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Seen this thread going around, but it seems like it skips over the important bit.
> So why the rule changes? Because last December the New York Times published an opinion piece by Nick Kristof caller “The Children of Pornhub” that accused the site and its parent company of profiting off revenge porn, child porn and sex trafficking.
How do you get from 'opinion piece in a newspaper' to 'gigantic transnational financial infrastructure company changes its rules'? In my experience, huge companies do not make changes like this purely on the basis of newspaper columns.
Was there legal advice? Political pressure? Regulatory pressure? All of those would be much more material than a piece in a newspaper.
It's the same crap as the ad-pocalypse.
Journalists with an agenda use a disingenuous tactic, if they have a problem with a person or entity, they'll call up their sponsors, business partners, vendors, etc, and say "we're writing an article on X's platform which has been found to have (controversial material framed in a negative context), are we to believe that you're supportive and would your company care to comment." This leads to the company panicking, going completely defensive, and killing all contracts, services, and pulling sponsors or place of employment from the person whose being targeted in what is often just a hit piece with unverified out of context accusations. So yes, journalists, especially those that work for outlets like the NYT's can have someone's sponsors, money streams, etc pulled out from them by asking so called "innocent" questions in a passive aggressive way. They've done this numerous times not even giving those accused to respond, sometimes the article never even comes out. It's one of the abuses of power you can see in journalism today, where agenda driven journalism is used as a weapon to get someone removed from society, bank accounts closed, etc. Some targets are too big for it to work, or can lose a few sponsors, but they do it all the time.
No. If a journalist asking uncomfortable questions about your business endangers your business, then the problem is not the journalist, the problem is your business.
If a journalist blows a story out of proportion, then usually nothing happens and the story is forgotten after a few months.
But in the porn hub story, the uncomfortable truth is that there was a lot of involuntary porn on the platform. The NYT story just made it a bit harder to ignore that uncomfortable fact.
And it's not like mastercard just changed their policy on a whim based on a single NYT story; credit card networks have always been known to kick all kinds of sex related services off the platform. Sex related businesses have been complaining about that for ever.
There's a difference between asking uncomfortable questions and asking loaded questions that misrepresent reality. The description of the CSAM & revenge porn issue in mainstream media painted the picture that this was a substantial portion of the site's content. In reality few would ever encounter such content, and PornHub did everything feasible to try and remove and report it. No joke, outlets highlighted the fact that "dozens" of instances of this kind of illegal content was found as though this was some kind of epidemic. The fact that incidents measure in the dozens, when 6.8 million videos were uploaded to the site in 2019 alone[1] strikes me more as testament to the rarity of this content.
1. https://www.pcmag.com/news/pornhub-reveals-explicit-traffic-...
By tablespoon 2021-08-2017:241 reply > ...and PornHub did everything feasible to try and remove and report it.
That's demonstrably not true, since PornHub did do more in response to the mainstream media coverage (e.g. finally require some kind of age verification for uploaders and purge unverified content).
The only way they could be contextualized to have done "everything feasible" is within a fundamentally flawed model that they created, but it's precisely that model that needed to be reformed.
I stand by what I actually wrote: that they did everything feasible to remove and report illegal content. Having more extensive verification of uploaders does not an expanded effort to remove and report illegal content that gets posted, but rather an effort to prevent said content from being uploaded in the first place. And as you pointed out, this comes with tradeoffs in the form of a more onerous sign up process.
To be even more pedantic, they still haven't done everything they can do: they could shut down their whole site and eliminate 100% of illegal material with 100% confidence. Which, I suspect, is the goal of those propping up the narrative that PornHub was some sort of wild west where child pornography was welcome.
By tablespoon 2021-08-2018:052 reply > I stand by what I actually wrote: that they did everything feasible to remove and report illegal content.
I mean they didn't even do that. Wasn't their enforcement team pretty small? The original op-ed said it was ~80 people. In any case it was inadequate.
> but rather an effort to prevent said content from being uploaded in the first place.
PornHub chose a model that made it impossible for them to deal with their illegal content problem. The distinction between legal an illegal porn is often too subtle for any solution that just looks at the content or relies on "someone else" to do the work for them. That's the core issue. It's like a factory that dumps toxic waste into a river, and then "solves" that problem by building a little filtration plant far downstream of the factory that only filters a fraction of the river water, just upstream of some city. Their solution can't work, for reasons that should be obvious. The only solution that has any chance of working is filtering the waste before it goes into the river at all, and that's essentially what PornHub has started to do with their more-thorough vetting process.
Businesses don't have the right to make compliance optional or inadequate if it doesn't work for their business model. They have to pick a business model that can be compliant.
For the second time, out of the tens of millions of videos on the platform critics found illegal content numbering in the dozens. Their enforcement was sufficient to drive down illegal content to literally one in a million rate of occurrence. Weighted by number of views on videos, it's probably an even smaller fraction of that. The filter was sufficient to make illegal content something that the overwhelming majority of people - almost everyone - will never see when using their platform.
By comparison, critics described pornhub as:
> Human beings of all ages, races, genders, and sexualities are being abused while Pornhub pockets profits from selling said abuse and exploitation online. It's nearly impossible to stress strongly enough the fact that these cases are far from anomalies.
https://exoduscry.com/downloads/Statement-of-Inclusion.pdf
This is utterly disingenuous. If dozens of instances out of tens of millions isn't an anomaly, what is?
By tablespoon 2021-08-2018:25 > For the second time, out of the tens of millions of videos on the platform critics found illegal content numbering in the dozens.
Can you say that was all of it? Frankly, I don't see how anyone can have any confidence that PornHub's previous moderation practices were effective. Some of the stuff they have to remove is too hard to detect without context which is not present in the content itself. Also, those practices put the onus on the wrong party (e.g. forcing someone who had illegal or otherwise improper videos of themselves uploaded to find them and play whack-a-mole as they got reuploaded).
> The filter was sufficient to make illegal content something that the overwhelming majority of people - almost everyone - will never see when using their platform.
And now they have an even more effective filter.
And you're twisting the goalposts: "the overwhelming majority of people" aren't going to seek out illegal content, so talking about what the "majority sees" is actually ignoring the problem.
>Businesses don't have the right to make compliance optional or inadequate if it doesn't work for their business model. They have to pick a business model that can be compliant.
Not to be snarky, but isn't the the SV business model. Facebook 'are not a publisher', because editors cost too much. Uber are 'not an employer', because proper benefits cost too much..etc ad infinitum
By tablespoon 2021-08-2022:59 > Not to be snarky, but isn't [that] the SV business model. Facebook 'are not a publisher', because editors cost too much. Uber are 'not an employer', because proper benefits cost too much..etc ad infinitum
I totally agree with you, it is. Responsibility is a barrier to scaling and other selfish goals, so their "clever hack" is to try to be as irresponsible as they can get away with.
By colejohnson66 2021-08-2022:06 Doesn't make it OK
By crdrost 2021-08-2015:51 Thank you. Hearing these stories I always feel like commenters treat the companies involved as having no real agency.
“Of course the New York Times article came out, so even if the information was sensationalized or whatever, MasterCard had to cut them off... It was out of MasterCard’s hands...” No, they made a political-humanitarian choice to use their gatekeeping to influence the world. Same with Apple choosing to go to war with CSAM, we can talk about worries about their methods or whatever but these big companies are making their own choices and they could choose to just ignore the problems with marketing spend, do like Amazon does and purchase ads about how green they are and how they improve local communities and whatever. They chose to instead take their own moral stances and act accordingly, they weren't forced to by some article. And as far as I can tell it's not a purely calculated profit move either.
For that better OnlyFans and PornHub also have agency. So yes MasterCard is making a decision to put financial pressure on a sleazy industry overall, but then PornHub is making their own choices to screw over indie creators and bank on their bigger porn producers. They could instead say, “hey, the indie porn market is about to face this stressor, we could lean into it and become their main ally and then we will basically corner the market on the indie/amateur stuff as others flee.” The business case is not at all open-and-shut you-must-screw-over-the-indie-producers. The story link above acts like this decision was forced; that decision is not forced upon them either. OnlyFans doesn't have to stop doing adult content. They are choosing to pivot away, we'll see if their choice is successful.
I'm surprised the post didn't mention Operation Choke Point, an Obama era regulation that put more restrictions on payment processing for certain categories.
I think it's easy to point to "religious groups" and op-eds and not to the overall regulatory push into more aspects of the economy.
from the same article
> On August 17, 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice, under the Trump Administration, announced that the Obama Administration's Operation Choke Point would officially end, stating that it was hurting legitimate businesses instead of preventing fraud as intended.
maybe Biden has done something?
