The Children of Pornhub (Nicholas Kristof/NYT investigation)

[entremet]

Content Warning: Description of sexual assault



Article is long and beyond disturbing. Good reporting by Kristof here.

Kristof has been tweeting about his article and replies. Here is a gofundme of one of the victims:

Pornhub prides itself on being the cheery, winking face of naughty, the website that buys a billboard in Times Square and provides snow plows to clear Boston streets. It donates to organizations fighting for racial equality and offers steamy content free to get people through Covid-19 shutdowns.

That supposedly "wholesome Pornhub" attracts 3.5 billion visits a month, more than Netflix, Yahoo or Amazon. Pornhub rakes in money from almost three billion ad impressions a day. One ranking lists Pornhub as the 10th-most-visited website in the world.

Yet there's another side of the company: Its site is infested with rape videos. It monetizes child rapes, revenge pornography, spy cam videos of women showering, racist and misogynist content, and footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags. A search for "girls under18" (no space) or "14yo" leads in each case to more than 100,000 videos. Most aren't of children being assaulted, but too many are.

After a 15-year-old girl went missing in Florida, her mother found her on Pornhub — in 58 sex videos. Sexual assaults on a 14-year-old California girl were posted on Pornhub and were reported to the authorities not by the company but by a classmate who saw the videos. In each case, offenders were arrested for the assaults, but Pornhub escaped responsibility for sharing the videos and profiting from them.

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"Pornhub became my trafficker," a woman named Cali told me. She says she was adopted in the United States from China and then trafficked by her adoptive family and forced to appear in pornographic videos beginning when she was 9. Some videos of her being abused ended up on Pornhub and regularly reappear there, she said.

"I'm still getting sold, even though I'm five years out of that life," Cali said. Now 23, she is studying in a university and hoping to become a lawyer — but those old videos hang over her.

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Pornhub profited this fall from a video of a naked woman being tortured by a gang of men in China. It is monetizing video compilations with titles like "Screaming Teen," "Degraded Teen" and "Extreme Choking." Look at a choking video and it may suggest also searching for "She Can't Breathe."

It should be possible to be sex positive and Pornhub negative.

Pornhub declined to make executives available on the record, but it provided a statement. "Pornhub is unequivocally committed to combating child sexual abuse material, and has instituted a comprehensive, industry-leading trust and safety policy to identify and eradicate illegal material from our community," it said. Pornhub added that any assertion that the company allows child videos on the site "is irresponsible and flagrantly untrue."

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Opinion | The Children of Pornhub (Published 2020)

Why does Canada allow this company to profit off videos of exploitation and assault?

www.nytimes.com

 

[Mammoth Jones]

They don't have some type of AI automated analysis to immediately remove flagged videos? Or vet them before they're uploaded?

 

[L Thammy]

They don't have some type of AI automated analysis to immediately remove flagged videos? Or vet them before they're uploaded?

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Seems like the automation might be weak and easily bypassed? The search terms mentioned that they don't use spaces, which suggest that they do block the terms of there are spaces.

 

[RROCKMAN]

Disgusted but unfortunately not surprised

 

[Teenage Fansub]

They should have every video checked by a human. It shouldn't aspire to be Youtube where the sheer volume makes something like that impossible. Maybe don't let random unverified users upload at all.

 

[mentok15]

So people can upload whatever they want to pronhub? There really really needs to be some human oversight to this.

 

[DJ_Lae]

I imagine they do have a bunch of people pulling moderation duty but probably not enough to keep up with the volume of videos uploaded there.

As with Youtube, all manner of shit is going to be uploaded to any service that allows sharing of that kind. I don't know if they have some sort of account verification for people who upload their own (or studios') material.

 

[entremet]

They don't have some type of AI automated analysis to immediately remove flagged videos? Or vet them before they're uploaded?

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According to the article, they use human moderators.

Videos still need to be reported and PH, I guess due to content, get lower reports:

Facebook removed 12.4 million images related to child exploitation in a three-month period this year. Twitter closed 264,000 accounts in six months last year for engaging in sexual exploitation of children. By contrast, Pornhub notes that the Internet Watch Foundation, an England-based nonprofit that combats child sexual abuse imagery, reported only 118 instances of child sexual abuse imagery on its site over almost three years, seemingly a negligible figure. "Eliminating illegal content is an ongoing battle for every modern content platform, and we are committed to remaining at the forefront," Pornhub said in its statement.

