven't seen it yet. Have you seen it? No. I think you should watch it. I think both of you will like it. Let me tell you why. There's a part of it that I think if you guys go to the last episode,

It shows when Vince McMahon was running it and it was like, they're all telling stories of what used to happen with girls and sex and drugs and cocaine and steroids and all this stuff. Right. And obviously Vince being the promoter that he is, you know, some call him the greatest promoter of all time. And then it ends with them endeavor buying them out and changing the culture to what it was once like. Okay. Yeah.

And Triple H runs it with his daughter because he had to step aside for many different reasons, legal issues. I don't know if you're following the story closely or not. And now that Triple H runs it and his wife, that's his daughter. I think they said they had the big, Rob, did they say the biggest WrestleMania ever or they had the biggest? This year was the biggest one. Biggest WrestleMania ever because they cleaned house with a lot of the old ways of doing business.

So for me, I have a very big, like when people tell me about OnlyFans, a guy asked me a question the other day, who was a Stiney that asked me the question on Nelk Boys. Rob, he's like, hey, what would you do if your daughter at 21 years old wants to get on OnlyFans? I said, if she wants to get on OnlyFans, I did a bad job raising my daughter if that's what she wants to do. But there's nothing I can do about it.

You know, she's an adult. She has a choice to make, right? What are you going to do? Sit there and say, hey, I'm going to give you a papaw and let's go. You're not going to get ice cream. You can do whatever you want to do with yourself when you're above 18 years old. You do your best to raise your family in ways where they make decisions, you know, certain decisions when they're above 18. I worked at Chatsworth Valley Total Fitness. You know what Chatsworth was known for decades? 80% of the porn in America was produced in Chatsworth.

You know what percentage of our members at Bally's were porn stars? You know how I know that? Every other day I got a job offer.

you would look like a good porn star. You ever thought about getting into the industry? I've never heard that. Wow. That's not a compliment I get. Every other day, they're like, I can see you as... I'm like, is that like a... What do you mean? It's like, well, we pay very well. I'm like, dude, I'm good, man. So I come home. That's what I used to look like. But you do... Look at that right there. That's this guy. No, not that one. The one to the left looks like a porn star. Look at that. I think they all look like porn stars. But anyways, but the point being is the fact that there is a difference between...

You want to do your thing? You're above 18 years old. You want to mess with kids? I have a problem with that. And we find a way to be responsible with that in the best possible way. It is what it is. Go ahead. I agree. So,

We are actually really involved in, because like you said, right, people more and more, the sort of the barrier to entry to the adult industry is much different than it was, say, 20 years ago, right? Where it used to be you get an agent and then they book you and it's professional scenes. And now because of platforms like ours or platforms like OnlyFans, people are able to be independent creators at home. Right.

And we're not blind to the fact that there are certainly risks that come along with that. We're never going to say that it's all sunshines and rainbows in the adult industry. There certainly are, much like any industry, there are people that could take advantage of folks. And so that's why we're partnering worldwide.

with people in the child protection space. We're also partnering with people in the anti-trafficking space. We work very closely with a group called the Cupcake Girls, and we're actually creating educational content for people specifically that are thinking about getting into the industry or that are new to the industry on things to look out for. So how you can do this work as safely as possible and avoid these kinds of situations. We support the anti-trafficking work that they do because we're not trying to put our head in the sand here.

Right. Like these are things that do happen that do exist. And we do take it quite seriously as a part of our responsibility as leaders in the industry to make sure that we're helping people do their work as safely as possible. You know what that reminds me of? You ever seen that? And I'm not trying to be funny, but I am because it makes me laugh every time. Sure. Rob, what is that commercial? I don't know which CEO it is. Is it Harrah's or, you know, Casino...

you know, he says, look, if you're, if you are finding yourself, um, at the casino, you're gambling too much, please step away and call this 1-800 gambling hotline. Right. I mean, it, you, it's a good thing to do to be a part of it. This is a very risque industry. You're a part of, you guys know that it's not like a industry. You are at that, uh,

