Detangling the Porn Industry's Dark Web

Engaging in weekly radio show and podcast produced by the North Carolina family policy Council hi this is John Rustin, presidency, family, and were grateful to have you with us for the speech program is our prayer that you will be informed, encouraged and inspired by what you hear on family policy matters and that you will fold better equipped to be a voice of persuasion for family values in your community, state and nation. Now here's our host family policy matters, tracing the veterans. Thanks for joining us this week for family policy matters. Many of us might envision dingy, dimly lit rooms.

When I think of the adult film industry but this is far from the truth anymore. While the porn industry is valued in the billions of dollars.

The reality is that it's tentacles are much more far-reaching and evolve many more businesses and industries that we might realize what Haley McNamara is vice president of the National Center on sexual exploitation which is committed to exposing the dark underbelly of this business. She joins us today to discuss why this is such an important issue. What we can do to affect change. Haley McNamara welcome to family policy matters.

Thanks for having me here.

It's not our business what someone is doing in the privacy of their own home. They say it's not really hurting anybody or it's a matter of free speech. So what's the problem with these arguments and why is it so important that we not look the other way on this issue will really well for entering into a phase where were seeing a rise in research on the actual public health harms of pornography and once a social or health issue involves problems that affect individuals or groups down there has to be to correct responsibility starts shifting from individual accountability holding the forces and influences that cause it accountable, so research is showing the public health harms of pornography is linked to child sexual abuse, compulsive sexual behavior.

Violence against women, sexual dysfunctions, neurological problems in the brain and really so much more. So what were seeing is not just a matter of individual choice.

It's a matter of how it's impacting your own health and your loved ones as well write in these connections are just hearsay. Right. I mean, these are our researched answers. Absolutely no even just since 2010 and there have been over 40 major studies. For example, that reveal that pornography has negative and in fact detrimental impact on the brain. This includes a 2014 study that found that pornography use is linked to decreased brain matter in the areas of motivation and decision-making, and you know there's so much more research on the brain.

It's thanks to sexual violence, child on sexual abuse is a really hidden crisis right now in America of children acting out in harmful sexual ways because they're reenacting what they've been exposed to hardcore photography and I think that we can be that this is something we need to be critical ads based on the fact that this is a completely new variable in the human experience. You know younger generations right now are the first to grow up with the access to this kind of hardcore endlessly novel endlessly violent material online when it's chilling. So we mentioned in the introduction that there's a wide web and and beyond what people might realize. Tell us how wide is that web that keeps pornography available right there are a lot of people who stand to make money from the pornography business. So of course there are the producers, and the agents that are working on pornography itself, but we also have many mainstream companies that are promoting it, facilitating it and profiting from. We've seen that for example with Google, which in the past used to have ads that would link directly to hardcore. Democracy websites. Thankfully, our organization took action and they've now stopped doing that through the dirty dozen list.com but we also see that there are other companies such as Amazon that hosts the privacy for their online websites.

It does web hosting for them and then is profiting from pornography. That way we see major credit card companies are processing payments for this industry and all the while not recognizing the public health harms but also the pornography industry's inherent link to sex trafficking and child sexual abuse as well.

What are some of the less obvious organizations that are making pornography possible. I would definitely highlight visa right now is a credit card company and dots on the dirty dozen last.

These is not alone visa, MasterCard and Discover all partner with the pornography industry processing their payments despite the fact that we like videos of sex trafficked women and children being sexually abused have been found on many of these sites so we are absolutely calling on all of these major credit card companies to stop processing those payments. In fact, last fall. PayPal stopped processing those payments so we know it something that they can do and actually if you go to dirty dozen list.com you can help us reach out to visa executives.

We have a little form that you can fill out and you can actually email them directly asking them to stop profiting from sexual exploitation.

So that's a great example of one success story from your organization. Your organization really is on the front lines regarding social media as well and calling out these mainstream social media companies that you say are enabling and even funding pornography. So tell us a little bit about your strategy. As far as addressing some of those concerns often have people ask me okay so sex trafficking is a problem on Instagram. Does that mean that I need to delete my Instagram is not necessarily the answer may be that the answer for you but what we typically advocate for is not boycotting but actually taking an affirmative action. A lot of companies really do pay attention to customer complaints or to bad reviews online or to someone is saying something negative about their company on social media companies care about the way that they're presented in the public so we are asking people to reach out to the companies either through our website or directly yourself to ask for change and we seen and that's been incredibly successful. For example, because of that we seen some really important improvements happening at Snapchat and at Instagram and I mentioned Google play now has a policy to pornographic apps in their app store.

