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Tanzina Vega: I'm Tanzina Vega, and you're listening to The Takeaway, and it's great to have you with us. Just a brief warning that this story includes graphic depictions of sexual violence in pornography. Pornography is one of the things that a lot of Americans don't talk about, but millions of adults watch it, especially with the proliferation of websites like Pornhub.

Now a new investigation by Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times has revealed that Pornhub and some of its competitors have also hosted videos that feature child pornography, so-called "revenge porn," and even rape. Pornhub has since removed millions of unverified videos from their popular site, and in a statement, among other changes, Pornhub said they would only allow videos from verified users to be uploaded, but questions remain about why and how the videos were there in the first place. Today on The Takeaway, we're going to talk about some of the most disturbing and challenging issues facing the porn industry today. Nicholas Kristof joins us now. Nick, welcome back to The Takeaway.

Nicholas Kristof: Good to be with you.

Tanzina: In your piece you wrote, and I want to make this as I think is an important distinction, that the issue is not pornography itself, but rape, tell us more about that.

Nick: There's a debate about porn, and I didn't want to go there, whatever one thinks about porn, I think there is consensus that children should not be depicted and that rapes should not be depicted, and so what I really focus on is child sexual abuse imagery, which is out of control on the web on porn platforms, but frankly, also on social media, and then issues of rape videos.

Tanzina, when I was first beginning debating whether or not to do this article, I was prowling the website, and some of the first things I found were videos of unconscious women being raped. The rapist was touching their eyeballs to show that they were completely unresponsive. That is just disgusting. Whatever one thinks about porn, surely, we can agree that those kinds of videos should not be uploaded in ways that prolong and assault and victimize these women over and over and over.

Tanzina: I want to talk a little bit about what is clearly disturbing here and so many of the things that you've raised in your piece. The number of images and videos that are related to child sexual exploitation have gone up dramatically in the past several years. In 2015, there were about 6.5 million images in 2019, there were 69 million images. Nick, what does this say about us? What does this say about the industry?

Nick: I think a couple of things. One, you've alluded to that-- This is a hard subject to talk about. One of the things that I think in journalism we note is that we always have the worst policy toward issues that are hard to confront, hard to talk about, whether it's domestic violence or mental health, or, frankly, anything to do with sex at all. I think that's part of the issue that- because these are hard conversations to have, and it's an icky subject, so we've tended to avoid regulating it the way we should, and the other is that there has been complete impunity on the part of the platforms.

I think, from the point of view of executives at any one platform, as long as there are some people who want to see these images, and as long as they can monetize them by putting advertising against them, then they're going to keep doing that as long as there are no consequences. A solution is going to have to involve not sensitivity training, but consequences.

Tanzina: We're going to talk a little bit about what Pornhub's response has been in just a moment. In your piece, Nick, you also talk about the role that these videos have also played in child trafficking. There's a woman you interviewed named Kelly who says, "Pornhub became my trafficker." Tell us about her and other people like Kelly.

Nick: Yes, there's this pattern of-- Obviously young women are trafficked in the US and in other countries. These days every buddy who rapes them has a cell phone and invariably they then video record some of those assaults and then post them on Pornhub or Xvideos. What these young women say is that then their humiliation is extended indefinitely because they can never escape that pass.

These videos are there forever, and it's amplified because Pornhub in the past allowed downloads of these videos so that even if the police later insisted upon the removal of some of these videos, then meanwhile, thousands and thousands of people had downloaded them. Then we're sharing them with each other and then reuploading them to other sites. One of the things that is helpful is that Pornhub has now stopped downloads. It's not perfect, there are still ways to download, but it's helpful.

Tanzina: To that point, they, Pornhub released a statement after your piece outlining some of the steps they're going to take, they say to prevent this from happening, and they talked about only allowing properly identified users to be able to upload content, banning downloads, as you mentioned, and making, "key expansions to our moderation process." Nick, based on your reading of their statement, do you think that's enough?

Nick: An awful lot depends on how these are implemented. For example, an authorized user has become authorized in the past by simply putting their name on a piece of paper and showing an extra their face, and no real ID has been demanded, but that's certainly a step forward, the absence of downloads is a real progress. Pornhub has improved moderation over the last year, but they've tended to focus on American girls and young women because they're more likely to be litigious. There has been much less interest in actually cracking down on videos of Chinese women being raped, or Indonesian women being raped, or I talked to a Colombian woman who had videos on the site.

I think that the issues that they talked about are really important. It's tremendous that they took down these videos that were not from verified users, but let's see how they actually implement it. I've got to say, Tanzina, we can't just go after one platform that's unfair to it and it's not terribly effective. In particular, there's a European-based company that owns Xvideos and xnxx.com. I hope that there will also be pressure on that company.

Tanzina: One of the things Nick, that worries me here is that, with the increased proliferation of these videos, as we mentioned a couple of minutes ago, just almost tenfold across the web is that-- I'm wondering whether or not this reflects how we are seeing the vulnerable, how we see women, how we see power in this. Why? I'm trying to get at why these videos have become so popular and why they're just proliferating all over the world.

