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View Charlie Angus Profile
NDP (ON)
I'm not interested in other entities. We're studying Pornhub-MindGeek.
So you haven't had any. Is that like a 10-year lag? You guys are just saying, “Okay, well, now they're complying and giving it to the Americans, and the Americans are giving it to us.” Is that okay?
Stephen White
View Stephen White Profile
Stephen White
2021-02-22 13:33
To my knowledge, we would have to confirm if we have received over that period of time any others.
Laila Mickelwait
View Laila Mickelwait Profile
Laila Mickelwait
2021-02-19 15:48
Thank you.
For anyone who's viewing this online and also for the committee, I want to offer a content warning before I get started of graphic, very offensive language and descriptions of sexual violence. I don't do this to be sensational. I do it because I think it's important for the committee to have an accurate idea and understanding of the situation with the content on Pornhub without mincing words.
As I proceed, I want to ask the committee to keep in mind that CEO Feras Antoon said to this committee, “every single piece of content is viewed by our human moderators”—every single piece of content.
COO David Tassillo said, “There should be zero videos tabbed under either [child pornography or non-consensual acts] categories. Those categories are banned from being used on our site, as the keywords are.” They said, “child abuse material has no place on our platform. It makes us lose money.”
I believe it's important to elevate the voices of survivors, and I want to read some quotes and testimonies from survivors who have reached out to me over the past year.
Kate said, “I was 15 years old. My ex was 20. He was into homemade videos and stuff so he had videotaped us having sex. One day he said, 'Let me show you something'. He pulled up Pornhub on his phone and showed me that he had posted a video of us having sex. I tried to contact Pornhub and get them to take it down, but they never contacted me back or did anything about it. He also posted my 'sexy pics' on his account. Grown men and women were looking and watching me there. I'm disgusted.”
Beth said, “I was 16 and I was drunk once at a friend's party. I woke up. I was naked and pictures of me were on Pornhub, along with my name and my phone number. I had calls and texts to the point that I changed my number.”
Nicki said, “When I was 14 years old, I made the decision that changed my life. I was having a sexual FaceTime call. I showed him areas of my body that were private. I didn't know at the time but he was recording and he had uploaded it to Pornhub. The name of the video even had the words 'young teen' but that was not enough for Pornhub to analyze it and make sure it was consensual or legal. Years later my classmates found it on the website and told me about it. I was 16 when they found it. The first one had over one million views. We got the first one taken down, but the identical video was posted over and over again. I reported it to the police, and they opened an investigation. They told me they had contacted Pornhub to make sure it wouldn't be shown anymore, but the video was posted again. During these times of being posted multiple times, I was bullied by my entire school. Every boy and girl in my high school saw my body, and it changed my life.”
Sarah said, “I found out an explicit video of me was posted to Pornhub. I was underage. I did not send it to anyone to the best of my recollection, and it got hacked from my phone. I was horrified and I reported it and filed a complaint. Police took a statement. I'm waiting for the detective to contact me. Even if the video is taken down it could always come back. This could ruin my life and my future. I'm terrified and I'm traumatized.”
Anastasia said, “There's a video on their site that was taken of me without my knowledge while I was underage. It is still up on their site despite my reporting it numerous times, stating that I'm underage in the video and that it was taken and posted without my consent.”
Linda said, “I'm now 20 years old and I'm a sex and porn trafficking survivor. At the age of nine, my biological mother sold me in exchange for drugs and for money. This happened until I was rescued at the age of 17 and placed in a safe house. For eight years I was raped and beaten, and the video was taped by hundreds of men, women and even married couples. I never thought I would live to be 18 years old. I was hospitalized dozens of times and one time I was forced to drink ammonia until I passed out and was raped for hours after that, even though my mouth and my throat were burning. I was forced to have sex with other children, especially young girls. I still have nightmares and extreme PTSD from this, but it's not fair that my life is so hard now because I was forced into a life of pornography as a child. I've had to get police involved on multiple occasions to get these videos removed from RedTube, owned by MindGeek, and Pornhub, of me being raped as a minor. I don't understand why it's so difficult. Please stop allowing people to make money off the torture and the coercion of children. It's not fair.”
