Indeed. The porn industry is quite serious about following the letter of the law, so it was strange that pornhub lost support from mastercard and visa when that NYT op ed came out.[1]
This antiporn movement is more about control and censorship than protecting children.
The claim that it's a bed for human trafficking and child pornography is the reason they now require user verification and consent forms.
At the time it was a valid criticism, now it weirdly feels like misdirection or disingenuous puff piece because the seedy underbelly of porn streaming and piracy has probably shifted elsewhere.
This came about as a result of many years of profit from non-consensual intimate media and many lawsuits from victims.
Yes they seem to be doing everything above board now but victims and their allies have a right to voice their worries and hopefully have them assuaged.
> Pornhub had over 2B visits last year and 100M+ daily active users
Is it just me or does that seem remarkably low? I wonder if "active users" only includes users with accounts. I'm sure plenty of people lurk such sites but never sign in.
> AI deepfakes and Generative AI means that anyone can create custom porn for themselves.
Admittedly, and somewhat embarrassingly, this is something I looked into with all the AI hubub going on this year.
While it's interesting what Stable Diffusion is capable of in terms of generating images of naked people, it's not that impressive what it comes to creating something that can actually compete with what humans can currently create. Every example of AI-generated pr0n I've seen looks erotically generic and uninteresting. On top of that, the AI seems to still not understand what a nipple or vagina is actually supposed to look like. It can't even do video yet outside of blurry "flipbooks" of multiple prompts in succession. Though I have no doubt that AI will eventually shake things up, we are a ways off from AI making human-made porn obsolete.
> To put the nail in the coffin, Netflix made a documentary about how Pornhub was the worst.
Well yeah, the problem with porn is it can't be (easily) used to push a narrative. Porn is hyper-reality. Porn doesn't pretend that people don't see race. Porn doesn't pretend that men and women aren't different, unless you're into that sort of thing. Porn isn't known for its intricate storytelling. Porn isn't pretentious. Porn doesn't pretend that penises are "gross." Porn doesn't pretend that human beings aren't animals that have irrational motivations. Porn is largely apolitical.
No wonder the mainstream wants it gone, despite being guilty of many of the same transgressions as sites like Pornhub. Nobody's gonna stop giving their money to Hollywood despite all the sexual abuse and child molestation.
As for visits, you have to consider demographic splits. 50% of people are female who's viewing is going to be relatively minuscule, another x% are too young to be interested, another y% are going to be too old to be regularly interested, and so on. You get a surprisingly small slice of society. And now factor in the fact that there are about 8 zillion other sites. There's also the issue that when any country decides to ban porn, Pornhub almost always going to be target #1. For instance it's banned in India and China, so you're losing potentially billions of people from stuff like that.
It seems high, after the fallout from the NYT piece. Last I had read, unverified (e.g. pirated) content was all removed, leaving mostly studios and community power users. Like YT, piracy is the reason it flourished. Most immediately flocked to rival streaming sites that as of yet have not received the same level of scrutiny.
> This sort of thing happens all the time in private transactions. But it has never happened in a case with one of the most important websites in the world! We should know more!
Based on what? You're not going to if a private company doesn't want you to and is structured correctly.
> The only reason to act against such strong incentives is if you have something to hide.
Yes, like the natural persons involved, because that's the default state of private companies structured correctly. Just like they said in the interview quoted.
> The victims harmed by Pornhub deserve assurances that the current owners will be better than the past abusers.
lol. punt your thinly veiled voyeurism to a third party. that's... rich.
> The victims harmed by Pornhub deserve assurances that the current owners will be better than the past abusers.
Why is that not a reasonable position?
Pornhub moved to it's current position of requiring verification etc after years of allowing non-consensual intimate media to thrive on its platform and only after multiple legal cases brought against them by victims.
Of course a change in ownership raises questions about the future for victims and for their allies.
For a site that's still dubious of Microsoft after their business dealings 30 years ago it's amazing to see so many people jump to "it's their private business, not for us to speculate on" just because the company in question is a porno provider.
"I had one source who insisted that the capital came from Hong Kong but when I asked for more details he mostly insulted me for not being able to figure it out myself ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. "
China can cross-identify Pornhub "customers" against other state owned tech asset's datasets (e.g. tictoc) ... valuable leverage against identified individuals?