The Internet Watch Foundation couldn't explain why its figure for Pornhub is so low. Perhaps it's because people on Pornhub are inured to the material and unlikely to report it. But if you know what to look for, it's possible to find hundreds of apparent child sexual abuse videos on Pornhub in 30 minutes. Pornhub has recently offered playlists with names including "less than 18," "the best collection of young boys" and "under- - age."

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[kyle mechlachlan]

As is the case with YouTube and all the vile shit on their platform, PH will do the bare minimum to combat this as long as they aren't legally liable for it.

 

[Mathieran]

That's pretty fucked up. I thought they were a stand up company but I'm guessing like everyone else, they aren't upset they are making money off other's misery.

 

[Deleted member 4461]

Maybe they should manually review all of the videos those searches pull up...

Or block those searches entirely

 

[krazen]

It's crazy to me; I always assumed there was AI or human mods on pornhub considering how rightfully hard international states go on child pornography.

The fact it could exist and they keep on rocking and rolling with cheeky commercials and stunts like nothing is wrong, damn

 

[Mammoth Jones]

According to the article, they use human moderators.

Videos still need to be reported and PH, I guess due to content, get lower reports:

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So anyone can upload a video.

And only IF it gets flagged by someone will it be human reviewed?

 

[WhySoDevious]

Saw the article earlier and also saw this:

 

[entremet]

So anyone can upload a video.

And only IF it gets flagged by someone will it be human reviewed?

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Acording to the article, yes. Not sure if they changed anything. The girl in the OP had a boy upload a video of her.

Saw the article earlier and also saw this:

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Kristof contacted PH. They never provided any statements. And I don't know how reporting on sex trafficking and underage folks on PH anywhere near a moral panic. It's actually something that is barely covered and a huge problem.

 

[kai3345]

idk how a site like this doesn't have a manual review for every video before it goes up. seems like the only surefire way to avoid situations like this

 

[squall23]

Maybe they should manually review all of the videos those searches pull up...

Or block those searches entirely

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I thought they did. At least, I remember reading a AMA about someone that does just that.

 

[N.Domixis]

They need users to be active for a year and use verification like credit card to upload.

 

[Static]

So anyone can upload a video.

And only IF it gets flagged by someone will it be human reviewed?

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It seems pretty unlikely for them to human review everything that gets uploaded presently. According to their 2019 Year in Review, 169 years of video were uploaded last year alone.

 

[Freakzilla]

Jesus fucking CHRIST. That is NOT what I was expecting when I read that title.

 

[N.Domixis]

Or better yet, a video does not go public unless all people are ID in video. Who gives a shit if it slows down uploads? It's to prevent this from happening. Safety of people over money.

 

[AcademicSaucer]

I imagine they do have a bunch of people pulling moderation duty but probably not enough to keep up with the volume of videos uploaded there.

As with Youtube, all manner of shit is going to be uploaded to any service that allows sharing of that kind. I don't know if they have some sort of account verification for people who upload their own (or studios') material.

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Imagine working screening out abuse videos, I imagine people wouldn't last long there having to watch that horror show

 

[TripleBee]

I believe they are a Canadian company - so if this was true seems like it would be pretty easy to enforce. Not like they are out of the reach of the law.

 

[HommePomme]

Imagine working screening out abuse videos, I imagine people wouldn't last long there having to watch that horror show

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yep, the entire industry is horrible for this:

https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/...-interviews-trauma-working-conditions-arizona

 

[Kthulhu]

If they know that this is happening and not trying to stop it they shouldn't definitely be shut down. Haven't read the article yet but I hope this isn't the case.

They don't have some type of AI automated analysis to immediately remove flagged videos? Or vet them before they're uploaded?

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There is a ton of stolen content on Pornhub so it wouldn't shock me if their tools suck.

