Pornhub denies layoffs after being hit with sex trafficking lawsuits

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The company behind the adult website Pornhub is facing scrutiny after allegations surfaced regarding the number of staff the company has laid off.

Reports surfaced on Tuesday when Reuters wrote that MindGeek, the owner of Pornhub, said that two top executives who ran the adult for more than 10 years had resigned but will remain shareholders. In 2021 MindGeek was hit with a lawsuit that claimed the company had broken federal sex trafficking and child pornography laws, which resulted in several payment companies such as Mastercard and Visa temporarily halting payment methods.

The recent allegations of layoffs come from the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, a non-profit that focuses on exposing the links between all forms of sexual exploitation, who said that its "no surprise" that two top Pornhub executives have "fled" the company after it's facing several lawsuits filed on behalf of sex trafficking survivors "whose abuse has been shown on Pornhub."

According to Dawn Hawkins, the CEO of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, Pornhub has "profited from the mass distribution of filmed sexual crime as well as non-consensually recorded and non-consensually uploaded videos." Hawkins says that Pornhub, and MindGeek have, for the last decade, several survivors have claimed that content of them that may be sex trafficking, child abuse, or filmed without consent has been made downloadable, shareable, promoted, and monetized by Pornhub.

MindGeek spoke to The Daily Wire and said that the allegations are "categorically false".

Hawkins and the National Center on Sexual Exploitation have called on US lawmakers and regulators to create regulations for pornographic sites such as Pornhub, and to hold the company accountable for the content stored on its servers located in the United States. Hawkins notes that currently, victims of sexual exploitation on pornographic websites are "powerless in removing recordings of their abuse," while the company that is hosting the content is able to "make millions of dollars from their trauma."

In other news about porn, China recently unveiled a mind reading device that will be used to censor porn. More on that story can be found below.

Read more: China is using an AI 'mind reading' device to censor porn