It’s hard to adequately convey how massive a move it is for Pornhub to remove all unverified uploads from its platform. The site – like many ‘free’ tube sites like YouPorn and Xhamster – has relied on unverified user uploads for so long that to suddenly remove them is a massive step. What does it mean? Should you be worried? And are there legitimate criticisms of the way this has happened?
At the time of writing, Vice estimates of the 13.5 million videos that were on Pornhub, somewhere between half and two-thirds have been deleted. That’s… a lot of porn! It’ll include plenty of legitimate, consensual videos as well as a lot of revenge porn, abuse content, pirated work and more. But before we get into the detail of what has been removed, first let’s just note that well over half the content on Pornhub was uploaded by people who Pornhub had never verified. Well over half. First thing that’s worth considering: if you’re browsing a porn site, are you really happy knowing that over half the content you find may well fall into one of the categories above? This is why it’s important to pay for your porn. You pay for porn from legit producers not because you’re a lovely person who wants to get a medal for supporting sex workers but because you want to make sure that you’re not enjoying something that’s actively causing harm.
Quite rightly, campaigners like Kate Isaacs, who have long been pushing for Pornhub to change its policies to help prevent abuse content being uploaded, have welcomed the move:
Over 10 MILLION videos removed from @Pornhub today.
10 MILLION videos sat on the site, with absolutely no age verification or consent checks in place.
My thoughts go out to every survivor who has been begging @Mindgeek for this day. I hope you sleep a little better tonight x
— Kate Isaacs (@Kate_Isaacs) December 14, 2020
Unverified upload ban: the good
The fact is that if you allow unverified uploads on your massive porn platform, you will definitely have some abuse videos on there. The business model of ‘free’ tube sites which allow anyone to upload content is fundamentally broken. Free porn tube sites fundamentally exploitative – I’ve written about this before.
So on the most basic level, I’m fucking delighted by this news. Banning unverified user uploads, and purging content which has not been verified, is a huge step. It involves fundamentally changing the Pornhub business model, which previously relied on having a large volume of content being uploaded all the time, and pushed content moderation further down the pipeline – relying on users and producers to report any problems, rather than expecting Pornhub to accept responsibility for it.
Who takes responsibility for content touches on the fundamental difference between platform and publisher – one which affects so many tech companies. Are you, the platform, providing the service, and therefore accountable for the service you’re providing? Or are you simply providing a platform by which other people can offer a service? Platforms are generally more profitable, because you can rely on others to do the work. Services less so, because you have to do the work yourself.
Pornhub unverified upload ban: the bad
There are legitimate massive concerns about the way that Pornhub’s gone about this, and the reasons why it’s done it. It’s happened just after an article in the New York Times highlighted the huge problems with the site itself, most notably that it hosted a lot of child abuse. This article came as a shock to a lot of people, though I don’t think it came as a surprise to most people in the porn industry – especially those making their own porn and selling it on platforms outside Pornhub.
So far, so simple. But there are two big concerns with the New York Times piece. The first being that it’s heavily influenced by organisations such as Exodus Cry – right-wing religious orgs which are waging a ‘war on porn’. There’s a good piece in industry publication Xbiz that has a lot more detail on this, and broadly I’m wary of being on the same side as people who also lobbied for legislation declaring porn as a ‘public health crisis.’ There’s nuance to this discussion: it’s not simply ‘porn is good’ vs ‘porn is bad’ – to me this issue is about ethical practices, not about porn as a whole.
The second key concern is that after that New York Times piece went up, Visa and Mastercard announced they would be suspending services to Pornhub and things got a bit more worrying. See, whenever card companies and financial processors announce they’re going to stop working with porn sites, people who produce porn get (rightly) nervous. Usually these things are the start of a domino effect, where payment processors (already incredibly flaky when it comes to working with adult companies) decide that the risk of working with any adult company is too great, and it’s safer for them to have a ‘no porn whatsoever’ policy. Then… well… people who make porn ethically get fucked.
Speaking to Motherboard, Avalon Fey explained:
“By targeting Pornhub and successfully destroying the ability for independent creators to monetize their content, they have made it easier to remove payment options from smaller platforms too. This has nothing to do with helping abused victims, and everything to do with hurting online adult entertainers to stop them from creating and sharing adult content.”