 

[Kinthey]

Imagine working screening out abuse videos, I imagine people wouldn't last long there having to watch that horror show

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It's a pretty traumatic job that often gets loaded off to people from poorer countries.

 

[Heraldic]

I gave up pornography for several years now. My sex life has never been better, and I personally feel it has made me a better person in terms of my emotional and physical well being, intimacy and relationship, as well as psychologically my views and treatment of women. There also was a level of desensitization I realized was occurring. It takes a whole lot less to arouse me now. Perhaps pornography is not the answer.

 

[lunarworks]

People who upload videos of their sexual partners without their consent are absolute scum and should be jailed. But yes, the porn industry should be reigned-in and regulated, and the Canadian government absolutely needs to launch an investigation.

 

[softfocus]

Revenge porn has to be the hardest to moderate.
I do believe the performers need to be verified before anything becomes searchable, otherwise you have no idea how these amateur videos took place.
Porn has a very ugly face. As much as I mock the incest stuff, the popularity of it is actually quite concerning. I know people have fetishes and I have my own but a lot of it revolves around exploitation.

 

[AlteredBeast]

Absolutely disgusting. Like ridiculously vile.

 

[nitewulf]

I thought people vetted them? It sucks how much of this exists.

 

[nsilvias]

i remember this one article i read that said that if you look at porn theres a good chance youve accidently seen underage porn without even realizing it. porn needs a better way of handling amater porn rather than letting be a free for all

 

[That1GoodHunter]

I have no fucking clue how people can't get in mayor trouble for using those search terms, you are quite literally looking for.... ugh, fucking depraved shits

 

[antonz]

Honestly any Porn that is not Studio Produced(which has enough issues as it is) should require some sort of Identification process etc. If Studios needs to keep records of performers and their eligibility etc. It should be no different for Amateur Porn. Both Participants should be obligated to provide identification and consent before the material is uploaded for the world to see.

Right now all Pornhub has is a Blue Checkmark status verifying the content you upload is in fact amateur and not studio produced.

 

[Deleted member 36578]

So fucking disgusting. I abhor the entire porn industry because of this shit. Goddamn it this pisses me off.

 

[Aurongel]

It doesn't help that those individual porn production companies often court that exact audience using every non-direct way they can.

For example, I came across one female actress on tiktok who was promoting her pornhub content and OF page from her tiktok videos. What I noticed was that her tiktok content (which wasn't age-gated in any way) was CONSTANTLY fixated on her abnormally short stature (like REALLY tiny) and small bodily features and framing it as attractive for those guys who "know who they are". It filled me with immediate disgust seeing that sort of thing normalized in what was a clear attempt to attract the types of audiences who would probably straight up consume CP if it was readily offered to them and they could get away with it.

Ugh... I came across that last week and it still fucks me up thinking about how many actual 13 year old girls come across those skeezy tiktok videos and come away from it thinking "yes, this is what men desire and what translates to a lucrative OF venture or pornhub sponsorship".

It's bad. It's really fucking bad. And it's bad in a way that even the strictest moderation on pornhub or changes to their terms can't address.

 

[Tavernade]

The really terrifying thing about this is that, compared to other sites, PornHub actually does seem cleaner content-wise. Compared to other similar sites, to be clear. If it's this bad there, it's gotta be truly horrific elsewhere.

Revenge porn has to be the hardest to moderate.
I do believe the performers need to be verified before anything becomes searchable, otherwise you have no idea how these amateur videos took place.
Porn has a very ugly face. As much as I mock the incest stuff, the popularity of it is actually quite concerning. I know people have fetishes and I have my own but a lot of it revolves around exploitation.

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Yeah, revenge porn is presumably extra hard because it was filmed 'with' consent so they'd somehow have to have a filtration system. I guess they could ask for signatures somehow?

They could always try to just eliminate the ability to post porn without being an official business or authorised amateur. Anyone else already isn't sharing their own content.

 

[Failburger]

People need to start paying for their porn. Stop being cheap fucks and pay. Do your research and find a good studio and support them directly.

 

[entremet]

Jesus fucking CHRIST. That is NOT what I was expecting when I read that title.

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Hence the parenthetical!