I don't know how you say you're positively changing people's lives. Like it wouldn't be like, oh my God, we are positively changing people's lives on a daily basis. It's purely a business. It's for profit. If you do it following the certain guidelines and the laws in the state state what they state, there's ways to make money with this legally. But it's not a, it's not a, do you feel like the company that you get, like for example, let's just say if you work at Apple, right?

we're thinking different and we're making the world and da-da-da-da-da, right? You know, you're working at Walmart and here's what we're going to do with serving people. Working at this restaurant. Sorry, Walmart is going to be given as our number one ethical company example. Sam Walton. I'm talking with Sam Walton. Ran it. It was like, we're going to serve our people right today in restaurant. We're going to do this. There's visions like we're correcting injustice. Does it bother you at all? You know, and if you do, how do you guys sell the dream to employees? Like,

Is there a way of selling the dream to employees where they feel like, man, we are really changing people's lives? Do you have that feeling? I would disagree with you, yes, because what's important to remember is that content creators are business owners, right? Each single person that has an OnlyFans or each single person that is uploading content to Pornhub for the purposes of monetizing their content, these are independent businesses. So these are people whose lives are changing in some cases drastically because of the money that they're making that way. Right.

So, yeah, it's helping people to feed their families in some cases. It's helping people to stay sheltered. It's helping people to, you know, pay for school, whatever it is. It does change people's lives. You know, and on my side, when I look at it from the, you know, the ownership level, the compliance level,

What we have put into place, it's not just for us. And this is important. Like we talked about like, everyone should feel good doing the work they're doing. It's very hard to work hard if you're not really feeling that it's meaningful work. And money is a pretty, you know this well, it's a pretty limited motivator, right? To really get the best out of people. Money doesn't cut it, okay? I'll tell you what happens inside when I talk to the trust and safety folks. We publish, for example, twice a year transparency report where we set out everything we're doing so others can copy it

Let that sink in so others can copy what we are doing on the platform. So to me, I was like, what's a success? The success is if what we are doing, the example we're setting becomes the standard, becomes the regulation, right? Then you have a safer internet. Are you a man of faith? I am a man of faith. You would say you are? Yeah. Are you ever conflicted?

I think that the work we are doing in an industry, whether you like it or not, right? And we happen to, we like the people we work with. We like the industry, okay? It will exist, right?

So to be part of the movement that's going to make it safer, not by getting 2.5 million, shut it down, have a petition, be nasty, but by actually doing the work, investing in making it safer, I mean, that's an extraordinarily positive thing to do. And destigmatization as well, because one of the realities is that this is a very stigmatized industry, right? And we know full fact that when there is increased stigma, right, there's more, there's increased violence. So whenever we have...

I'm listening. I'm just reading hard. Okay. I got a big nose. When I breathe, the whole city hears about it. So don't forgive me.

No, but it's true. And so that's why, you know, that is why we're public. And that is why we, you know, we're, Saul and I are very proud to be transparent and represent the company that we work for and the industry that we're in. Because the more that we're able to destigmatize it, the less harm truly will come, hopefully, eventually to people in our industry. Let me talk about a project that we've been working on for two years that is now live and running that tells you about the values of this company. Yeah. Okay.

we have what's called a banned word service. So that's 50,000 terms that are banned. You can't search for them. You can't tag content. You can't use it in comments that basically represent illegal activity. So we made a decision as a company that when you search for one of those terms, first of all, it's not like Instagram where it says show results anyway. You remember that controversy? We've decided that it shouldn't redirect you to even legal content. Obviously, you're not going to find that content, but it shouldn't redirect you to legal content because we don't want to make a

penny of somebody searching for an illegal term. But that's number one. Let's go to two and three. We have a warning that what you're looking for is illegal. Okay? This content, you're not going to find it, but it's illegal. And here's number three. We have partnered with

