India was recently shaken by the brutal murder of a 31-year-old doctor-trainee, who was found dead on August 9, 2024, in a lecture hall at R.G. Kar Medical College in Kolkata. The victim was raped, strangled, and suffered extreme violence allegedly at the hands of Sanjay Roy and possibly others during her shift. As protests erupted across the country demanding justice and protection for women, a disturbing parallel narrative emerged online — an alarming surge in <keyword id="22854025" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="pornographic-searches" source="keywords">pornographic searches</keyword> linked to the rumors of her rape being filmed. According to data from Google Trends, searches for terms like “*victim’s name* rape video” and “*victim’s name* porn” spiked as the news spread. This grotesque phenomenon reflects a troubling trend where incidents of <keyword id="20335626" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="sexual-violence" source="keywords">sexual violence</keyword> are followed by an explosion of online curiosity, particularly around alleged rape footage. The case of a veterinary doctor raped and murdered in 2019 also saw a similar trend of millions of searches for her name on pornographic sites. <div type="Article" hostid="261" msid="112643793" title="Kolkata doctor rape and murder case: Supreme Court tells CBI to file report by August 22" mstype="2" mssubtype="0"></div>The search for such content is not only a deplorable act against the victim and her family, but it also is a reflection of a far deeper tendency of objectifying women and normalising violence against them. The fact that the Kolkata doctor-trainee’s name, associated with such a horrific crime, is trending on porn websites speaks to the extent of the desensitisation to sexual violence even in this day and age. What should have been a moment of mourning and demands for justice instead became fodder for voyeuristic consumption, treating the violation of a woman’s body as entertainment. This issue also raises critical concerns about the responsibilities of internet platforms. While companies like Google and social media giants have policies to control explicit content, the virality of these searches often outpaces enforcement. Pornographic websites are particularly culpable, as they struggle to manage the line between consensual content and exploitative material. In this case, searches on XVideos-India serve as a grim reminder of the failures of these platforms to prevent the sexualization of violent crimes. Public response to the young doctor’s murder has been strong, with protests led by medical professionals and several other groups calling for systemic reforms to prevent sexual <keyword id="20228207" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="violence-against-women" source="keywords">violence against women</keyword>. The <keyword id="20083252" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Indian-Medical-Association" source="keywords" meta.keywordsubtype="org" meta.entityname="Indian Medical Association" meta.hostid="261" meta.entityid="Indian Medical Association">Indian Medical Association</keyword> (IMA) even organised a national strike, demanding better safety measures for <keyword id="19896830" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="healthcare-workers" source="keywords">healthcare workers</keyword>. <div type="Article" hostid="261" msid="112628108" title="Senior doctors march to Kolkata Police HQ after notice over social media posts" mstype="2" mssubtype="0"></div>However, the <keyword id="21417811" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="online-exploitation" source="keywords">online exploitation</keyword> of the victim’s name could point to a deeper psuchological issue — one where the digital space becomes a battleground for <keyword id="21467437" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="gendered-violence" source="keywords">gendered violence</keyword> and its normalisation. Addressing this requires more than just laws and stricter regulation. It calls for a cultural shift that inhibits commodification of women’s suffering and a reckonning with the root causes of this behaviour. As India seeks justice for the deceased, the fight must also extend to the online world. The disturbing trend of searching for rape videos underscores the need for a broader conversation on the desensitisation to violence against women and the role of digital platforms in enabling it. True justice for the doctor means confronting these behvioural issues and challenging the narratives and behaviours that perpetuate violence — both offline and online. <div type="Article" hostid="261" msid="112656459" title="As the prime accused in Kolkata rape-murder gears up for a polygraph test, how reliable are lie detectors?" mstype="2" mssubtype="0"></div>

Google trends reveal disturbing surge in porn searches following brutal rape of Kolkata doctor

<ul><li>Globally, human trafficking is a $150 billion industry, and India has lost 1.2 million of its children to this.</li><li>Already, 40% of Indian women in the sex trade are children, and added to that 66% of the revenue generated from trafficking comes from sexual exploitation.</li><li>Child porn is an $8 billion industry for content creation only. </li></ul> (Disclaimer: This interview was originally published on Business Insider in July 2019) Most of India’s lost children end up in brothels. Already, 40% of Indian women in the sex trade are children, and added to that 66% of the revenue generated from trafficking comes from sexual exploitation. Unfortunately, this is only increasing as children are also being extensively used for child porn as well, which has exploded in the era of high-speed internet. “In India, short films are produced while the children are being raped. If the girl is a virgin or being gang raped by a group of boys, such a blue film is sold at a higher price,” <keyword id="377475" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Kailash-Satyarthi">Kailash Satyarthi</keyword> tells Business Insider in an interview. Since there is a premium on the ‘age’ of such victims, younger and younger children are roped into this trade. Globally, human trafficking is a $150 billion industry, and India has lost 1.2 million of its children to this. Many such children end up in Internet chat rooms where they are put in obscene situations as well, making child porn the root of many ills. Some children are either brainwashed or medicated to take part in this ugly industry. And, this business extends across borders and it’s large. Globally, only content creation of child porn is $8 billion industry. Chat rooms &amp; blackmail The Nobel laureate has been working for enslaved and trafficked children, is also waging a war against child porn. Satyarthi has been demanding a legally binding UN convention from world leaders which can monitor the activities and also have enough teeth to prosecute offenders across borders. “The reason it is proliferating; is that it is a profitable business for those without a conscience. There are no costs; all the source material is either trafficked or hacked into! And payments are not traceable, because they use either cold cash, or crypto-currencies or some such mind boggling currency,” he explains. Porn and crime Porn has two sinister faces where child victims are used to create them, and some of its consumers are children too. Today, thanks to telecom revolution and cheap data, children across hinterlands of India wield smart phones. Unfortunately they access videos with graphic content which glorifies rape, gang rape and violence, seeding such thoughts into young minds. Satyarthi tells the disturbing story where four boys aged between 12 and 15 who were heavy consumers of porn. “One of them had a 7 year old sister. One day, when the parents were not home; the boy brought on gang rape on his own sister! They gang raped that girl. Such exposure erodes our sense of morality,” he laments. Prosecution The problem is deeply entrenched into the fabric of the society. Yet, the government too is playing its part to eradicate it. In the last one year, the number of prosecution against criminals in trafficking has increased five-fold. But, freeing such children from the industry is only one side of the coin. To help them, government formed a victim compensation scheme, but it has a few loopholes. The victims are not entitled to the compensation until the summary trial begins, and activists are working on ways where the rehabilitation process starts faster. In the case of child prostitutes, psychological, social integration is a challenge. This is also true with victims of rape, where society places stigma on the victim and the family. “It’s a shame that, the victims are always treated as culprits, they are stigmatized. It’s a sickness, this is the dirt in our minds and we should clean it,” says Satyarthi.