Or how NY Times framed it:
> Banks Tried to Curb Gun Sales. Now Republicans Are Trying to Stop Them. [0]
Corporations like predictability. When you see regulations going back and forth with administration to administration, companies just pick the worst case scenario and go by that. That's why you didn't see any cars lower fuel mileage just because limitations were lifted during the last administration. I imagine MC and Visa are definitely anticipating more restrictions and don't want to be caught flat footed.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/25/us/politics/banks-gun-sal...
I'm not sure that reasoning would apply to something like payment processing.
It absolutely makes sense when you are manufacturing a physical good. No point in designing a thing that you might not be able to sell for very long, particularly when you're dealing with something like automobiles. Plus honestly, which car buyer wants less miles per gallon?
Payment processing though is rather different. You can do it today and make some money, and tomorrow you can stop. It's obviously not quite so agile, but the point roughly holds. Unless Visa and Mastercard require years of payments from OF to pay for their costs of starting to do business with OF... there's no real point to not doing this now. They can stop later if needed without a real problem.
They'll preemptivly do it because the revenue is not a lot and the headache and worrying is not worth it. It's not black and white where something isn't allowed. There's likely more hoops you have to jump through. When it does get enforced its easier to just say we don't allow any transactions in that an even broader category than is currently being targeted.
And there isn't a button that says "exclude all payments in category [X]" that they can click and the next day they're cut off. It takes time, especially in a giant organization where there might be different regulations based on the content, jurisdiction, etc.
So it absolutely makes for them to cut it off preemptively.
By foerbert 2021-08-215:44 I still don't see it. These laws aren't going to sneak up on them. It's not like they're going to have 12 hours notice to categorize and terminate all accounts in some category.
Again it's not something that has much upfront cost nor do later products depend on the current decision.
OF was pulling in about $400M/year. If law changes were a serious risk here, how are they making any money at all? At least two years are probably dependable here. If the payment processor can't be profitable processing $800M over two years for a single account, I don't see how that business would work at all.
By smsm42 2021-08-2018:56 In a perfect world where all people are rational, and the media is largely truthful and professional, politicians are incorruptible and bound by laws, and businesses love to take care of their clients - sure, it may work that way.
In a real world, where people are prone to moral panics, the press is driven by clicks and agendas, politicians are corrupt and routinely abuse power, and businesses love to cover their asses - a single accusation in anything sex-related could cause a lot of damage to any business, whether truthful or not.
By jollybean 2021-08-216:56 "If a journalist blows a story out of proportion, then usually nothing happens and the story is forgotten after a few months."
Definintely disagree. Stories can be published that are sided, contain bad facts, are missing highly relevant facts, and the narrative can be set in the public consciousness as a matter of record forever.
By stjohnswarts 2021-08-211:19 That's not really a fair claim. Journalists are human and some will do anything to up their game whether they're being honest or not or can corroborate their story. Thus they call it an opinion piece rather than "news". Whether that's the case here is up to anyone who wants to research it.
By jbverschoor 2021-08-216:33 Except the ones that make them big $$$. Same with banks. It’s never about anything moral or legal.
It’s always a risk-reward issue. Banks are more than happy to work, as long as they can profit enough
"If a journalist blows a story out of proportion, then usually nothing happens and the story is forgotten after a few months."
This heavily depends on the audience. For example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_whistle_(politics) or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_on_Campus
By pc86 2021-08-2015:53 What exactly is the dog whistle here?
By justinator 2021-08-2015:418 reply That’s quite the axe to grind against journalists. Especially since their job is to ask questions. To think they’re a part of this mass conspiracy to take powerful entities down is laughable.
My partner, a journalist, has gotten death threats just by being at peaceful protests against certain groups that have wealth and pull in the community - just because members of that org were certain the journalist was the main provocateur. It’s just absolute paranoia. But it is a tell isn’t it? Maybe the rich and powerful should be worried about the common people learning about some truth that they invest a lot of resources to keep secret?
Also I think you may have to look and see how much journalists make. To be so entrenched in a mass conspiracy that takes down whole networks of industry, I’d negotiate a better salary then the equivalent of $20/hour.
By AnthonyMouse 2021-08-2016:231 reply > Also I think you may have to look and see how much journalists make. To be so entrenched in a mass conspiracy that takes down whole networks of industry, I’d negotiate a better salary then the equivalent of $20/hour.
This is like arguing that hooligans engaged in vandalism are virtuous because they're not millionaires.
You're failing to distinguish between journalists publishing a balanced truthful article in which the truth makes someone look bad, vs. "nice business you've got there, shame if someone were to publish a hit piece in a major media outlet."
>"nice business you've got there, shame if someone were to publish a hit piece in a major media outlet."
I might be misreading this, but are you implying that a subset of journalists perform investigative journalism to engage in blackmail rather than to follow-up on a lead or hunch?
I think it's interesting that people believe that this is the ambit of journalists rather than short selling investor relations groups where it is literally their job to publish hit pieces about companies that are hopefully flawed, while taking a short position on their equity.
By AnthonyMouse 2021-08-2222:02 > I might be misreading this, but are you implying that a subset of journalists perform investigative journalism to engage in blackmail rather than to follow-up on a lead or hunch?
It's not blackmail for money, it's blackmail for capitulation.
Suppose you have a dishonest journalist who thinks car companies should submit the location history of all their customers' vehicles to the FBI without a warrant.
You can't successfully advocate for that as government policy because it would violate the Fourth Amendment and anyway the public isn't likely to want that.
You can't use honest reporting to convince customers in the market to not buy a Ford just because Ford isn't doing that, because customers don't want to buy a car that constantly reports their location to the authorities without their consent.
But if you call up Ford and ask them some leading questions implying that you're going to publish a hit piece on them if they don't change their policy, now you're blackmailing them to change their policy. The point of the story isn't to inform the public of the company doing something bad, it's to coerce the company to change their policy under threat of slanted negative media coverage.
By totony 2021-08-2215:10 Being a journalist does not absolve you from wrongdoings. Wasn't the journalist who did the hit piece related to some religious anti-porn org?
By tomc1985 2021-08-2016:28 If a specific journalist has an axe to grind they don't need to be part of a larger conspiracy to ask damaging questions.
There are some people that enjoy the power trip of forcing the hand of large companies, and there are others that will get behind a cause dogmatically and are capable of inflicting extreme damage -- no conspiracy required.
That is what I suspect happened with that NYT piece, because its depictions of PornHub were distorted and off-base. And the damage stretches far and wide.
And judging by the Twitter thread this seems to be the case.
By throwaway306744 2021-08-2016:481 reply > My partner, a journalist, has gotten death threats
Sorry that happened to your partner.
I am surprised that death threats are still around. Is it not actually a crime or is anonymity so good that law enforcement can't trace them or do the recipients or police just not bother following up?
By jfengel 2021-08-2020:39 It's the latter two. It's generally out of the jurisdiction of local police departments, and the FBI doesn't have anywhere near the manpower to take every threat seriously.
Personally, I'd really like to see them put at least a little effort into it, to send the message that it is in fact illegal and you take at least some risk. As it is, people often make no real effort to disguise themselves, but get away with it because no authority cares enough as long as they don't commit actual violence. So they can shut down speech with impunity.
By mbesto 2021-08-2016:34 > To think they’re a part of this mass conspiracy to take powerful entities down is laughable.
I agree with your overall sentiment, but the fact that a journalist may make $20/hr is all the more reason for motivating them, individually, towards uncovering mass conspiracies. In other words, a large scandal no matter how true or not that garners a lot of attention is sure to lead to potential writing prizes, more compensation, bonuses, etc. So while I don't think every media company has some grand Murdoch-like figure that can play individual journalists like puppets, I do think there is a lot to be gained by an individual journalist leaning towards being overly harsh.
By antattack 2021-08-2020:40 Right, we should blame people who actually decide what gets published, not the messenger.
It's the publisher and owners who make that choice. In fact on occasion some publishers acquire exclusive rights to a story just to bury it: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/national-enqui...
By fennecfoxen 2021-08-2016:092 reply > Especially since their job is to ask questions.
That's a stretch. What else will you have us believe? That the New York Times intends to be a politically neutral voice of reason? No, sir. Maybe in the 1950s, maybe before the Internet, in those halcyon days when newspapers had a good slice of the nation's ad money and lots of competitors and earned money by attracting from a broad swath of readers to earn money from ads — instead of reliably enticing specific kinds of readers to pay for their content. [2]
The job description of contemporary journalists, and especially journalists at the New York Times, is to build narratives™ and use them to influence the world. That's what you'll learn about pursuing a modern journalism degree, and that's what will get you career success at the Grey Lady — doubly so since the Trump election. This is not a conspiracy theory against "the media" or even a secret; the Times has overtly published opinion articles to this effect [1], declaring this approach to journalism righteous and good, the appropriate approach for our times.