NGOs in every jurisdiction that will have us, including Canada, the United States, try this out yourself. Go on Pornhub and put in the search word underage. You will see we have linked up with organizations that try to, people who are looking for this material, deter them, get them help. Because it would be very easy for us to just turn a blind eye and say, well, you know, they're never going to find that material on our site. So, you know,

Just have nothing. Yeah, our work's done and that's it. Our work's done. But it's not. We take it the extra step. So we've partnered in Canada, where we're from, in the United States here, where people can actually get help who are looking for illegal material. And that means, so what's the meaning of that? Imagine those people get the help they need and that saves a child from a lifetime of victimization. Now, is that a porn site's job? No, it's not. But we have these eyeballs. And if we know people are making these searches, even though they're not going to find anything,

That is something that we can do to make a positive impact. I want to get your reaction to this. So this says Solomon Friedman, a rabbi overseeing Pornhub, right? What a great way to go. So I'm just saying, that's what it says. There's already falsehoods in that number one, right? Which one is a falsehood? The rabbi part or? Well, I was educated as a rabbi. I've never practiced as a rabbi. It's part of my education. Are you Jewish or Jew-ish? What do you think? Solomon Friedman, this face, do you think I'm Jewish or Jew-ish? No, no. Meaning, what I mean is like, do you practice?

practice or you're just like this i mean you know you're like fully committed to all i always say this i say this i'm gonna can i take you to dinner every night of the year and we're gonna be fine or do you take some days off i'm gonna keep practicing until i get good at it okay so so there's this guy that i want to show you i'm gonna see what you're gonna say to it i mean it's not like uh i am sure you're gonna take some shots at him it's okay it won't hurt my feelings i've read lots of no i'm sure it's not gonna you're not gonna so not this guy rob there's the other clip there's a clip i think

Let me see which one it is. Let me see this here, Rob. There's one that you guys showed me earlier, Shmuley. And I'm sure you know who Shmuley is, right? I know who Shmuley is. So Shmuley has a clip that, Rob, you guys showed me with, what's his name, with Brandon.

Do you know which one I'm talking about or no? Yeah, let me find it right now. Yeah, you guys texted it. I think, let me see where this is. By the way, just so you know, I don't want to make you guys uncomfortable. It's not porn. We're not going to sit here. Oh, thank God. I was worried we'd sit here, we're going to watch porn. We can, on the business side, we're going to watch it, but we're not going to sit here and judge. What do you think about this clip? You think this is, here, Rob, let me send it to you. I just found it.

I want to get your reaction to this to see what you're going to say. If you have it, great. If you don't, this is the one I'm sending to you. I have. Okay. Do you know which one it is? I think so. All right. Do you know who he is or no? I know he is, sure. Okay. Are you guys friends, buddies? Small world. So you guys know each other? I know who he is. Okay. But like, do you guys kick it or like you guys? Do we kick it? No, you guys grab a shmooly if we kick it. We don't. We don't kick it.

All right, so guys, it's very important to note, they don't kick it, but let's just see where we stand here with Mr. Shmuley and our friend here, Friedman. Go ahead, Rob, play the clip. There clearly is a need for pornography as evidenced by the huge supply there is. So my question is, instead of trying to eliminate pornography from our society, why aren't we trying to find a cure for loneliness? She's a great advocate. I love it. Rabban Shmuley.

I have to say that Great Britain has a minister for loneliness, and it's an interesting concept maybe other countries should take up. Well, it's one of the reasons, getting back to this issue of celibacy, the very first thing that the Bible says is bad is that it is bad for man to be alone, and that's the beginning of Genesis. I completely agree, but how is pornography possibly compensation for real human company? The exact opposite is true.

