Pornhub pushes gay, transgender videos to ‘convert’ straight men, secret recordings suggest

Pornhub pushes gay and transgender pornographic content on to straight men and children in order to "convert" them, according to employees of the site's parent company Aylo.

A pair of employees of the pornography giant explained in secretly recorded videos produced by undercover journalism group Sound Investigations that its websites can help children who are "still figuring out [their] sexuality, maybe even [their] gender," while also steering gay and transgender content to straight men in order to convert them.

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Aylo told the Washington Examiner it disagrees with SI's characterization of the tapes, arguing the conversion discussion was related to subscribers.

"Think about it: Let's say you're 12 years old, you're still figuring out your sexuality, maybe even your gender, wouldn't it be helpful to see, not a celebration but just maybe a normalization of something that you think is what you want?" Dillon Rice, a senior script writer for MindGeek, rebranded as Aylo, said when describing one of the company's websites, TransAngels.

Rice added that children need to be helped to figure out their sexuality and orientation preferences because they are more "pliable."

Speaking about children who may be sexually confused, production coordinator Sylvian Fernandez said Men.com, a gay pornography site run by the company, can be used as a resource, adding, "They'll find their kink in there, I'm sure."

Websites such as Pornhub, which is less targeted to specific sexual attitudes and is more a repository for a wide array of content, are designed to "push the envelope" with straight users by suggesting gay and transgender videos to them, Rice explained.

"The thing is, like, when you write for [Aylo-run website and studio] Sean Cody, which is primarily gay-targeted, when you write for TransAngels, which is trans-female-presenting-targeted, you also try to see how much you can take of that and bring it to mainstream, vanilla content," Rice said, using a term to describe biological males who identify as females. "Because, like, Brazzers and Reality Kings [both Aylo-owned production companies] is predominantly for 'straight' men but you try to, like, push the envelope as much as you can."

Rice explained that because Brazzers has "done a lot to explore kind of every mainstream thing," the goal now is to "push stuff that's ... less accepted, like putting a trans male [biological female] or a trans female [biological male] in a scene."

"Test it out," Rice continued, adding that the same tactic can be used for bisexual and gay content. "See if you get a bigger audience with it, see if you can convert somebody, right? Like maybe somebody who's never looked for anything like that. Bi[sexual] stuff is usually marketed towards women, but they also want to try to get more men, straight men, in on it, too."

He continued to say that one of the reasons TransAngels is "female-presenting" is to "sell that to straight men. That's the demographic."

A spokesperson for the pornography platforms' parent company disputed the interpretation of what the employees were discussing.

"The person who was illegally filmed in this video is very clearly speaking of converting free users into paid subscribers, and any insinuation otherwise is disingenuous, reckless, and hurtful," an Aylo spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. "It is egregious for a journalist to misrepresent this information in order to push outlandish and harmful conspiracy theories."

"Aylo’s platforms are strictly by adults and for adults, and it would be factually inaccurate to say otherwise," he continued, without commenting on the references to children made by Aylo's employees.

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As the Washington Examiner previously reported, Aylo has been exposed as having set up roadblocks for reviewing and removing child pornography, admitting to underage content existing on the site and the existence of a loophole for uploading it, and allowing advertisements without requiring verification or consent of the people pictured.

Aylo is also in the midst of battling 10 human trafficking class action lawsuits, with 257 alleged victims suing the company.