Whereas before advocate like your listeners took action they were allowing that so we definitely seen success through this, which is helpful because these are very dark subjects but we know that if we take affirmative action. We actually have a good track record. What about social media sites like Facebook and twitter are they also having some issues with this absolutely one thing that's a little bit frightening about phase right now that they're pursuing encryption methods even on things like kids messenger and of course encryption were not actively against. We recognize the desire for privacy. However, going to be doing that we need to do it in a way that we can still protect children from sexual predators on Twitter. We really see that twitter is really ground zero for social media, sexual exploitation right now.

They blatantly allow pornography. They blatantly allow escort prostitution accounts to be running though we know that there's a significant amount of sex trafficking happening on twitter as well because porn images and videos that are being shared and used to advertise for real life victims off-line so we certainly know that those platforms are a problem there. Many predators on twitter, Facebook, Instagram that are reaching out to children very regularly asking them for nude images nude videos and then using that to extort them really to blackmail them into either sending more of these kinds of images or even into meeting in real life where they could later be sexually abused her sex trafficked. Tragically, we've met with and I personally spoken with individuals who this is happened to you, and that's really a trend across all social media, even across video games where there's an online chat component, though certainly I would recommend.

In addition to reaching out to the companies task that they improve their systems that they get proactive algorithms to stop predatory behavior.

I also recommend that parents really talk with your kids about who they talk to online whether they think that their offender or not it's important for you to know who they're speaking with and make sure that your child is safe. So you mentioned earlier, you've had some good results. Any other companies or industries that are stepping up and making some changes now we know we've seen really significant improvements with Comcast. They we met with them several times.

They said that they heard our feedback and made improvements to their parental controls which was really amazing.

After our advocacy at Department of Defense stop selling pornography and Army and Air Force base exchanges, which is quite significant. If you think about the military's problem with sexual assault.

It's important that they not also fuel attitudes that are inherently degrading towards women. We've also really had a big impact on the hotel industry in the last few years you gotten Hilton worldwide wide Hyatt hotels Intercontinental Hotel groups and Starwood to all meant to stop selling pornography on demand in their guestrooms, so that's a big chunk of change of the pornography industry is pocket which I don't mind at all, but but we all know that that makes a real world difference.

People who are able to go to these hotels not be attempted with those images, and even I spoke with a sex trafficking survivor whose trafficked in one of those hotel chains and she said that when she would go in men would often find pornography on the TV and force her to act out what they saw and she said that when she realized the hotel is no longer selling those materials. She felt like maybe someone out there actually cared about women like her. So I think when we make these kinds of policy improvements at the corporate level.

They certainly have a ripple effect in many ways including just on our cultural values and saying that we are going to respect the human dignity of each person, rather than seeing them as sexual commodities.

While great example. So we started seeing some state legislatures take some action on this as well. Right yes we have had at least 15 states have now declared pornography a public health hazard recognize its public health harms formally. These are fantastic resolutions that really does recognize the research and then it raises awareness and makes it much easier for the state to then say, okay, let's really look at the filters in the libraries or in the public schools where taxpayer money is going and make sure that the spaces are free from pornography as well. And while were doing this interview we are in the midst of much of our country being locked down and actually not just a country but many countries in the world are being locked down because of the COBIT 19 virus is so with all this time on our hands. Do you have any special concerns. Does this create any additional problems.

Do you think for this issue.

It really does knowing the midst of social distancing self isolation and quarantines. We know that there is a large increase of children who are spending more time online than they ever would have before and it is a sad reality to know that wherever children are predators will flock to that space. And so we know that happening online so really encourage parents to talk to your kids about their Internet usage ask them you know if there chatting with people online who are they chatting with these really important things to talk about in a nonaccusatory way, but Billy just make sure that you're tuned in with your child's online options and then we also encouraging parents to make sure that they're setting up parental controls on making sure that there whether limiting time online or making sure that pornography is not allowed on the child's devices you can set a lot of really great filters through Google's safe search and there's great parental controls on all of the different apps that you use it as well.

So encourage you to look at those and then also talk to your kid about why it's important to be careful online to use a lot of this information that you've just told us on your website tell us where that is and how people can access it yet. So if you are wanting to learn more and take action about corporations facilitating sexual exploitation. I would direct you towards a dirty dozen list.com and if you're curious just to learn more about our work in general and also maybe some of our advice during the coronavirus we just put out a blog with some examples of filters that might be helpful for you to look at with your family.

You can find that information and sexual exploitation.org will thank you very much Haley McNamara, VP of National Center on sexual exploitation. Thank you for being with us on family policy matters listening to family housing. We hope you enjoy the program to do next to listen to the show will want to learn more about into family encourage and inspire families across the water or website into family into family.org Mexican for listing in my goblet