Pornography is the living degradation of women. It trains the male mind to see a woman as a means to an end. It makes women into the walking embodiment of a male erotic fantasy. And it leads to disrespect because it means that women exist forever.

to fulfill those erotic fantasies. I actually think that it does a serious toxic harm to how men view women and it makes them very objective about women. Meaning the only synonym I can find for love is the word subjectivity because to love is to be rendered subjective. Your emotions actually color and transform and enhance the object of your love. But when you become too objective, when you absorb thousands and thousands of these images,

You learn to look at women very objectively to the extent that it's difficult to be attracted to women because you're no longer responding instinctually. You're responding almost instinctively. Pornography is the living degradation of women, okay? And he says on porn and loneliness. Your thoughts on it? Yeah, I couldn't disagree more.

I think that pornography, like any other form of expression, we have Hollywood movies full of fantasy. So people who can distinguish between fantasy and reality can enjoy fantasy. It's funny. I wonder what he would say about the over 30% of our visitors who are women. There's a big misconception there that pornography is only men consuming.

- The couples who view it, the people who find all sorts of sexual meaning and avenues in it. I disagree. I couldn't disagree more. I think sexuality is an important part of the human expression. And if somebody says, look, sex, and I respect what Rabbi Shmuley says, you know, in terms of the power of sexuality and human connection, I do. But when you say sex only fits in, in my view of the world, anywhere else, it must be degrading women. What you've done there is you've taken agency away from people and women in this case, in his example,

to make free choices about their bodies. So I don't think that it contributes to loneliness. In fact, many people find connection and meaning in sexual experiences in porn. Couples watch porn. People get inspired, but it's in a situation understanding the difference between fantasy and reality. No, I think, you know, and I'd love to, we have Alex here, a female executive of, you know, the largest, one of the largest adult companies. Love to hear her take.

I mean, I agree. I think that there's a big misconception that pornography exists only for the male gaze. I think that's also another. Male gaze? Yeah. Really? That's what people say? G-A-Z-E. Yes. G-A-Z-E. Sorry. Like the. The gaze from your eyes. The perception. Oh. Patrick's losing it. He's like, it's only for the gaze. I'm like, wait a minute. That is a whole other kettle of fish, my friend. First of all, we don't say the gaze. No, no, no. The male gaze. The male gaze. Okay.

Am I the only one that thought you said that, Rob? No, I heard male gaze. I'm like, wait, male gaze? Get your mind out of the gutter. Your only viewers are male gaze. No. Very offensive. But no, that it's made only for men, right? I think there's this concept that it is... Gaze, viewership. Viewership, yes. The...

The visualization. Or that it's made through the lens, the male lens. So more and more, and I wanted to touch on this because I saw in some of the questions that you sent us beforehand, you talk about this notion of ethical pornography, right? And what that means and what that looks like. Just a full disclosure. I don't know what questions I sent you. Whoever sent you the questions, it wasn't me that sent you the questions, but-

I'm glad they send you some questions to know what we're going to be talking about. And so more and more, you know, we're seeing that there isn't just a singular concept of what pornography is or what it looks like in the same way that we don't have a singular sense of who watches it, right? It's extremely diverse. Yeah.

And that is one of the things that I think is really great about a platform like Pornhub is that it doesn't look like just one thing. It's not just one single kind of person consuming it. And people do feel represented. And I know that people are going to, you know, say that that's corny and whatever when we're talking about things like diversity and inclusivity. Yeah. But.

It's true. Like sexuality and sex is something that impacts all of us. It's part of all of our lives. And it's important that I think people are able to see themselves represented in that medium. And I'll come back, by the way, to Rabbi Shmuley's point, because I think it's worthy of discussion. Like this is an important social topic to discuss.

I think there was a time in the porn industry where there was the vision of a porn star, right? She looked a certain way. She had a certain hair color, certain proportions. And, you know, you don't want to have a society where everybody thinks that's the sort of pinnacle of beauty, of sexuality, et cetera. What actually happens now with the content creator world is that porn looks like everybody. Yep. Older, younger, bigger, smaller, whatever.

different skin colors, different identities. Everyone is represented. So people actually find a lot more of themselves in what they see, more than that professional studio content, which I think is actually a social benefit to let people be represented in what they see. So it's actually, I think that's a very outdated idea of what porn is and what it represents. I mean, if there's anybody that you could have taken a complete different angle with, Rabbi Shmuley, do you know what his daughter does?