Maybe they're even right, and even if they're not, at least they're not Fox! But we're a long way from just "ask[ing] questions."
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/08/business/balance-fairness... to start with; one can find others, see also general coverage of the trends in pieces like https://www.city-journal.org/journalism-advocacy-over-report...
[2] From the City Journal piece above: "The intent of post-journalism was never to represent reality or inform the public but to arouse enough political fervor in readers that they wished to enter the paywall in support of the cause. This was ideology by the numbers—and the numbers were striking. Digital subscriptions to the New York Times, which had been stagnant, nearly doubled in the first year of Trump’s presidency."
By ditonal 2021-08-2016:15 Thanks for saying the hard things others are afraid of saying. It’s difficult to watch gems of American journalism flushes down the toilet in the name of activism such as the NYTimes. You’re right, its not a financial conspiracy, it’s an ideological one. Journalistic standards used to be about getting facts straight. Now it’s about narrative building.
The NYTimes fired an editor for publishing an opinion piece by a sitting US Congress person because that opinion upset people. And this is supposed to be the crown jewel of journalism and has turned into Huffington Post. Your downvotes and others defending modern “journalists” are delusional.
By tablespoon 2021-08-2017:371 reply > The job description of contemporary journalists, and especially journalists at the New York Times, is to build narratives™ and use them to influence the world. That's what you'll learn about pursuing a modern journalism degree, and that's what will get you career success at the Grey Lady — doubly so since the Trump election.
No, you're conflating different things. That's the job of an op-ed columnist, which is what Nicholas Kristof is. And frankly, that isn't new. It's been true since the invention of newspapers. An op-ed columnist the equivalent of a modern-day pamphleteer.
The news section is different, and it's job is to report facts. The news and opinion sections are run as totally different organizations in well-run newspapers, because their objectives are so different.
Also, City Journal is even more ideological and biased than the New York Times.
By fennecfoxen 2021-08-2017:541 reply > The news section is different, and it's job is to report facts. The news and opinion sections are run as totally different organizations in well-run newspapers.
You have definitely described an ideal. It's a reasonable ideal, even when those who follow it fall short. But do you actually contend that this ideal is shared by those at the New York Times and do you feel your words describe their newsroom accurately? That is the specific paper before us, after all.
> Also, City Journal is even more ideological and biased than the New York Times.
Perhaps so! Sometimes this is a positive feature; those who are biased do have an incentive to investigate facts, and uncover the truths their enemies would prefer to remain hidden. No doubt that this has been a major reason for the New York Times' success with their coverage on Trump, which contains many damning facts.
Is this a positive feature insofar as this article on OnlyFans is concerned?
By tablespoon 2021-08-2018:17 > Perhaps so! Sometimes this is a positive feature; those who are biased do have an incentive to investigate facts, and uncover the truths their enemies would prefer to remain hidden. No doubt that this has been a major reason for the New York Times' success with their coverage on Trump, which contains many damning facts.
It's an interesting observation that the people who have an axe to grind about, say, the New York Times being "biased" very frequently do not live up to their own purported ideals of neutrality nearly as well as the NYT does (i.e. the critics are hypocrites who are salty that someone dares to speak a different opinion than them).
By throwaway894345 2021-08-2016:261 reply It doesn’t require a conspiracy, the parent postulates a single journalist at a prestigious publication.
By mcphage 2021-08-2019:20 Well, in this case, it was an opinion piece, not a journalist. And they definitely do have an axe to grind.
Let's look at this from the reverse angle:
Did PornHub have revenge porn, child trafficking, etc. on the site? Yes. The twitter thread concedes this point. So this isn't "just a hit piece with unverified out of context accusations". Is that fair game to report on? I'd certainly say it is.
If you're going to publish a potentially explosive article about something, is it better or worse to reach out to sponsors, partners etc proactively to get their reaction in the published piece, or should you surprise them with it? IMO the former makes sense. To suggest that these sponsors would somehow not be at all affected if a reporter didn't call them up doesn't match with reality at all. We've seen too many viral boycotts to count at this point.
> They've done this numerous times not even giving those accused to respond
Well, how long is long enough? If you were required to wait for someone to respond before publishing it would be a fantastic stalling tactic, wouldn't it? You could just keep putting it off and off.
The problem here, IMO, is twofold: there is a payment processing duopoly, and societal mores are still very puritanical. These are the cause of the problem, not the article. Yes, Kristof wrote an article that resonated with those two factors but what's the alternative, not publish controversial stories that might have a negative effect?
> Did PornHub have revenge porn, child trafficking, etc. on the site? Yes.
Does Facebook have revenge porn, child trafficking, etc. on the site? Yes.
I don’t understand the point… journalists shouldn’t report on child trafficking content unless they catalogue every instance of child trafficking content on the internet?
By rkk3 2021-08-2320:34 Every instance? FB and the other social companies are the worst offenders.
By scoopertrooper 2021-08-2015:314 reply It's easy to criticise the article in general terms, but what specifically did you find problematic with the article itself?
Go ahead and have a read, I'll wait.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-ra...
There is nothing wrong with the article (from memory, I read it some time ago), the problem is going from "there is a small minority of users who abuse user-generated content platforms" to "zomg, this platform is a horrible and encouraging all sorts of illegal things!" One does not follow from the other. The problem with the article isn't that it exposed a problem, that part was excellent journalism, the problem is also that it advocated for all sorts of companies to boycot PornHub, as well as being laced with a kind of accusatory attitude towards PornHub I don't much care for, almost as if PornHub themselves uploaded the videos.
The same problem exists on YouTube, Twitter, reddit, and even Hacker News to some degree. Of course, being a text-only platform makes the scope a lot less dramatic, but I've seen some people advocate for violence against certain groups and the like. I'm sure dang can tell you about some of the horrible things he's had to ban people for.
This is a difficult problem to solve, I don't really have a good solution for this, I'm not sure if anyone does. I do know that private companies acting solely in their own interest acting as custodians of what is and isn't allowed based on what does and doesn't generate "negative publicity" is most definitely not a good solution.
How often do we see "{YouTube,Apple,Google,...} blocked my account and is threatening by business and I don't have a good recourse"-stories on HN? Too often, and those are just the ones that manage to get publicity. There is often no good recourse to address mistakes or really get a good impartial judgement on things that might be on the border.
You might say "these are private companies and can reject the customers they want, you don't have a right to do business with them", well, fundamentally I don't really disagree with that, but a lot of these companies are monopolies or duopolies they can really have a big impact and even make basic participation incredibly hard or even impossible. Sometimes that's not a bad thing, but again, it doesn't seem to me that we really want to leave it up to private companies acting in their own interest to make these kind of decisions.
By squeaky-clean 2021-08-2015:582 reply I don't disagree with the article overall, but it is very sensationalized. Statements like this
> 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.”
imply Pornhub is going out of it's way to specifically monetize rape or child videos, when the truth is they monetize every single video on their platform. If it was as easy as creating some sort of child or rape filter and de-monetizing those videos as the sentence seems to imply they should be doing, they would just remove the videos entirely, not de-monetize them.
And the bit about related suggestions sort of implies to a non-techie that Pornhub employees are generating these suggestions, and it's not the only place in the article they make this point.
The reality isn't an evil mustache-twirling Pornhub employee sitting at a desk and brainstorming "Ah yes, if they searched for ‘Young Asian’ they probably want to search for 'young tiny teen. The reality is an algorithm detecting patterns in user searches, and some of those users are sick people, and there's basically no level of human moderation of videos or search terms happening at the scale of usage Pornhub gets.
Sentences like
> Mindgeek’s moderators are charged with filtering out videos of children, but its business model profits from sex videos starring young people.
Implies that Pornhub is getting a substantial amount of it's profit from illegal porn, which I highly doubt is the case and the article provides no evidence of.
Again, I agree overall with the content of the article, and approve of Pornhub's reaction to only allow verified videos (which was suggested by the article). I'm not angry at Nicholas Kristof for sensationalizing some things, as it appears that is what it took to actually make something happen. But the article is definitely skewing towards misleading in some sections to get more reach.
