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In any war, there are moments of breakthrough whose significance is so great that the true impact won’t be known until time later reveals it. Through the Traffickinghub campaign, the fight to hold Pornhub accountable for profiting off sexual abuse and assault had many of those moments in 2020.
In 2021, that momentum only continued and so did the game-changing wins, both in the continued fight to hold Pornhub accountable and also in the fight to protect children from the tentacles of the porn industry.
Below are highlights of some of these wins, milestones, and breakthroughs. And for every one of you who engaged with this work—who liked, commented, read, watched, shared, prayed, or gave—these are YOUR wins too. Thank you for helping to give life and breath to this ongoing fight for freedom.
Traffickinghub Wins
Through the Traffickinghub movement in 2020, we succeeded in globally exposing Pornhub’s complicity in criminal porn and in lobbying Visa, Mastercard, and Discover to cut ties with this predatory platform. The Traffickinghub wins in 2021 carried on from those unprecedented breakthroughs.
Traffickinghub Campaign Inspires Mastercard to Enact Policies that Uproot Criminal Porn
In April 2021, Mastercard announced new measures to protect their network by preventing illegal adult content. Mastercard now requires robust age verification and documented consent for all porn sites globally as well as an in-depth process for illegal content to be removed quickly. This compels banks to ensure the legitimate consent practices of their merchants before processing any payments.
They’ve essentially set a new bar for accountability in porn distribution and it’s policies like these that will effectively uproot porn of rape, trafficking, child sexual abuse, and other image-based abuse.
With Mastercard holding a 30% global share of all payment processing (outside of China), this represents a foundational shift in how businesses work with porn companies. We are already seeing these changes disrupt the industry as thousands of videos are being deleted that do not comply with Mastercard’s regulations.
Pornhub Competitor XHamster Starts Deleting Content, Removes Download Button
In addition to the major breakthroughs holding MindGeek and Pornhub accountable, we’ve seen broader industry changes begin to take place as a powerful ripple effect. A major competitor to Pornhub, xHamster, has begun to backpedal. They’re implementing significant changes to their website, shifting their entire business model in very similar steps to Pornhub. The changes include:
– Removing the “download” button
– Deleting huge numbers of unverified content from the website
– Disallowing anonymous uploaders to upload content to the site
XHamster is also being investigated for the hosting of real rape, trafficking, revenge porn and child exploitation while being sued by the victims of these crimes.
Roku Bans Pornhub After Massive Pressure from Our Followers and Allies
In March, Exodus Cry publicly called out Roku, the US’ number one TV streaming platform, for hosting a private channel for Pornhub. We rallied thousands of our followers to flood their social media pages, demanding Roku remove the Pornhub channel.
Just months later, in the beginning of November, Roku announced they would ban not only Pornhub but also all other porn channels from their platform, effective March 2022. Movieguide wrote an article about Roku’s decision and, sharing our celebratory Instagram post, they stated, “The change comes in part due to added pressure from advocacy groups such as Exodus Cry.”
Protect Children Not Porn Wins
We kicked off the second half of the year with our Protect Children Not Porn campaign, which launched in August. This campaign is pushing for widespread awareness of the tragedy of underage exposure, illuminating the life-altering consequences of it, and calling for mandatory age verification, with government ID, on all sites hosting pornographic content.
Exodus Cry’s New Film, Raised on Porn, Inspires Parents to Protect Kids from Porn
In just three months, our newest film, Raised on Porn, has amassed over 870,000 views! The 35-minute documentary exposes the ways pornography has become the new sex education for children and unpacks the dangerous lifelong implications of this global phenomenon. It premiered on YouTube September 30th and is well on its way to 1 million views.
New York Times bestselling author and podcaster, Jeremy Roloff, shared the film with his followers, saying Raised On Porn has “a powerful message identifying the porn pandemic facing our youth.”
Many of you also shared the film and submitted reviews, many of which we shared in this blog.