Do you know what him and his daughter do? Rob, you want to pull that up? They have a kosher sex store in Tel Aviv. Okay. Ran by his daughter. Mazel Tov. And sells spice for marriages. So they're about selling toys to couples, but he's not for...

uh, porn and Rabbi Shmuley, the last 12 months has had a rough 12 months. He's been all over the place going viral, but it's been a rough 12 months for him. But can you pull up the guardian article? This is kind of where I was going with it to see a fifth of teenagers watch pornography frequently are some, uh, some are addicted and UK study finds, right? If you go to the bottom, Rob, there's a quote in there. That's the part where, uh,

The correlation between sexual abuse and watching porn is very high. The majority of what they see is violent. Now, the majority of what they see is violent. And I know you'll say, well, for us, you know,

We don't let the man slap physical abuse. He's slapping her in the butt. Maybe we'll approve it because our people will approve it, but not if it's this. I don't know what kind of stuff that you guys are going to put up there or not. To me, if I was a kid that grew up very poor and we sold drugs, some of our friends sold drugs, the goal was to...

stop and get away from it. And it's temporary, right? Because there's more honorable ways of making money. Okay. But at certain times when you're in a place and you're doing what you're doing, it's really not your number one job. Like if you look at the correlation between somebody who becomes a porn star and they're

upbringing with their parents, loving mom and dad. It's a lot of messy stories. I'm not saying everybody. I know you're going to go tell me there's this pastor that's now an incredible porn star and all this other stuff. And I even saw that Ron Jeremy one time called his triple X pastor and he prayed for him. And then right after he prayed for him, he went back and Ron Jeremy's doctor said, if you can climb up the stairs twice, you can do porn. He says, doc, I climbed up the stairs four times. So that means I can do two times a day and all this. I

I've seen all this stuff because Ron Jeremy, I used to go and we would have dinner. He'd be sitting right next to me, whatever place he lived. We lived around because he would go to the same El Torito years ago. Right. But to me,

People don't grow up with their dreams of saying, I want to be a porn star, unless if they watch porn to aspire to become a porn star. - It's interesting. - It's a, let me finish to stop and I'll finish, turn it over to you. People do it purely, I've been around porn stars. I had people who got into the business and the breakdown of math and if you're agreeing to do this,

gay porn will pay you this much more money than you do this. And there was a dollar a month. This paid this much, that pays this much, this paid this much, this paid this much. If you do this, so person's like, wait a minute, if I do this, you're going to pay me this much. It's one day we're sitting, and I'm not going to mention the person's name because the person ended up being a vice president with our company, previous company that was a part of making a quarter million dollar your income. One day at the office, these guys are playing late HBO soft porn. Remember HBO when they had soft porn back in the days? I don't, well, I'm sure you consumed it, but back in the days that, uh,

HB at soft porn. And guys are like, is that who I think it is? I'm not even kidding with you. He's like, no, it's not. Dude, I think it is. Like, there's no way in the world. Can you pause it? So then we went to the event and a couple of the guys approached him. They said, was this you? And you should see the look on his face. The look on the face was like, yeah, back in the days when I needed money, I had to do something to make money. And even bodybuilders, a lot of them do stuff purely out of desperation on needing money.

This is not necessarily an industry where I would say more than 5% of people do it because they aspire to grow up and be porn stars.

It is an industry because you don't, people who become drug dealers, their dream wasn't to be a drug dealer. And I know this is an uncomfortable conversation. Drug dealers are criminals. There's a difference. Drug dealers are criminals. Yeah, I get that. But even those who did certain kind of porn that is edgy, almost anybody that gets into porn and then they want to make the bigger dollars, they participate in certain things that pays more.

