Conservative pundit claims PornHub is trying to turn straight men gay

Michael Knowles, a commentator with the conservative media site The Daily Wire, has claimed that PornHub is attempting to get straight men to watch gay pornography.

The commentator previously called for “transgenderism to be eradicated” from public life. He has aggressively argued in recent years for the upholding of traditional gender roles and strictly heteropatriarchal sexual mores, calling gay marriage “the most radical political shift our civilization has ever embraced” and attacking drag shows.

Now, Knowles has made claims about the influence of pornography on sexuality and gender identity.

Speaking in an interview with Arden Young of Sound Investigations on Twitter/X, Knowles spoke about undercover videos posted by Young's platform.

“Protecting children is not a concern, maximizing profits is their concern, and they don’t seem to care who they hurt in the process,” Young told Knowles.

The undercover videos recorded by Sound Investigations reportedly feature three employees of Ayla, the parent company of PornHub, speaking about gay and trans actors in “straight” videos on the site.

One of the employees said that despite some content being “primarily for straight men,” the company is looking to “push the envelope as much as you can and be like, can I hint at bi content here, what if we brought a trans talent onto the site… you kinda take those risks to broaden it a little more…. You’re always trying to push a little further.”

Knowles reacted to this by claiming that the company is trying to turn men gay.

“Two major discoveries here. One, they know that kids are looking at their content. They’re totally fine with it,” he said.

“Yeah, we are trying to convert straight guys into looking at gay porn or trans porn.”

When approached for comment, a spokesperson for Ayla told indy100 in a statement: "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. It is egregious for a journalist to misrepresent this information in order to push outlandish and harmful conspiracy theories."

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