Pornhub owners will pay $5M penalty in settlement with Utah

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah and federal officials announced a proposed settlement with the owners of Pornhub and other adult video sites requiring them to remove child sexual abuse material and nonconsensual sexual content from those platforms.

Utah Attorney General Derek Brown joins Maria Shilaos to discuss the settlement agreement:

 

The proposed consent order, announced Wednesday in Salt Lake City by the Utah Department of Commerce’s Division of Consumer Protection and the Federal Trade Commission, requires Aylo, the company that owns Pornhub, RedTube and other adult video sites, to pay a $5 million penalty to the state of Utah while also making changes to its business practices.

Specifically, the company must verify that people who appear in pornographic videos are consenting adults, and it must remove previously uploaded videos unless it can confirm that the participants are adults and agreed to be featured in them. The company will also be required to post a notice on its websites informing visitors of the allegations and the requirements of the proposed settlement, as well as submit to independent audits for the next decade.

Aylo will face additional fines of $10 million if the company fails to follow the conditions of the settlement.

“Utah stands ready to protect our children from exploitation — wherever that exploitation takes place,” said Utah Attorney General Derek Brown.

What Aylo is accused of doing

In a complaint filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court, the state and FTC allege that since 2012, Aylo distributed tens of thousands of videos and images of child sexual abuse material and sexual material involving adult participants who did not agree to be part of it.

That nonconsensual sexual content, according to FTC Commissioner Melissa Holyoak, included “revenge porn, spy camera videos, rape, incest or other absolutely appalling categories of content.”

The complaint also alleges that Aylo ignored hundreds of thousands of users flagging that content, instead allowing it to remain on the company’s websites.

“The children and nonconsenting adults included in the content that the Aylo companies distributed were violated and injured in the most horrific of ways,” Holyoak said.

Holyoak, Utah’s former solicitor general, said the company waited to take any action on the videos “until after their credit card processors began threatening them with massive fines and termination of payment processing.”

“But even then, defendants routinely ignored or overruled such efforts, maintaining tens of thousands of CSAM (child sexual abuse material) and NCM (nonconsensual material) videos and photos on their websites,” the complaint states.

Margaret Woolley Busse, executive director of the Utah Department of Commerce, accused Aylo of being “systematically deceptive” about the illegal material on its websites — and about the “robust safety measures” the company supposedly had in place to protect against distributing it.

“Why were they doing this? Unprecedented profits, yes,” Woolley Busse said. “But in reading the complaint, it’s hard to see anything else (other) than that this company seems to relish spreading this kind of content for its own sake.”

Company responds

In a statement to KSL, Aylo confirmed the settlement, which it said “strengthens the comprehensive safeguards that have been in place for years on Aylo platforms.”

“These measures reflect Aylo’s ongoing commitment to constantly evolving compliance efforts,” the company said. “Importantly, this settlement resolves the matter with no admission of wrongdoing while reaffirming Aylo’s commitment to the highest standards of platform safety and compliance.”

Aylo said it has already taken “proactive measures” to deal with illegal material on its websites, including requiring all performers to provide proof of consent and identification and increasing efforts to moderate content. Aylo also noted the allegations against it date back to 2020 or earlier, and that since then, its new measures “place us among the safest platforms on the internet.”

“Aylo maintains a zero-tolerance policy for illegal content,” the company concluded, “and this agreement underscores our dedication to upholding high standards of trust and safety in the industry.”

Utah’s attorney general told KSL the company’s stance is welcome news.

“The reality is, if they are continuing to move in the right direction of protecting children, from my standpoint, that’s a win,” Brown said.

‘One more tool in the toolbox’

Wednesday’s court filing and proposed settlement are the latest in an ongoing dispute between Utah and Pornhub, after the company made its website inaccessible to Utahns when the state passed a law in 2023 requiring users to verify their ages before accessing adult content online. Pornhub later sued the state, saying the law was unconstitutional.

But Holyoak said the settlement is still necessary for the state because the allegations go back years before Pornhub blacked out its service in the state. And because there are still ways to access the site, “Utahns are still being revictimized by these actions,” Holyoak added.

Utah has also gone after pharmaceutical companies and social media platforms in recent years for their alleged roles in the opioid crisis and in creating algorithms that have harmed young users. Brown said the filing against Aylo represents “one more tool in the toolbox that we have” and said his office will continue to investigate allegations of exploitation.

While the First Amendment “protects speech we may find offensive … it does not protect this kind of material,” he added.

Brown didn’t rule out potential criminal charges when asked why his office is pursuing this case in civil court, but said he wouldn’t comment on any pending criminal investigations.

“From our standpoint, what matters most is that we are forcing change in an industry that is long overdue for change,” he said.