Online porn is possibly Canada’s greatest export

Article content

Solomon Friedman, an Ottawa-based criminal defence lawyer and ordained rabbi, is an unlikely public face of Pornhub, the world’s most popular adult entertainment website.

Pornhub — headquartered in Montreal, Que. — is not only the most-visited pornography website on the internet, it is one of the most-visited websites in the world, period. Each day, 140 million people log on, spending an average of nine-and-a-half minutes on the website. That is more than double the amount of time the average Canadian couple spends actually having intercourse.

Article content

With more than half a million verified content creators, and millions of videos, Pornhub is the flagship website of the adult-entertainment juggernaut that Friedman and a group of private-equity investors have controlled since purchasing MindGeek in March 2023. The investor group, Ethical Capital Partners, rebranded the controversial MindGeek platform that had been the target of a number of lawsuits over sexual exploitation and was the subject of a Netflix documentary. Now called Aylo, the pornography conglomerate includes not just Pornhub, but three other streaming sites, porn-production companies and paid-porn sites.

If anyone has insights on the sex lives of humans, it is Solomon Friedman.

For example, there is this: One third of Pornhub’s visitors are women. “There are certain stereotypes about who visits a site,” Friedman said in an interview with National Post. “This is not an exclusively male interest. It’s a human interest. The number of couples who have accounts, both as viewers and uploaders, is substantial. I think it says that sex is the fundamental human drive, and you cannot legislate it out of people.”

Article content

Or this: “Pornography is not a depiction that society then models itself after,” said Friedman. “Pornography … is more like a mirror. Whatever is reflected into it is reflected back.”

Ethical Capital Partners has prioritized trust and safety at Aylo. Friedman is head of compliance, meaning he works to keep the platform on the right side of continuously evolving online pornography rules and restrictions.

He has his hands full. In November 2023, Aylo entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office — thereby avoiding criminal charges — to resolve a three-year investigation related to proceeds from sex trafficking and exploitation of minors.

Friedman spoke to National Post by phone about Aylo, Pornhub and the evolving world of internet pornography. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Q: Let’s start at the beginning, which is Ethical Capital Partners’ decision to acquire MindGeek. Why did you do it?

I never thought in a million years this is where my career would go. I was asked by a group that was considering an acquisition of MindGeek to do criminal and regulatory due diligence on the company. And when I actually got into the company, as you can imagine, I had certain preconceived notions, not just about the company, but about the industry at large. I’d done some regulatory work from a criminal law perspective when it comes to adult entertainment and sex work, but did not have significant exposure to it. I had these preconceived notions about the kind of people who would work at these companies and manage these companies and what the industry is all about.

Article content

Article content

Turns out, I really didn’t know what I didn’t know, because what I found was primarily a tech company — an advanced, sophisticated tech company where people are solving some of the most difficult technical and policy challenges that face the creator side of the internet.

And I found people who took trust and safety incredibly seriously. But I also found — this is the real diamond in the rough — the products and the software that were being developed in-house were things that could solve real challenges, that law enforcement struggle with when it comes to investigating, solving and prosecuting offences related to online exploitation, sexual exploitation, whether of minors or adults. My eyes were really opened when I saw the software and realized that it has potential so far beyond the adult industry, and that it should be in the hands of those who can use it best.

I think there’s something very profoundly human about it all.

So, ultimately, like many complex bids for large companies, that bid fell apart. But with my partners, including my law partner, Fady Mansour, who serves as managing partner of Ethical Capital Partners, we formed this private equity group because we saw real value in proceeding with an acquisition like this.

Article content

What made it such an attractive investment was that we identified a significant gap between the public perception of what this company was about and the reality of what its values were. And in that gap is an enormous investing opportunity if you can align the public perception with the reality.

It became obvious that what it lacked, more than anything, was not the proper processes, not the proper software, not the proper management, but ownership who were not willing to speak openly and transparently on behalf of the companies they own, which is a much larger problem in the adult industry.

It’s impossible to meaningfully engage with government, law enforcement, regulators, if you’re not open and transparent. Also, in the public conversation, the space is dominated by people who, from an ideological perspective, think you shouldn’t exist, and when the space is wholly taken up by those voices, it’s sort of hard to complain that you’re not being heard, right?

So, we saw a real investing opportunity if the stigma around the industry could be dispelled, and the only way that stigma could be dispelled was with open and proud ownership.

Article content

Q: As long as humans have been daubing paintings on cave walls, we were thinking about erotic art. Where do you think pornography fits in the human experience?