By PastaMonster 2021-08-2018:16 The problem is real amateur porn were kicked out because many feared to get verified which means people seek other less reputable sites to upload their videos on. Sites which some don't care about if it's legal or not like pornhub did and of course people will flock to sites that provide what pornhub destroyed. So many shady porn sites will get an income boost from what pornhub did in panic. Would you consider that a win since you agree with the verified only move? I definitely don't. It was a very bad move without any consideration of the consequences. You're supposed to support good sites. What pornhub was. Now it's just filled with professional garbage. I've been on these sites and stumbled upon illegal stuff. I never did that on pornhub. Nicholas Kristof only made the problem much worse. Journalists never consider the consequences. They only care about writing hit pieces.
This all seems extremely hand-wavey to me.
> the bit about related suggestions sort of implies to a non-techie that Pornhub employees are generating these suggestions
They are, in a sense. They're not actively doing it in person but the code they wrote is generating those suggestions. Changing the code is within their power, yet they don't. If the code processing payments accidentally started charging everyone $0 you can bet it would get fixed pretty quickly. Why not fix the code that suggests rape videos?
> The reality isn't an evil mustache-twirling Pornhub employee sitting at a desk and brainstorming "Ah yes, if they searched for ‘Young Asian’ they probably want to search for 'young tiny teen. The reality is an algorithm detecting patterns in user searches, and some of those users are sick people, and there's basically no level of human moderation of videos or search terms happening at the scale of usage Pornhub gets.
"We created a feature that can be actively harmful, but there's no way for us to moderate it. Oh well!". Wouldn't it be better to just... not have that feature? Why isn't it an option to just turn it off?
By squeaky-clean 2021-08-2016:40 > Why not fix the code that suggests rape videos?
None of those titles say rape or child in them, and the article already covered that they have a blacklist of search terms. Ever played a videogame with a censored wordlist for profanity? People will still find a way to call you a racial slur, even if it involves some really creative uses of text to get around the filter.
> Wouldn't it be better to just... not have that feature? Why isn't it an option to just turn it off?
Related searches in a search engine is a pretty core feature, and it's not like it prevents people from just coming up with related searches with their own mind and typing them in manually. And your statement sort of applies to every facet of Pornhub. Uploading user submitted videos can be actively harmful. Comments can be actively harmful.
Edit to respond to this bit:
> Changing the code is within their power, yet they don't.
I'm pretty certain it's not just taking search term and running it through a thesaurus or something like that. It likely correlates searches from users that make similar search terms. The code isn't really generating any suggestions, just aggregating correlated search terms. I don't have hard proof of this of course, but it's a very common implementation for related searches.
> Why not fix the code that suggests rape videos?
Deciding what is and isn't rape is an AI-hard problem.
Pornhub literally hasn't even let you search "rape" in years. Go ahead and search it. 0 results. This precedes the now infamous editorial. Same with "forced" and "brutal".
By arp242 2021-08-2210:11 Consensual non-consensual (CNC) and even "rapekink" is a thing. There is nothing wrong with videos having "rape", "forced", or "brutal" in it as long as everyone performing is doing so out of their own free will.
This is a bit akin to saying that a film like reservoir dogs encourages theft, torture, and murder.
You may not like it personally, and that's perfectly reasonable, but a lot of people – men and women alike – do.
By shadilay 2021-08-2121:34 This doesn't help, just ask Winnie the Pooh. (Xi) People are very creative with language to get around filters.
By afavour 2021-08-2016:58 So it being difficult is enough to absolve the company of responsibility?
By neolog 2021-08-2022:36 The article uses innuendo to suggest that nonconsensual videos were very popular on the platform and that its proposed policies will improve performers' conditions. These questions are not seriously examined, but the article is focused on sensational stories and big numbers while skipping context and consequences.
https://newrepublic.com/article/160488/nick-kristof-holy-war...
By gamblor956 2021-08-2019:56 Nick Kristof is an opinion writer, not a journalist. His job is literally to write his opinions and "The Children of Pornhub" piece was published in the opinion section of a once-weekly non-news supplemental publication.
Defending CP and revenge porn is such an odd hill to die on.
Please tell me what was wrong about the NYT's opinion piece? That it painted a visceral picture of a literal child whose exploitations continued to be put on PornHub to profit off of?
You give a lot of generic accusations without anything substantial.
Are you upset that companies now have to answer for their actions? Why is that a bad thing? A private company isn't a government, if MasterCard or Visa doesn't want to do business with certain risk prone sectors why should they be forced to?
Your reason for being upset is frankly odd and extremely dismissive of real issues, that companies are profiting off of CP, but decide to get upset that a news story can effect the public zeitgeist?
By atty 2021-08-2015:33 Because MasterCard and Visa are essentially a global duopoly - they most certainly should not be allowed to discriminate against any legal industry, even if it is extremely high risk. Because that leads to very serious harm for people who legitimately work in those industries. It should be as hard for MasterCard or Visa to not serve a company as it is for a utility to turn off the water to a home.
To play the devil's advocate. Let's say a columnist in the WSJ wrote a piece with a bunch of first hand stories of people who were murdered by ex-cons who had been released early. And as a result the decarceration movement was stalled. Would you be okay with that? Anecdote focused reporting is very manipulative. Aggregate statistics matter. Context matters. Knock on effects matter.
By MichaelGroves 2021-08-2017:59 > Would you be okay with that?
What does it even mean to be "okay with that" in this context? I certainly think it should be legal for newspapers to publish opeds arguing for harsher sentencing, just as it should be legal for newspapers to publish opeds calling for more lenient sentencing. I am okay with both. If I said it was only okay when I happened to agree with it, that would make me an authoritarian.
All the people hand-wringing about newspapers advocating against causes they believe in should spend less time wishing their opponents didn't exist, or weren't permitted to speak, and spend more time writing advocacy articles of their own. If you think anecdotes are more effective than statistics, then go dig up some anecdotes of your own. You're never going to stop your opponents from using anecdotes.
By Stevvo 2021-08-2015:28 Nobody is defending CP and revenge porn.
Commenter above isn't defending those things though... And in fact revenge porn, CP and other awful content appear across all social platforms. And just like Pornhub they remove them when notified. Thought experiment, what happened to piracy when Napster shut down? What would adding subscription options and regulating Napster have done. Would it have created spotify a decade earlier and disincenvtised the development of Gnutella, bitorrent etc?
Right now we have a moral panic, fuelled by a microscopic proportion of content on a site, being used to fuel laws and economic exclusion to remove freedom of action from an entire industry. The consequences are, if not obvious, entirely predictable. Porn will balkanise, and what regulation exists (very strict in its production, relatively strict in its dissemination) will disappear. Sites like only fans being shut down - as with backpage, will force sex worker into enormously more dangerous street work, and ultimately lead to a vast amount of exploitation. And all this will happen, in practice not to protect the vanishingly smaller numbers of trafficked women, or children who appear on these platforms. But because an ungodly coalition of rabbidly anti-porn, anti-sexwork Christian fundamentalists, and anti-porn, anti-sexwork radical feminists have undue political influence.
By scoopertrooper 2021-08-2016:021 reply > While Pornhub would not tell me how many moderators it employs, I interviewed one who said that there are about 80 worldwide who work on Mindgeek sites (by comparison, Facebook told me it has 15,000 moderators). With 1.36 million new hours of video uploaded a year to Pornhub, that means that each moderator would have to review hundreds of hours of content each week.
So, this article alleges that MindGeek only hires 80 moderators to monitor million of videos being uploaded each year despite taking in 460 million dollars in revenue? That's pretty damning, if true. It's little wonder so much is getting through.
You refer to the amount of problematic content as "microscopic" and "vanishingly small", but on what basis do you believe that? On one hand we have an article filled with some pretty horrific examples of abuse being broadcast on PornHub, on the other I guess we have your gut feeling about this whole thing?
> Thought experiment, what happened to piracy when Napster shut down? What would adding subscription options and regulating Napster have done. Would it have created spotify a decade earlier and disincenvtised the development of Gnutella, bitorrent etc?
I don't even know what you're trying to say here. Sites like PornHub already adopt a model that fairly closely resembles Spotify when you think about it. In any event, it sounds almost like you're making the argument that a little child abuse is just the price we need to pay for innovation. No thanks.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-ra...
By jimnotgym 2021-08-2019:26 > , this article alleges that MindGeek only hires 80 moderators to monitor million of videos being uploaded each year despite taking in 460 million dollars in revenue?
>there are about 80 worldwide who work on Mindgeek sites (by comparison, Facebook told me it has 15,000 moderators).
