Aylo, the Canadian parent company of Pornhub.com, has agreed to a $120 million settlement resolving two class action lawsuits filed in 2021 by sex-trafficking survivors who say they were exploited as minors in content distributed across the company's platforms. Attorneys for the plaintiffs filed a motion for preliminary approval in federal district court late Friday, asking U.S. District Judge Wesley Hsu of the Central District of California to establish the settlement fund.
The class covers individuals who were under 18 when they appeared in child sexual abuse material or other exploitative content uploaded to Aylo-owned websites between Feb. 12, 2011 and Dec. 6, 2024. The two original complaints were filed separately in federal district courts in California and Alabama and have since been combined into a single proposed class settlement.
The lawsuits trace directly to a December 2020 investigative piece by journalist Nicholas Kristof published in the New York Times opinion section under the headline "The Children of Pornhub." That piece detailed how the company—then operating as MindGeek—allowed illegal content depicting minors to remain on its platforms and generate advertising and subscription revenue. The 2021 class actions followed within months.
"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," the motion reads. "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."
If Judge Hsu grants preliminary approval, he will schedule a final approval hearing within 96 days. During that window, any class member can file objections to any component of the settlement. A separate industry source said Aylo would fund the $120 million payment over six years.
Beyond the cash figure, the settlement requires an overhaul of Aylo's trust and safety practices. The company must verify the ages of all users who want to upload content and all individuals who appear in that content. The agreement also mandates changes to record-keeping policies covering content creators, pornography producers and adult studios.
Aylo has already moved on several of these fronts since the Kristof column ran. All content creators enrolled in Pornhub's model programs are now required to upload identity verification documents. Online content partner account holders—typically production studios and producers—must pass criminal background checks before they can monetize content on the platform. The company also began reporting to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in the years following the 2020 article.
The company was renamed from MindGeek to Aylo after its acquisition by private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners, which has said the trust and safety overhaul is a stated priority. The settlement formalizes many practices Aylo says it has already adopted as standard policy.
The scale of the alleged harm puts the case among the largest involving a technology platform and child sexual abuse material. A fund of $120 million spread across thousands of survivors means individual payouts will depend on the size of the class certified by the court, a figure not yet established in the publicly filed motion. The 684 million view figure cited in the motion refers specifically to content on Pornhub.com and Aylo's other owned websites.
The next procedural step is Judge Hsu's ruling on preliminary approval. Once that order issues, the 96-day clock starts toward a final approval hearing, at which any objecting class member may appear before the settlement becomes binding.
