TrafficJunky, the advertisement wing of Pornhub, does not require uploaders to provide age verification or consent for images used in ads, employees said in secret tapes.
Employees on the tapes, recorded by the undercover journalism group Sound Investigations, also said they would not call authorities if advertisers were deemed to have uploaded illegal, underage content.
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As the Washington Examiner has reported, Pornhub's parent company has been under fire for several reasons, including 257 individuals across 10 class action lawsuits suing the company for sex trafficking, for putting up roadblocks to review child sexual content on their sites, and for admitting content moderation for the site was not taken seriously.
In response to some of the revelations, a group of 26 state attorneys general sent a letter questioning the company about a potential loophole allowing child pornography to be uploaded to the site and get past content moderators.
The pornography giant and its ad network, owned by Aylo, formerly MindGeek, is based in Montreal, Canada, but has operations in the United States as well.
All U.S.-based internet companies are required to report all child sexual abuse material to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Several years ago, Pornhub decided it would also report CSAM to NCMEC, but statements from employees call into question whether every Aylo subsidiary does the same.
When TrafficJunky customer support representatives were asked if documentation of consent or identification was required to upload explicit content for advertisements on the site, representatives identified as Naomi and Manuel independently confirmed that they were not.
Content is reviewed, which a representative identified as Nicoletta said "can be a little bit subjective, but basically will reject anytime there are undeveloped body parts, we'll also request further review if someone's face looks really young."
"If you do upload something with, you know, someone that's potentially underage, we will just reach out to you and let you know that that's prohibited," she continued. "Your account is not likely to become suspended or anything like that. It's just kind of a warning to not upload anything similar or to re-upload that creative."
Manuel, however, confirmed that even if an ad does end up having child pornography in it, TrafficJunky will not report the uploader to the police, saying, "Telling the authorities [is] not part of our job."
Another representative named Tony also confirmed that the company will not ask for consent documentation but advised that getting consent "would be ideal."
"The legality of your activities, of your content, that’s something that we won’t really ask you," he said, adding, "We, on our end, won’t call the cops on you."
Although uploading underage content may not get an advertiser account suspended at TrafficJunky and representatives will not call the police, according to the employees, not notifying authorities of CSAM is in violation of U.S. federal law.
"The fact is, the very strict Trust & Safety and compliance rules and policies Aylo has in place extend to all its platforms, and all content and ads published on Aylo platforms must undergo compliance review and approval before going live," Aylo officials told the Washington Examiner in a statement.
"Like content uploads, ads that are uploaded to TrafficJunky are run through our suite of automated moderation tools including Safeguard, Safer, CSAI Match, Photo DNA, and NCMEC’s hash lists," the statement continued. "Violative ads are fingerprinted and added to our Safeguard library to prevent future upload. After going through those scans, ads are moderated by employees who are assisted by suggested flags. Once ads are live on site, live site scans and third-party tools help us monitor for any ads which may be detrimental to user experience or which may violate our rules and regulations."
Aylo's customer support team is "supplemented by third party call centers" which "are not, nor should they be, expected to demonstrate expertise in our robust and complex Trust and Safety policies, which are instead explicitly laid out in our Trust and Safety Center on our website, and demonstrated fully in our actions, which have been applauded by experts and non-profit organizations around the globe," according to the statement.
The company did not directly address statements made by its employees.
Sean Morrier, a senior software developer at Aylo who works on TrafficJunky, was filmed saying that part of his job working on software that allows advertisers to get their content onto the website while being compliant with the trust and safety protocols involves "making sure the stuff that we're showing is legal and ethical."
"Maybe not ethical-ethical," he said, "but Pornhub-ethical."
Morrier explained that ads will be scanned and representatives will determine if an advertiser is real or putting spam on the sites, but that the advertisers do "not need to be verified." He also said he did not believe the company looks into the consent of the people pictured in the ads.
He acknowledged there was "underage, nonconsensual" content on the site, explaining, "It’s very blurry when you don’t have confirmed people. You don’t know if it was an actual rape video or fantasy. And I don’t think they cared. ... Revenge porn: they didn’t give a f***.
“As long as money’s being made, morals get blurred," he continued.
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In its statement, Aylo also condemned the recordings as being "filmed surreptitiously and never fact-checked," adding that the videos are "simply an attempt to use disingenuous tactics to create a damaging characterization devoid of any fact or truth" and the content was obtained and published illegally.
"Despite continuous effort by [Sound Investigations] to fraudulently frame it otherwise, there is no world where Aylo would encourage the upload and distribution of illegal material in content or advertisements, period," the company concluded.