'In the last three years, Facebook self-reported 84m instances of child sexual abuse material. During that same period, the independent, third-party Internet Watch Foundation reported 118 incidents on Pornhub.'[0]
Facebook's revenue is about 94 billion.
It makes me feel like Facebook should have around 200x the number of mods that pornohub do based on revenue (pretty close, well done ph), or 700k more based on reported instances of CSAM (nowhere near)
0: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/dec/14/pornhub-p...
By chiefalchemist 2021-08-2016:131 reply Pardon the editorial / rant but we need to all mitigate our promotion of newspeak (read: language abuse).
Point here being, anyone doing this is not a journalist; the scenerio described is not journalism. In using the word it belittles and compromises the trust in legit journalism. And it gives the violators the privilege of the label without actually doing anything to live up to the definition of the word.
If your pet barks, do you call it a cat? It's not fair nor honest to call this type of schlock journalism.
While not bulletproof, this filter is handy.
By chiefalchemist 2021-08-2018:06 How is it HN can be relentless about accuracy and completeness but constantly allows newspeak to be normalized?
Yes. It does matter. Words matter. We can't giving a free pass to deceptive language and then expect change.
By unethical_ban 2021-08-2015:37 Before you wrote this manifesto, did you read the entire article by Kristof? I didn't think it came off as anti-sex, and I disagree with some of the points made by the OP.
I think that the MC and Visa duopoly that effectively governs what kinds of goods and services are permitted in society is immoral and concerning. I think the Kristof article and the Visa/MC issues need to be talked about separately.
By crazygringo 2021-08-2014:403 reply Honestly, in this particular case huge companies did make changes on the basis of this newspaper column. It's not common, but it's what happened here.
It was an incredibly visible and influential accusation that seemingly came out of nowhere from arguably the most prestigious newspaper in the country, and legitimate businesses like PornHub and MasterCard are terrified of brand association with child porn and sex trafficking -- if those stuck, it's corporate suicide.
You're right that most opinion pieces don't make a shred of difference. But this particular one, because of the seriousness of the allegation combined with its plausibility, did in a big way.
By throwaway306744 2021-08-2015:134 reply > businesses like PornHub and MasterCard are terrified of brand association with child porn and sex trafficking
With PornHub that makes sense because the type of content they provide is the crux of their businesss.
But does anyone care or know what MasterCard is associated with? I would not even think to blame PG&E for providing electricity, even if the recipient turned out to be doing some super illegal things with that electricity.
So I am not convinced by reputation damage to payment processors. I am more convinced by unacceptably high chargebacks and fraud, but even there it is hard to explain the about face that payment processors have made here. Curious!
By saddlerustle 2021-08-2015:27 The story [1] literally called them out: "And call me a prude, but I don’t see why search engines, banks or credit card companies should bolster a company that monetizes sexual assaults on children or unconscious women. If PayPal can suspend cooperation with Pornhub, so can American Express, Mastercard and Visa."
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-ra...
By aidenn0 2021-08-2015:22 If PG&E weren't compelled by law to provide their services to all, I know they would cave to similar pressure w.r.t CSAM...
"Your company provided the electricity to take these pictures. Now that you know are you going to continue to facilitate known predators?"
By NortySpock 2021-08-2015:251 reply > But does anyone care or know what MasterCard is associated with?
The average layperson would care if MasterCard got hit with a headline like:
"MasterCard processed payments for Very Bad People for months/years!".
Layperson: Guess I'm calling my congressman and switching to Visa!
I assume MasterCard would (a) retain some very good PR firms to assist with keeping their image clean and (b) distance themselves from anything that might tarnish their image, like, well, regular porn websites.
By jrwoodruff 2021-08-2015:381 reply Would they though? I very rarely consider which credit card processor I'm using - it's what card has the best interest/rewards/whatever, or what logo does my personal bank use on their debit cards. It's not like I can go to my bank and say "I'm done with the mastercard debit card, give me your visa debit card please"
By NortySpock 2021-08-2016:472 reply > it's what [credit] card has the best interest/rewards/whatever
...and doesn't have a reputation in the toilet.
Would you get a SatanCard(tm)? Generous 10% cash back rewards but we make our money by extorting the elderly, killing kids, addicting adolescents to hard drugs, profiteering on pollution in your hometown, kicking puppies on video, and if you die we come after your family for the money, regardless of local laws.
By jrwoodruff 2021-08-2018:04 I mean, I know it's not -at all- the same but that was kind of a staple for Bitcoin. Hasn't seemed to bother anybody...
By throwaway306744 2021-08-2017:51 I bet MasterCard and the others have profited from literally everything on your list. They are too big not to have.
By conductr 2021-08-2015:38 I feel like the better comparison is what happened with Craigslist and Backpage. Their elevator pitch business model sounded legit but anyone that sniffed around knew what the site was predominantly focused on. CL was more diversified in terms of site usage, revenue, etc and could easily just ban adult services when the heat turned up. Backpage was just a front for sex work. There was no material classifieds business beyond adult services. A small percentage which could potentially be of the trafficked variety that brought on the heat. They made some dumb choices that contributed to their demise but only because of the bullseye that was put on them by the trafficking rhetoric. It feels to me like OF has either been told an investigation is occurring/likely to occur and is trying to soften any future blows -or- they are just being proactive knowing that this risk is present and would kill their company if it came down to it.
You say "it's what happened here" and "But this particular one, because of the seriousness of the allegation combined with its plausibility, did in a big way" - but you haven't actually provided any evidence for it, just repeated assertions that it's true.
Can you show anything aside from just speculation?
By btown 2021-08-2015:18 This was posted in another thread here, but it seems that activist investor Bill Ackman was the link in this case, and his personal interest (and general notoriety for extremely aggressive attacks on companies he believes are vulnerable) almost certainly played a part in him making this a five-alarm fire at Mastercard:
> Ackman, who has four daughters, was outraged when he read how one teenager ended up a Pornhub victim... An influential shareholder activist, Ackman immediately thought about the growing interest in ethical, or ESG, investing... He was friendly with Mastercard’s then-CEO Ajay Banga, whom he had met through a mutual friend. Ackman texted Banga, providing a link to Kristof’s story with his tweet: “Amex, VISA and MasterCard should immediately withhold payments or withdraw until this is fixed. PayPal has already done so.” ... Banga quickly wrote back: “We’re on it.”
https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1s9f698vwhczr...
By crazygringo 2021-08-2014:572 reply It's literally been all over the news, with journalists and analysts directly linking the column with the changes at both PornHub in December and at MasterCard in April -- and these are the people who follow this professionally. You can Google it yourself trivially, you don't need to ask someone on HN to get it.
But if you somehow don't trust that and you're asking for someone to report on the confidential goings-on of internal meetings at MasterCard and nothing else will satisfy you, you're not going to get that here on HN.
By twic 2021-08-2016:53 > It's literally been all over the news, with journalists and analysts directly linking the column with the changes at both PornHub in December and at MasterCard in April
This is not evidence of a link. What they have said might contain evidence of a link, in which case i'd be interested to hear it. But the job of talking heads on the news is to construct compelling narratives from facts they have to hand, regardless of whether those narratives are true, so the fact that they were talking about this is just noise.
Ok, well for those of us that didn't read the exact same set of articles you did, you sound like a guy making stuff up...so send some links.
By angus-prune 2021-08-2015:22 This article from December 2020 exactly supports what OP is saying- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/10/pornhub-mast...
Just like you, I hadn't read the exact same articles as GP. But I was able to find this article in seconds on google as GP suggested.
Given PornHub removed a bunch of videos after that article came out, it seems reasonable to conclude that either the article was responsible, or the article made the idea popular enough. At this point, I’m not sure what the difference is, but I am sure that people denying the article played a role are the ones speculating here.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornhub
> In December 2020, following a New York Times article on such content, payment processors Mastercard and Visa cut their services to Pornhub. On 14 December 2020, Pornhub removed all videos by unverified users.[15] This reduced the content from 13 million to 4 million videos.[16]
By throwaway444590 2021-08-2016:03 not just pornhub but from all their other sites too. huge amount of content vanished
By speeder 2021-08-2015:16
By afavour 2021-08-2015:51 > in this particular case huge companies did make changes on the basis of this newspaper column
Well, they made changes based on the popular reaction to a newspaper column. I’m not sure why you’d point fingers at the column when the obvious reality is that it simply reflects societal norms.
> How do you get from 'opinion piece in a newspaper' to 'gigantic transnational financial infrastructure company changes its rules'? In my experience, huge companies do not make changes like this purely on the basis of newspaper columns.
The amounts are minor as far as payment processors are concerned, but those payment processors want to avoid governments getting up their grill.