That's why I said, what is the dream? Is the dream to help them get off of producing this kind of stuff? Or is the dream to, you know, this is their way to do something and then get away and have a regular day job and whatever they're doing. Because I don't see the dream or the aspirations for us to get other people growing up to say, hey, what do you want to do when you grow up? I want to be a porn star. Well,

Well, I think that this is informed a lot because I agree with you. There are a lot of these narratives that are out there that are these kind of doom and gloom stories, right? Because that is reinforcing a very problematic longstanding stereotype that that's what it means to be a porn star, right? That that's what it means to be a content creator. Is it necessarily means that you came up through undue hardship or your parents were absent or your parents were drug addicts?

That's not the reality of a lot of people. I don't want to say that there's like a singular definition of how these people grew up or where they came from. But there is certainly a very dominant idea in the media of what that looks like. And that's because we're very, as a society, very comfortable with that idea. And I think there's a very, there's a very... That was around them.

This is not about what TVI saw. So am I. That's my job. These are my friends and these are my family. And I can tell you that these are people that that's not their reality. How does somebody aspire to become a porn star? Hang on. I want to hear this. What is the healthy way that somebody grows up to want to be a porn star? Give me a healthy way. I think that there's people who are very comfortable with their sexuality and they see a way to monetize that in a way that is completely legal. I get that. But think about the question, though. The question is...

How does one, like for example, how does one aspire to become a basketball player? They watched somebody play basketball when they were younger. How does somebody aspire to become a baseball player? They watched somebody play baseball when they were younger. How does somebody aspire to become a politician president? They saw a debate. They saw somebody command presence from stage. I want to grow up to be. How does somebody aspire to be a comedian? How does somebody, but how does somebody aspire to become a,

Well, how does somebody aspire to work at Starbucks or how does somebody aspire to want to be an accountant? No, that's not an aspiration. That's called a job. That's an interim. And then you hope to move up within the company if you decide to stay. But most people that work at Starbucks don't stay there for 20 years. It's a step up of a job is what I'm trying to say. I didn't work at Bally's because I was going to be the CEO of the company. I didn't go in the military because I wanted to be the general of the army. I went in the army because I didn't have an option.

I went in the army because I had a one-pointer GPA in high school and life was tough. It wasn't easy. So all I'm saying is an element of this is to get away from the industry because if somebody inspired to become a porn star at a young age,

Then that's called child pornography. That's, that's exactly part of the problem. When did you know you wanted to be a lawyer? 29 years old. When did you know you wanted to be a lawyer? Probably young age.

Sure. Who inspired you? Yeah. Law and order? Of course. And how old were you when you first watched it? But you're validating my point. No, no, the point is there are adult jobs, right? There are adult jobs that are for adults. I know there is. I get what you're saying. I'm not telling you there's not. And I'm not even going with like the idea of we must ban all porn. No, that's the option and the choice of people above 18. This is America. You're not comfortable with it?

Don't watch it. But if somebody else that wants to do your thing, but you have to realize how did one aspire, inspire? How were they inspired?

to be a porn star. They probably- But there's a whole bunch of assumptions in that, that people are inspired. It's not. No, no, I'll tell you what the assumption is. It's been interviewed. You want me to roll up how many documentaries of former porn stars' background? That people are inspired or aspire, right? People like Alex, who works with creators every single day, and not anecdotally, like talking about working with them, helping them through their business issues, helping them with trust and safety, helping them with all these things, getting to know them. They have stories that are as varied as you can imagine. In fact, we're

Probably less than 5% of them. No, no. Before I got into this, I had never met anybody in the adult industry, or at least admitted to me they were in the adult industry. Never. And I had all kinds of these preconceived notions. Right. What their background looked like, what their education looks like. And all of a sudden, I'm meeting people who are, and this is a very loaded word, normal.

who are parents and spouses, who have advanced degrees, who come from strong, stable families. You're making the exception. So I'm telling you my experience and you're telling me your experience. How good of a boxer are you? Come on, I'm a Jewish guy named Solomon with these glasses. That's my point. Why though? Why? Why are you not a boxer? Why are you not a jujitsu fighter?