Keira said, “At the age of 15 I was coerced into being filmed during a sex act, and that video was uploaded without my consent to Pornhub. The uploader was also underage, and they had no way of confirming anyone's age or consent. I have been dealing with image issues, PTSD and sexual discomfort since the incident, into adulthood. This is my personal account, and I have heard similar stories from other women. I will never forgive Pornhub for allowing my abuse to be shared publicly and causing me to relive that pain years later.
Amanda said, “Leaked nude photos from when I was underage were put online, allowed to be uploaded by Pornhub and men were allowed to vote on which child was the most attractive. Pornhub told me that there was no point in making a fuss since people had already screenshot the photos, so deleting the video is pointless.”
Tiana said, “When I was 14 years old, someone recorded me performing oral sex without my knowledge or consent. The video was used as blackmail and was shared on Pornhub. Police contacted Pornhub, and it took them a while to delete it. It ruined my life, and people still bring it up to this day.”
Caroline said, “I spent two months begging Pornhub to take down a video of me being orally raped at the age of 15. I was crying, screaming. I had a bloody nose. It was up for a year and a half before I knew about it.”
Beth said, “I was 10 the first time I was raped. My uncle saw those porn stories and used me to play out his fantasies. Two years later I found the videos of me on Pornhub.”
I could go on and on. My time is short. I have many accounts of children who personally reached out to me, whom I've talked to, who have had their abuse immortalized on Pornhub.
All of the following is a small sample of evidence that has been documented on Pornhub in 2020, before the mass deletion of 10 million videos from unverified and unknown users.
Videos on Pornhub are titled “Young Teen Gets Pounded”; “Old Man with Young Teen”; “Young Girl Tricked”; “A Club Where you can Play with Little Girls, and It's So Fun”; “Cute Amateur Teen Drunk and Stoned”; “First BBC on Drugs”; “Stolen Teens' Secret Peeing Scenes”, with video cameras inside girls' toilets videotaping them without their knowledge; “Amateur Sex Tape Stolen from Teen Girl's Computer”; “Daddy Fucks Young Teen Boy Virgin, First Time”; “Tika Virgin from High School Jakarta Grade Two”; “Jovencitas violadas”, meaning “young rape”, from an unknown user; “Drunk Teen Fucked by Black Stranger”; “Innocent Teenage Girls are Used and Exploited”; “Crying Teen”; “Passed Out Teen”; “Very Young South American” with the tags “teenager” and “young”, and a comment says, “This girls looks 13”; “Chinese Northeast Middle School”; “Junior High School Student”; “Anal Crying Teen”; “I'm 14”, with a video of a young boy masturbating; “Gay 14”, a video of a young boy masturbating; and “Pinay Junior High Student”.
I could go on and on. Again, suggested and promoted searches by Pornhub that were found on their site as of 2020 are search terms that Pornhub actually serves up to its consumers: “abused teen”, “crying teen”, “punished teen”, “anal crying teen”, “teen destroyed”, “young Black teen”, “young, tiny teens”, “young girl”, “tiny, young girls”, “sleeping teen”, “middle school sex”, “Snapchat teen”, “middle student”, “stolen teen sex tape”, “stolen teen homemade” and “very young teens”.
As for comments on the site, there are hundreds of documented comments, if not thousands of documented comments, where users are flagging these child sexual abuse material videos to Pornhub, and they're ignored. They're on the site for months and even years. Examples are, “Isn't this technically child porn?”, “She looks 13. That's illegal”, “Wow, she looks like she's 12”, “I'm not legal but I have a winning video”, “She looks nine. Trade CP?”, and “She looks like she's 12, like she hasn't even hit puberty.”
