#Mindgeek

[dingleberrytimes]

Several Pornstars Sue PornHub After Discovering That Website Encourages People to Masturbate to Their Videos

MONTREAL, CANADA - Wanting to go public in order to bring the website’s foul practices to light, a group of pornstars have unionized to form the union “Sex Workers Against the Foul Practices of the Sex Industry” (SWAFPSI) in order to sue Canadian based company Aylo, the owner of PornHub and several other popular pornographic websites after it came to light that the company encourages the users of their websites to masturbate to pornstars videos.

“Me and my fellow sisters use sex work as a way to express ourselves, not to satisfy the cravings of perverts.” Holly HardKore, a popular adult actress and member of SWAFPSI, told reporters. “We are artists who use our bodies as the canvas, and this powerful, corrupt, corporation is trying to take advantage of our art by advertising it to people who see our bodies as nothing more than objects. That isn’t right, and we are determined to make an example out of PornHub to end this humiliating process once and for all.”

SWAFPSI and Aylo are expected to duke it out in the Superior Court of Québec on June 8. As of right now, Aylo hasn’t made any comment on the lawsuit. The Dingleberry Times tried to reach out to Aylo to receive their side of the story, but they never got back to us.

[theexodvs]

The only necktie any member of Mindgeek's board of directors has any business wearing is a rope.

[platinum-iridium]

so funny watching these insurance companies try to scrub their CEO names and photos off the internet like the death note just got dropped

[txttletale]

Can you elaborate on what you find objectionable about the "porno isn't misogynistic" post? Interested to learn more

i just think it's really unserious to respond to critiques of porn being misogynistic by saying "there's nothing inherently misogynistc about people having sex on camera". there is nobody who believes that in the whole entire world. like, i think if you talk about misogyny and porn and you don't even acknowledge the existence of mindgeek, you just can't be taken seriously. there are serious & vital critiques of the porn industry to be made and if you cede all those critiques to people who use them to reach reactionary conclusions you're shooting yourself in the foot

[maaarine]

We're getting the social media crisis wrong (Henry Farrell, Programmable Mutter, Jan 7 2025)

"The example that really made me think about how this works has nothing much to do with democracy or political theory.

It was the thesis of an article published in Logic magazine in 2019, about Internet porn.

The article’s argument is that the presentation of porn - and people’s sense of what other people’s sexual interests are - is shaped by algorithms that respond to the sharp difference between what people want to see and what people are willing to pay for.

The key claim:

"a lot of people .. are consumers of internet porn (i.e., they watch it but don’t pay for it), a tiny fraction of those people are customers. Customers pay for porn, typically by clicking an ad on a tube site, going to a specific content site (often owned by MindGeek), and entering their credit card information. … This “consumer” vs. “customer” division is key to understanding the use of data to perpetuate categories that seem peculiar to many people both inside and outside the industry. … Porn companies, when trying to figure out what people want, focus on the customers who convert. It’s their tastes that set the tone for professionally produced content and the industry as a whole."

The result is that particular taboos (incest; choking) feature heavily in the presentation of Internet porn, not because they are the most popular among consumers, but because they are more likely to convert into paying customers.

This, in turn, gives porn consumers, including teenagers, a highly distorted understanding of what other people want and expect from sex, that some of them then act on.

In my terms, they look through a distorting technological lens on an imaginary sexual public to understand what is normal and expected, and what is not.

This then shapes their interactions with others.

Something like this explains the main consequences of social media for politics.

The collective perspectives that emerge from social media - our understanding of what the public is and wants - are similarly shaped by algorithms that select on some aspects of the public, while sidelining others.

And we tend to orient ourselves towards that understanding, through a mixture of reflective beliefs, conformity with shibboleths, and revised understandings of coalitional politics.

This isn’t brainwashing - people don’t have to internalize this or that aspect of what social media presents to them, radically changing their beliefs and their sense of who they are.

That sometimes happens, but likely far more rarely than we think.

The more important change is to our beliefs about what other people think, which we perpetually update based on social observation.

When what we observe is filtered through social media, our understandings of the coalitions we belong to, and the coalitions we oppose, what we have in common, and what we disagree on, shift too."

[theenglishpoet]

Jane Doe & GirlsWhoDoPorn.

In an interview, a woman, protected under the pseudonym "Jane Doe" came forth to tell her story about how she was trafficked into doing porn under the company "GirlsWhoDoPorn."

A collective of women have spoken out against this company and all claimed that they were trafficked and forced into producing pornographic videos and content. [ A class action lawsuit was filed against the company as well as their partner company MindGeek--which oversees videos on porn websites such as PornHub, etc.]