I’ll be very basic about it: Pornography is sex work. And if you boil it down one step further, it’s work, it’s labour. At ECP, we fundamentally believe that sex work is work deserving of dignity, legal protection, and all the safeguards that a responsible platform can offer.

Sex work is controversial. It’s controversial because it is the subject of polarizing views. On one side, you have folks who say labour is part of the human experience. Some people have jobs they love. Some sex workers have jobs they love. Some janitors have jobs they love. Some lawyers have jobs they loathe, but they’re jobs, and we don’t take one category of labour and say this is fundamentally unacceptable and therefore should be deprived of the legal protections of labour ordinarily in our modern society.

Now, on the other side of the debate, are those who say — and to be very clear, most sex workers are women — women should not be permitted to make free choices about the labour they perform with their own body. I understand it generally comes from a religious perspective, which should not be a driver in public policy. At the same time, it’s a view that’s just so hypocritical.

Article content

They’re performers, and they do this to earn a living, just like many other people on Earth do all kinds of interesting jobs to earn a living. Of course, that means it’s going to be divisive, because on one side of the debate are people who say this can never be a free choice, no woman can make a free choice. Frankly, I find that patronizing, paternalistic, insulting, whatever you want to say about it.

Q: Internet porn has been around for a while, since at least the mid-1990s. What has changed?

We’ve seen a real shift away from centralized content creation to individual content creators — away from your traditional studio porn-star model to individuals in the safety and comfort of their own homes, creating their own content, building their own fan bases, and making a living out of doing it all, by the way, without your traditional intermediaries like agents, directors, producers, cast and crew. And I think that’s a very positive development. The fewer people or intermediaries between a creator and audience, the far lower the likelihood of exploitation.

Q: There are about 140 million daily users of Pornhub. What does that say about humanity or our sex lives?

Article content

There’s a reason why in Canada and the United States, in basically every Western liberal democracy, pornography is constitutionally protected as free expression. Sexual expression is part of free expression, whether they’re the ones creating the content or the ones viewing the content. I think there’s something very profoundly human about it all.

Q: One of the criticisms of the porn industry is that it’s sculpting tastes and practices. I’m thinking of media articles about how young people are discovering their partners are into choking during sex.

The empirical studies show that online porn is not becoming harder, but it’s becoming softer because of the kind of moderation and increased regulatory scrutiny. If you speak to others in the industry, Pornhub is seen as relatively vanilla in all of this. In fact, what’s banned on Pornhub goes so far beyond what’s legal. To give you an example, not only is consent key, but the depiction of consent is key.

So, no person can depict, even fictional and acting, a lack of consent — to the act or consent to the recording. Even if that’s your niche fetish and totally consensual, if it’s spy cams or revenge porn or whatever, that’s all banned.

Article content

The same is true when it comes to violence. The platform does not allow any content that depicts — once again, totally fictional and totally voluntary acts — that show bodily harm or likely to cause serious injury or death. That same is true when it comes to choking, to depictions of intoxication, where an individual can’t consent.

For example, hypnosis is not allowed. You can have a Hollywood movie with that, but on Aylo’s platforms that’s completely banned. You don’t want to be the arbiter of taste, but you have to draw certain lines when it comes to trust and safety.

Q: What about porn addiction? It’s talked about everywhere online.

This is not an accepted mental-health diagnosis in the present diagnostic standards manual. It goes like this: Let’s say you love fly fishing. So, you go fly fishing on the weekends, you spend a little bit of money on your fly-fishing equipment, and that’s a healthy hobby.

But if you go fly fishing all day, every day, and spend all of your income on it, stop going to work, stop talking to your wife and kids, you’ve got a real problem and you need help, right? That’s not a fly-fishing addiction. That’s something in your life that’s interfering with your function. The same is true when it comes to porn.

Article content

The vast, vast majority of individuals are consuming it in a way that has absolutely no negative impact on their life. In fact, many report a positive impact on their sex life and their functioning. But if an individual is obsessed and spends all their money and their time, and it interferes with their real-life human relationships, that’s a big problem and they should seek assistance for that.

Q: Since you’ve acquired MindGeek — now Aylo — there’s a lot happening regarding what you call trust and safety. Can we talk about that?

To apply to upload you must be a verified uploader. That means that your age, ID and consent are verified using both automated means and then reviewed by a human moderator. We use a third-party tool called Yogi. Yogi is used by government insurance companies, banks, car rental agencies, all around the world to verify government documentation and ID. It involves a scan of government ID, a biometric face scan that requires movement to ensure that it’s an actual human and not a screen capture or video, and comparison of the individual to the standard ID. Once that passes Yogi, it then comes to one of our moderators. We employ a team of full-time moderators who work in shifts around the clock, reviewing both identity verification and content moderation, and they need to independently determine that this person is the individual depicted.