This Kailash Satyarthi interview is a reminder that the worst form of child labour is child porn — an $8 billion industry

New Delhi, The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Centre to hold discussion with internet intermediaries, including Google, <keyword id="790242" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="WhatsApp">WhatsApp</keyword> and Facebook, to develop a strategy to restrict circulation of rape videos, child pornography and images. A bench headed by Chief Justice S.A. Bobde and comprising Justices B.R. Gavai and Surya Kant noted the submissions of advocate Aparna Bhat, appearing for Hyderabad-based NGO Prajwala. Bhat submitted a meeting, to deal with circulation of obscene content on social media platforms, is yet to be convened by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) involving all the stakeholders since December 2018. Solicitor Tushar Mehta, representing the Centre, submitted before the court the meeting on this matter would take place soon and asked the court not to pass any order. Bhat cited the difference in opinion between the NGO and internet intermediaries on the matter - NGO reckon the content can be blocked at the outset, but internet companies say materials have to be brought to their notice to take action. Bhat said delay in action would eventually make the content go viral. She insisted that the issue of child pornography falls under POCSO (the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act) and it's mandatory to report on it. Lawyer N.S. Nappinai, who is assisting the court as <keyword id="525739" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="amicus-curiae">amicus curiae</keyword>, suggested artificial intelligence tools could filter obscene content and help in its elimination. In 2015, the apex court had taken the suo motu cognizance of a letter written to the then Chief Justice H.L. Dattu alleging circulation of two rape videos and the video content was submitted in the court in a pen drive. The top court on Tuesday said it will ask MHA to schedule a meeting on this matter. The court asked Bhat to provide a status report to all parties to the case and scheduled the matter for further hearing after four weeks. In 2018, the apex court had said the Centre could lay down standard operating procedure (SoP) to block obscene content involving children.

Indian court wants Google, WA and FB to help stop child porn and rape videos

Two University of Oregon students recieved some seriously unexpected news yesterday - their <a href="http://www.peabodyawards.com/stories/story/press-release-73rd-annual-award-winners">viral anti-rape YouTube video had won a Peabody Award</a>, which recognizes standout electronic media.
Samantha Stendal - an OU junior - and Aaron Blanton - a recent graduate - won the prestigious award for their <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZxv5WCWivM">25-second YouTube video "A Needed Response."</a> The video was created as a student project responding to the rape of a 16-year-old girl in Steubenville, Ohio, and has over 3 million views since it was uploaded last year.
"To the Steubenville rapists...or any rapists out there," reads the video's description.
You can watch their winning video below:
<iframe width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/eZxv5WCWivM"></iframe>
According to student newspaper The Daily Emerald, <a href="http://dailyemerald.com/2014/04/02/uo-grads-stendal-and-blanton-win-peabody-award-for-viral-video/">Blanton first found out about the award</a> when he recieved a personal call from the president of the Peabodys Wednesday morning.
"Honestly I'm just kind of bewildered. It's a complete surprise. I had no anticipation of winning," Blanton told The Emerald. "He said, 'We've never had a video like this before."
Here's how <a href="http://www.peabodyawards.com/award-profile/a-needed-response-youtube-samantha-stendal">the Peabody's website describes the video: </a>
Short, simple and spot-on in its critique of rape culture, the ingenious PSA by two University of Oregon students takes just 25 seconds to make its point that real men treat women with respect.
"A Needed Response" is the only viral video to win a Peabody this year, and is part of a class that includes "House of Cards," "Orange Is the New Black," and "Breaking Bad."

University Of Oregon Students' Viral Anti-Rape Video Wins Peabody Award

<div class="image-container float_right" style="width:350px"><div class="image"><img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/51827f7decad049507000008-707-530/google-funny-or-die-sex.jpeg?maxX=350" border="0" alt="Google Funny or Die sex" width="350" />Google</div></div>Digiday has pulled the lid off a little-known but commonly used search engine optimization trick used by major media publishers such as Funny Or Die, Complex, Vice, Daily Motion and blip.tv: They have <a href="http://www.digiday.com/publishers/how-porn-helps-fuel-digital-media/">automated pages that are generated to respond to searches for "porn," "sex"</a> and other more graphic searches.
Obviously, there is a huge level of background search activity for sexual content on the internet.
But it's weird that Funny or Die is the No.1 Google result for "sex" searches (click to enlarge image). It is not a porn site. The company earned that placement in Google because its content management system generates a "sex" section for incoming search requests from Google.
And Funny or Die has an auto-generated "gang rape" page, on which it serves ads for major brands like Kraft and TBS:
<div class="image-container click-to-enlarge"><div class="image"><a title_source="Funny or Die" title_caption="" class="zoomin" href="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/51827d96eab8ea2119000005-960/screen%20shot%202013-05-02%20at%2010.51.08%20am.png"><img src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/51827d96eab8ea2119000005-1047-662/screen%20shot%202013-05-02%20at%2010.51.08%20am.png" border="0" alt="Funny or Die rape" width="600" /></a>Funny or Die</div></div>
The content on those pages isn't necessarily about sex, either.
Funny Or Die COO Mitch Galbraith told DigiDay that the company isn't creating these pages on purpose:
“It’s not a strategy to optimize for those terms; those pages are created automatically ... The content itself is clean content; it’s just a function of the fundamental SEO our site does.”
Read <a href="http://www.digiday.com/publishers/how-porn-helps-fuel-digital-media/">the entire Digiday story here</a>.