Jane had been under the assumption that she would be traveling to do work as a fitness model but shortly after landing and been sent to a hotel, she was swiftly assaulted and her rape was filmed as content.

This is one of many instances of assault being filmed and turned into pornographic content. Jane was then threatened once her assault was filmed---threatened that her family would be shown the videos and images they took of her (and that her identity would be exposed). Jane also stated that she was forced to re-film 'scenes' until she looked like she "was consenting."

With stories like Jane Doe's (and the other women involved in lawsuit) our consumption of pornography must be interrogated. The ethics of watching porn are the question. As for Jane Doe, she answers it by stating, "I hope that I have ruined porn."

I think the first question one should ask themselves is, "who am I harming by watching this type of material?" Too many people.

If you would like to hear Jane's story in full, I've linked it here! (She goes into detail, so keep that in mind if you decide on watching/listening).

Also, here's a relevant article!

[museenkuss]

[CW porn industry, abuse, rape] Yup, and ESPECIALLY any kind of thinking that could possibly align with radical feminism, even when it is VERY MUCH in its place, like criticizing the porn industry, how the vast majority of prostitution is built on taking advantage of disenfranchised women and children [the age of entry is shockingly low…]… poor women, foreign women who barely speak the language, refugees, runaways, kids escaping abuse only to be met with more abuse… the entire concept of the Romeo pimp who sweeps a vulnerable person off their feet only to traffic them… It's like, I get it, I also don't like to use the feminist label for myself because of what modern feminism became (the choice feminism that is so blind to everything, that it'd even celebrate pornography because, hey, a woman's behind the camera, as if the stars aren't still exploited.) Most actresses are lied to initially, told they'll do a one boy one girl scene and it's suddenly a group thing. If they don't record at the end that it was consensual, they will have suffered for nothing and won't get paid. Then, there's cases like that woman who suffered brain damage after a car accident, whose emotional support animal who she brings on set is taken effectively hostage to force her to agree to things. They often tell her off for writing too candidly about things on her own twitter. Messed-up

People on here attack the privacy / age verification thing but they completely and conveniently ignore that it was spurred on by things like Pornhub / Mindgeek KNOWINGLY making a lot of money off their stuff being accessible to even kids who end up addicted to this stuff [it's traumatizing, but also leads to gratification, so they just keep watching it, even if it causes grades to plummet and for them to become angrier the longer they spend apart from it, or withdraw from their old hobbies] and it increases the rise of misogyny in little boys many are complaining from right now. They scare and upset girls by mimicking the moaning sounds from these videos. They harrass and objectify girls mimicking the likes of Andrew Tate. I remember very sad articles about how internet pornography being accessible to teenagers has led to a lot of injuries nurses have seen in very, very young girls going through things their bodies were absolutely not prepared for because boys are mimicking what they watch online, believing it's accurate, healthy, or realistic (porn stars are often addicts--men and women both--they're drugged to look so placid, smiling, and calm while all this stuff happens to them.) There was a internal memo leaked by former Pornhub staff precisely about how they're against ID/age verification BECAUSE they know it'll cut into their profits if kids are actually kept off their site. It's sick and sad.

This is SUCH an important topic. When you step back from the internet spaces and really look at the fact that “porn is harmful for actors and viewers” is a problematic statement, the current state of feminism is just horrific.

I read an article just earlier today on how victims of csa are being ignored in their pleas to have the videos of their assault taken off of those platforms, because they make money. Terms like “very young” and “brutal” are perfectly okay to use. Taking in the things you mentioned, the drugs involved, the dubious consent, the effects in viewers, really call into question (for me) whether this(the glorification of rough sex in porn) is something that should be encouraged. And the statements the “stars” make, as you mentioned as well, are just unbelievable.

It’s such a baffling situation to me, too, because why is speaking out against the harm other people are experiencing seen as prudish? Or, worse, anti-feminist? It’s a shift in the general conversation I do not understand and it’s scary to me. The things you listed are COMMON KNOWLEDGE, or at least I’m sure every person who’s come into contact with the discussion would know at the very least one thing on this list, and YET the idea that this is harmful is seen as repressive, conservative, prudish. AND “Anti porn stars” — saying that people shouldn’t be harmed isn’t speaking out against these people.

[mariacallous]

For the past two years, millions of people searching for child abuse videos on Pornhub’s UK website have been interrupted. Each of the 4.4 million times someone has typed in words or phrases linked to abuse, a warning message has blocked the page, saying that kind of content is illegal. And in half the cases, a chatbot has also pointed people to where they can seek help.

