While the internet is a highly forbidden place, a set of behavioral rules prevails, and one of the most famous is stated in the old meme known as ‘Rule 34’: “If there is anything online, pornographic versions of it have already been made”. And most of them were available on Pornhub, at least until recently.
Founded in 2007, the adult content streaming platform has more than 76 million monthly registered members and the 112 million daily visits it receives. ahead, the 12th most trafficked website on the planet Tech giants like TikTok. It helped to radically change the way pornography was created and distributed, and in the meantime, made many people rich.
However, as someone warned at one point in the documentary ‘To the Bottom: The Pornhub Story’, “if you let someone upload any content, then everybody will upload any content”. The movie, which was recently released on Netflix, sees the light to coincide with the announcement. Acquisition of Mindgeek, the company that owns both the Canadian platform and similar platforms such as YouPorn, Redtube and Brazzers, by Ethical Capital Partnersa venture capital firm that claims to seek “investment opportunities in industries that require ethical leadership.”
Algorithm Geniuses
Like pretty much everything else in the “sale” world, Pornhub’s success is described as follows: algorithm. Its engineers were pioneers when it came to developing job search optimization tools, so every time someone “googled” their favorite fetish, the platform’s videos were at the top of the results list. At the same time, the company has developed a lucrative selling point for all adult content creators who provide a legal and consent-based service to customers willing to pay for it.
However, a 2020 article by New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof points out that alongside this thoroughly venerable material, platform hosted rape and harassment videos of minors. Anyone could post content on Pornhub – providers who only did so for profit needed to verify their identities – and it turned out that the company turned a blind eye to this illegal material as it generated more advertising revenue. In the movie, one of his former employees reveals that only thirty or so people are dedicated to supervising the thousands of videos uploaded to the platform every day; each had to review about 700 of them, making tight control of content impossible.
However, after and after the news had repercussions in the public. Visa and Mastercard will remove Pornhub’s ability to process payments With a credit card – something that in any case hurts verified professionals but doesn’t help victims of harassment – those responsible for the service began cleaning it up, removing millions of videos from the platform and boosting the platform. security protocols. However, the response came too late. Complaints piled up in 2021, some by underage women, and in the summer of 2022, Mindgeek’s apparent presidents Feras Antoon and David Tassilo resigned.
crusade against porn
But in the war against Pornhub, the line between heroes and villains isn’t as neatly drawn as it first appears. As is evident in patient el fondo, the activists and lawyers who have campaigned for years to shut down the platform are not exactly—or exclusively—in defense of the victims, but above all. far-right and evangelical church-affiliated groups as tools at the service of extremist religious groups whose purpose is to remotely remove anything sexual from public life and, of course, to remove porn from the Internet. “Trying to remove pornography from the Internet is like ripping off someone’s spine.” says Noelle Perdue, ex-Pornhub writer at one point in the documentary.
“Accordingly, it is urgent to abandon this discourse. sex work is bad and encourages violence” points out to actress Gwen Adora in another scene of the movie. “As sex workers, no one really listens to us. Instead they are trying to ‘save’ us from pornography.” Regarding the campaign against the platform, his colleague Siri Dahl adds: “This is not just an attack on pornography. It is an attack on female sexuality, ‘queer’ sexuality and people’s freedom of expression.” But perhaps the biggest truth contained in ‘Hasta el fondo’ is summed up in a tweet that pops up in the last lines of the footage: “If you think Pornhub is bad, you’re going to really hate it. If they do, they will visit, they will close”.