Mia Khalifa Fans Start Petition to Remove her Adult Content from Net

Former adult performer Mia Khalifa, whose BangBros “hijab” scene rocketed her to international stardom and infamy back in 2014, has been public about her regrets for being a part of the porn industry. When she told the BBC last summer that she had only earned about $12,000 from the 11 scenes she made during her several-month tenure in porn, and “never saw a penny again after that,” her legions of fans were shocked and appalled. They claimed that she deserved more pay since she continues to be one of the most searched-for adult models in the world, and summarily showed their collective ignorance about how payment works in adult entertainment.  

Now, those fans are back at it. In late June, one fan tweeted that Khalifa “deserved a bigger bag” for her work in porn. Khalifa replied: “I’d rather have [the content] removed than take a dime from that bag. I was offered millions to return for 1 video & felt violated all over again by the sheer audacity that they thought my body was contingent on the right price (years after I started speaking out against industry practices).”

Taking her at her word, her fans responded by starting a Change.org petition claiming that because “Mia has stated her regret for her decisions in the porn industry multiple times,“ petition signers are “demanding [Khalifa’s] domain names be returned, her videos be removed and fairly discussed in court without putting Mia Khalifa into deep financial ruin.”

The petition further states that, after her 3 months in the industry and the religious and political furor that her hijab scene brought down on her, Khalifa now “attends therapy on a consistent basis for trauma, emotional distress, and consequences of bullying. Mia and her team have provided countless financial offers to the current owners of her domain name and pornographic videos to no avail. Big corporations are not giving Mia Khalifa a fair chance to demand her content in court due to financial advantage.”

I’d rather have it removed than take a dime from that bag. I was offered millions to return for 1 video & felt violated all over again by the sheer audacity that they thought my body was contingent on the right price (years after I started speaking out against industry practices) https://t.co/YjWXpgDQ5s

— Mia K. (@miakhalifa) June 23, 2020

The petition is aimed at Pornhub and the MindGeek top brass, as well as BangBros—a porn company owned by the same group. As of the time I’m writing this, it’s gained over 1.75 million signatures—a pretty stunning accomplishment. And it’s an interesting tactic—directly petitioning the folks who are earning the most on Khalifa’s videos, rather than trying to appeal to a government body. Given the overwhelming support it’s earning, perhaps the petition will do better than Khalifa’s “countless financial offers” to the companies who control her domain names and videos. 

But, given that Pornhub and BangBros have been, and continue to be, in hot water for other, far more egregious ethical slip-ups in the past, I’d be surprised if this petition gained more ground than anything has so far. This petition is aimed at MindGeek, a company which, since it launched Pornhub in 2007, has decimated the adult entertainment industry by allowing piracy of copyrighted content, earned ad revenue on stolen content, failed repeatedly to take down illegal material, and provided next to zero oversight on the content that’s uploaded to Pornhub and other tube sites every day, summarily allowing videos of outright crimes to be hosted on their platforms and downloaded, then re-uploaded by pirates. 

These practices at MindGeek have been in place for well over a decade, and so far, nothing has gained much traction—even a separate Change.org petition demanding that the federal government step in to shut down Pornhub—although the US government can’t do that, since Pornhub is not an American company. 

These petitions, while well-intentioned, display consumers’ deep ignorance about the legalities of pornography production and dissemination, and even deeper ignorance about the prospects of appealing to MindGeek’s ethical sensibilities. But, hey, it’s worth a shot, I guess.