MONTREAL — The world shook a little when it was announced that Pornhub and its parent company, MindGeek, were acquired by a newly formed private equity firm for an undisclosed sum. Ethical Capital Partners (ECP) is the brand new owner of the world’s most recognized adult entertainment brand. As a means to boost trust among its business partners and customers, ECP announced the acquisition of the parent company of Pornhub during a crucial time for the adult industry.

Since late 2020, Pornhub has been targeted by a strong opposition movement that sparked from a combination of external factors that led to a resurgence of scrutiny as to the trust, safety, and ethical missions of adult companies that field web traffic volumes that are on-par or greater than the leading social media networks or the search engine segment. Between the #TraffickingHub movement on social media and the one-sided journalism of New York Times opinion contributor Nicholas Kristof, right-wing politicians all over the United States and Canada have called for civil and criminal investigations.

Nevertheless, per ECP’s intentions, Pornhub is revitalizing itself for the better. It’s high time that the anti-porn movement takes note. Laila Mickelwait, the extremely controversial leader of the anti-porn #TraffickingHub movement that went viral on the heels of Kristof’s “The Children of Pornhub” column, continues to employ right-wing, populist tactics in an effort to outlaw pornography entirely. The individuals who lead the National Center for Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) are in a similar quandary. NCOSE, formerly Morality in Media, is a well-funded anti-pornography organization that hijacks the credibility of organizations like RAINN or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to push a puritanical policy agenda that includes censorship of constitutionally-protected sexual speech on the internet.

Exodus Cry, an “anti-trafficking” organization inspired by Evangelical Christian and socially conservative beliefs, continues to work against consensual sexual speech and maintains an overtly anti-pornography position through the use of debunked theories like so-called “porn addiction,” “white slavery” myths, and other derivatives of Satanic moral panics from the mid-to-late Twentieth Century. Collectively, these organizations are relying on similar talking points that they’ve used for decades and they neglect, intentionally and unintentionally, to pay attention to the latest developments in child protection from the adult entertainment industry.

“In MindGeek, we have identified a dynamic tech brand that is built upon a foundation of trust, safety, and compliance, and with ECP’s resources and broad expertise spanning regulatory, law enforcement, public engagement, and finance, we have a unique opportunity to strengthen what already exists,” Fady Mansour said in a press release.

Mansour is a founding partner at ECP and serves as the firm’s managing partner. The acquisition of MindGeek is noteworthy because ECP’s executive team is staffed by professionals and leaders in their fields of expertise. The company says its mission is to “seek out investment and advisory opportunities in industries that require principled ethical leadership.” The company’s website adds that ECP intends to invest “in opportunities that focus on technology, have legal and regulatory complexity, and that put a value on transparency and accountability.”

ECP has a roadmap to truly develop a brand that values transparency and cooperation in its efforts to make adult content mainstream and a viable, trusted partner for investors and consumers. In the years since Kristof’s column, MindGeek and other platforms, like OnlyFans.com corporate parent Fenix International Limited, have taken proactive steps to overhaul their trust and safety programs. This is highlighted by Pornhub’s removal of millions of videos by unverified uploaders and OnlyFans committing age verification for performers.

This contradicts the outdated tropes and beliefs of anti-pornography groups who claim that the industry doesn’t engage in systematic reform and comprehensive engagement with law enforcement agencies in the United States and abroad. Mike Stabile, the director of public affairs for the Free Speech Coalition, keeps tabs on the anti-porn movement and posts the movement’s “greatest hits” of stupidity to his feed on Twitter quite regularly.

One case shows that Laila Mickelwait continues to push the debunked theory that Pornhub is a “crime scene.” She has also called Pornhub a “terrorist organization.” Stabile, speaking of Mickelwait, tweeted: “She’s no longer talking about executives, she’s talking about unleashing an audience she knows to be violent against a single worker by publicly exposing his name.” Stabile additionally tweeted: “Can’t imagine how this will impact the thousands of employees and creators on the platform.” Mickelwait has also called for violence against sex workers who defend their career choices of working in sex work and participating in the adult entertainment industry.

The development of aggressive tools to stop illegal content should be met with cheers from the "anti-trafficking" movement. But instead, they want it to fail because their fight against CSAM/revenge porn is only a means to an end … abolishing p*rn entirely. pic.twitter.com/hfmFFctjOI

— Mike Stabile (@mikestabile) April 4, 2023

Solomon Friedman, an ECP partner and the firm’s vice president for compliance recently sat for an interview with the Ottawa Citizen, in which he stated “I fundamentally believe that sex work is work.”  In his feature on Friedman, the Citizen’s Andrew Duffy explained Friedman’s role at ECP and the company’s belief that Pornhub can be a power for good. The thesis for the high-profile investment into the porn mega-brand is to eventually move MindGeek away from simply monetizing adult content, to being a SaaS provider.