Again, David Tassillo told this committee that, “Child abuse material has no place on our platform. It makes us lose money.” I would like to tell the committee that is not true, because child sexual abuse has made its way to Pornhub in a significant way. Every single video of a child that is found on Pornhub or of an abused adult is heavily monetized. It's monetized with ads of premium memberships, data collection. In some cases it's being directly sold for the profit of Pornhub: 35% to Pornhub and 65% to the person who uploaded the sex act through the model hub program.
I want to point out to the committee that any minor used in a commercial sex act is a victim of sex trafficking according to international law as well as domestic law. I think it's very important for us to realize that.
I also want to make it clear that Pornhub added insult to injury by adding an intentional download button to their system whereby every single video on Pornhub was made available to possess by consumers. It was transferred from MindGeek servers to individuals. One hundred and fifteen million users a day have the ability to commit the federal crime of downloading and possessing child sexual abuse material because Pornhub built that feature into the design of their website.
Feras Antoon said to this committee that “the spread of unlawful content online and...the non-consensual sharing of intimate images...goes against everything we stand for at MindGeek and Pornhub.” He said, “this type of material has no place on our platforms and is contrary to our values and our business model.” He said, “When David and I joined MindGeek in 2008, our goal was to create the most inclusive and safe adult community on the Internet” and that it was designed to value privacy. He said, “We knew this could be possible only if safety and security were our top priority.”
Anne wrote me and said, “Revenge porn is a major issue. I was a victim of it two years ago when I wouldn't take back my ex-fiancé. A couple of weeks later I received a call saying that my private photos I had sent him were uploaded to Pornhub. It was such a hassle to get them down.”
We have scores of testimonies of victims who have experienced the same thing.
Jessica says, “Most of my videos were done by my ex. I was too high to consent. I was blacked out. He put them on Pornhub without my permission.”
The following is a small sample of content on Pornhub as of 2020. On September 24, you could search the initials “GDP”, for “girls do porn”, which is a known sex trafficking operation which Pornhub is well aware is for trafficking victims, and you could turn up 338 results for these sex trafficking victims on the site. Other videos were titled “Fucked Sister Hard in the Ass While She Was Drunk and Sleeping”; “Drunk Girl Gets Handcuffed and Abused Next to the Party”; “Fucked Sleeping Schoolgirl After a Drunk Party”; and “Tinder Girl Passed Out At My House, So I Stuck It in Her Ass”.
Tiziana Cantone was a victim who committed suicide. Her video was on the site as of 2020. Other titles were “Anal Sex With a Drunk Girl”; “Drunk Asian Girl Humped By My Friend”; “Hidden Camera: Girls in the Toilet At Prom”; and “CCTV in Changing Room: Full Naked Hockey Team”. Suggested search terms to users on the site include “real hidden camera”; “hidden camera”; “voyeur”; “spycam shower”; “stop fucking me”; and “rape” in Chinese.
When pressed on the allowance of these kinds of non-consensual and illegal videos on his site, David Tassillo said to this committee, “We are a start-up still.” He said that about a site that is the 10th-largest-trafficked site in the world, and that makes hundreds of millions of dollars a year on this content.
In only a couple of minutes more, I want to finish. Feras Antoon told the committee that Pornhub was designed to celebrate freedom of expression. However, there are many instances of extreme racism on the site as of 2020, including “Black Slave Girl Brutalized”; “How to Treat Your Nigger”; “Real Drunk Stupid Chink Whore”; “Racist White Slut Sucks and Fucks Black Dick and Says Nigger”.
Lastly, I want to point out that VP Corey Urman has said in the media many times that they have a vast and extensive team of human moderators that is viewing each and every single video before it is uploaded to the site. I want to tell the committee that I have evidence that, actually, as of early 2020, Pornhub had under 10 moderators per eight-hour shift reviewing content on the site, in Cyprus. They had only 30 to 31 employees per day looking at content, and that's for all of MindGeek tube sites. These constitute the world's largest and most popular tube sites, with millions of videos uploaded per year.
