LOS ANGELES — Adult industry-founded child protection nonprofit group Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection (ASACP) says that New York Times opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof overlooked their efforts in anti-CSAM operations.
In December of 2020, Mr. Kristof published a column entitled “The Children of Pornhub.” In April of 2021, he published “Why Do We Let Corporations Profit From Rape Videos?” Both columns took the adult industry to task over an alleged crisis of CSAM and other non-consensual content on adult websites and social media platforms like Reddit and Twitter.
After both columns were published in the Times opinion section, readers responded with outrage. Payment processing companies like Mastercard and Visa immediately withdrew from offering services to a platform like Pornhub. The response has blossomed into a full-fledged moral panic that has enveloped innocent adult performers and indy studios.
Carrie A. Goldberg, a prominent victim’s rights attorney who specializes in online abuse and revenge porn, tweeted at the time: “I’m a victims rights lawyer. For every 1 case involving a rape tape on Pornhub, I have 50 involving rape and CSAM being disseminated on Insta and FB. Pornhub is far from perfect. But mainstream big tech is far worse and have a built-in mechanism for harassing victims directly.”
Asked whether Kristoff has overlooked the adult industry’s CSAM mitigation efforts, ASACP Executive Director Tim Henning told me that Kristof “has absolutely and completely ignored the CSAM mitigation efforts in the industry.”
“Mr. Kristof did not reach out to ASACP for comment,” Henning said. “He also ignored requests by other industry journalists to reach out to ASACP. In fact, there have been attempts by other industry journalists to make this happen.”
Lo and behold, this hasn’t happened. Other adult industry news media outlets have questioned the veracity of Kristof’s reportage and whether all of his bases were covered before the columns were sent to the press and published. Unfortunately, any solid evidence suggesting a connection between Kristof and anti-porn advocacy groups like the National Center On Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) or Exodus Cry has yet to surface.
Speculation aside, it has become a commonly shared sentiment in industry circles that the two-time-winning Pulitzer journalist aligned with certain groups that could benefit from the attention. Imagine, anti-porn groups that are often disregarded by the mainstream media for being “conservative” or “right-wing” suddenly get their fifteen minutes of fame when a high-profile journalist like Kristof cites the efforts of these groups as “humanitarian” or “abolitionist” efforts attached to the tinge of anti-porn and anti-free speech advocacy. I don’t speak on behalf of Henning, of course. But to me, the optics of the Times columns and the sudden public outcry scream coordination and, one step further, collaboration.
“A great many of the individuals that work in this space are parents and grandparents themselves and have the same feelings and concerns that the rest of society has when any child is victimized in such an abhorrent way,” Henning added. “I am very proud of the accomplishments of ASACP over the past quarter-century especially considering the size, funding, and resources at our disposal.”
