The company behind Pornhub and other adult entertainment sites will pay $120 million to end a pair of lawsuits in California and Alabama alleging they profited from child sexual abuse and trafficking.
The websites also agreed to improve their policies and practices to deter and reduce the uploading of child sexual abuse material, including mandatory government-ID verification for all persons depicted in the content, according to a motion filed late Friday in the US District Court for the Central District of California.
The deal will benefit a class of victims who were under 18 when they were depicted in the content that was viewable on any website owned or operated by the defendants between Feb. 12, 2011, through Dec. 6, 2024.
“Behind the legal standards and docket entries in this motion are thousands of children whose sexual exploitation was recorded and uploaded to Defendants’ pornography websites by third parties and distributed by Defendants across the world. Their videos and images were viewed over 684 million times on Pornhub.com and Defendants’ other websites, some of the most visited websites on Earth,” according to the settlement motion.
The websites further agreed to implement extensive content moderation by using technological tools and human moderation to review, detect, and remove prohibited content from their websites. They’ll also conduct mandatory workplace training to prevent child sexual abuse material.
The lawsuits, filed days apart in 2021, accused Pornhub’s parent company MindGeek — which rebranded to Aylo in 2023 — of violating federal sex trafficking laws. They were brought in California and Alabama by women saying they were victims of child sex trafficking and videos of their abuse were publicly available on MindGeek websites.
Under the deal, which requires the approval of Judge Wesley L. Hsu, class counsel will request fees not exceeding one-third of the settlement, and service awards of up to $150,000 for each class representative.
Susman Godfrey LLP and Pollock Cohen LLP represent the California class. Levin Papantonio Prince Glover & Hayes, Laffey Bucci D’Andrea Reich & Ryan LLP, Clark Hill PLC, The Zarzaur Law Firm, and the National Center on Sexual Exploitation represent the Alabama class. Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky & Popeo PC represents MindGeek.
The case is Doe v. MindGeek USA, Inc., C.D. Cal., No. 8:21-cv-00338, motion for preliminary approval 8/14/26.