Lastly, David Tassillo said, “We digitally fingerprint any content removed from our site so that it cannot be re-uploaded.” He said this to the committee, but we have emails of Pornhub telling victims that they do not guarantee that their child abuse will not be reuploaded to the site, and they callously tell victims, “Please educate yourself on the limits of our software.”
On behalf of two million people who have signed the petition from 192 countries to hold Pornhub accountable and over 300 organizations around the world that are calling for accountability by Pornhub, I want to thank this committee for taking this issue seriously and for conducting this investigation.
Laila Mickelwait
View Laila Mickelwait Profile
Laila Mickelwait
2021-02-19 17:08
I have just one last comment. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to share this. I think it's relevant to this conversation.
There's another piece of information that I was made aware of through a MindGeek whistle-blower moderator that I think should be fully investigated. It's this idea that they have multiple different folders that they're supposed to put flagged content into that is illegal or child sexual abuse material. He suggested that there is something called “Folder A”, where very young-looking children go that are under the age of 12, but there is also “Folder B”, which is used for 15-, 16- and 17-year-olds. He suggested that he was not confident that this was being reported, even though that is illegal child pornography. I think, as a point of investigation, it's very important to be looking into that.
David Matas
View David Matas Profile
David Matas
2021-02-18 15:43
Thank you for inviting me and for inviting us to participate in this study.
Beyond Borders ECPAT Canada is the Canadian affiliate of ECPAT, headquartered in Bangkok, Thailand. ECPAT is the worldwide network of organizations working to end the sexual exploitation of children. ECPAT is an acronym for the phrase “end child prostitution, pornography and trafficking”.
Within the general topic of the study, we wish to address the vulnerabilities of children to sexual exploitation created and exacerbated by the COVID pandemic. In general, the vulnerabilities of children to sexual exploitation have been both created and exacerbated by the pandemic.
Protective parents have died from COVID, rendering children vulnerable. Funds directed to protecting vulnerable children from sexual exploitation have been diverted to combatting COVID. Programs combatting child sexual exploitation have been impacted by the overall shutdown in reaction to COVID. School closures to protect against COVID have meant that child sexual abuse at home is not reported at schools. Children in sexually abusive home situations have, because of the COVID-related shutdowns, been trapped in these situations.
For those with access to the Internet, the increased time children spend on the Internet stuck at home because of COVID increases their vulnerability to sexual grooming and cyber-bullying by child predators. Children in detention suffer from decreased monitoring by the International Committee for the Red Cross, decreased as a COVID-prevention measure, leaving them open to increased abuse, including sexual abuse, from detention staff.
COVID prevention measures have impacted adversely on the delivery of humanitarian aid generally, including aid for the protection of children from sexual abuse. The shutdown of economies to protect against COVID has led to increased poverty, prompting some parents to sell their children into underage marriages or the sex trade.
ECPAT in April 2020 posted a publication titled “Why children are at risk of sexual exploitation during COVID-19” and wrote:
When entertainment venues that traffickers frequently use to seek customers and exploit child victims are shut down, there is a likelihood that child trafficking patterns will adapt... Child marriages are...likely to increase as teenagers from rural areas are highly affected by the worsening economic situation, being forced to migrate to urban areas and to live on the streets.
The variety of problems that COVID presents that create and exacerbate the vulnerability of children to sexual abuse require a variety of solutions. Because of limited time, I only want to address one component, the increase in child marriages.
Global Affairs already had a strong policy updated on its website on August 20, 2020 against child, early and forced marriages.
The trouble with that policy is that, in a Canadian context, it rings hollow in light of the widespread availability and practice of child marriages in Canada itself. The Constitution of Canada gives Parliament exclusive jurisdiction to regulate the legal capacity to enter into marriage. The provinces have exclusive competence over the formalities of marriage.
Parliament, in the exercise of its powers over the legal capacity to enter into marriage, allows for child marriages. The federal Civil Marriage Act allows for marriages of children aged 16 and 17, and the power has been widely used.