>MindGeek itself has something of a checkered past. In 2009, the Secret Service seized $6.4 million from bank accounts controlled by Mansef, a company founded by Stephane Manos and Ouissam Youssef, the assets of which Mansef later sold to German tech investor Fabian Thylmann, who made them part of a company he owned called Manwin. Manwin would later become MindGeek.* (Of the $6.4 million that was seized, $4.15 million was later released pursuant to a settlement with the federal government.)* In April 2011, Manwin quietly secured a $362 million loan from Wall Street firm Colbeck Capital, founded by former Goldman Sachs employees Jason Colodne and Jason Beckman. (Goldman Sachs distanced themselves from the two.) Colbeck’s funds were in turn secured from other firms including the troubled Fortress Capital, masking the Manwin association. Having used the loan to continue to acquire tube sites and content producers, Thylman was then extradited from Belgium to Germany in 2012 for tax evasion on Manwin’s profits. In late 2013, Thylman was bought out by current CEO Ferras Antoon and COO David Tassillo, longtime players within the company, who now control operations from Montreal. (Manwin’s name was changed to Mindgeek in 2013.)
And their business model was basically pirating their own content, that they produced, so they didnt have to pay the people in production.
>Even content producers that MindGeek owns have trouble getting their movies off MindGeek’s tube sites. The result has been a vampiric ecosystem: MindGeek’s producers make porn films mostly for the sake of being uploaded on to MindGeek’s free tube sites, with lower returns for the producers but higher returns for MindGeek, which makes money off of the tube ads that does not go to anyone involved in the production side.
BenGPT summery: "Hyper rich individuals and/or foreign investment funds buy reasonably profitable 'sin' business and do so by forming a special purpose vehicle just for this transaction which hides their identity. Said owners elect not to register the business as an investment fund, which author notes is optional in Canada anyway. Occom's razor conclusion would be they do all of this because they don't want to be identified."
Ethical discussions about the operation of a pornographic website aside, I'm not clear what the issue or surprise here is?
[+] [-] herbst|3 years ago|reply
I am not sure why so many journalists always miss this fact when they claim it's a bed for human trafficking and child pornography
Or am I missing something?
[+] [-] game_the0ry|3 years ago|reply
This antiporn movement is more about control and censorship than protecting children.
[+] [-] pibechorro|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slothtrop|3 years ago|reply
At the time it was a valid criticism, now it weirdly feels like misdirection or disingenuous puff piece because the seedy underbelly of porn streaming and piracy has probably shifted elsewhere.
[+] [-] yieldcrv|3 years ago|reply
> Or am I missing something?
Seems you're missing that they used past tense in the article? specifically not present tense?
[+] [-] AlecSchueler|3 years ago|reply
Yes they seem to be doing everything above board now but victims and their allies have a right to voice their worries and hopefully have them assuaged.
[+] [-] april2023|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ravenstine|3 years ago|reply
Is it just me or does that seem remarkably low? I wonder if "active users" only includes users with accounts. I'm sure plenty of people lurk such sites but never sign in.
> AI deepfakes and Generative AI means that anyone can create custom porn for themselves.
Admittedly, and somewhat embarrassingly, this is something I looked into with all the AI hubub going on this year.
While it's interesting what Stable Diffusion is capable of in terms of generating images of naked people, it's not that impressive what it comes to creating something that can actually compete with what humans can currently create. Every example of AI-generated pr0n I've seen looks erotically generic and uninteresting. On top of that, the AI seems to still not understand what a nipple or vagina is actually supposed to look like. It can't even do video yet outside of blurry "flipbooks" of multiple prompts in succession. Though I have no doubt that AI will eventually shake things up, we are a ways off from AI making human-made porn obsolete.
> To put the nail in the coffin, Netflix made a documentary about how Pornhub was the worst.
Well yeah, the problem with porn is it can't be (easily) used to push a narrative. Porn is hyper-reality. Porn doesn't pretend that people don't see race. Porn doesn't pretend that men and women aren't different, unless you're into that sort of thing. Porn isn't known for its intricate storytelling. Porn isn't pretentious. Porn doesn't pretend that penises are "gross." Porn doesn't pretend that human beings aren't animals that have irrational motivations. Porn is largely apolitical.