The warning message and chatbot were deployed by Pornhub as part of a trial program, conducted with two UK-based child protection organizations, to find out whether people could be nudged away from looking for illegal material with small interventions. A new report analyzing the test, shared exclusively with WIRED, says the pop-ups led to a decrease in the number of searches for child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and saw scores of people seek support for their behavior.

“The actual raw numbers of searches, it’s actually quite scary high,” says Joel Scanlan, a senior lecturer at the University of Tasmania, who led the evaluation of the reThink Chatbot. During the multiyear trial, there were 4,400,960 warnings in response to CSAM-linked searches on Pornhub’s UK website—99 percent of all searches during the trial did not trigger a warning. “There’s a significant reduction over the length of the intervention in numbers of searches,” Scanlan says. “So the deterrence messages do work.”

Millions of images and videos of CSAM are found and removed from the web every year. They are shared on social media, traded in private chats, sold on the dark web, or in some cases uploaded to legal pornography websites. Tech companies and porn companies don’t allow illegal content on their platforms, although they remove it with different levels of effectiveness. Pornhub removed around 10 million videos in 2020 in an attempt to eradicate child abuse material and other problematic content from its website following a damning New York Times report.

Pornhub, which is owned by parent company Aylo (formerly MindGeek), uses a list of 34,000 banned terms, across multiple languages and with millions of combinations, to block searches for child abuse material, a spokesperson for the company says. It is one way Pornhub tries to combat illegal material, the spokesperson says, and is part of the company’s efforts aimed at user safety, after years of allegations it has hosted child exploitation and nonconsensual videos. When people in the UK have searched for any of the terms on Pornhub’s list, the warning message and chatbot have appeared.

The chatbot was designed and created by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), a nonprofit which removes CSAM from the web, and the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, a charity which works to precent child sexual abuse. It appeared alongside the warning messages a total of 2.8 million times. The trial counted the number of sessions on Pornhub, which could mean people are counted multiple times, and it did not look to identify individuals. The report says there was a “meaningful decrease” in searches for CSAM on Pornhub and that at least “in part” the chatbot and warning messages appear to have played a role.

The chatbot was relatively simple: It asked people a series of questions, allowing them to click buttons to answer or type out a response. Ultimately, it explained that the material people were searching for may be illegal and pointed them toward the Lucy Faithfull Foundation’s help services. There were 1,656 requests for more information made through the chatbot, while 490 people clicked through to the charity’s Stop It Now website. Around 68 people called or chatted with Lucy Faithfull’s confidential helpline, the report says.

Donald Findlater, the director of the Stop It Now helpline, says that while the numbers are “relatively modest” compared to the overall number of warnings displayed, they are still seen as a “big success” as it’s a sign that people may want to get help. “If people have been doing something dodgy on a site, clicking through is quite a bold step to make,” Findlater says.

The vast majority of people who received the warning message and chatbot did so only once, the report says. Around 1.7 million people saw a warning before leaving Pornhub or making other searches related to legal material. “They didn't just disappear. They typically remained on the site and looked for other stuff,” Findlater says. “The influence for the millions of people that actually did a dubious search and then stopped doing that dubious search is a big win.” Not everyone was deterred, however. In the most persistent cases, around 400 people made 10 searches that triggered the message.

Cynthia Najdowski, an associate professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Albany, who was not involved in the research, says the chatbot appears to show promise for interrupting some people’s efforts to access CSAM. Warning messages and small behavioral nudges have been used in multiple ways to change people’s behavior online, from piracy and copyright infringement to gambling. Google has used some deterrence messages around child abuse searches since 2013, and other studies have found decreases in searches and millions of views or warnings.

Najdowski says there are three things known about deterring people from engaging in criminal behavior: People must know what they’re doing is illegal; they need to apply that “legal knowledge” to their own behavior; and they need to believe the cost of the behavior may outweigh any benefits they expect. “A chatbot that delivers notice of the potential illegality of certain searches can certainly accomplish the first step in the deterrence process, and that alone is a significant contribution,” Najdowski says. It may struggle to help cases where people are more persistent in their behavior or more complex scenarios though.

Scanlan, who conducted the analysis into the chatbot trial, says there were some complexities with the work. The data provided by Pornhub, the IWF, and the Lucy Faithfull Foundation wasn’t always complete, and there weren’t any figures from before the warnings were introduced to compare the results against. However, Scanlan says the results show the method could be one part of broader education and deterrence efforts against people finding CSAM online. “If someone's doing that sort out of curiosity, you want to nudge them away from it before they get involved in it, because we can't arrest our way out of the problem,” Scanlan says.

