Victims of the sex trafficking ring Girls Do Porn are demanding that Cloudflare stop providing services to websites that host videos of their abuse.
Holm Law Group, which represents more than 80 Girls Do Porn victims, sent two letters to Cloudflare in the last year—one in October 2022, and another last month—demanding that the company drop a list of more than 100 porn websites hosting their content. The women in these videos legally own that content, as a result of a ruling by a federal judge in 2021.
Videos by VICE
The websites hosting these videos often post the women’s legal names and social media information, and result in stalking and doxing that has followed them online and off through their lives since the videos were first put online by Girls Do Porn. Most of the people who ran Girls Do Porn have either been arrested or have pled guilty to federal charges of trafficking by force, fraud and coercion; in 2022, after nearly three years as a wanted fugitive and months on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, co-owner Michael Pratt was arrested in Spain.
“I should be excited about going to law school, or nervous about the workload, instead I have anxiety and I’m terrified that my colleagues will find the video. I was trafficked over seven years ago, and I have the rights to the videos,” one of the Girls Do Porn victims, who requested to speak anonymously for their safety, told Motherboard. “It shouldn’t be impossible for me to remove them.”
The most recent demand letter from the victims’ lead attorney Brian Holm states that “Cloudflare itself is knowingly participating in this criminal venture” by providing services to these sites.
In an emailed response to Holm Law Group’s demand letters, viewed by Motherboard, Cloudflare said that it couldn’t remove content from the sites it provides services to, because it doesn’t have “control over the content of websites using those services,” doesn’t have “the ability to alter or remove content on them,” and doesn’t “have knowledge of the people or entities who post any specific content to such websites.”
Cloudflare, including CEO Matthew Prince and its general counsel, did not respond to Motherboard’s request for comment. Cloudflare has an abuse reporting form on its website, which states that “our ability to respond depends on the type of Cloudflare service at issue.”
The company denied that many of the sites hosting this content use its services. “In this case, a number of the websites you listed do not appear to be using any of our services, and the remaining websites are using our pass-through security and performance services described above,” Cloudflare wrote to Holm.
“My demand, which I again reiterate, is that Cloudflare stop providing services to the Trafficking Websites, something it can easily do,” Holm replied in a March letter.
Holm pointed out in the October letter to Cloudflare that these sites break Cloudflare’s terms of service, which state that Cloudflare “retains the right (but not the obligation) to block content from its Distributed Web Gateway that Cloudflare determines (in its sole discretion) to be illegal, harmful, or in violation” of its terms, including content that promotes trafficking, infringed on another’s intellectual property rights, or discloses sensitive personal information.
In the past, Cloudflare has drawn a moral and legal line when it comes to hateful content posted to sites it provides services to. After public pressure to drop services to stalking and doxing forum Kiwifarms (and initially refusing to do so), Cloudflare dropped the site as a customer of its protection services. The same thing happened in 2019 with 8chan, a forum that hosted terrorist manifestos: Cloudflare said it had no plans to stop servicing the forum, and then booted it from its services a day later. In 2018, Cloudflare banned sex work harm reduction social network Switter from using its services, citing anti-trafficking legislation FOSTA/SESTA. In 2017, Cloudflare stopped services to The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi site.
“I shouldn’t have my nightmare posted online for everyone to see anymore. Videos of a crime shouldn’t be allowed to be monetized,” the Girls Do Porn victim who spoke to Motherboard said. “Cloudflare servicing websites that are full of GDP videos is supporting trafficking and spitting in the face of its victims.”
