mickelwait

The gripping, true story of one woman’s battle to expose and shut down a criminal online porn empire.

Pornhub was the 10th most visited site on the Internet, often praised as a progressive champion of women. Then one day, an activist discovered a secret they had been keeping from the world for over a decade: it was infested with child sexual abuse and rape videos.

Now for the first time, anti-trafficking expert and mother of two Laila Mickelwait tells the story of her battle against Pornhub’s billionaire executives and the credit card companies who helped them monetize the abuse of countless victims--some as young as three years old. Readers will follow her from her first horrifying discovery of criminal content on Pornhub to closed-door meetings with credit card executives, White House and Justice Department senior officials, a powerful hedge-fund manager and more. Through insider accounts from Pornhub moderators and executives, you’ll meet the world’s first online porn tycoon, AKA ＂the Zuckerberg of porn,＂ along with Pornhub’s top brass (known internally as ＂The Bro Club＂) who operate in secrecy.

The culmination of years of activism, Takedown is the true, never before told story of how Mickelwait mobilized a movement of two million people and together they accomplished ＂the biggest takedown of content in Internet history.＂ (Financial Times)

Laila Mickelwait is the Founder and CEO of the Justice Defense Fund and the Founder of the global #Traffickinghub movement supported by millions around the world. She has been combating the injustice of sex trafficking for over a decade and is a leading expert in the field.