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Photo: Logo of Pornhub’s parent company Aylo; via Wikimedia Commons.
The owner of Pornhub has agreed to a proposed $120 million settlement resolving two class action lawsuits alleging that the company profited from child sexual abuse material uploaded to its websites.
The proposed agreement involves lawsuits filed in California and Alabama against MindGeek, the former parent company of Pornhub. MindGeek was acquired in 2023 and renamed Aylo.
A court filing submitted August 18 asks a federal judge in California to grant preliminary approval of the settlement, which would create a $120 million fund for eligible class members while also requiring significant changes to how the company’s websites verify users, review uploads and respond to suspected child sexual abuse material.
If approved, the agreement could become one of the most significant civil settlements involving allegations that a major online platform financially benefited from sexual exploitation material involving minors, writes J.P. Finet, J.D. on FindLaw.com.
Lawsuits Alleged Abuse Videos Were Distributed on Pornhub
The two lawsuits were filed by survivors who alleged that videos documenting their sexual abuse while they were minors were uploaded to Pornhub and other websites operated by MindGeek.
In the California case, the plaintiff alleged that an abusive boyfriend recorded sexually explicit videos of her while she was a minor without her consent. After the relationship ended, she discovered that the videos had been uploaded to MindGeek-owned websites.
According to the lawsuit, the material could be viewed, downloaded and uploaded again by other users.
The plaintiff further alleged that the company reviewed the videos before allowing them to be distributed through its websites.
In the Alabama lawsuit, another survivor alleged that she was drugged and sexually assaulted while she was a minor and that recordings of the abuse were later uploaded to Pornhub.
She similarly alleged that the company reviewed the material before making it available to users.
The lawsuits accused MindGeek and affiliated companies of knowingly receiving and distributing child sexual abuse material and financially benefiting from alleged sex trafficking activity.
Settlement Would Create $120 Million Fund
Under the proposed agreement, Aylo and other defendants would contribute $120 million to a settlement fund.
Court documents indicate the money would be paid over several years, beginning with a $25 million payment in July 2026 and followed by six annual payments of approximately $15.8 million.
The fund would be non-reversionary, meaning money designated for the settlement would not simply return to the defendants if it is not immediately distributed.
Before any payments can be made to survivors, however, the court must approve the settlement process and establish procedures for identifying and notifying eligible class members.
Pornhub Would Face New Verification and Content-Moderation Requirements
The proposed settlement goes beyond financial compensation.
It would also require Aylo to implement or maintain extensive safeguards intended to prevent child sexual abuse material and non-consensual sexual content from appearing on its websites.
Among the proposed requirements:
- Uploaders and people depicted in content would have to undergo age verification using government-issued identification.
- Content would be reviewed through a combination of technology and human moderation.
- Procedures for reporting and removing suspected child sexual abuse material would be expanded.
- Users associated with illegal or prohibited content could be banned.
- Content identified as child sexual abuse material would be digitally fingerprinted to help prevent it from being uploaded again.
- Procedures for requesting removal of non-consensual material would be strengthened.
- The company would publicly report information about its efforts to identify and remove prohibited material.
The agreement would also create a monitoring committee tasked with reviewing compliance for at least five years.
What Role Does Section 230 Play?
One of the major legal questions surrounding lawsuits against online platforms involves Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
Section 230 generally protects online services from being treated as the publisher of content posted by third parties.
But that protection is not absolute.
The survivors in these cases alleged that MindGeek’s conduct went beyond merely hosting content uploaded by users. Their claims included allegations that the company knowingly benefited from sexual exploitation and participated in the receipt and distribution of illegal material.
Those allegations are important because courts have increasingly been asked to determine when an online platform’s own conduct can create liability separate from the actions of its users.
The proposed settlement does not establish a court ruling that Pornhub or its owners are liable under those theories. By settling, the defendants would resolve the claims without the court necessarily deciding those broader legal questions.
Impact of the Proposed Pornhub Settlement on Survivors
The proposed settlement is significant not only because of its $120 million value, but because of the safeguards it could impose on one of the world’s largest adult-content platforms.
For survivors whose abuse was recorded and distributed online, removing a single video does not necessarily end the harm. Digital files can be downloaded, copied and uploaded repeatedly across multiple websites, sometimes years after the original abuse occurred.
That can make online sexual exploitation uniquely difficult to escape.
The lawsuits also raise broader questions about the responsibilities of companies that operate platforms where users upload sexual content.
If the settlement receives court approval, Pornhub’s owner would be required to maintain stronger age-verification, moderation, removal and monitoring systems designed to prevent child sexual abuse material from being uploaded and redistributed.
For survivors, those measures may prove at least as consequential as the financial settlement itself.
The proposed agreement also illustrates a developing area of civil litigation: whether technology and adult-content companies can be held accountable when plaintiffs allege that the companies did more than passively host illegal material and instead financially benefited from its distribution.
The $120 million settlement remains subject to court approval.
