Docs: Pornhub Allowed Child Abuse Videos That Were Flagged

Disclaimer: This article discusses child sexual abuse material and sexually explicit terms.

When Republican lawmakers across the country rolled out plans to crack down on on-screen sex companies for failing to verify the age of their users, the porn lobby, Democrats, and their allies in corporate media threw a fit. They defended the on-screen “sex work” as consensual and constitutionally protected. In reality, mass abuse, exploitation, and sex trafficking of children is routinely uploaded and searched on porn websites — sometimes without objection or hasty removal.

A 51-page document trove recently uncovered due to a “filing error” shows Pornhub allowed child sexual abuse material (CSAM) to stay on its website for years at a time despite its clear violation of federal law.

The previously sealed memorandum from December 2024 includes dozens of internal records and conversations showing Pornhub employees knew of content documenting the rape and trafficking of minors on their platform but failed to curb it.

A New York Times’ exposé determined the documents “show why we shouldn’t trust porn companies.” The evidence, however, increasingly indicates that Pornhub and a significant number of its patrons are complicit in sex crimes against children.

In several instances spanning from 2015 to 2020, Pornhub received reports from users flagging certain videos as involving someone underage but failed to remove the criminal acts from its website. One particular video, despite getting flagged to Pornhub content reviewers 13 times since it was uploaded in 2015, racked up 1.7 million views before it was taken down in 2019.

“There is A LOT of very, very obvious and disturbing CSAM here, connected to numerous CSAM profiles,” one employee remarked to a coworker in November 2020.

The court filing notes that “that same day, that coworker wrote to another” that he noticed “probably the worst video I’ve ever seen” involving potential CSAM. At that point, the video, which was uploaded nine months prior, had already been viewed 237 times.

During discussions about child exploitation videos on their website, Pornhub moderators allegedly joked that the material they downloaded to review could put them in jail “for a long time.”

“I hope I never get in trouble for having those vids on my computer LOOOOL,” another chat between employees stated.

They also admitted that “whenever a mistake was found it was negotiated.”

“I.e. we were not always enforcing strict rules as the decision was that the team had to focus on speed and numbers instead,” the internal conversation about the “700k backlog” states.

The employees acknowledged that the subjects in the missed videos were obviously kids based on their physical appearance and stature. When one moderator asked another if he was doing anything to prevent the reupload of certain CSAM videos, he replied, “Nope we said only really bad cp and you and I t[h]ough[t] that video was not that bad.”

Another employee expressed concern when he was advised not to loop in a supervisor on the CSAM reports.

“He deosn’t [sic] want to know how much cp we have ignored for the past five years?” he asked.

Pornhub also permitted tags with explicit phrases suh as “brutal,” “childhood,” “force,” “unwilling,” “minor,” “very young teen,” and “young girl” to be attached to videos. In some cases, Pornhub created tags such as “young-AF,” “jailbait,” “teen,” “child,” and “Lolita,” along with titles such as “barely legal” and “petite teen,” to reach CSAM-attracted viewers.

“[T]he entire algorithm that Defendants created and employ for their sites uses the tags and categories it created and the keywords in titles to help uploaders advertise CSAM and help users seeking CSAM locate it,” the court documents state. “Indeed, Defendants tracked how much traffic and profit each category and stage earned them — down to the dollar amount per month and per day for the most popular tags.”

The company also maximized its search engine optimization to redirect users who Googled phrases like “gorgeous teen strips naked” or “stop, it hurts porn video” to the Pornhub site above other on-screen sex sellers.

Federal law “prohibits the production, advertisement, transportation, distribution, receipt, sale, access with intent to view, and possession of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).” The U.S. Department of Justice determined that on-screen sex companies like Pornhub’s complicity in publishing CSAM does nothing but fuel sex crimes against kids.

“The market for CSAM among individuals with a sexual interest in children drives the demand for new and more egregious images and videos. The push for new CSAM results in the continued abuse and exploitation of child victims, and the abuse of new children every day,” the DOJ states. “When these images and videos are posted and disseminated online, the victimization continues in perpetuity. Children often suffer a lifetime of re-victimization knowing the documentation of their sexual abuse is on the internet, available for others to access forever.”

In 2023, Pornhub’s parent company, MindGeek S.A.R.L turned Brooklyn, Aylo Holdings S.A.R.L., admitted to profiting off of sex trafficking yet avoided criminal charges.

“This was far beyond negligence. It was systemic criminal conduct — monetized sexual abuse on an industrial scale, driven by willful corporate decisions,” Justice Defense Fund CEO Laila Mickelwait said in a statement about the damning documents. “These newly released documents confirm what survivors have long known: Pornhub executives knew they were distributing child rape — and they chose profits over children’s lives.”

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on X @jordanboydtx.