By acting "proactively" on anything which smells of controversial or bad PR (and nothing does that more than accusations of child trafficking, not even actual child trafficking), regulators see "self regulation" and go look at something else.
Very insightful comment. When you run a gazillion dollar company, you don't care about a billion here or there from porn sites, you care about not losing your gazillion dollar business. There are plenty of examples where CEOs were not conservative enough and it cost them big time - just look at Facebook's loosey goosey approach to political advertising, which in the end turned the entire country against them. From a business perspective, it's better to take a small financial hit but continue to run your business without any additional regulatory oversight.
By masklinn 2021-08-2015:53 > From a business perspective, it's better to take a small financial hit but continue to run your business without any additional regulatory oversight.
Indeed, staying on the down low and out of regulator minds (and crosshairs) is one of those "cost of doing business" things older companies do.
By YetAnotherNick 2021-08-2015:54 > The amounts are minor as far as payment processors are concerned, but those payment processors want to avoid governments getting up their grill.
The actual profit in this specific case might be small but there are lot of money in things related to adult content. They are all now looking for a trustworthy processor. Also even for non adult content lot of people will prefer having payment processing partner who will not kick you out based on some newspaper image. There are lot of grey area in most of the business, specially the biggest ones.
By chasd00 2021-08-2017:20 i think what they were really afraid of was a grass roots boycott. It's very easy for a consumer to cut up a mastercard and just use their visa. It's virtually impossible for a business to say "we accept all cc's except mastercard".
All it took was one useful billionaire...
https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1s9f698vwhczr...
By formerly_proven 2021-08-2014:582 reply > Mickelwait, however, says there was a “fatal flaw in that they put a download button on every video.” Under current law, any site that transfers pornographic content is responsible for verifying the age of the people in it.
> “Because they had a download button that actually transfers from their servers onto the devices of millions — I think it was up to 130 million a day in 2020 — of visitors to the site, they have been responsible this whole time for record keeping. So what that means is they violated the criminal code of the United States millions of times, tens of millions of times,” she says.
Is this actually true? How is streaming not transferring under the law?
Edit: This article is also interesting in that it characterizes Mickelwait as a "human rights activist" without mentioning Mickelwait basically being the COO of Exodus Cry, which is an anti-gay/abortion/LGBTQ group among other things.
By 0xcde4c3db 2021-08-2017:42 > How is streaming not transferring under the law?
I'm not sure if this has been tested in courts, but there seems to be a legal theory that a streaming function corresponds to broadcasting (only creating transient copies, if any, by default) while a download function corresponds to publication (creating a permanent copy by default). I'm not sure which definitions apply to 2257, but US copyright law says that copies are "material objects [...] in which a work is fixed". So if your system is only designed to transfer into volatile/transient storage, you can apparently argue that you're not responsible for creating copies. I suspect a similar distinction is being made here.
> Edit: This article is also interesting in that it characterizes Mickelwait as a "human rights activist" without mentioning Mickelwait basically being the COO of Exodus Cry, which is an anti-gay/abortion/LGBTQ group among other things.
This kind of laundering is common in opinionated outlets, and ostensibly neutral ones aren't immune either. Keep an eye out for sources being described with phrases like "concerned parent" or "concerned resident", for example.
By shrimpx 2021-08-2018:04 This is straight out of Silicon Valley the show, when they're giddy to see their daily active users skyrocket, only to realize that it's become a pedophile haven and they're liable for billions of dollars in back fines.
By ectopod 2021-08-2014:55 That's the problem with wealth inequality: outsize wealth comes with outsize political power. The money doesn't matter.
By throwawayay02 2021-08-2014:49 Insane.
By _fat_santa 2021-08-2014:092 reply You could say that the NYT piece was the spark that eventually led to the rule change. I doubt someone read the column and made the rule change immediately, but it probably sparked dialog within MasterCard that eventually led to the rule change.
The tweet that comes right after is much more relevant imo:
> One of the primary sources in Kristof’s article is Traffickinghub founder Laila Mickelwait. She also works for the group Exodus Cry, a Christian group that is among other things anti-sex, anti-homosexuality and, naturally, anti-semitic.
While the article itself was a spark, this group has been lobbying for years and pushing from every imaginable direction, including lobbying payment processors and suing companies left and right. So yes, the article was just one tiny piece of the puzzle, but Exodus Cry is the real puppet master.
By WillPostForFood 2021-08-2016:201 reply Are they anti-semitic, or is it just ad hominem?
By profgerm 2021-08-2016:58 I'm not terribly familiar with the group, but that whole list appears to be ad-hominems demanding absolute purity. Or at the very least should be taken with a large grain of salt.
I suspect the "anti-Semitic" bit comes from the founder comparing abortion to the Holocaust [0], which is... a deeply stretched interpretation.
As far as anti-LGBT goes... yeah, they're a conservative Christian organization, they're not likely to have a Pride float. But it's not a common "anti-" group that goes out of their way to have a Statement of Inclusion [1] included in their FAQs, in my opinion.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_Cry
[1]: https://exoduscry.com/downloads/Statement-of-Inclusion.pdf
By hulitu 2021-08-2016:41 Or was paid by these people to justify the purge.
According to the thread
> Which, to be clear, they kinda were. PornHub was notoriously bad among the tube sites for its reckless lack of content moderation and exploitation of the people whose videos ended up there. Because of the story, Visa and MasterCard both cut PornHub off.
This should be fairly easy to verify and would corroborate the thread
By lawtalkinghuman 2021-08-2014:50 NYT article came out on Friday, December 4.
By Thursday of the next week, December 10th, Visa and MC had cut them off. Discover had followed the next day, the 11th. The Washington Post article linked below includes a statement from MC which reads:
"Our investigation over the past several days has confirmed violations of our standards prohibiting unlawful content on their site. As a result, and in accordance with our policies, we instructed the financial institutions that connect the site to our network to terminate acceptance."
See: https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/pornhub-crack... and https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/12/10/pornhub-m...
By johnnyanmac 2021-08-217:231 reply The issue is that they "were" in the same way that the ocean does indeed "contain" fecal matter in it. I doubt their moderation was "reckless" For how many actual offending videos they are compared to the sheer amount of uploads the site had.
Any and all websites that allow user published content runs into this issue. It's just a matter of how fine a comb the investigations want to put on it.
By webkike 2021-08-2318:52 You’re missing that this is in comparison to other tube sites. There is a direct comparison here between the moderation or porn hub and other websites, and the claim is that porn hubs moderation was worse. It’s fine to say that content moderation is hard, but it’s much harder to justify doing a crappy job in comparison to other content moderators, especially those in the same space as you.
By MattGaiser 2021-08-2015:13 Child sexual exploitation is pretty much the worst thing you can do as far as society is concerned. Such people are considered low in prison.
So I think the possible brand damage alone could have caused a panic, simply because this particular type of damage could be absolutely horrendous.
The other question to ask is whether that piece came out of the blue or because someone was talking it up with Kristof. The author of that twitter thread thinks it’s inspired by an evangelical group (Exodus Cry) and it seems highly unlikely that they’d only be talking with him. It seems more likely that companies like MasterCard are hearing from them, politicians who are getting lobbied by their supporters, etc. and the NYT editorial was more like the final straw than the trigger.
It’s important to note that this isn’t wrong or malicious: many things most of us approve of (e.g. ending child labor, environmental reforms, banning dogfights, etc.) followed the same process. The concern is transparency and whether it’s effective at the stated goals: for example, I think trafficking is evil but I also think that the best way to support it is by ensuring fewer people are financially desperate rather than driving them underground where abuse is more likely and harder to prevent.
But the thread wasn't defending trafficking. It's claiming that the forces that push the anti-trafficking rules have a hidden agenda, which is not about trafficking at all: They want to get rid of the whole sex industry for religious reasons, specifically including the legal and consensual part. That's a different goal altogether.
The problem with that kind of argument is that these rules are what everyone pushes to deter traffickers. No one has seriously managed to come up with a viable alternate policy that averts this kind of collateral damage on bona-fide sex work. It's much like saying that all the efforts that are now saving elephants from being poached to extinction are just some shadowy "anti-ivory agenda" rather than being undertaken for the sake of the elephants. Terribly bad faith argument.
By johnnyanmac 2021-08-217:30 >The problem with that kind of argument is that these rules are what everyone pushes to deter traffickers.
yes,and I argue there is a severe amount of false negatives caught up in the crossfire because legal entities don't understand the scale of digital platforms. So these rules are made with no regards to how feasible they are and how big a problem this actually is.