How many jujitsu, can you type in how many jujitsu fighters that are Jewish? I think they're good. We got judo guys. I know you do, but type in how many professional jujitsu fighters that are Jewish. Okay. Can you type that up? I'm a Christian guy. Okay. So there isn't much information about how many Jewish fighters there are. You know why? What, you know, what's the profile of a fighter? Fighting is not illegal, but what's the profile of a fighter? What is the profile of somebody that became a fighter?

because they lived in a place that was probably not the best option and they wish they could have become an accountant or a lawyer or something else. They didn't have another choice. I was at one point a GPA kid in high school. I

I didn't have a lot of choice. I went to the army and then later on I got lucky to get into the financial services industry. I grew up with people that were in this space. The number one G dealer in, you know, the caps back then. I was the guy. My guy was a friend of mine that had to drop him off in UK. Anyways, the number one pot sales guy, the number one ecstasy guy that went to jail for nine years. These are all my buddies. Okay. So the point I'm trying to make to you is the part of it that if somebody is in this space, right?

It's to say, if somebody got into the space, they had a rough upbringing,

No one grows up to be a porn star at 12 years old. There's a lot of truth in what you're saying, by the way. And I think it actually brings us to agreement more than disagreement. The creator community, whether it's porn star, call them what you want, they are vulnerable, right? They are a vulnerable community. Thank you. No question about it. Which is why they need a platform that keeps them safe to the absolute nth degree. Maybe for three to six months they do this to get off of porn.

Which is their personal choice. We live in America or Canada, land of personal choice and self-determination. But when you have a population that is vulnerable, by the way, for a number of reasons. What's this? They need to have a platform that is absolutely safe. I earn millions from doing porn, but my adult firm can ruin my life. X-rated stars have bitter reality of the job revealing she's shamed over it every day and even lost her whole family because of her...

By the way, this is just one story. This is the Daily Mail and this is a story about Riley Reid, who is a multimillionaire and who owns her own agency. Do you know how many stories we can- Sorry, her own agency? What kind of agency? She has her own content management agency. She's happily married with a kid. Alexandra, what I'm trying to say to you is I can give you hundreds of stories like this. You cannot tell me somebody who grows up to be a porn star-

They grew up to become a porn star because since they were a kid, they had a dream. And if that was the case, they watched porn illegally and these people groomed them at a young age. That's a problem. And you can't sit there and say, that's not a problem. If a person became a porn star at 18, they were consuming porn and they were inspired by these guys.

This is not a healthy industry to be a part of. There are certain things that we do that you get out. You're trying to get out of it. I was a bodyguard at one point for a Colombian guy. What do you think I was doing for this Colombian guy? Selling sugar? What do you think I was doing for this guy in Santa Monica, California? No. But there was a time when I'm like, hey, what's going to happen with this? I don't know if I want to do this. And then boom, I'm out. Certain things in life that happens, all I'm saying is when I think about

you know, investing in certain industries at any cost of rate of return money to be made. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. One of my very, very good friends back in the days, God bless his soul, was a criminal defense attorney in L.A. And he would talk like this. Hey, Patrick, how you doing, buddy? And he was in a porn himself in his late 50s, early 60s.

And he was a lawyer to a bunch of these criminal guys until eventually he started doing cocaine and then he went to jail. You have a really fascinating cast of characters around you. That's all I can say. We're the most boring people you've ever met. Actually, no. You would be amazed. You have to know. I enjoy good conversations and I'm enjoying this conversation. Likewise. Because you're giving me your perspective and I'm going to tell the story to say their point of view was dot, dot, dot.

And they seem like reasonable, nice, respectful people. I'm not walking away saying this was a bad experience. You were disrespectful. Not at all. I'm going to walk away saying I actually really enjoyed their conversation. I'm just questioning if, you know, like I think America right now has the wrong people as heroes and they're confusing a lot of kids. I want to make sure kids, you know, hero making machine is a problem in America and their kids are confused today in a big way.

