By Robert Ghehrke | The Salt Lake Tribune | Photo by Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune

The parent company of Pornhub and Redtube, two of the most-visited pornographic websites in the world, has agreed to pay Utah $5 million, and potentially up to $15 million in fines, and to stop hosting videos depicting child sexual abuse material and depicting nonconsensual sex.

State regulators, the Utah Attorney General’s office and the Federal Trade Commission announced the agreement with Aylo on Wednesday, part of a consent decree resolving an enforcement action and lawsuit by the Utah Department of Commerce.

According to state officials, Aylo distributed tens of thousands of videos and photos from 2012 to 2020 that featured child sexual abuse material and non-consensual images and ignored hundreds of thousands of “flags” for years. The illegal content was viewed, downloaded and shared millions of times in that span.

“This consent order is an important step in protecting people from some of the most harmful and exploitative material online,” Gov. Spencer Cox said in a statement. “Companies that profit from such conduct must be held accountable.”

Margaret Busse, executive director of the Utah Department of Commerce, said that Aylo had “openly, repeatedly and severely violated” Utah’s laws by distributing “the worst of the worst” material.

Read more at SLTrib.com.

This article is published through the Utah News Collaborative, a partnership of news organizations in Utah that aims to inform readers across the state.