 

[RedMercury]

idk how a site like this doesn't have a manual review for every video before it goes up. seems like the only surefire way to avoid situations like this

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I think it's the same reason almost no video hosting service has this, no service at any scale has enough money to pay people to review every second of every video posted, so all these sites just shirk responsibility and think AI is going to save them or pass off the responsibility to their users.

 

[Fugu]

Pornhub is definitely a mixed bag - all youtube-style porn sites share the common defect of actively profiting off of sex work while inadequately funneling that revenue back into the people that its business depends on, for example - but this criticism being targeted at them doesn't really make sense in context. First of all, for content vetting/removal Pornhub is at the forefront of the industry by a considerable margin, meaning that it's probably much worse on other websites with lower standards.

Could pornhub do more? Probably, but a lot of the solutions I'm seeing proposed to deal with this aren't realistic and/or are beyond the scope of what it is possible for one porn site to accomplish. Manual ID verification, for example, exposes people who depend on the platform to a huge amount of risk because doxing is a gigantic problem for sex workers. There's also no good evidence that this will actually solve the problem, since falsifying identification is probably small potatoes to someone who is raping people and putting it on pornhub. Manually verifying all of the videos that go up would fundamentally turn pornhub into a different operation and would maybe kill the service completely. I'm not necessarily opposed to this (since anyone large enough to be making money on pornhub probably has other options), but it's really only scratching the surface of the problem.

At the end of the day, what facilitates this sort of content being put on the internet is not pornhub but rather a complex interplay of shitty laws relating to prostitution, shitty laws relating to immigration, and a shitty culture that devalues the work that sex workers do and encourages men to expect porn for free. If you care about this issue beyond reading a salacious headline, there are lots of great resources for educating yourself.

Also, you should be very skeptical of anyone who has a reputation of deploying the word "trafficking" overzealously. It is a word that is often used as a blunting instrument to oversimplify complex issues relating to prostitution and immigration. I think the information in this article is likely to be cherrypicked/misleading because of who wrote it. Indeed, I'd advise anyone who is only hearing about these issues for the first time in this article/thread to recognize that this is a ludicrously complicated issue and that they shouldn't form an opinion based on one article.

 

[hodayathink]

This same type of problem with Pornhub was covered by Vice last year during the GirlsDoPorn trial, where it took months after the trial started for Pornhub to actually take down GDP's official channels (and you can still find those videos on the site if you use the right search terms). And that was a very public case with women coming out and explicitly saying they were being exploited. It's even worse in situations like this where it's harder to find the proof/the victims have less of a platform. And this is why you should actually be paying for your porn, and know the people who are producing it (either the studio or the actual performers themselves).

 

[hodayathink]

Pornhub is definitely a mixed bag - all youtube-style porn sites share the common defect of actively profiting off of sex work while inadequately funneling that revenue back into the people that its business depends on, for example - but this criticism being targeted at them doesn't really make sense in context. First of all, for content vetting/removal Pornhub is at the forefront of the industry by a considerable margin, meaning that it's probably much worse on other websites with lower standards.

Could pornhub do more? Probably, but a lot of the solutions I'm seeing proposed to deal with this aren't realistic and/or are beyond the scope of what it is possible for one porn site to accomplish. Manual ID verification, for example, exposes people who depend on the platform to a huge amount of risk because doxing is a gigantic problem for sex workers. There's also no good evidence that this will actually solve the problem, since falsifying identification is probably small potatoes to someone who is raping people and putting it on pornhub. Manually verifying all of the videos that go up would fundamentally turn pornhub into a different operation and would maybe kill the service completely. I'm not necessarily opposed to this (since anyone large enough to be making money on pornhub probably has other options), but it's really only scratching the surface of the problem.

At the end of the day, what facilitates this sort of content being put on the internet is not pornhub but rather a complex interplay of shitty laws relating to prostitution, shitty laws relating to immigration, and a shitty culture that devalues the work that sex workers do and encourages men to expect porn for free. If you care about this issue beyond reading a salacious headline, there are lots of great resources for educating yourself.