A study of child marriages in Canada published in January this year concluded:
Demographic patterns of child marriage in Canada are similar to those observed in many low- and middle-income countries. Girls were far more likely to be married as children than boys and typically wed much older spouses.
The study pointed to a discrepancy between Canada's domestic law and its foreign policy. The global COVID-related problems relating to child sexual abuse would be difficult for Canada to resolve on our own. Changing Canadian law to prevent child marriages is something entirely within the power of the Parliament of Canada. We should be doing this to prevent the sexual exploitation of children at home. By doing so, we would make our efforts to prevent the sexual exploitation of children through child marriage abroad more credible.
Thank you very much.
Shelly Whitman
View Shelly Whitman Profile
Shelly Whitman
2021-02-18 15:48
Thank you very much to the committee for this opportunity to speak with all of you today.
My name is Dr. Shelly Whitman. I am the executive director of the Dallaire Institute for Children, Peace and Security. I also wish to bring you greetings from our founder, Lieutenant-General (Retired) Roméo Dallaire.
It's a great opportunity for me to be here and it's lovely to see some of my former friends and colleagues like Pernille Ironside. The last time we met was in Nigeria.
I wish to begin by stating that the world needs to focus on building a global peace and security agenda that prioritizes the protection of children. Our collective failure to see the world through the eyes of children prevents us from effective and innovative approaches to address some of the world's most pressing issues of our time and will be felt for generations that have yet to come.
At the Dallaire Institute, we have been conducting work in places such as Juba, South Sudan; Kigali, Rwanda; DRC; Somalia; into Sierra Leone; Nigeria; and hopefully soon into other places such as Cameroon.
Today we are here to discuss the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children who are exposed to armed conflict.
Despite calls by the UN Secretary-General, armed conflict has not stopped during the pandemic. Health care systems and educational services already under immense strain by conflict have been placed under even more stress due to COVID-19. Yet, worryingly, the world's attention has been diverted from many of the conflicts that have continued or emerged. As a result, we are also not bearing close witness to the results on the concerns of children.
The UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict has also expressed deep concern on the heightened risk of grave violations against children due to COVID-19. The UN special representative summarized the annual report to the Human Rights Council and stated that, “the response to the outbreak often had an unintended adverse impact on children's fulfilment of their rights to education and health, as well as their access to justice, social services, and humanitarian aid.” The report indicates that the pandemic has exacerbated children's vulnerability to grave violations in situations of armed conflict. “School closures made children even more vulnerable to other grave violations, in particular recruitment and use, and children in camps for internally displaced people and those deprived of their liberty have been particularly exposed to further protection risks.”
It is estimated that 99% of children globally reside in one of the 186 countries that have enacted some level of restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic. And for children living in conflict and fragile environments, the pressures of COVID-19 are even more complex.
I would like to remind this committee that UN Security Council Resolution 1612 highlights six grave violations against children in armed conflict. Those are the killing and maiming of children, the recruitment and use of children as soldiers, sexual violence against children, attacks against schools or hospitals, abduction of children and the denial of humanitarian access for children. These six grave violations have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In particular, an example that I would like to highlight for you is that when it comes to measures to combat COVID-19 many children have been confined to dangerous home settings, increasing their risk of exposure to violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation, including sexual and gender-based violence, while limiting their access to protection services and social networks.
UNICEF estimates that 1.8 billion children live in 104 countries where violence prevention and response services have been disrupted due to COVID-19. And the UN Population Fund estimates that the pandemic will result in an additional 13 million child marriages between 2020 and 2030.
In addition, when it comes to the recruitment and use of children as soldiers, we know that we have seen instances in places such as Colombia where the armed groups are exploiting the global pandemic to recruit children into their ranks. Almost as many children are estimated to have joined armed groups in Colombia in the first half of 2020 as in the whole of 2019.
In addition, we have also seen increased insecurity because of the present pandemic, which has created conditions that have led to an increase in child trafficking in places such as Mali, and the cases of child recruitment have doubled there over the previous year.