Why Funny Or Die Has A Web Page For 'Gang Rape' Videos

An Oregon college student's date rape video made in response to <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/malik-richmond-2020-interview-2013-3">the Steubenville, Ohio case</a> is going viral, <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/film-student-anti-rape-video-viral-article-1.1299615">The New York Daily News reports.</a>
The video, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZxv5WCWivM">"A Needed Response,</a>" shows exactly how a guy should respond when he encounters a woman who's had too much to drink. It currently has 1.4 million views on YouTube.
"Hey bros, check who passed out on the couch," a young man in the video says. "Guess what I'm going to do to her?" He then covers her with a blanket and puts some coffee on an end table near her. He looks directly at the camera and says, "Real men treat women with respect."
Consent became a major issue in the Steubenville rape case against two high school football players when defense attorneys argued the victim was drunk but still making <a href="http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2013/03/steubenville_rape_trial_will_c.html" target="_blank">"cognitive decisions,"</a> according to the Plain Dealer.
<object width="560" height="315"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/eZxv5WCWivM?hl=en_US&amp;version=3" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/eZxv5WCWivM?hl=en_US&amp;version=3" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="315" width="560" /></object>

An Oregon College Student Made This Brilliant Anti-Date Rape Video In Response To Steubenville

<ul class="summary-list"><li><keyword id="1607136" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Pornhub">Pornhub</keyword> announced major changes to its platform on Tuesday.</li><li>The site says it will increase its moderation team, only allow verified accounts to upload material, and ban downloads.</li><li>The changes come after the New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-rape-trafficking.html">published an op-ed</a> accusing Pornhub of hosting videos taken without participants' consent, including scenes featuring rape, spy-cameras of women, and underage girls. </li><li>Following the NYT column, major credit card companies <keyword id="6368201" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="mastercard">Mastercard</keyword> and <keyword id="6359421" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="visa">Visa</keyword> have reconsidered their ties to the platform and launched investigations into the popular site.</li><li>"Any assertion that we allow CSAM (child sexual abuse material) is irresponsible and flagrantly untrue," Pornhub said in <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mastercard-to-investigate-allegations-against-pornhub-2020-12">an earlier statement to Business Insider</a>.</li></ul>Pornhub <a href="https://help.pornhub.com/hc/en-us/categories/360002934613">announced major changes</a> to the rules of its platform on Tuesday, following allegations that the site was hosting videos of child abuse and non-consensual content. Now, only verified users can post videos, and no one can download videos from the site, with some exceptions. "At Pornhub, nothing is more important than the safety of our community. Our core values such as inclusivity, freedom of expression and privacy are only possible when our platform is trusted by our users," the company wrote in an announcement. "Today, we are taking major steps to further protect our community."The announcement comes after <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-rape-trafficking.html">an explosive op-ed published by the New York Times</a> alleged that the platform is "infested with rape videos." The op-ed, written by Nicholas Kristof, claimed that Pornhub profits off of child abuse, "spy-cameras," (hidden cameras that film people without their consent), and depictions of non-consensual sex. "Any assertion that we allow CSAM (child sexual abuse material) is irresponsible and flagrantly untrue," Pornhub said in <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mastercard-to-investigate-allegations-against-pornhub-2020-12">an earlier statement to Business Insider</a>.Major credit card companies <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mastercard-to-investigate-allegations-against-pornhub-2020-12">Mastercard and Visa both announced that they would investigate their ties to the site</a>, following the op-ed in the Times. Competitor PayPal already cut ties with the site in 2019, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-paypal-pornhub/paypal-halts-payment-support-to-pornhub-models-idUSKBN1XO2SV">according to Reuters</a>, and American Express does not allow its cards to be used on digital adult content websites.Kristof's column called on Pornhub to only allow verified users to post videos, ban downloads, and increase moderation. All three changes were made in Pornhub's Tuesday announcement."Effective immediately," the platform will only allow certain users to upload videos. Content partners (like studios) or people within their "Model Program," who upload their own videos, are allowed to post, the company said. In 2021, Pornhub will use a verification process "so that any user can upload content upon successful completion of identification protocol."In addition, Pornhub will ban downloads and use "fingerprinting technology" to prevent content that has already been removed from the platform from being reposted.Pornhub also says it will expand its moderation efforts with a new task force called the "Red Team" that will search the platform looking for illegal material. Read more:<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/pornhub-and-the-popular-sites-mysterious-executives-2020-9?r=ij-sub">Pornhub has been widely covered for its marketing savvy. But its most-quoted executives are nearly invisible, and it's unclear if they actually exist.</a>Pornhub said it already has "an extensive team of human moderators dedicated to manually reviewing every single upload, a thorough system for flagging, reviewing and removing illegal material, robust parental controls, and utilization of a variety of automated detection technologies."The company earlier this year launched a "Trusted Flagger Program" in partnership with the National Center for Missing &amp; Exploited children, which allows non-profits to alert the platform of concerning content. Pornhub also said it will release a transparency report in 2021, and will contract a law firm to review its compliance with legal standards.

Pornhub just made major changes to its site's rules following accusations that the platform hosts illegal content