Let's be honest here, the real silk road/black market aren't browsing Pornhub/OnlyFans to get their fix. This would be like money laundering on eBay. being on a big platform ruins the point.
>It's much like saying that all the efforts that are now saving elephants from being poached to extinction are just some shadowy "anti-ivory agenda" rather than being undertaken for the sake of the elephants. Terribly bad faith argument.
I don't really care about the intent to be honest. I just hate the loopholes over things that every digital platform needs to perform being taken advantadge of to cause these asinine decisions.
It's like throwing the baby out with the bathwater to kill a cockroach. The baby is hurt, the water is wasted, and the roach is probably still alive. I don't think it was a deliberate attempt to support baby murder, but the entire thought process was stupid and will spread to everything else in the house. While failing to kill any bugs.
By acdha 2021-08-2016:04 I’m aware: that’s the reason why I mentioned that topic - transparency is what helps the reader know why a topic is getting a spike in coverage and let’s them decide whether they share all of the goals of the groups pushing it.
> In my experience, huge companies do not make changes like this purely on the basis of newspaper columns.
You'd think, but no. In my experience working at a large tech company, executives cared a lot about what the New York Times in particular thought. A piece published by them would have immediate attention from those executives, and it'd be our problem to respond, even if the original article wasn't well founded. Once I figured out how much leadership cared about NYT, I even justified one engineering decision based on "what would NYT say". And it worked.
It doesn't surprise me in the least that MasterCard cares so much about what the NYT prints.
> Political pressure? Regulatory pressure?
You're on the right track. If you think (correctly IMO) that politicians and regulators read NYT, then pressure from these groups is going to come soon after the NYT piece is published. Best take action before that happens.
By Terretta 2021-08-2017:16 I intended to post this, but this is well said.
Such an article is forwarded to “leadership” and “the board”. Boards in particular, who hire and fire the leadership, prefer collecting advisory cheques without getting any side looks at the country club.
That's the first leap in logic, the second is this:
> The new MasterCard rules are a direct result of this, which basically means an overwrought Christian anti-sex fever dream is now dictating sexual content online.
That's right, the state of everything was "dictated" by a guy writing an article.
The article itself was also a side-effect, not the source. Exodus Cry has been lobbying everyone such as payment processors, rich donors, advertisers, as well as NYT (getting them to write the article).
So article wasn't the source, it was just another piece in the path of Exodus Cry's rampage. They have a huge legal team and they've been attacking this from every imaginable angle.
By ehsankia 2021-08-2020:35 I didn't claim it was necessarily paid, just that they were convinced or tricked into it. The piece itself isn't problematic at the surface, putting an end to human trafficking is a good thing, it issue is the people behind the organization and their motives, which NYT either didn't know or ignored.
I understand the thread, but if Kristof's reporting is accurate, then you can hardly blame him. He's not responsible if payment providers decide to freak out over potential liability. Or that OF can't figure out how to verify their creators.
By johnnyanmac 2021-08-217:38 I don't blame the reporting rather than usual human understanding that never learned how statistics worked.
Someone peed in the ocean and they are draining the entire sea to "fix it". That's not the fault of the pee-er nor even the person who yelled "someone peed". It's the fault of people who didn't understand what that meant before draining some 20% of the matter on earth.
Until that happens, pretty much every single website with user generated content is at risk in some degree.
>Or that OF can't figure out how to verify their creators.
OG does in fact verify every creator. The problem is no company at that scale is going to site down and review every single piece of content they post after that verification which may or may not include other participants that they could not verify. That's what this policy change wants to enforce (which any webmaster would know is prohibitively expensive to do without being Google).
By imglorp 2021-08-2014:08 Yes, there was funded pressure; see the tweet thread.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_Cry
“ Exodus Cry is a non-profit advocacy organization seeking the abolition of the legal commercial sex industry, including pornography, strip clubs and sex work, as well as illegal sex trafficking. The organization originally developed out of a weekly prayer group founded in 2007 by Benjamin Nolot, a filmmaker and member of the charismatic Christian International House of Prayer.”
By sschueller 2021-08-2015:562 reply Maybe we should get a law passed making it illegal to fund any non-profit church with a credit card...
By brodouevencode 2021-08-2016:481 reply In the churches of which I've been a member, most tithes and donations come in cash. More orthodox Christians won't even have credit cards because the consumerist nature is contrary to scripture.
By sschueller 2021-08-2017:47 OK, we pass strict money laundry requirements for non profit churches.
By hulitu 2021-08-2016:45 You cannot abolish the church.
By SauciestGNU 2021-08-2019:18 As an interesting aside, the Christian International House of Prayer was a substantial mover behind the proposed Ugandan law to execute LGBTQIA+ people.
By plusbryan 2021-08-2021:25 Agreed. Onlyfans is probably large enough that if they told their customers they could only accept visa or crypto payments that they would lose a lot less business than if they jettisoned their (core?) business.
In fact, MasterCard might lose enough business that they might reconsider. So this can’t be the full story.
By Mindwipe 2021-08-2014:18 Specifically the how is covered here.
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/bill-ackman-...
By jarcane 2021-08-2014:53 It's not entirely just because of the NYT article, but the article was the big PR victory for a massive and almost entirely fabricated campaign against Pornhub run by a religious wingnut masquerading as a human rights activist.
Kristof's piece wasn't the first I'd heard of the "Traffickinghub" campaign but it seemed to be the first time a lot of people around me did.
What wasn't widely known at the time was that basically all their "data" was either exaggerated or outright fabrication, with near-zero sources, and backed by religious fundamentalists. That didn't start coming out until the damage had already been done.
"Won't somebody think of the children?!" works every fucking time though.
By ballenf 2021-08-2015:52 I'd never heard of Exodus Cry mentioned in the thread, so looked at their website. They seem to have made themselves a target of accusations from Pornhub as a result of the NYT article. Here is their statement on the site that addresses some of the things presented as fact in the Twitter thread:
https://exoduscry.com/downloads/Statement-of-Inclusion.pdf
I'm sure there's much more to the story, but thought it worth at least looking at the vision, etc. from this company given the accusations made against them.
By relax88 2021-08-2014:52 By johnnyanmac 2021-08-217:13 >How do you get from 'opinion piece in a newspaper' to 'gigantic transnational financial infrastructure company changes its rules'?
Easy. the reporter isnt just launching the page and waiting for a reaction. They probably used those accounts to report to authorities and timed their story with an expected result from the investigation.
There's no magic to it except for the ability to post the news piece and have the public think "they are just reporting on it"
By runawaybottle 2021-08-2014:351 reply There’s more money to be made as an acceptable platform that isn’t seen as a porn site. Many women on Twitch already do sexualized streams. Twitch is not seen as taboo.
It’s just a bigger market when people can feel like they aren’t a complete sex worker, and can actually share that they are on OnlyFans, same way they can share their Twitch.
By colinmhayes 2021-08-2015:13 The not being seen as a porn site ship has sailed for OnlyFans.
Genuine question: are the payment processors legally exposed because of the purpose of transactions going on in their system? If so, this seems to be the main problem --I mean if social media platforms can absolve responsibility for content, Mastercard/Visa absolutely should as well....
By Scoundreller 2021-08-2014:441 reply The issue is that EU and Australia have regulated interchange fees for MasterCard/Visa, costing them gobs of money and value.
The US doesn’t need to fine or litigate them if they want to penalize them heavily, they can just pass a “consumer protection bill” (so Walmart and others can pay <1% instead of ~2% on all credit card payments).
By hocuspocus 2021-08-2016:412 reply The interchange goes to the card issuer, not to the scheme. Visa and MasterCard fees are the smallest part of the overall fee charged by the payment processor. (That said it might be higher in the US, I don't know).
By Scoundreller 2021-08-2017:33 A lot of the incentive to pay by card evaporates if the vendor pushes the fee to the customer.
The incentive to issue cards evaporates when there’s less fee to collect.
Both would be bad upstream for visa/Mc/Amex.
By JackFaker 2021-08-2020:43 Works mostly the same in the US
By dzonga 2021-08-2018:10 journalists, are in a position of major influence but never having skin in the game. these are the same NYT journalists wo advocated for the Iraqi war. yet never been to Iraq and speak of whiff or arabic. it's a system where itself reinforces, the gvt / other actors influence the media and the media influences policy. yet those people don't suffer any consequences at all. those are the same people at NYT that slandered Bernie and propped up HC and wake up amused that Trump won. I'm all for freedom of speech, however journalists should be held to a higher standard. coz honestly most journalists except the local ones doing groundwork are pure scum.