Although Pornhub grew in an environment of ‘free porn’ only, more recently it has started verifying users and implementing programs whereby people can get paid for their work. On top of this, some producers use Pornhub as a marketing tool to help sell longer videos elsewhere on the web. So there are many legitimate adult producers who are understandably worried that the involvement of payment providers in this might mean their ability to earn in the future might be stripped away. While I’m very much in favour of the move – I think having robust content upload policies and moderation is the only way to significantly reduce (and ideally eliminate) abuse content on the platform – I fully get why this is troubling, and I think it’s an important area to watch, and see what happens next.
Broadly: banning unverified user uploads is good, card companies pulling service from adult sites is bad, and organisations which are using Pornhub as a way to shoehorn ‘porn is bad’ into legislation are fucking terrifying. It’s important to keep an eye on how Visa and Mastercard respond to Pornhub’s changes, and whether they use this as a reason to start dropping other sites which have more ethical and robust content practices.
Pornhub unverified upload ban: the ugly
While the above criticisms are worth considering, there are a couple more objections I don’t have much truck with.
- But they don’t have my favourite porn any more!
When I tweeted about the Pornhub news last night, a few people contacted me to say ‘it’s a shame there’s no longer any X, Y or Z, though,’ and while I hate to ruin your wank I’m not massively swayed by these criticisms. If you’re worried that your porn is no longer on Pornhub, what that tells me is you were previously watching that porn for free, and happy to accept the risk that it might have been uploaded without the consent of the people who feature in it. I know you probably weren’t consciously thinking this every time you settled in to watch, but that’s not really the point.
If you’re sad that you can no longer find a particular type of scene on Pornhub, sites like Clips4Sale may well have what you’re after. Or go to social media, find the performers whose work you enjoyed when it was uploaded to Pornhub, and ask them where you can buy their work directly.
If you don’t understand why this criticism is such an easy one to dismiss, replace [your favourite porn] with the phrase ‘revenge porn’. Does your objection still sound legitimate? Probably not. I promise you, if your kink is legal, there will be people catering to it in ethical ways which you can pay for.
But Facebook has abuse content too!
This was one of the key points made by Pornhub in their statement:
“It is clear that Pornhub is being targeted not because of our policies and how we compare to our peers, but because we are an adult content platform.”
And later:
“As part of our policy to ban unverified uploaders, we have now also suspended all previously uploaded content that was not created by content partners or members of the Model Program. This means every piece of Pornhub content is from verified uploaders, a requirement that platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat and Twitter have yet to institute.”
They are right, of course, that these platforms don’t have the same policies in place. They are also right that there is a hell of a lot of abuse content on platforms like Facebook. Facebook, and any other site which allows unverified user uploads, will always have the problem of how to deal with abuse content. However, Facebook is not a porn site. People don’t go there to have a wank. I think this really does make a difference – where you’re publishing sex related content you need to be better at consent and recognise the very specific ways in which your platform might encourage sexual abuse. That’s not to say I don’t think Facebook should be regulated (it should), or that I don’t think Facebook has a problem with abuse (it does), but that I think there’s a significant enough category difference between ‘porn site’ and ‘social network’ to mean a porn site should care more about where its content is coming from.
Adult sites have always been held to higher standards than non-adult sites, because the nature of sexual content means those making it should be hot on ethics and consent. Ideally we’d do this without being forced to, because we recognise the responsibility we have. That Pornhub has now been forced to consider things that ethical indie producers have cared about since forever doesn’t exactly make me sad. Even if they can point to a much bigger player in the online space, and say ‘but they’re even naughtier than me!’ Sure, they are. But if someone told me I’d published abuse content, I wouldn’t try to defend myself by pointing to Pornhub and saying ‘but THEY’RE even worse!’, I’d clean my fucking house and be better, no?
Pornhub does not have the moral high ground
Final point: while there are many very legitimate criticisms of the recent changes, I’m unlikely to be swayed by anything Pornhub itself chooses to say. If you’re a porn producer or performer and you have thoughts on these changes, I’d love to know what you think – please do feel free to drop links to your own pieces in the comments here and I’ll add a round-up at the end of this post. This is one of those topics that I think will have huge ramifications, and although I was really keen to write about it (so I can introduce readers who might not be as sex-involved as I am to a seismic shift in the porn industry) I don’t want to go stamping my own thoughts all over it before I’ve had a chance to properly listen to what those directly affected are saying.