<ul class="summary-list"><li><keyword id="1607136" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Pornhub">Pornhub</keyword>'s parent company <keyword id="8649190" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="MindGeek">MindGeek</keyword> on Tuesday was hit with a lawsuit from 40 victims of the <keyword id="386171" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="sex-trafficking">sex trafficking</keyword> operation <keyword id="10443862" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="girls-do-porn">Girls Do Porn</keyword>.</li><li>Girls Do Porn was shut down by the FBI in 2019 after victims said they were tricked and coerced into making videos for the company.</li><li>The suit alleges Pornhub hosted and profited off Girls Do Porn videos for years, despite knowing the company was engaging in sex trafficking.</li><li>Pornhub is making sweeping changes to its platform, and on Monday started taking down millions of unverified videos.</li><li>This follows a December 4 New York Times column that accused Pornhub of hosting illegal content including child pornography and rape.</li></ul>Pornhub was hit with a $40 million lawsuit from sex trafficking victims the day after it started deleting millions of videos from its platform, <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/3anvw8/40-girls-do-porn-victims-suing-pornhub-mindgeek">Vice</a> reports.The lawsuit was filed by 40 women who were victims of a sex trafficking ring known as Girls Do Porn. The website for Girls Do Porn was <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/884gq3/girlsdoporn-is-offline">shut down by the FBI in 2019</a> after a civil court ruled the owners were guilty of coercing women into having sex in its videos, as well lying about whether those videos would be shared online.The women on Tuesday <a href="https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/20425190-mindgeekjanedoes1-40">filed a lawsuit</a> against MindGeek, Pornhub's parent company, for hosting Girls Do Porn video, allegedly in the knowledge of the company's illegal practises."As early as 2009, and definitely by fall 2016, MindGeek knew GirlsDoPorn was trafficking its victims by using fraud, coercion, and intimidation [...] Despite this knowledge, MindGeek continued to partner with GirlsDoPorn, never bothering to investigate or question its business partner regarding the mounting evidence of sex trafficking that MindGeek received," the suit alleged.It argued that it was an open secret in the porn industry that Girls Do Porn was scamming and coercing girls as soon as it started in 2009. In 2016, victims started to get in touch with Pornhub to have their videos removed, it said."I'm going to kill myself if this stays up here. I was scammed and told this was only going to be on DVDs in another country. Please I'm begging you I'll pay," one plaintiff said in a 2016 message to Pornhub. This same victim sent two more messages, and the video was allegedly not taken off MindGeek's sites until after October 2019."I was told this video went to a private viewer, and now it is all over the internet. I was lied to, and this isn't okay," another plaintiff said in a 2016 message to MindGeek. A third plaintiff told MindGeek "me and other girls are being brutally harassed."Pornhub <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xw9dx/pornhub-still-hosting-girls-do-porn">continued to host</a> Girls Do Porn videos even after victims started to come forward and be covered in the press in 2019, and the suit alleged the site still hasn't managed to boot all the videos off its service. "As of December 12, 2020, MindGeek still hosts victims' videos on its websites, including Plaintiffs," it said. The plaintiffs said they endured harassment and ostracization as the result of their videos being shared online, and all of them had suicidal thoughts as a result. Each plaintiff is seeking at least $1 million in damages.Girls Do Porn was a "content partner" on Pornhub, meaning the two companies had a contractual agreement. <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xw9dx/pornhub-still-hosting-girls-do-porn">Vice reported</a> in 2019 that Pornhub had at one point described Girls Do Porn as "top shelf" content. The lawsuit alleged this business relationship lasted from 2011 to 2019.The suit alleged that MindGeek tried to acquire Girls Do Porn's video library in 2018, but backed out after its due diligence turned up more evidence of the company's illegal practises.Business Insider contacted Pornhub for comment on the allegations contained within the lawsuit.This lawsuit comes as Pornhub is trying to fend off allegations that it profits from illegal content. Following an explosive <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-rape-trafficking.html">New York Times column</a> on December 4 that accused the company of hosting rape videos and child pornography, the company <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/pornhub-visa-mastercard-major-changes-platform-rules-revenge-porn-2020-12">changed its policies</a> so that only verified users can upload content, and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/pornhub-purges-millions-unverified-videos-amid-child-pornography-allegations-2020-12">started deleting millions of unverified videos from its platform</a>. This came after both <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mastercard-visa-pornhub-cut-off-payments2020-12">Visa and Mastercard</a> withdrew their services from Pornhub, and US lawmakers introduced a bill which, if passed, would allow sex trafficking and revenge porn victims to sue wesbite hosts like Pornhub.

40 victims of the Girls Do Porn sex trafficking operation are suing Pornhub's parent company for $40 million, alleging it knowingly profited from illegal videos