By stefantalpalaru 2021-08-2016:24 > Political pressure?
Probably. Hunter Biden had a PornHub account where he uploaded incest porn with his underage niece: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/10/huge-breaking-exclu...
>huge companies do not make changes like this purely on the basis of newspaper columns.
The same newspaper ran similar tactics against YouTube which resulted in colossal changes. These kinds of stories have an enormous impact, magnified I think by company's (in the case of YouTube, advertisers, in the case of OF, payment providers and investors) being terrified of snowballing bad PR in social media.
It's strange but in the modern world yes, 'old media' can have transformative impact on corporations.
By hulitu 2021-08-2016:47 it has nothing to do with media. They just use the media to justify their strategy.
By nonameiguess 2021-08-2014:173 reply At least this explains why normal porn sites keep living on perfectly well using MasterCard and Visa. They already have to follow regulatory requirements to demonstrate they are complying with age and consent laws, each video includes a front-matter frame saying where you can get the documentation of their compliance, and many include behind-the-scenes extra content showing all of the performers presenting government-issued IDs and signing consent forms.
This brings this conflict out of the realm of adult entertainment and into a broader conflict between incumbent central providers that are held to regulatory standards and apps providing a platform for individual contractors that don't follow those requirements. It's in the same field as people arguing AirBNB is only able to exist because it's allowing people to operate hotels without having to comply with hotel regulations, and Uber allows people to operate taxi services without complying with taxi regulations. OnlyFans was giving individuals a way to produce adult films without having to comply with adult film regulations related to age and consent verification of the performers.
If that's the case why can't OF impose these requirements on their creators?
Presumably because of the costs of verification and record keeping.
A single adult video studio might have a maximum of a few hundred people who they have to keep records for. Those people are paid per shoot, and the content is owned by the studio. There is a high ratio of revenue to number of people whose records must be kept.
On OnlyFans, they have a huge amount of people producing a small volume of content and making very little money, of which they only get a cut.
By PoignardAzur 2021-08-2019:592 reply That can't possibly be it. We're talking about a billion dollars business burning its main revenue source to the ground, and the main reason would be that they can't afford to do the easily-automated paperwork? The math doesn't make sense.
By johnnyanmac 2021-08-217:44 >that they can't afford to do the easily-automated paperwork?
if this tweet is true, that's the issue. they don't want just automated paperwork:
>, but review all posted content before publication, including real-time review of livestreams
It's virtually impossible to discriminate criminal content with an algorithm (and extremely hard to even with a human, but I disgress. This policy isn't rooted in logic to begin with), so any non-professional studio is basically being demanded to have some massive team pre-screen every single piece of content before it lands on site. The labor would either be massive and/or they'd have to massively delay how quickly the site can deliver content.
Imagine needing to wait in a queue for 1-4 weeks before a single post can be shown publicly. That's unacceptable in modern websites. And expesnsive in 2 ways.
By throwawayboise 2021-08-2015:55 Exactly. It would change OnlyFans from an almost no-overhead (just servers and storage) business to one that would need a huge increase in staff (payroll, offices/equipment, benefits, etc) to do the verification reviews, as well as a bigger HR deparment to handle the recruitment and hiring of these people. Their overhead costs would explode.
By that_guy_iain 2021-08-2016:05 Also, they need to view the footage before it's published. Studios do this when they're editing it. It's literally part of their process. A big one will deal with processing four 60 minute videos a day maybe? Onlyfans would presummely be dealing with multiple minutes of footage per minute of the day they would need to screen.
By bob33212 2021-08-2016:02 The reason some creators use OF is because of the convenience. If you make it takes weeks and tons of work to get on the platform, they might as well start their own site.
Also from a legal perspective it is very risky to take on that liability for so many creators. All it would take is one screw up on checking date of birth on an ID, and now OF is accessory to sex crimes.
By Siira 2021-08-2417:14 Considering there is no garbage collection for regulations, and incumbents apply huge pressure to further entrench bad tradeoffs, I see apps that subvert the laws and demonstrate immense benefits to both the workers and the consumers as positive trends.
By Notanothertoo 2021-08-2014:27 Uhh pornhub takes btc and ach only
By cataphract 2021-08-2013:425 reply Aren't the payment processors not abusing their dominant position, like what happened a decade ago with Wikileaks? At least at that time they had the excuse they were pressured by the US government. What's motivating them this time? Do we need some sort of liability safe-harbor for payment processors?
By elmo2you 2021-08-2018:58 These large international payment processors, with their almost mafia/cartel-like rules and influence, have a long history of being used by powerful entities do enforce policies that would otherwise be (and in many cases actually are) illegal.
Their behavior certainly goes way beyond their legal mandate, if not in the USA then for in other countries. Certainly arbitrary, within international context all but certainly illegal. Considering the impact that have had around the globe with their abuses, arguable even covert state terrorism.
However, they are essentially untouchable. Any substantial threat to these companies will have several huge economies instantly through all their persuading power at whomever may cause pose that threat. I don't see that changing as long as these companies are such a convenient tool, in a system where literally everything is ruled by capital (how conveniently).
But the system will erode itself, step by step. Until it does come to a collapse. Good luck with that day, for I hope to not live to see it happen (it won't be pretty).
By foodjinn 2021-08-2016:01 They did the same to Cody Wilson's patreon alternative and Dick Masterson's NewProject2 using the exact same verbiage too.
By gadders 2021-08-2014:04 Payment processors have been doing this for a while with anyone politically controversial as well. Now people have realised they fold to public pressure, you just need to start complaining about your own pet cause to make it happen.
By thrower123 2021-08-2013:521 reply Regardless of any legal safeguard you might legislate into place, it's radioactive PR to be associated in any way with sex trafficking and child porn.
By cataphract 2021-08-2013:593 reply I'm not sure it is. When people hear "PornHub is disseminating / profiting off revenge porn", does anyone think "shame on their payment processors"? I think the outrage is directed at the operators of the websites themselves.
By icegreentea2 2021-08-2014:032 reply People with only outrage won't think about their payment processors. Those with outrage who think through their options to enact change will think of their payment processors, and direct group pressure on them.
By jrwoodruff 2021-08-2016:134 reply I'm very skeptical that anyone would think through this scenario and arrive at boycotting an entire payment network. Not just PornHubs bank, or payment processor, but an entire credit card network. And of those that did, I doubt it would be a big enough group for Mastercard to even notice. Unless that 'someone' is a major institution like Bank of America, or the federal government.
By lazide 2021-08-215:15 They don't need to boycott it - financial regulators can and have come down on banks and payment processors for allowing 'morally dubious businesses' [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point] such as payday lenders, firearms related companies, porn producers, and many more. There is a long history of this type of thing happening, and no one wants to get near an industry where their underlying ability to bank (and therefore interact with the financial system at all) can be yanked with a phone call.
By HelloNurse 2021-08-2114:51 Payment processor scenario: you need to select one, for example for the POS in your new grocery store. Your fanatical friend says that the evil heathens at provider X support porn and you should avoid payments from X. You want to appease your friend, even if you don't want to boycott porn; on the other side of the balance, in favor of using provider X anyway, no compelling business or moral reason.
By thrower123 2021-08-2016:44 It doesn't take many people to agitate, if they are sufficiently unpleasant and noisy and can't be easily written off as cranks.
By shadilay 2021-08-2121:34 This has nothing to do with boycotts or consumer choice. It's about regulation. If payment processors don't crack down the government will. No one votes for pedos.
Has anybody in history ever said "I'm cutting up my MasterCard because this porn site takes it!"
Organizing a boycott like that seems almost impossible. There just isn't enough realistic competition and going back to paper checks is just not happening, especially online.
By johnnyanmac 2021-08-217:50 Not many, but it just takes a few of the "right" people who know how to pull the strings: https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1s9f698vwhczr...
By emaginniss 2021-08-2015:26 Some of this is going to come down to legal liability. Someone who suffers because of child or revenge porn at OF or PH might realize that there isn't enough money at those companies and will instead direct lawsuits at "the companies that enabled the behavior." Even if unsuccessful, the legal fees could be enormous.
By leokennis 2021-08-2118:27 I’m not sure if it’s abuse. In The Netherlands, ING got a €750,000,000 fine from the government (the largest ever in this country) for not doing enough to prevent money laundering. It basically ate up the entire quarterly profits.
So I don’t think it’s so much “abusing a dominant position” as “being subject to so many regulations and potential fines that it’s almost always better to just not engage in some business than to take any risk”. Lost revenue from OnlyFans is peanuts compared to potential fines for “facilitating sex trafficking”.