School closures and disruptions have also created immense impact on the 1.6 billion students in 190 countries, and the risk of military occupation of closed schools remains a real concern. Prior to the pandemic, education around the world was already in crisis. It is estimated that over 10 million children will not return to school after the pandemic, as families continue to be impacted by growing poverty and unemployment rates. Schools continue to be attacked in places such as Central African Republic, Cameroon, Nigeria and Yemen. As recently as this week, we have seen horrific attacks on more schools in northeast Nigeria.
The denial of humanitarian access for children in active conflict zones and pre-existing challenges with nutrition have been exacerbated during the pandemic. Border closures in response to the pandemic have also adversely impacted the delivery of humanitarian aid to populations in need of additional support. For those living in IDP camps, access to sanitation is also further limited, and this is happening in a context of record child displacement occurring in 2019.
There is also increasing concern for children who are being detained due to suspicions of their involvement in terrorism or security offences, and the deplorable conditions that many of those children continue to be held in.
When we look at this issue, it is important for this committee and the Government of Canada to recognize that child protection is already a gravely underfunded field, constituting just 0.6% of official development aid. It is expected that the pandemic and the response will continue to reduce this funding.
I want to remind those here that in November 2017 the Canadian government, in partnership with the Dallaire Institute, co-created the Vancouver principles on peacekeeping and the prevention of the recruitment and use of child soldiers around the world. Today I would like to reiterate the need for Canada to continue to demonstrate leadership amongst the 100 endorsing nations that have endorsed since 2017, and also amongst the many that have yet to endorse.
It should not—
View Hedy Fry Profile
Lib. (BC)
Thank you.
I wanted to ask a question quickly—because I don't have a lot of time—of David Matas. It's about ECPAT. In 1997, I went to the first world conference on the sexual exploitation of children and youth, and it was there that ECPAT started to form its legs. ECPAT is an NGO, as most of you know, and it is doing extremely important work on children who are being trafficked.
We talk about conflict areas. We talk about Africa. We talk about South America. We talk about all those places. No one wants to talk about what's going on in Europe. Children are being trafficked there daily by organized crime, and we don't have data on it. We don't know what happens to them. We can't find them. About 13,000 children right now are missing in Europe, and nobody knows where they've disappeared to. There is an informal kind of refugee camp because these people come through Greece; they come through Italy, and then they get blocked at every border, with the exception of Germany and...Europe. Everyone thinks Europe is wondrous because Europe is a rich continent, but it isn't. There is a lot going on with regard to the safety of children in Europe.
I wanted to know how you feel ECPAT could do something about this. Is ECPAT involved in the European theatre? What is ECPAT doing to flag commercial sexual exploitation of children?
David Matas
View David Matas Profile
David Matas
2021-02-18 16:06
ECPAT is a network of affiliated organizations, and there are country representatives of ECPAT in 102 countries, including the European countries, absolutely. The headquarters have put out a general statement about the problems of COVID and sexual exploitation.
What you're talking about is a continuing problem. It existed pre-COVID, and it continues on with COVID. Of course, what you're dealing with are sexual predators who are targeting children. A lot of the venues where they traditionally have gone to target children, like bars and so on, have been shut down. As a result, they're using new and different ways, and they're adapting to the COVID situation.
Often what we find is that children, because of the increased poverty and the shutdowns that are generated with COVID, become vulnerable in different ways. As a result, the combat against child sexual exploitation in a COVID context has to shift. In reality, there has been a degeneration. Of course, you're absolutely right.
In terms of the European countries, it's not just people, refugees, coming from outside Europe and then being exploited in Europe. It's actual Europeans being exploited within Europe. Hungary has a very big problem, not only in terms of what's happening there but in terms of exporting to the rest of Europe.
View Stéphane Bergeron Profile
BQ (QC)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to thank the witnesses for being here and for sharing their insightful comments with our committee.