RELATED: The Raised on Porn Reviews Are In: “Everyone Needs to See This”
One viewer wrote:
“I’m a Registered Nurse in a CCPEP. This is a designated Child/Adolescent Psychiatric Emergency Room. I see first hand the effects of porn on the developing mind. The movie was so spot on. It should be shown in many forums to get this incredibly important information out there. Thank you for your dedication to the mental health of our children” –@dawneasparro
We believe this film has the power to impact an entire generation and protect millions of kids from exposure to pornography. Raised on Porn is opening eyes everywhere about how underage exposure to porn is derailing the lives of children and 94% of viewers polled say the film inspired them to be more proactive in protecting their kids from porn exposure.
Protect Children Not Porn Campaign Reaches Millions on Social Media
The Protect Children Not Porn social campaign has drawn more than 540,000 social engagements (likes, comments, saves, and shares) on Instagram and Facebook since the launch of the campaign in August, 1.5 million video views, and has earned a combined social reach of 7.1 million. The truth is getting out there!
As part of this, our #PornHurtMe social campaign inspired hundreds of you to speak up and share your stories of underage porn exposure, revealing its devastating lifelong effects. These incredibly heartbreaking stories have reached vast audiences online and served to humanize this injustice in a way that the stats and figures can’t quite do.
We believe it’s absolutely critical to shift cultural paradigms in order to enact change, and this social campaign is doing exactly that. All of this digital content is driving powerful widespread awareness, normalizing the conversation around this tragedy, and fueling the global movement to protect kids from the life-altering consequences of underage exposure to porn.
RELATED: My Porn Addiction at Age 6 Drove Me To Attempt Suicide | #PornHurtMe
The Protect Children Not Porn Petition Will Soon Be Sent to Congress
The Protect Children Not Porn petition has reached 63,000+ signatures, and it’s growing by the day. It will be brought before Congress in 2022. The campaign and petition is now officially supported by 120 anti-trafficking, women’s rights, and child protection organizations, as well as a coalition of 2,000 other organizations.
The petition calls for the following:
– All websites hosting pornographic content must require site visitors to verify their age with a government-issued ID, validated by a third-party platform.
– All internet-accessing devices sold must come with safety filters turned on (adults can disable).
– Lawmakers must pass legislation requiring effective safeguards be put in place to protect children from porn exposure online.
Reaching Out to Victims, Assisting Survivors
Exodus Cry Provided 300+ Hours of Specialized Trauma Therapy to Child and Adult Trafficking and Exploitation Survivors
For the past year plus, we have been providing specialized trauma therapy—from some of the best experts in the country—for survivors of trafficking and exploitation on Pornhub. After just three months, survivors reported, on average:
– 37% decrease in anxiety
– 51% decrease in depression
– 37% decrease in self-harm
– 28% decrease in substance-based coping
– 39% decrease in suicidal thoughts
One survivor of exploitation on Pornhub said, “The sessions have been life-changing for me. The therapist has been so patient and understanding. I used to struggle with anxiety, panic attacks, shame, ruminating and self-loathing. The therapist has helped me to understand why I did certain actions in the past, and this has helped me to forgive myself and move forward.”
In 2022, we plan to expand our reach and provide this invaluable and transformative service to many others.
This has truly been a year of phenomenal and foundational advances in the fight against commercial sexual exploitation.
Below are three key areas of impact we’ll hone in on in 2022:
– Propel the petition to Congress to demand better laws to protect the millions of children with internet access in the United States.
– Reach 5 million views of Raised on Porn.
– Provide 500+ hours of specialized trauma therapy to survivors of sex trafficking and child sexual abuse in pornography.
You can help fulfill these life-changing objectives by helping us meet our year-end fundraising goal of $300k! Click the button below to bring freedom.
Stay tuned in early 2022 for the announcement of several new groundbreaking films we’ll be launching next year!