But those people won’t include Pornhub itself, for one key reason: if Pornhub cares so much about ethics, and genuinely wanted to get rid of abuse content, it would have made moves long ago to change its business model. For a very long time, many porn producers have been crying out for Pornhub to ban unverified uploads – one of the key problems that leads to their content getting ripped off and republished for ‘free’. That it took an article in the New York Times from someone with dodgy connections to the religious right to make them actually change their policies is a huge red flag. Why not listen to the porn producers who have been telling you since time immemorial that your policies cause harm? Why not listen to campaigners who are not ‘anti-porn’ but merely ‘anti-policies-which-allow-abuse-content’? Why not listen to the people who have been harmed by you hosting videos of them being abused? Why dig your heels in until two major card companies wade into the discussion, and thus put all other sites at risk?
One of the key reasons I think it’s important to lobby adult companies to make changes like this is because in an ideal world, you don’t want credit card companies (or governments) to step in. Where they do, their changes are often wildly misguided and end up causing harm to far smaller players (see the Digital Economy Act for example).
Broadly I think the recent changes are good – I’m pleased that Pornhub has a more robust upload policy in place, and I am pretty sure they’re extending this to other sites in the Pornhub network.
(So if you’re tweeting ‘lol I’ll just go find what I want on YouPorn’ then lol, no you won’t. PornHub and YouPorn are both owned by parent company MindGeek, and The Verge is currently reporting that the policy will apply to all MindGeek sites.)
But I can’t just say ‘yay!’ without addressing the nuance here. I always get frustrated by the porn discussion being distilled into ‘porn is good’ or ‘porn is bad’ that I’d be letting myself down if I addressed this massive change with the same level of simplicity. I’m glad that people are starting to realise that porn sites which allow ‘unverified uploads’ cannot truly be ethical or consensual, and I hope it encourages more people to consider where their porn is coming from, and pay the creators who are making the stuff you love. But this is a huge change which will have broad impact on the industry, so in this case my hot take just has to be ‘this is interesting, let’s see what happens next.’
7 Comments
Leaving aside this particular battleground of PornHub (on which I agree with all your points), it’s never a good thing for sex-positive people when Exodus Cry has a win. They have waged a very successful campaign to conflate all sex work, from porn up, as “trafficking,” because that’s an emotive topic that middle America can get behind, with stories of doe-eyed underaged girls being snatched from Wal-Mart. In the past that’s led to SESTA/FOSTA which has forced sex workers into unsafe working conditions by removing their ability to advertise and screen clients online. Well-meaning individuals, wanting to end abuse, end up pouring support and donations into a scheme that actively inflicts it.
Going after consumer porn sites shows how deeply entrenched the Exodus Cry narrative now is – and I think in that light it is legitimate to ask why the supposedly anti-trafficking campaign is choosing to go against the targets it does, while ignoring other targets that have higher instances of the campaign’s supposed cause. Where Exodus Cry succeeds, they get bolder and more intrusive. Their next move won’t be an attempt to strip abusive content from Facebook, it will be another attempt to shut down platforms that provide a legitimate income for verified sex workers, perhaps OnlyFans. Abusive content will continue to be created and shared in places where the spotlight isn’t being directed by a well-funded pressure group.
And where Exodus Cry leads the US, so will the same backers seek to set up further operations of the same type here in the UK. Organisations like LGB Alliance, who are currently trying to drive a wedge into LGBTIAQ+ solidarity by making loud transphobic arguments, are using the same tactics as Exodus Cry.
This is one of those situations where I want all parties involved to lose – Mindgeek, Exodus Cry, and anyone creating and sharing abusive content. But only Mindgeek has actually lost here (it’s a no-score draw for abuse content sharers) and the win for Exodus Cry makes me truly anxious for sexual freedoms in the west.
Oooh, OK thank you Not The LBC Guy =) Let’s get stuck into this…
“it’s never a good thing for sex-positive people when Exodus Cry has a win. They have waged a very successful campaign to conflate all sex work, from porn up, as “trafficking,” because that’s an emotive topic that middle America can get behind, with stories of doe-eyed underaged girls being snatched from Wal-Mart. In the past that’s led to SESTA/FOSTA which has forced sex workers into unsafe working conditions by removing their ability to advertise and screen clients online. Well-meaning individuals, wanting to end abuse, end up pouring support and donations into a scheme that actively inflicts it.”