UNICEF has reported that at the height of the pandemic, 90% of students around the world were affected by school closures. Even in countries like ours, we have seen how much of an impact these closures have had on student motivation and academic achievement. We can only assume that things are even worse in countries facing much more difficult conditions with technology that lags behind, and where some students might be tempted to enter the workforce, while others might be recruited for human trafficking and prostitution, or even join the ranks of child soldiers.
UNICEF further reported that according to a world survey released in August, children were being exposed to a growing risk of violence, exploitation and abuse as a result of the pandemic.
We also received a few answers with respect to the sexual exploitation of children.
February 12 is International Day Against the Use of Child Soldiers, also known as Red Hand Day. Its objective is to gain support from governments to put an end to the recruitment of children as soldiers. According to the director of World Vision, the number of child soldiers has increased by 75% over the past 10 years.
Can the pandemic be assumed to have heightened, increased and intensified the recruitment of children as soldiers and for human trafficking networks?
Pernille Ironside
View Pernille Ironside Profile
Pernille Ironside
2021-02-18 16:12
Thanks, Shelly. I'm happy to do so.
Mr. Bergeron, you're absolutely right that there is an intensification, but it's not only pandemic-related. It's also due to the nature of warfare, the increasing complexity of warfare that's been happening and the increasing disparities and inequities in the world that are driving the most vulnerable children to seek whatever avenues they may have at this time. I personally have met with many children who have actually felt that it's safer for them to join an armed group, where they can also have access to regular food and shelter and so forth, rather than be in the dire circumstances they have at home.
So to the extent that COVID is exacerbating those circumstances and drivers...noting that those are not voluntary. A child is under duress under such circumstances. It's very concerning for UNICEF that this is happening.
I'll hand it over to my colleague Shelly. I'm sure she will complement that further.
Shelly Whitman
View Shelly Whitman Profile
Shelly Whitman
2021-02-18 16:13
I think it's important to emphasize what Pernille is saying. The situation will be exacerbated by this pandemic. I think it's important to recognize our deep concern that the foot will be taken off the gas in terms of the positive efforts because money and attention will get diverted to other areas. I think that's important for us to not lose sight of.
The other thing I want to emphasize is there is a variety of reasons, as Pernille mentioned, why children join armed groups. They can be forcibly abducted, but that's only one very small part of it. For many, yes, there's safety, a sense of purpose, a sense of meaning and access to power. All of these dynamics are very important for us to think about in terms of our responses to the pandemic, making sure we are including this perspective of not losing sight of protecting children from exploitation, sexual exploitation, violence, abuse and so on.
David Matas
View David Matas Profile
David Matas
2021-02-18 16:14
If I may just add something about sexual exploitation in particular, which you also asked about, there's a double problem here. One is there's increased vulnerability with the increased poverty, which leads to increased willingness to sell children for money. Also, many parents are killed through COVID, so there's decreased protection.
On the other hand, there's a weakening of the protective systems generally because money's being diverted to other purposes because of COVID. We have this double-barrelled problem.
Feras Antoon
View Feras Antoon Profile
Feras Antoon
2021-02-05 13:02
Good afternoon. My name is Feras Antoon.
I'm the chief executive officer of Entreprise MindGeek Canada. With me are David Tassillo, chief operations officer, and Corey Urman, vice-president of product management, video-sharing platforms. We are grateful to the committee for the opportunity to speak with you today.
MindGeek is one of the largest, most well-known brands in the online adult entertainment space. Our flagship website, Pornhub, is among the top five most visited websites on the Internet. Over 12.5% of the adult Canadian population visit our website every day. As a leader in this industry, we share the committee's concern about the spread of unlawful content online and about the non-consensual sharing of intimate images. It goes against everything we stand for at MindGeek and Pornhub.
When David and I joined MindGeek in 2008, our goal was to create the most inclusive and safe adult community on the Internet. It was designed to celebrate freedom of expression, to value privacy and to empower adults from all walks of life. We knew this could be possible only if safety and security were our top priority. While we have remained steadfast in our commitment to protect our users and the public, we recognize that we could have done more in the past and we must do more in the future.