Also, you should be very skeptical of anyone who has a reputation of deploying the word "trafficking" overzealously. It is a word that is often used as a blunting instrument to oversimplify complex issues relating to prostitution and immigration. I think the information in this article is likely to be cherrypicked/misleading because of who wrote it. Indeed, I'd advise anyone who is only hearing about these issues for the first time in this article/thread to recognize that this is a ludicrously complicated issue and that they shouldn't form an opinion based on one article.

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Pornhub has a very long history of not giving a fuck who is hurt by the content on their site as long as they're making money from it, so I don't buy any "They're doing all they can" or "this isn't just about them" narratve.

 

[Gwenpoolshark]

Saw the article earlier and also saw this:

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Does any of this discredit the article?

Or is this just leftwing associationist handwringing a la chapo trap house logic?

 

[Fugu]

Pornhub has a very long history of not giving a fuck who is hurt by the content on their site as long as they're making money from it, so I don't buy any "They're doing all they can" or "this isn't just about them" narratve.

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...But it isn't just about them. Pornhub could - and, indeed should - be doing better in this area (I don't recall arguing otherwise), but the problem is much larger than them. The GirlsDoPorn debacle highlighted a bunch of issues, many of which have nothing to do with Pornhub. Here are some examples:

• The legal/regulatory status of sex work rendered the women with few options for recourse that would have been available to people in similar industries, which was compounded with stigma surrounding porn
• People have become accustomed to turning a blind eye regarding whether the sex they're watching is consensual, whether the performers are of age, whether the performers are/were properly being paid, etc. Indeed, there are entire communities on the internet that push back when they are told that what they're watching is essentially rape. In the case of girlsdoporn, reddit/4chan/etc. were huge in facilitating the continued availability of the videos
• Porn piracy is so rampant that removing verified videos does nothing to inhibit access to the videos
• Pornhub was far too slow in their reaction to the litigation and despite being basically the only porn tube website that does anything about this problem at all it continues to be available on their platform

So yeah, pornhub being better would have been nice here but it wouldn't have actually made a difference because you could go on, say, spankbang and probably still find all of the videos.

 

[Antrax]

Pornhub has a very long history of not giving a fuck who is hurt by the content on their site as long as they're making money from it, so I don't buy any "They're doing all they can" or "this isn't just about them" narratve.

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They're doing all they can given their priors that they won't budge from (mainly completely open uploading). But it's like a steering wheel made out of razor wire, the concept is flawed from those red lines

 

[PanzerKraken]

Clearly a problem if they are allowing videos that claim to be "under 18" and this doesn't get stopped or flagged in some way

 

[Fugu]

Clearly a problem if they are allowing videos that claim to be "under 18" and this doesn't get stopped or flagged in some way

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I mean what's the difference when people are already accustomed to seeing "barely legal" and deciding that's good enough for them? People don't actually do any of the things that would indicate they cared about underage/child porn on the platform. That's the real problem.

 

[Masterz1337]

It's crazy it's allowed to go so far without consequence, but I also wouldn't be surprised if they allow the rules to be "relaxed" as allows them and law enforcement to track down people who traffic in this stuff, and also allows people to be identified like with that one kid recognizing his classmate. Sadly, this stuff will exist with or without pornhub, so I hope this is "permitted" with a working relationship with law enforcement.

This same type of problem with Pornhub was covered by Vice last year during the GirlsDoPorn trial, where it took months after the trial started for Pornhub to actually take down GDP's official channels (and you can still find those videos on the site if you use the right search terms). And that was a very public case with women coming out and explicitly saying they were being exploited. It's even worse in situations like this where it's harder to find the proof/the victims have less of a platform. And this is why you should actually be paying for your porn, and know the people who are producing it (either the studio or the actual performers themselves).

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Then you read things like this and realize it's probably just as likely they are fine with profiting off anything for as long as they can without consequence.

 

[aevanhoe]

I gave up pornography for several years now. My sex life has never been better, and I personally feel it has made me a better person in terms of my emotional and physical well being, intimacy and relationship, as well as psychologically my views and treatment of women. There also was a level of desensitization I realized was occurring. It takes a whole lot less to arouse me now. Perhaps pornography is not the answer.

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What do your personal views on pornography and your sex life have to do with someone putting rape videos online?