SaaS, or software-as-a-service, allows a user to connect and use cloud-based apps over the internet. This is significant. As a part of its overhaul since the Kristof story and its aftermath, MindGeek has invested heavily in the use of third-party tools that assist moderators and trust and safety teams at the company to detect, digitally fingerprint, and hash child sexual abuse material (CSAM), non-consensual intimate images (NCII), and instances of some intellectual property violations. The software is reportedly called SafeGuard and MindGeek has it patented. That means that scaling it as a business could be now viable.

Axios, referencing ECP’s roadmap statement, adds that Pornhub has developed a proprietary software stack that claims to detect variants of a digitally fingerprinted image. This means that this system can detect altered variations of a photo or video that would otherwise slip through other platforms. As such, ECP believes that Pornhub can positively impact the international software market by marketizing its proprietary verification technology.

News outlets covering ECP’s acquisition additionally referred to remarks that were issued by Mickelwait in response to the new motivation behind platforms to be more transparent.

“There’s nothing they’ve done yet except to buy a live crime scene, which to me doesn’t justify the name Ethical Capital Partners,” said Mickelwait. Mikelwait has even alleged that every remark and claim from ECP is a lie. The evidence clearly suggests otherwise. Mike Stabile said in a tweet thread that Friedman “has thrown down the gauntlet” adding that “this is, predictably, causing the antis to lose their minds.”

ECP's Solomon Friedman — new head of Mindgeek has thrown down the gauntlet on #traffickinghub, saying that PH and its groundbreaking anti-CSAM/NCII tech can be a "force for good" on the internet. This is, predictably, causing the antis to lose their minds. https://t.co/WGY1eBK6Y5

— Mike Stabile (@mikestabile) April 4, 2023

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) recently announced the launch of a new platform designed to help remove child sexual abuse material that is posted on the internet. The free tool is called “Take It Down.” In a press statement, NCMEC calls “Take It Down” a “groundbreaking platform.” The platform “allows users from around the world to submit a report that can help remove online nude, partially nude, or sexually explicit photos and videos depicting a child under 18 years old.” Launched December 2022, the tool operates similarly to SafeGuard. More than 200 cases have been submitted already to Take It Down services.

“Having explicit content online can be scary and very traumatizing, especially for young people,” said Gavin Portnoy, the vice president for communications and brand at NCMEC. “The adage of ‘you can’t take back what is already out there’ is something we want to change. The past does not define the future and help is available.” Portnoy also discussed the coalition behind the Take it Down platform.

TAKE IT DOWN a NCMEC program launched in December 2022, the first of its kind.

Enabling children to transmit to NCMEC hashes of nude, partially nude, and sexually explicit photos and videos in which they are posted online. https://t.co/2QBSv9CSQn

— National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (@MissingKids) February 14, 2023

PornHub joins Facebook, Instagram, OnlyFans, and Yubo in launching Take it Down with NCMEC, using a new hash list to scan for and remove CSAM

(GIFCT style, but for CSAM, not "terrorist" content)

PR release here, website at https://t.co/EFS31wMRn5https://t.co/NGCnyUwZt6

— Ashley Lake (@AshleyLatke) March 6, 2023

“Our detection tools will now be able to draw directly from NCMEC’s image hash-sharing list to ensure even more effective and rapid moderation of inappropriate content,” said Sacha Lazimi, the chief executive officer at Yubo, in the same press statement.

“In order to expand our fight against nonconsensual image sharing online, it was important for us to give our users the ability to report content of them circulating anywhere on the internet through Yubo,” Lazimi added. “Users can now find an additional reporting option that, when selected, directs them immediately to the Take It Down site.”

Antigone Davis, Global Head of Safety at Meta Platforms, added in the same statement that “Meta has worked with NCMEC, experts, and victims to develop this platform and help young people get the resources they need when facing these horrific situations. We look forward to other tech companies joining this effort so we can collectively combat this issue across the internet.”

Pornhub is listed as a participating company collaborating with NCMEC on the Take It Down service. Other participating companies include Meta Platforms, Inc., the parent company of Facebook and Instagram; OnlyFans parent Fenix International Limited; TikTok’s United States operation; and the French social media networking app Yubo.

“These are the companies who have agreed to use the Take It Down hash list to scan for images and videos on their public or unencrypted platforms,” the Take It Down website states. This is a considerable commitment to ethical conduct and trust and safety by some of the most controversial platforms on the internet. NCMEC also publishes an annual report on data that was collected through its CyberTipline program. All these partner platforms voluntarily submit data to CyberTipline through the role of an “electronic service provider.”

Platforms owned by Meta reported over 25 million potential cases of child sexual abuse material. This stark number made up well over 85 percent of the total reports submitted to the CyberTipline program in 2021 — the most recent data. OnlyFans, through the disclosure of Fenix International Limited, reported 2,984 cases to CyberTipline. Yubo reported 855. TikTok reported 154,618. MindGeek, through the disclosure of MG Freesites, reported 9,103. These platforms are now actively collaborating on Take It Down.

OnlyFans also participates in the StopNCII.org program. StopNCII is also supported by Meta-owned platforms, TikTok, Reddit, and Bumble.

“Change” photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich from Pexels