I want to be clear to every member of this honourable committee, and to the Canadian public, that even a single unlawful or non-consensual image on MindGeek's platforms is one too many, full stop. We are fathers and husbands. We have over 1,800 employees with families and loved ones. We are devastated by what the victims of these heinous acts have gone through. I want to emphasize that this type of material has no place on our platforms and is contrary to our values and our business model. We are sickened when anyone attempts to abuse our platforms to further their violence. Fortunately, the vast majority of attempts by criminals to use our platform for illicit material are stopped.
Before I speak about the steps we have taken to combat unlawful content on our platform, let me first tell you more about MindGeek and how we operate. MindGeek's flagship video-sharing platform is Pornhub. Created in 2007, Pornhub is a leading free, ad-supported, adult content hosting and streaming website, offering visitors the ability to view content uploaded by verified users, individual content creators and third party studios. Demand for MindGeek's content rivals that of some of the largest social media platforms. For example, in 2020, Pornhub averaged over 4 million unique user sessions per day in Canada alone. In 2020, over 30% of our Canadian visitors were women. Roughly 1.3 million Canadian women visit the site every day.
Running one of the world's most visited websites is a responsibility we do not take lightly. The spread of non-consensual and CSAM content is a massive challenge facing all social media platforms. The U.S.-based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, also known as NCMEC, the industry standard for reporting CSAM, says it has received 16.9 million referrals from tech companies about possible child abuse, with well over 90% of those related to a single social media platform. MindGeek is a proud partner of NCMEC. We report every instance of CSAM when we are aware of it, so that this information can be disseminated to and investigated by authorities across the globe.
We share the objectives reflected in the 11 voluntary principles developed by governments, including Canada, to fight online sexual exploitation and abuse. We have been leading this fight by being more vigilant in our moderation than almost any other platform, both within and outside of the adult space.
Today, only professional studios and verified users and creators, whose personal identity and date of birth have been confirmed by MindGeek, may upload content. This means every piece of content on our websites can be traced back to its uploader, whose identity and location are known to us. We are the first and only major social media platform, adult or non-adult, to introduce this policy. We hope and expect that the entire social media industry will follow our lead.
We are also working to ensure that once content is removed, it can never make its way back to our platform or to any platform. The revictimization of individuals when their content is re-uploaded causes profound injury that we are working fiercely to prevent. We are attacking this problem in two ways. First, our people are trained to remove such material upon request. Second, we digitally fingerprint any content removed from our website so that it cannot be re-uploaded to our own platform.
For the last two years, we have been building a tool called “SafeGuard” to help fight the distribution of non-consensual intimate images. As I sit before you today, I am pleased to report that this month we will be implementing SafeGuard for all videos uploaded to Pornhub. We will offer SafeGuard for free to our non-adult peers, including Facebook, YouTube and Reddit. We are optimistic that all major social media platforms will implement SafeGuard and contribute to its fingerprint database. Such co-operation will be a major step to limit the spread of non-consensual material on the Internet.
Mr. Chair, thank you for the opportunity to discuss MindGeek's commitment to trust and safety, including our work to stamp out CSAM and non-consensual material on our platforms and on the Internet as a whole.
We look forward to answering the committee's questions.
Thank you.
View Shannon Stubbs Profile
CPC (AB)
View Shannon Stubbs Profile
2021-02-05 13:09
Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witness for his statement.
Has MindGeek or any of its at least 48 subsidiaries ever monetized child sexual abuse and non-consensual material?
Feras Antoon
View Feras Antoon Profile
Feras Antoon
2021-02-05 13:09
This is a very important question, and I thank you very much for actually starting with it, because that's the core of this meeting. Sexual material, child abuse material has no place on our platform. It makes us lose money. I will walk you through two steps to exactly explain this point.
When you see this kind of material on our website, it completely ruins the brand that we have been trying to build for over a decade. The Pornhub brand, which is known worldwide, has the trust of its users. When the four million Canadians who come daily to Pornhub see this disgusting kind of material, they lose trust and faith in us—
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