No wonder the mainstream wants it gone, despite being guilty of many of the same transgressions as sites like Pornhub. Nobody's gonna stop giving their money to Hollywood despite all the sexual abuse and child molestation.
[+] [-] makeworld|3 years ago|reply
Porn is practically the frontier of social politics.
[+] [-] somenameforme|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slothtrop|3 years ago|reply
It seems high, after the fallout from the NYT piece. Last I had read, unverified (e.g. pirated) content was all removed, leaving mostly studios and community power users. Like YT, piracy is the reason it flourished. Most immediately flocked to rival streaming sites that as of yet have not received the same level of scrutiny.
[+] [-] Beaver117|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yieldcrv|3 years ago|reply
Based on what? You're not going to if a private company doesn't want you to and is structured correctly.
> The only reason to act against such strong incentives is if you have something to hide.
Yes, like the natural persons involved, because that's the default state of private companies structured correctly. Just like they said in the interview quoted.
> The victims harmed by Pornhub deserve assurances that the current owners will be better than the past abusers.
lol. punt your thinly veiled voyeurism to a third party. that's... rich.
[+] [-] pavlov|3 years ago|reply
Arguably it shouldn't be the default state, or even possible.
[+] [-] AlecSchueler|3 years ago|reply
Why is that not a reasonable position?
Pornhub moved to it's current position of requiring verification etc after years of allowing non-consensual intimate media to thrive on its platform and only after multiple legal cases brought against them by victims.
Of course a change in ownership raises questions about the future for victims and for their allies.
For a site that's still dubious of Microsoft after their business dealings 30 years ago it's amazing to see so many people jump to "it's their private business, not for us to speculate on" just because the company in question is a porno provider.
[+] [-] jannw|3 years ago|reply
China can cross-identify Pornhub "customers" against other state owned tech asset's datasets (e.g. tictoc) ... valuable leverage against identified individuals?
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] dr-detroit|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] dingusdew|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] gray5|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] diabolique_2|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] basch|3 years ago|reply
https://slate.com/technology/2014/10/mindgeek-porn-monopoly-...
It's financing has always been questionable.
>MindGeek itself has something of a checkered past. In 2009, the Secret Service seized $6.4 million from bank accounts controlled by Mansef, a company founded by Stephane Manos and Ouissam Youssef, the assets of which Mansef later sold to German tech investor Fabian Thylmann, who made them part of a company he owned called Manwin. Manwin would later become MindGeek.* (Of the $6.4 million that was seized, $4.15 million was later released pursuant to a settlement with the federal government.)* In April 2011, Manwin quietly secured a $362 million loan from Wall Street firm Colbeck Capital, founded by former Goldman Sachs employees Jason Colodne and Jason Beckman. (Goldman Sachs distanced themselves from the two.) Colbeck’s funds were in turn secured from other firms including the troubled Fortress Capital, masking the Manwin association. Having used the loan to continue to acquire tube sites and content producers, Thylman was then extradited from Belgium to Germany in 2012 for tax evasion on Manwin’s profits. In late 2013, Thylman was bought out by current CEO Ferras Antoon and COO David Tassillo, longtime players within the company, who now control operations from Montreal. (Manwin’s name was changed to Mindgeek in 2013.)
And their business model was basically pirating their own content, that they produced, so they didnt have to pay the people in production.
>Even content producers that MindGeek owns have trouble getting their movies off MindGeek’s tube sites. The result has been a vampiric ecosystem: MindGeek’s producers make porn films mostly for the sake of being uploaded on to MindGeek’s free tube sites, with lower returns for the producers but higher returns for MindGeek, which makes money off of the tube ads that does not go to anyone involved in the production side.
[+] [-] monero-xmr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cptcobalt|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] rainworld|3 years ago|reply
https://probablycancelledpod.libsyn.com/the-porno-mafia-mono...
[+] [-] dotBen|3 years ago|reply
Ethical discussions about the operation of a pornographic website aside, I'm not clear what the issue or surprise here is?