"I hope this will motivate Pornhub, as well as the other companies in this industry, to put in place security measures so that this does not happen to anyone else," Rachel reacted on Friday (loan name ), one of the 34 complainants who accuse Pornhub in particular of hosting rape videos (including minors). Rachel, 38, Canadian, had testified, on condition of anonymity, of her long fight to remove a video of her sexual assault from the Internet, broadcast without her consent on Pornhub which claims 130 million visitors per day. Now withdrawn from the site, the recording has spread on the Internet and still continues.
The noose is therefore tightening around Pornhub, one of the most popular porn sites on the planet, and its parent company, after the filing of this civil complaint in California.
"This is a case that concerns rape, not pornography," insists this complaint, of which AFP has had a copy and which is not the first of its kind.
Some 3.5 billion visits each month
Lawyers accuse Pornhub and its parent company MindGeek, one of the world's adult internet giants, of being "a classic criminal enterprise" whose financial model is based on the financial exploitation of non-consensual sexual content .
The Montreal-based group, which owns more than 100 porn sites, is said to have some 3.5 billion visits each month.
"Today is a day to remember," said Laila Mickelwait, founder of the Traffickinghub campaign on Thursday, behind a petition signed by more than 2.2 million people accusing Pornhub of authorizing sexual exploitation mass of women and minors and profit from it.
"This lawsuit makes it clear that Pornhub and its parent company MindGeek are not just a tech company that has made moderation errors," the sex trafficking expert said in a video on Twitter.
Pornhub dropped by Mastercard and Visa
The porn giant has been facing a real outcry for months after the publication of a
New York Times article
accusing it of hosting child pornography and rape videos, which he denied.
In the process, two financial giants, Mastercard and Visa, announced that their credit cards could no longer be used immediately to make payments on Pornhub.
Politically, the scandal caused a stir in Canada.
"Why is Canada hosting a company that distributes rape videos to the world?
"Asked the author of the article, Nicholas Kristof, calling on Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau" who calls himself a feminist ".
Our file on the Pornhub affair
On Thursday, a Canadian parliamentary commission made 14 recommendations in Ottawa, arguing in particular for the establishment of "clear regulations" for these platforms.
As for the Trudeau government, it plans to introduce a bill "as soon as possible" to force online platforms to remove all illegal content.
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