Broadly agree, although ‘it’s never a good thing for sex-positive people when Exodus Cry has a win’ gave me pause – the fact is that Exodus Cry (and ANY org which is anti-porn) will by default also hate porn companies which are doing actively bad things. So anyone who wants to critique certain sites or practices within the porn industry will always occasionally find that they cross over with the anti-porn crowd, by definition.
I think one of the key problems here is something which benefits both Exodus Cry *and* Pornhub, namely the conflation of ‘porn’ with ‘free tube sites.’ Pornhub wants us to lump them into a broad category of ‘adult’ so they can say ‘aha! They’re coming for us first but it’s *all* adult content next’, and Exodus Cry want to do the same because … well… PH is right and that’s exactly what they wanna do. But we need to resist this strongly. Pornhub is not ‘porn’: it is one site with some really atrocious and exploitative business practices. ‘Free porn’ tube sites which follow the same model also have these exploitative business practices, and I think any sex-positive people who care about consent and want people to be able to enjoy porn (like me) need to be able to rip the definition of ‘porn’ away from free tube sites. Free tube sites are not the only way to access porn, and in fact there are many far more ethical ways to access porn.
So. Yeah, sometimes you’re going to end up (kind of) celebrating things that EC are also celebrating, but for vastly different reasons. It means it’s vital that the narrative around porn is shaped by people who are broadly welcoming of adult content and supportive of sex work, rather than letting EC control the narrative – which will inevitably turn into ‘porn is bad and inherently exploitative.’ So when things like this happen, it’s not enough (I don’t think) to say ‘argh, this is motivated by card company overreach and the religious right, *therefore it is bad*’, it’s important to say ‘this is being done for really dodgy reasons, which may well have huge negative impact on ethical porn companies, but broadly we should welcome any move that challenges the idea that ‘free porn’ tube sites can exist in an ethical way.’
“Their next move won’t be an attempt to strip abusive content from Facebook, it will be another attempt to shut down platforms that provide a legitimate income for verified sex workers, perhaps OnlyFans. Abusive content will continue to be created and shared in places where the spotlight isn’t being directed by a well-funded pressure group.”
Yep, you’re absolutely right – they will absolutely not be targeting FB next, but that’s why the Pornhub response of ‘well you’re not doing this to Facebook’ is an argument I think we need to utterly reject. Again, because it’s in Pornhub’s interest to point to larger *non-adult* platforms, thus cementing the idea that they are the definition of ‘porn’ or ‘adult’. If there is this kind of mission creep (which I fully agree with you – EC would like very much) then that will largely benefit PH. Anything which impacts other adult sites, even ones which have ethical practices, means all adult sites get fucked and PH can maintain its dominance. So again, it really benefits PH for us to buy into the argument that it is the canary in the coalmine for all adult sites. But… it really genuinely doesn’t have to be. We can hold the line on ‘porn sites should not allow unverified user uploads’ without also making the huge, ridiculous, entirely unethical leap to ‘payment processors should withdraw services from all adult sites.’ And I think it’s important we do this, otherwise the argument just descends into ‘all porn is good’ or ‘all porn is bad’ again.
“This is one of those situations where I want all parties involved to lose – Mindgeek, Exodus Cry, and anyone creating and sharing abusive content. But only Mindgeek has actually lost here (it’s a no-score draw for abuse content sharers) and the win for Exodus Cry makes me truly anxious for sexual freedoms in the west.”
As to the winners and losers: there are many many porn producers who will see this as a win. For years, people who make porn have been campaigning for PH to *do something* about the fact that their content is repeatedly copied, uploaded and shared on the site. And as for abuse content sharers – it really isn’t a ‘no-score draw’, one of the biggest porn sites *in the world* has now added one extra verification step (potentially not enough – see Ms Naughty here: https://twitter.com/msnaughty/status/1338646298606518272), which is no small thing. On top of this, victims of abuse content, revenge porn etc, can now be slightly more confident that the videos of them which they do not want public have actually been taken down, and cannot be reuploaded by people who haven’t verified their accounts.
[Edited to add – not ‘one of the biggest porn sites’ but ‘one of the biggest *networks* – it’s not just PH, apparently these changes are being rolled out across all Mindgeek sites which have a huge slice of the porn traffic/attention on the web]
So yeah, hmm. I agree with you on some of this, but I think it really is more complicated than just ‘EC like this therefore it’s bad’, there’s a lot of nuance here and I think we can (and always should) welcome better and more ethical practice in the porn industry, the sooner the better to avoid people like EC getting hold of the narrative and being able to beat *all porn producers* over the head with ‘but think of the children.’