<ul class="summary-list"><li>On April 25, 2021, a $16 million Montreal mansion belonging to the CEO of <keyword id="11897492" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="pornhub" source="Orion">Pornhub</keyword> went up in flames.</li><li>The fire remains under investigation, and no one has been charged. </li></ul>Last April 25, just before midnight, beneath a nearly full moon, two figures were spotted on the construction site of a massive, nearly-completed mansion on the edge of a suburban Montreal nature park.The hulking structure, two grinding years of construction in the making, was so large that a local newspaper called it "pharaonic." Plans called for eight bedrooms, seven baths, multiple elevators, a piano suite, an art gallery, a spa, and a sports complex that doubled as a grand ballroom.In minutes, the mansion was ablaze. Neighboring homes in the affluent Ahuntsic-Cartierville community were evacuated, their occupants hustled away in pajamas. Eighty firefighters battled the three-alarm blaze well into dawn. Investigators quickly determined the fire's source and within hours the incident was designated a criminal arson, according to a Montreal Police spokesperson. A year later, no one has been charged, and investigators say, in all likelihood, that no one ever will be. ("The investigation into this criminal arson is still ongoing," a spokesman said last week.) Fingers have been pointed in all directions and nearly every element of the crime remains shrouded in mystery. One reason for this comes down to the dizzying array of possible motives. That's because the mansion's owner, Feras Antoon, the CEO of Pornhub, was one of the most despised men in <keyword id="6356687" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="canada" source="Orion">Canada</keyword>, and beyond. Complicating things further is the fact that arson is a notoriously difficult crime to prosecute: because fire often destroys the evidence necessary to prove an ignition source and tie a suspect to the crime. Between 2016 and 2020, only<a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3510017701&amp;pickMembers%5B0%5D=1.1&amp;pickMembers%5B1%5D=2.84&amp;cubeTimeFrame.startYear=2016&amp;cubeTimeFrame.endYear=2020&amp;referencePeriods=20160101%2C20200101"> 10.1%</a> of arson investigations in Canada resulted in arrests, according to government statistics. "At the end of the day, this is one of the easiest crimes you can commit," said Glenn Corbett, associate professor of fire science at John Jay College in New York. <h2>Sudden scrutiny </h2>At the time of the fire, Antoon—who co-founded Pornhub's parent company, Mindgeek, in 2007—was tumbling through a bruising season of public relations disasters, investigations, lawsuits, and death threats. "I can't even count how many comments I saw from people saying to burn the company or my house down,"Antoon told Vanity Fair earlier this year. "For a while, it was easy to dismiss the tweets as just people on the <keyword id="11897865" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="internet" source="Orion">internet</keyword> talking. Then my house burned down."For nearly two years, victims of child <keyword id="11898869" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="porn" source="Orion">porn</keyword>, revenge porn, rape and <keyword id="11897683" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="sexual-assault" source="Orion">sexual assault</keyword> had been coming forward to say that Pornhub had ruined their lives. Many described the same harrowing one-two punch: First, learning that their sexual assault (or in some cases their private, consensual sexual encounters) was streaming on Pornhub. Then, being repeatedly ignored or rebuffed when they demanded the videos be taken down. Months of social media campaigns, <keyword id="11893589" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="news" source="Orion">news</keyword> probes, and civil lawsuits against Pornhub had reached a fever pitch by December 2020, when New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-rape-trafficking.html?searchResultPosition=1">columnist</a> Nicholas Kristof published a scathing portrait of the company. Kristof charged that Pornhub was "infested with rape videos [and] monetizes child rape, revenge pornography, spy cam videos of women showering, racist and misogynist content, and footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags." In a statement released in response to the Kristof's reporting, the company said that "Pornhub is unequivocally committed to combating child <keyword id="11910913" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="sexual-abuse" source="Orion">sexual abuse</keyword> material, and has instituted a comprehensive, industry-leading trust and safety policy to identify and eradicate illegal material from our community." The company added that any assertion that the company allows child videos on the site "is irresponsible and flagrantly untrue."<div type="image" title="A firefighter is seen from the back and facing a large burning house." height="798" width="1428" msid="91084142" hostid="261"></div>Mastercard, Visa and Discover all cut ties, and under enormous public pressure, Pornhub deleted all non-verified user-uploaded content—80% of its library. It also promised it had significantly improved its<a href="https://help.pornhub.com/hc/en-us/categories/360002934613"> auditing and moderation</a> software and staffing levels. (Pornhub no longer allows unverified users to upload X-rated content, according to company news releases.) In February 2021, Antoon and Pornhub's COO were summoned to testify before the <keyword id="13383673" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="canadian" source="Orion">Canadian</keyword> House of Commons' ethics committee, part of five months of hearings into the business practices of Pornhub and its parent company, MindGeek.For all Antoon's notoriety and wealth—he<a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-mindgeeks-business-practices-under-srutiny-as-political-pressure/"> reportedly</a> tools around Montreal in a bright yellow Lamborghini with vanity plates—the controversial porn king has gone to great lengths to protect his own privacy. He rarely speaks in public, instead communicating through press releases. The hearings marked the first time many longtime critics of Pornhub had ever seen Antoon's face. "We are very proud that we built a product that gets 170 million people visiting a day, four million Canadians, 30% of them women," Antoon <a href="https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/43-2/ETHI/meeting-19/evidence">said</a>, referring to Pornhub. "Don't you believe if those four million Canadians who come to our site every day saw something so heinous and criminal, they would be calling the police?" Antoon <a href="https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/43-2/ETHI/meeting-19/evidence">continued</a>, according to a transcript of his testimony. "We created a very good product that I and our 1,800 employees who have families and children are proud of. It is not perfect."Two weeks before the fire, with the Pornhub hearings dominating Canadian headlines, Vice published a piece focused on far-right extremists' calls on alt social platforms like Gab for violence against company executives. The piece was headlined, "The Crusade Against Pornhub is Going to Get Somebody Killed."On April 22—three days before the fire—the mansion went up for sale for close to $16 million.Repeated attempts to reach Antoon and other Pornhub executives through Pornhub's public relations liaisons were unsuccessful. A company official who identified himself only as Ian and used a Gmail account did not respond to written questions about the fire or claims made about the company. <h2>A 'Tube' site revolution</h2>But where did Pornhub come from, and why was it so loved but also so hated? Almost immediately after YouTube debuted in 2005, a flurry of knock-offs—then known as "Tube" sites—began popping up. Along with a few friends, Antoon and a few college friends at Montreal's Concordia University launched a series of X-rated Tube sites that encouraged users to upload and share videos. "Suddenly porn went from being something people would happily pay an inflated price for to something that people would not pay anything for," said Lux Alptraum, a veteran writer and podcaster on the porn industry. As the deluge of pirated porn flooded to Pornhub and other Tube sites, traditional porn sites saw their revenue streams dry up. Once they began to fail, MindGeek eventually became the dominant player, Alptraum said. Pornhub, the most successful of the Tube sites, became the crown jewel. "It cannot be stressed enough that these [other tube] sites were built on pirated content," Alptraum said. "It wasn't that they were creating their own content or relying on amateur content. They were allowing users to steal content from other sites and upload it."<div type="image" title="A hand is seen holding a phone, which shows the logo of the company Pornhub." height="3264" width="4896" msid="91084143" hostid="261"></div>While critics contend that Antoon and fellow MindGeek executives built their empire on aggressive tactics, they were also seen, even grudgingly by some, as innovators. In 2019, a pair of prominent U.S. law professors published a paper in the New York University Law Review contending that MindGeek was on "the leading edge of data-driven creativity," and had grown more adept at data crunching and fine-tuning user experience algorithms than even Netflix.