Nick: Boy, that's a grim sociological question. I do think it has a lot to do with impunity and that once companies find that they have a business model that can show 17-year-olds being raped, then they go on and find similar impunity with 15-year-olds, and so on. On Xvideos, I tried searching middle school and it returned thousands of videos, and one of its suggested searches was elementary school. Boy, that just floored me, I think it's an escalation in exactly the wrong direction.

Tanzina: Nick, what has the government done, if anything, about this? We're talking about criminality, aren't we? Shouldn't the Department of Justice, or local police departments, or somebody be involved in this.

Nick: Yes, so I sure think so. I think, historically, governments haven't gotten involved either in the US or in other countries, again, because it's just an icky topic. I think that is now changing, both on the criminal side and on the civil side, there's section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which has provided a certain amount of immunity on the civil side to these platforms, has been amended, and they've talked about further amendments, which should make it easier to allow civil suits that create some incentive for these companies to police themselves. For example, there's a suit now underway by women who had been secretly filmed in a changing room at a college, showering, and that video was placed on PornHub. They are now assuming that company, and if they win, PornHub is going to be a lot more careful about those kinds of images.

As for the criminal side, there is legislation that is now introduced in the US, and also it seems to be on its way in Canada, where Pornhub is based, that would tighten regulation of these companies, and presumably, lead to some potential criminal liability.

Tanzina: Finally, Nick, the question here is how much these efforts will actually send a chill down the spine of the pornography, not just the industry, but those players who are putting up these types of videos, or whether these videos will go even further underground. What are your thoughts on the future of this here?

Nick: Look, I don't think that porn is going to be eliminated, including the really outrageous videos. I'm sure some will go underground and some will go to the dark web. There is going to be a tendency for videos to migrate from platforms and countries like the US or Canada. There's more of a push to regulate to Ukraine, to Belarus, et cetera.

I think that there are still ways to crack down, to regulate, to limit, and that can't be eliminated, but to reduce the number of 14-year-olds who have their lives shattered because they have naked videos of themselves, or rape videos of themselves that are placed on these sites and broadcast to the world in ways that humiliate them, and in many cases, as I wrote, drive them to commit, to attempt suicide. We can do better, we're not going to be perfect. Can we do better? Absolutely.

Tanzina: Let's see that, if that actually manifests. Nick Kristoff, thank you so much for your reporting. Nick Kristoff is a columnist for The New York Times and the author of the recent investigation, the Children of Pornhub.

Nick: Thank you, Tanzina.

Tanzina: You can read the full Pornhub statement on our website at thetakeaway.org. If you need help with issues of sexual abuse, the National Sexual Assault Hotline is 1-800-656-4673. If you're having thoughts of suicide, call the national suicide prevention hotline at 1-800-273-8255 to get help. We also wanted to get some thoughts on this topic from Cindy Gallop, who's the founder and CEO of Make Love, Not Porn, which is a site that tries to make more conscious sex scenes available from verified users.

Cindy Gallop: The problem is, we all watch porn, we don't talk about it, who therefore exist in this parallel universe, in this shadowy other world, when you force an entire industry into the shadows and underground, you make it a lot easier for bad things to happen, and you make it very difficult for good things to happen.

Tanzina: Cindy's been on the show a couple of times, talking about sex work and how to make the industry better.

Cindy: I think it's very important when people look at what is happening with Pornhub to differentiate between sex work and sex trafficking and appalling trade in rape videos, those are two separate areas. It's very important that legitimate, and by the way, legal, adult sex workers or adult entertainers do not find their livelihood at risk because of the absolutely appropriate moves to root out the appalling bad actors.

Tanzina: Part of the problem, Cindy says, is that Americans aren't good when it comes to talking about sex.

Cindy: Our parents bring us up to have good manners, work ethic, sense of responsibility, accountability. Nobody ever brings us up to behave well in bed, but they should, because in bed, values like empathy, sensitivity, generosity, kindness, honesty, respect, are as important as those values are in every other area of our lives, where we are actively taught to exercise them.

The only way that you end rape culture is by doing what I and Make Love, Not Porn are attempting to do, which is embedding society and openly talked about, discussed, promoted, and very importantly, aspired to go standard of what constitutes good sexual values and good sexual behavior. At Make Love, Not Porn, we are socializing and normalizing good sexual values and behavior to get to a societal scenario where celebrating rape situations and enjoying posting rape videos on Pornhub is absolutely no longer behavior that anybody will condone.

It is tremendously important to tackle this in the real world, not simply by censoring and blocking what turns up on Pornhub, and on Facebook, and many other platforms. First and foremost, the issue isn't porn, the issue is that we don't talk about sex in the real world. We have to do that openly and honestly, we have to encourage social standards of good sexual values and behavior to get everybody to understand how we should all be operating around sex.

Tanzina: Cindy Gallop is the founder and CEO of Make Love, Not Porn.

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