[I’ve made a teeny tiny edit to your comment for libel reasons, soz, feel free to email me if you’d like me to explain!]
This was a very thoughtful piece, GOTN. It certainly got me thinking about the underlying issues.
While the removal of unverified content is clearly a big positive step, like you I am worried about how this has come about and the “porn=bad” narrative that underpins it.
I’ve just started out writing erotic fiction, and it already feels insecure enough, with the worry that retailers may reject my work for crossing some line of propriety that doesn’t really understand the medium, what I want to write or my readers want to read. I fear that, if the pendulum swings towards outright censorship again, we may see swathes of adult content being driven away from the light, and I don’t think this is healthy.
Written adult content cannot – of course – directly cause harm in its production, so it differs from the unverified Pornhub content in that respect, but if as you suggest the attack is less founded on the harm and more on prurient moral preaching, then the risk to producers across all adult media (including bloggers) may be the same.
Actually, I just had a thought about how written adult content could cause harm, and now have the vision of a filth-writing sweatshop, with a whip-wielding supervisor screaming “Write more cocks! More cocks I tell you!”
Good and in-depth analysis in this blogpost, and your comment above. I don’t have much to add to it, since I basically agree, but I’m sure this response is far more nuanced and insightful than the simple ‘yay’/’boo’ hot takes you might find elsewhere.
Personally, I see MindGeek’s action as extremely welcome and long overdue, even if they took it for the wrong reasons. As you say, they are a company none of us should have any sympathy for – personally, I’d be entirely happy to see them go bust and the whole PH ‘family’ of sites shut for good. And if that puts me standing alongside some highly dubious conservative religious bigots, so be it.
Again, as you say, the crucial thing is that we distinguish PH and its ilk from ‘adult sites’ more generally, because the vast majority of porn sites are far more responsible with how they handle uploads and problematic content. It’s precisely *because* PH was so irresponsible and shameless about the content they host that they got so big. The same is true of course of YouTube, Twitter and Facebook; but I agree that hosting sexual content raises particularly important obligations, and compels hosts to act with more responsibility, because of the sheer harm it can cause when it’s not consensual.
It might well be that this is the first step in a journey towards greater regulation of Internet companies, and stronger moderation requirements on sites hosting user-generated content. If so, I’d support that, though that’s a debate far beyond the scope of this blog. If this does instead become the first step (or second, or twenty-seventh) in a war on porn sites instead, then I’ll oppose it, and defend all the responsible, ethical companies out there as best I can. But regardless of that, for now MindGeek makes a richly deserving first target.
“It’s precisely *because* PH was so irresponsible and shameless about the content they host that they got so big.”
Exactly this! Even if now PH has to remove all unverified vids, they have still received the astonishingly massive traffic growth and user engagement they already have by virtue of the fact that they’ve been allowing all this in the past. MG’s sheer size – and the fact that they’ve subsequently been able to expand and buy up lots more porn real estate – is partly down to the policies they’ve had on these tube sites for so long. So yeah, little sympathy for them.
A few people on twitter have pointed out that creators who have uploaded and lost work are struggling, and I do have a lot of sympathy for those whose work has been removed or channels for marketing/selling their own work have been lost. But again here, I think the blame lies squarely at the feet of Pornhub, who if it cared about creators would have been considering these issues long before the card companies forced their hand.
Thank you for joining in – it’s always good to hear your thoughtful responses to this stuff!
Actually, I just had a thought about how written adult content could cause harm, and now have the vision of a filth-writing sweatshop, with a whip-wielding supervisor screaming “Write more cocks! More cocks I tell you!”
A sweaty cock shop. Now that’s what the world needs right now.
This whole shitbucket reminds me of how the editor of the Daily Star got fired after publishing a 15 year old girl (I almost remember her name, shame on me) naked, with her hands over her nipples and the slogan “When she’s 16 in 3 days time we can show you her nipples!”. Why did he lose his job? Because Tesco withdrew their advertising contract.
We’re due a good flood …
Please replace “Tesco’s” with “Tesco”. I don’t think I could live with the apostrophecal shame …