<h2>'Sick to my stomach'</h2>Around the time construction began on Antoon's mansion in 2018, strange things had begun happening to Vicky Galy, a 34-year-old paralegal more than 11,000 miles away in Hendersonville, Tennessee.People she met on the street would insist they knew her from somewhere, but from precisely where they could never recall. Strange men sat in parked cars outside her home. A new male friend on Facebook made sudden, indiscreet sexual overtures.A single mom raising a teenage son and a daughter with Down syndrome, Galy said she had made some bad decisions regarding men she met online. One of them, she said, would often record their sexual encounters, with or without her consent."There were three kinds of videos he made of me," she recalled with a sigh when we spoke. "At first, he would pull out his phone on me" during sexual encounters. "The second kind were hidden camera video during our consensual sex. The third kind were made on a trip to Vegas where I was either drugged or intoxicated." As she would later <a href="https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/43-2/ETHI/meeting-20/evidence">testify</a> in February, during the Pornhub hearings, Galy told me she was floored one day to learn that at least 30 of those videos were circulating on Pornhub under some variation of her name "Vicky." (Galy was one of numerous Pornhub victims who <a href="https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/43-2/ETHI/meeting-20/evidence">testified</a> before Canadian lawmakers earlier this year.) "To think of the amount of money that Pornhub has made off my trauma, date rape and sexual exploitation," Galy <a href="https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/43-2/ETHI/meeting-20/evidence">told lawmakers</a>, "makes me sick to my stomach."Another was Serena Fleites, who brought several lawmakers to tears when she told them about how she had developed a crush on an older boy in eighth grade and how he begged her to send him a nude video of herself and she ultimately complied, only to learn the boy had uploaded it to Pornhub and shared it with his classmates.Victim testimony from Fleites, Galy and several women identified as "Jane Does" directly contradicted Pornhub executives' claims that the site responds swiftly to takedown requests and works diligently to remove child pornography. For some victims, like Galy, feelings of frustration and embarrassment were compounded by outrage upon learning that both her alleged abuser and Pornhub were profiting from the scheme. She said she went to the police, but that they didn't believe her. She contacted local law firms to help her sue, but each wanted a $10,000 retainer, she said, and besides, she said, "no one wanted to sue him because he was worth nothing anyway." She cut five inches from her hair and dyed it brown so she wouldn't look like the woman people recognized from the Pornhub videos, took a leave of absence from work, and she and her children moved in with her mother. 'Not having people believe me was the hardest part of this whole thing," she said. "I had a sergeant tell me, 'I'm not going to have my detectives sit and watch porn all day.'"Galy was also contacting Pornhub's legal department to get the videos taken down. "They mostly ignored me, and then kept insisting it wasn't me," she said. Two days before the Canadian hearings began, Galy said, she received an email from Pornhub's legal director saying they would delete the account."That was the happiest day of my life," Galy said. "I didn't know then that there were hundreds more videos on other sites. With some of them there's not even a way to report [an unauthorized] video like this, so I'll really never be able to get these videos down completely." <div type="image" title="A masked man, face obscured, holds up a sign that reads &quot;Free Pornhub&quot;" height="3008" width="4512" msid="91084144" hostid="261"></div><h2>Mafia Row</h2>During the same two years leading up to the hearings, Antoon had been quietly overseeing the construction of a massive mansion for himself and his wife and two children on a prime tract of land that bordered a cherished nature park. According to Vanity Fair, the property was within walking distance from where Antoon grew up. Located on the northern edge of Montreal, the spot had a fraught history even before Antoon became involved—first as the site of a notorious Gangland assassination, and then as a front line between environmentalists and developers. The Mafia had moved into the neighborhood in the 1970s. Antoine Berthelet Avenue, the road just behind where Antoon would later build his mansion, became known as "Mafia Row." It was there that the Sicilian crime family led by Nicolo Rizzuto would run their operations for the next few decades. On November 10, 2010, an assassin crept onto what would later be Antoon's property, and fired a single shot through the double-reinforced pane glass windows of Nicolo Rizzuto's solarium, killing Rizzuto in his kitchen, according to mob author Peter Edwards. "This was an extremely good sniper shot," Edwards said, noting that investigators long-suspected the triggerman to be Calabrian soldier Salvatore Calautti, who himself was assassinated in 2013.The fatal shot effectively ended the Rizzuto family's three-decade long reign. (The hit series 'Bad Blood' was based on a book about Rizzuto's son and successor, Vito Rizzuto.)The assassination, like the arson fire, remains unsolved to this day—though a source told Insider that while Montreal Police are exploring theories related to Pornhub and Antoon's spectrum of critics, Mafia involvement is not suspected. <h2>An 'eco-corridor' vs. a development </h2>Four years after Rizzuto's shooting, a different kind of war broke out on the same spot over a plan to clear 200 trees on the border of the Bois-de-Saraguay nature park.The community had been trying to create an "eco-corridor" between the river and Bois de Saraguay nature park so that boaters could dock on the riverside and then hike through trails to the nature park. While the park itself was protected from development as a national heritage site, sections of the border woodlands remained in private hands. The local government didn't have the funding to purchase and preserve the land, according to Simon Van Vliet, a reporter for Ahuntsic-Cartierville's Neighborhood Journal newspaper, which produced a<a href="https://journaldesvoisins.com/?s=Feras+Antoon"> three-part series</a> on the controversy during the months leading up to the arson fire. <div type="image" title="Lush greenery is seen along a narrow residential alley." height="3024" width="4032" msid="91084145" hostid="261"></div>Local property owner Francesco Lapara had other plans – to cut down the trees and subdivide his land into residential lots. Van Vliet said local officials repeatedly rejected Lapara's development applications, but he went to court and won. Antoon and his sister, Dana Antoon, a local real estate agent, purchased all four lots, according to Van Vliet's reporting. Construction began in 2018. Reached by Business Insider, Dana Antoon declined any comment on the land deals. Van Vliet described Antoon's compound as a "castle" among mansions."People were just kind of baffled by the lavishness of the place, and obviously upset about the ecological loss and the setback to the project of building this eco corridor." Jacques LeBlue, a spokesman for Environmental Mobilization Ahuntsic-Cartierville which fought the clearing of trees on Antoon's property, seemed to echo this frustration when he said "the subject of Mr. Antoon has been a tragicomic distraction from our core activities, every time his name gets associated with ours. This only got worse with the fire." LeBleu declined further comment.Sylvia Oljemark, 81, a neighborhood resident since her birth, said local residents watched in disbelief as the structure rose up over the neighborhood."It was enormous," she said. "Enormous.""To think [local officials] could permit somebody to purchase land and build a huge structure [and] take down all the trees," she said, "it was personally reprehensible to me."<h2>No resolution </h2>The hearings neither shut Pornhub down nor rehabilitated the public image of Antoon and Pornhub COO David Tassillo, who also testified. Arnold Viersen, a conservative MP from Alberta, said the executives' defense, which he saw as "Hey, we're just doing business here, we're just making money," was "very frustrating to us as members of Parliament.""The Canadian public was outraged at the smugness," he said. Viersen said that he has been investigating <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=allePSwZmko">Pornhub</a> for five years, and noted that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle were equally frustrated in questioning Pornhub executives during the hearing. "It's a fairly non-partisan thing," he said. "While [Liberal MP] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3yszvkMSPs">Charlie Angus</a> and I don't agree on much we were both fighting on the same side of the war."Personally, Viersen said he was "incredulous that the fire happened to come in the middle of the ethics committee hearings." "I've just got a feeling it's just a masterful sympathy play," he said, though he offered no evidence that Antoon, or anyone Angus has knowledge of, had a hand in torching the mansion. "That's my intuition on it, given what I know about them. They are very good at changing people's perceptions." Last week, a Toronto personal injury law firm <a href="https://www.blogto.com/city/2022/04/toronto-law-firm-500-million-lawsuit-pornhub/">announced</a> it had filed a $500 million class action lawsuit against Pornhub.