And I just wanna make sure that that mindset of growing up saying, when I grow up, I wanna be this doesn't happen. That's because life was hard. Patrick, we started the discussion about young people accessing the platform by saying, we wanna be blocked by Apple, Google, and Microsoft.

Like let that one sink in. That is the ownership group of Pornhub saying, we want our platform to be blocked by Apple, Google, and Microsoft. And we're currently blocked in how many states actively right now where people can't? 13, 14. 13 states where we have made the conscious decision to block our service outright. That's the reasoning for it. Yeah, because we will not take the ID of individual visitors. We will not take...

people's private information. - Oh, those states require you to take the, which states are these? - Texas, Mississippi, Virginia, Arkansas. - So wait a minute, the Texas person you talked about that you said was a Reagan person, which argument was that for? - Yeah, so we challenged the law, we won the trial. He overturned the law and found it unconstitutional.

the state appealed. Two out of three of the judges agreed with Texas. We went to the Supreme Court of the United States and they have granted us, it's called certiorari, they've agreed to hear the case. The case will be heard in December, which, by the way, has been joined by the ACLU representing the First Amendment interest. Solomon, is this at Utah, Texas, Louisiana? So those are states where regardless of...

Anything. You cannot access Pornhub. Yeah. So the difference, by the way... Because they have to give the idea. Right. So other platforms are... Good for them. Yeah. Other platforms are just operating there, not obeying the law. We have withdrawn service because we want this to be done. Which goes to show that these laws do not work. Right. Of course they don't work. Because...

There has been, I think, zero exactly. Yeah, no other websites that have there's no enforcement that's happening. So all these other porn sites are still accessible in these states where people can go. These are websites that have minimal, if no compliance, trust and safety. They're not moderating their content. So people can still access all of those, except they can't go on ours, which is a safe site that does moderate content, which is why it's not working. A device based solution.

on all the advice that we already use today would actually stop young people from accessing porn. By the way, these people that are your hundreds of moderators that all they do is watch porn all day. Yeah. When they get home, are they like, babe, I'm so tired. I'm not in a mood, babe. I've watched so much crazy shit that I'm like, what do you want to like,

I would be curious to know how long they last at their job. Do some people stay doing that for like years or is it like six months at a time? Or even more, how long it takes to train them to be able to do that? You have to train them, like physically show them like what they are. It's a months long protocol. Like physically showing different positions what's going to prove or not. Well,

All sorts of acts that we allow or don't allow. Are you joking right now? No, it's a three month training period. So you guys will be like, hey, Mary, do me a favor. Put that leg up. John, can you go stand? No, no, no. We will not approve this. We're looking at videos. We're looking at things that. Oh, I thought you guys. Like Patrick, you've got a fascinating idea of what's happening in the office. No, we're talking about making sure that the content is adhering to community guidelines. Watch your amount of resumes. But to answer your question, no, there are a lot of folks that have been at the company for a very long time. People really enjoy working for us.

Listen, you sound happy. I'm very happy. You sound happy. Your tone sounds very happy. So that's good for you. Anyways, it's been a very interesting conversation. I had no idea what direction we're going to go, but it was actually great. And, you know, normally I'm laughing, Rob, because I think the only person that will understand why I'm laughing. Normally we would say to learn more about their business, go visit. But we're not doing that today.

Because we don't need to. It's going to be if they want to do it, they're going to do their thing if they're above 18 years old. All right. They can go to our Trust and Safety Center, though, if they want to learn more. Which one is that? The Pornhub Trust and Safety Center that outlines all of our policies and the ways that we keep the plot. Who would go to a website that long? Pornhub Trust and Safety Center. Oh, no, sorry. That's not the URL. No, no, no. That's not the URL. We can give you the URL to plug after. Anyways, we will do that. There we go. You've got it up on the screen. Boom. That's it.

Yeah, there you go. Okay, guys. Well, we appreciate you for coming out. It was a pleasure. Thank you very much for having us. Yes. Take care. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.