Article content

I can’t stress this enough. It’s not YouTube, it’s not Facebook, it’s not Reddit — it’s not you just go and create an anonymous account. So, for every single verified uploader, the company knows exactly who they are and has verified their identity.

So, that’s to apply to upload content. Once you pass that stage, you can then submit content for review. Every single piece of content is reviewed by both automated means and human moderators before it is approved or denied. So, we run it through about 10 databases. If it passes those checks, it then goes to a human moderator. That human moderator is doing a number of things. First of all, they’re reviewing the material. They’re supported by a number of automated tools, including automated transcription and translation depending on the language of the content, a number of AI detection tools that are looking for certain cues, but at the end of the day, they watch it manually, and they can approve, deny or seek further documentation.

In basically every Western liberal democracy, pornography is constitutionally protected as free expression

We are the only free video-sharing platform online to require identification for every single person appearing in content. The regulation in the United States requires that the uploader attest that they hold the identity and consent from everyone appearing in content. We have gone a step further, and now require that we hold that and verify it ourselves.

Article content

This is an onerous process, onerous in the sense that it costs an enormous amount of money to execute. We’ve invested heavily in the company’s trust and safety. For us, it’s not just the cost of doing business, but we actually think it is the only way to make it clear that this is an industry that prioritizes trust and safety and takes an ethical approach to what it does.

We have on every single platform, at the bottom of every single page, a link to the content removal request form. And our standard of service is that if an individual says, “I have firsthand knowledge that this is either underage content or nonconsensual,” the content goes down immediately. There’s no waiting period, there’s no assessment. I call it, “take down first, ask questions later.”

We’ve also developed what’s called a trusted flagger program. That’s a partnership with, I think we’re up to almost 60 NGOs and governmental organizations around the world, where we have given all of these organizations full, unfettered access to disable any piece of content on our site for any reason, and then we will investigate once they have disabled it.

Article content

We’ve also partnered with organizations, including in Canada, for what we call “deterrence messaging.” We recognize that people are going to search on Aylo’s platforms for unlawful content. They’re going to look for it just like they look for it on Google, YouTube, etc. Now, they’re not going to find it, but we recognize that there’s a responsibility the company has to make some positive difference.

So, No. 1, you don’t see any results whatsoever, nor are you redirected to legal results. No. 2, you see a warning that the content you have searched for could be illegal and harmful to you and others. Going one step further, we partnered with a program called Talking for Change, a program of the Canadian Association of Mental Health, funded by the Government of Canada, that provides free therapy for individuals who are troubled by a sexual interest or behaviour involving children.

I think it says a lot about a company when the first thing they want to put in front of people’s eyeballs is, ‘Here is how you block us.’

We recognize that as an adult entertainment platform we don’t have any expertise in deterring offenders, but we partner with people who can because there’s an opportunity to reach people here.

Article content

In the U.K., we’ve taken it even farther. We’ve partnered with the Lucy Faithfull Foundation and implemented a pilot chatbot project, so an AI chatbot intervenes and engages with the individual. We submitted all the data on this project to the University of Tasmania. They released a paper that showed that not only were people getting real-world help, but it actually reduced, in aggregate, the number of searches for unlawful material, which is an amazing outcome.

The last thing I want to talk about is parental controls. If you go to Pornhub, or any one of Aylo’s platforms for the first time, the first thing you’re going to see is a prompt to confirm you’re over 18. Below that, immediately before seeing any explicit content whatsoever, is a link to parental controls. So, without seeing any explicit material, you click there, and you have a list of resources on how to block the site on a device level, the router level, the internet service provider level.

I think it says a lot about a company when the first thing they want to put in front of people’s eyeballs is, “Here is how you block us.”

Article content

Q: In addition to your role with Ethical Capital Partners, you were also educated as a rabbi. What has that been like, especially after October 7?

Not a week goes by that I don’t receive the most heinous and vile antisemitic correspondence directed to me, with every antisemitic trope under the sun, that I am personally the corrupter of society, and this proves everybody right about the cabal of evil Jews controlling not just Hollywood and news media and the banks, but porn as well.

I’ll point out that this is not a new trope. It was a favourite of Hitler’s and the propagandists of the Third Reich — the talk of the Jewish degenerate pornographers of Berlin. It’s an old Fascist trope that Jews pervert the sexual power of white women away from the nation. It’s obviously false and offensive and degrading on a number of levels, but that is a part of doing this work, unfortunately, anytime you live in the public space as a Jew. But it’s not something that deters me.

Article content