Will the Pornhub mansion fire ever be solved?

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Victims of so-called "<keyword id="6429802" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="revenge-porn">revenge porn</keyword>" are struggling to report their content to Instagram due to the coronavirus pandemic. </li><li>According to screenshots seen by Insider, victims are being told that their content might take longer to be reviewed due to the company having a reduced workforce that is working from home.</li><li>One victim Insider spoke to, who had no issues reporting her images in the past, said that "old wounds" were reopened after her pictures popped up on Instagram again during the lockdown period.</li><li>A student activist from France, who has spent most of her lockdown helping victims remove around 300 "fisha" or "shame" accounts, said she'd seen the worst content on Instagram.</li><li>Since Instagram does not have specific language in their reporting flows to allow users to flag content strictly as "revenge porn", users have to report it as "nudity" instead which means it won't be given top priority.</li></ul>Victims of image-based abuse are struggling to get their explicit pictures removed on Instagram, despite a rise in incidents over the lockdown period. In some cases, the reported pictures or accounts are left on the platform for days. The distressed victims of so-called "revenge porn" are being told that due to COVID-19, the company has fewer moderators to review reports and are therefore forced to "prioritize content," according to screenshots seen by Insider. This policy change is in stark contrast to evidence that revenge porn cases have increased steeply.The UK government-funded Revenge Porn Hotline, for adult victims, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-52413994">told the BBC in April</a> that traffic to its website nearly doubled in the week after the country went on lockdown, on March 23. It opened more cases in the month that followed than any other four-week period since the offense was first made illegal in 2015.As a result, the hotline, which only has two full-time employees, has been given extra funding. In England and Wales, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-law-to-tackle-revenge-porn">revenge porn is a criminal offense</a> with a maximum punishment of up to two years in prison.The rise in cases can be attributed to "the increased use of the internet and social media, as well as heightened emotions," according to Professor Clare McGlynn, a law professor at Durham University, who was quoted on the BBC.An increase in "sexting" between couples who were not isolating together during the lockdown could also have contributed to the surge, the BBC reported.Simultaneously, Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, has been working with a reduced workforce since the coronavirus outbreak, <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2020/06/coronavirus/#keeping-our-teams-safe">a public statement released by the company said.</a>As a result, it has been forced to prioritize the reviewing of certain content and is relying heavily on AI technology to do the job for them.In a comment to Insider, a Facebook company spokesperson said: "Since March, when we sent our content reviewers home to protect them from COVID-19, we've been prioritizing reviewing content that has the greatest potential to cause harm. This includes reports of non-consensual intimate imagery, which we have continued to review during this time." <h2>"I've been reliving the trauma"</h2>Grace*, 21, a student from Bristol who has chosen to be anonymous, was horrified after she found that nude images of her that had initially been posted on social media by her ex-boyfriend in 2018 — and were removed — were again posted on Instagram during the lockdown period.The student, who had no problems with reporting the images in 2018, says her experience during lockdown has been drastically different and resulted in a great deal of stress. "I reported the account several times and also asked my friends to do the same but it took Instagram almost 10 days to take any action and every day I was having mini panic attacks because of it," she told Insider.After reporting the account that had reshared her images, Grace said that an automated Instagram message warned her that not all flagged content could be reviewed due to COVID-19, but she didn't expect it to be ignored for so long. She was also advised to block the account. "I was watching as it stayed on there, it was so awful I had to stop checking," she said.After her first experience with revenge porn in 2018, she had to seek treatment with a university therapist for several weeks because of how traumatizing it was for her. Grace said that the reemergence of her pictures "opened old wounds," and that it has "only added to the current stress of what's been happening in the world." "When I saw them again, I couldn't believe it, I have been reliving the trauma I had last year, the one I've been working so hard to work on," she added.<h2>These cases are not just happening in the UK</h2>Shanley Clemot McLaren, 22, a student from Paris, France, has helped hundreds of revenge porn victims after observing a surge of so-called "fisha" accounts — the French term for "shame" — over the lockdown period. Clemot McLaren, whose studies were put on hold during the lockdown period, says that she has seen at least 500 of these accounts emerge on social media since the coronavirus restrictions were put in place in France in mid-March.While these "fisha" accounts have been appearing across different social media platforms including Twitter and encrypted messaging service Telegram, Clemot McLaren told Insider that she's seen the worst content on Instagram. "The most shocking content I've seen has been on Instagram. I don't really get it to be frank. So many girls are fully nude, " she said."The worst was a gang rape video and that image is going to stay in my brain forever. It was on Instagram for two days, and had millions of people who saw it," she added. To combat this, Clemot McLaren got together with a lawyer and a group of friends to <a href="https://www.instagram.com/stop.fisha/?hl=en">create an online awareness campaign called #stopfisha</a>, which has since received extensive media coverage in France, where revenge porn is an offense punishable of up to two years in prison or a €60,000 fine ($68,000).<blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" style="background:#FFF; border:0; border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width:540; padding:0; width:99.375%; width:-webkit-calc(100% - 2px); width:calc(100% - 2px); data.width~540;"><div style="padding:8px;"><div style="background:#F8F8F8; line-height:0; margin-top:40px; padding:62.4537037037% 0; text-align:center; width:100%;"><div style="background:url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAACwAAAAsCAMAAAApWqozAAAABGdBTUEAALGPC/xhBQAAAAFzUkdCAK7OHOkAAAAMUExURczMzPf399fX1+bm5mzY9AMAAADiSURBVDjLvZXbEsMgCES5/P8/t9FuRVCRmU73JWlzosgSIIZURCjo/ad+EQJJB4Hv8BFt+IDpQoCx1wjOSBFhh2XssxEIYn3ulI/6MNReE07UIWJEv8UEOWDS88LY97kqyTliJKKtuYBbruAyVh5wOHiXmpi5we58Ek028czwyuQdLKPG1Bkb4NnM+VeAnfHqn1k4+GPT6uGQcvu2h2OVuIf/gWUFyy8OWEpdyZSa3aVCqpVoVvzZZ2VTnn2wU8qzVjDDetO90GSy9mVLqtgYSy231MxrY6I2gGqjrTY0L8fxCxfCBbhWrsYYAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC); display:block; height:44px; margin:0 auto -44px; position:relative; top:-22px; width:44px;"></div></div><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/B_GTFa3AS3d" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;" target="_blank">La honte doit changer de camp! #StopFisha Merci à @collages_feminicides_internet de nous avoir permis de réaliser ce collage ! #collagesfeminicides #collagesfeminicidesinternet</a> <p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;">A post shared by StopFisha (@stop.fisha) on Apr 17, 2020 at 3:16pm PDT<time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2020-04-17T22:16:17+00:00">Apr 17, 2020 at 3:16pm PDT</time></div></blockquote>But the work has not been easy. A lot of the accounts being reported are either remerging again or are being left on Instagram for days at a time, causing victims major distress.In response, Clemot McLaren and supporters of her campaign have developed a strategy of "virtual raids.""On the first raid, for example, we were 300 people, and we told people to log in at a precise time and report a list of accounts at once," Clemot McLaren said."So these raids were quite successful because since we were plenty of people and had plenty of reports in a short time, they can't ignore us anymore. But it's tiring, and we shouldn't be having to do this in the first place," she added.So far, Clemot McLaren and her team have managed to remove around 300 "fisha" accounts. But she thinks more can be done."I'm happy that we can make a difference but these companies should be doing more, especially now," she said.<h2>Instagram has been working with a reduced team</h2>In mid-March, <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2020/06/coronavirus/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the company announced</a> it would send home most of its employees, including its team of content moderators, hired to review posts flagged by users or the company's software to determine if the content is inappropriate or harmful.Instagram explained that it would be difficult for moderators to be working from home. Their home network wasn't secure enough for the data they were looking at, and there were no on-site resources that could help employees who were finding the job emotionally taxing.As a result, it has made several changes to how it reviews content. It includes the increased usage of automation, which <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/3/17/21183557/coronavirus-youtube-facebook-twitter-social-media" target="_blank" rel="noopener">it has already acknowledged</a> could lead to mistakes and omissions. It also began prioritizing user reports based on their potential for harm. The company told Insider that non-consensual imagery is on their priority list, alongside other sensitive areas including suicide and self-harm, terrorism, and child exploitation. Nudity, however, is not included in this list, Facebook informed Insider, by email.Instagram does not have specific language in their reporting flows to allow users to flag content as "revenge porn." Instead, they must flag it as nudity or harassment, which means it won't be given top priority.This week, Facebook said that some content reviewers had returned to the office voluntarily, to help review the most sensitive content that could cause harm.<h2>The trend of image-based abuse will outlast the pandemic</h2>Image-based abuse is also becoming a common feature of domestic abuse, which has seen a drastic increase in the lockdown period. Calls to Britain's national domestic abuse helpline have soared 66% since the lockdown, <a href="https://news.trust.org/item/20200604150944-sp205/">according to the Thompson Reuters Foundation.</a>Johanna Nelles, executive secretary of the Istanbul convention — a European treaty to prevent violence against women — <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-europe-porn-trfn/revenge-porn-soars-in-europes-coronavirus-lockdown-as-student-fights-back-idUSKBN22H2I6">told Reuters</a> that the trend of image-based abuse, as well as the shame and anxiety that accompanies it, will likely outlast the pandemic."During lockdown and as the world moves online...women and girls are exposed to higher risks. Domestic violence is on the rise and many perpetrators also use new technologies to assert their power over the victim," Nelles saidWhile the Revenge Porn Hotline and activists like Clemot McLaren have been helping hundreds of victims, their job is becoming increasingly difficult as numbers continue to soar.The French campaigner, in particular, has said she is currently taking a step back from her work, mainly because of the impact on her mental health."I've decided to step back a little and to let other people help and investigate these accounts for me. Because on a psychological level, it's really really hard. I have had to start seeing a psychiatrist now because I've seen so much traumatizing stuff," she said. It remains unclear when Facebook offices will be fully staffed again. In an announcement in June, the company wrote: "It's become clear in recent weeks that our offices are unlikely to return to business as usual in the near future. Some of our full-time employees will continue to review sensitive content...but we will begin working with our partners to bring a small number of content reviewers back to offices to support these efforts in the coming weeks." One "fisha" account that was flagged to Instagram by Insider has since been removed.<ul class="read-more-links"><li>Read more:</li><li><a href="https://www.insider.com/revenge-porn-victims-and-the-law-2019-12">'Is this you?!' How revenge porn victims are forced to deal with the incompetence of the police</a></li><li><a href="https://www.insider.com/revenge-porn-laws-katie-hill-chrissy-chambers-2019-11">There are revenge porn laws on the books in 46 states, but victims say not enough is being done to protect them online</a></li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/map-states-where-revenge-porn-banned-2019-10?r=US&amp;IR=TIR=T">Here's a map showing which US states have passed laws against revenge porn — and those where it's still legal</a></li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/who-domestic-violence-to-rise-during-lockdowns-2020-5?r=US&amp;IR=TIR=T">WHO: If lockdowns go on for 6 months, there could be 31 million new domestic violence cases globally</a></li></ul>

You Searched For "rape video" and got 10 results

Google trends reveal disturbing surge in porn searches following brutal rape of Kolkata doctor

Ashmita Gupta

This Kailash Satyarthi interview is a reminder that the worst form of child labour is child porn — an $8 billion industry

Katya Naidu

Indian court wants Google, WA and FB to help stop child porn and rape videos

IANS

University Of Oregon Students' Viral Anti-Rape Video Wins Peabody Award

Peter Jacobs

Why Funny Or Die Has A Web Page For 'Gang Rape' Videos

Jim Edwards

An Oregon College Student Made This Brilliant Anti-Date Rape Video In Response To Steubenville

Rebecca Baird-Remba

Pornhub just made major changes to its site's rules following accusations that the platform hosts illegal content

Isabella Jibilian

40 victims of the Girls Do Porn sex trafficking operation are suing Pornhub's parent company for $40 million, alleging it knowingly profited from illegal videos

Isobel Asher Hamilton

Will the Pornhub mansion fire ever be solved?

Chris Francescani

Revenge porn victims are struggling to get Instagram to remove their images despite a rise in cases over lockdown

Sophia Ankel