Scanlan’s findings say that over time, the web traffic being referred to the Stop It Now website appeared to decrease, perhaps as people who continued to search became used to the messaging. However, helpline calls, emails, and online chats showed an increase over the duration of the trial. The report says that in the future, a variety of messages could be used—potentially including existing deterrence videos—and the chatbot could directly connect people to a live chat session with Lucy Faithfull’s helpline.

The chatbot itself could also be improved. Since it was initially designed and created, says Dan Sexton, the chief technology officer at the IWF, generative AI has changed people’s perceptions of what chatbots are and how they interact with people. The reThink Chatbot could respond to only a limited number of queries. Sexton says there may be ways to make the chatbot more approachable and better handle questions it was not programmed to deal with.

While the trial period has ended, the chatbot and warnings are still in place on Pornhub’s UK website. “There's certainly no plans to turn it off. It is in production. It was a pilot project, but it is having an effect right now,” Sexton says. Those involved in the study say that other porn companies could look to introduce similar nudges across their services and deter people from looking for child abuse content. “They all should be doing this; it should become the norm,” Scanlan says. “This report and technology are significant steps forward in identifying, removing, and reporting harmful and illegal content,” a spokesperson for Pornhub says. “We feel all other major tech and social media platforms should explore the implementation of similar deterrence technology to create a safer internet for all.”

Findlater, from the Stop It Now helpline, says he hopes other companies, such as social media websites and file-hosting platforms, can look at the results of the trial and introduce similar nudges where people are seeking CSAM. “The more places you can put it, the greater chance you're going to catch those people that might be at a stage where they can still be helped, or those people that are looking for help but don't know about it,” Sexton says.

[thatdebaterguy]

Ok what in the fuck did I just read?

Watching pornhub is now an act of genocide. Yikes. This has to be satire right? There's no possible way someone actually thinks watching porn on a business owned by a Jewish guy directly funds the IDF. Also there's no actual proof the guys Jewish, the CEO of mindgeek is Austrian but that's all that's listed on his wikipedia, and one of the founders of pornhub is Syrian, but if I say that funded terrorism in the middle east I'll be called a racist. Pornhub is a Canadian company, run by a bunch of people, none of which are from Israel. Generalising all Jews to be servants of the IDF is like saying all Muslims are loyal to Osama Bin Laden, which isn't even a good comparison since the IDF aren't terrorists they're just a national armed force. I don't even know why I need to explain any of this, it's ridiculous. And I did google it, apparently 95% of pornstars are Jewish. Does that even mean anything? Pornstar implies successful at porn, it just means they're better at their job lmao, although if you ask anyone to name a male and female pornstar you'll get johnny sins and mia khalifa, who's literally Lebanese and pro palestine and pro hamas, meanwhile I haven't heard a single Jewish pornstar stick their nose into politics. I pray to god this is satire.

[archeracy]

I'm sorry that you have apparently unresolved psychological issues (you reblogged a post that implies that children committing assault is some kind of ingrained male trait jfc) but having orgasms does not rewire your brain and I think maybe you should consider therapy for whatever it was that drove you to that conclusion instead of seeking refuge with the radfems who are teaching you shit like that

There’s nobody who has *no* psychological issues, but I’d say overall I’m doing okay. I don’t actually have any sexual trauma. Not because I’m special in any way—I’ve just genuinely been lucky thus far.

Radfems didn’t “teach me shit like that.” Grad school professors taught me that. Working professionals taught me that. Doing clinical research taught me that. I wrote my undergrad thesis on the topic, then pursued it further in grad school in a master’s program that was quite focused on that field of study.

I actually went into grad school assuming I’d focus on femicide/women who get murdered (which, spoiler alert, still sours you on men, the overwhelming majority of murderers) but then I did my internship working with sex offenders and realized there was a much greater need for people specializing in that.

I don’t really tell people details about what it’s like to work with sex offenders because honestly? It’s gross as fuck. If you don’t need to know the online slang offenders use to describe their child sexual abuse material, you really should’t have to ever know it. I’m not gonna teach people things they’ll wish they hadn’t learned. Even while maintaining clinical distance and having a good work/life balance, it’s still nauseating.

Regardless, I’ll say this much: more research needs to be done on the impact of pornography, but most of it is showing negative impacts. Especially for young people. Especially for young boys. Adults aren’t immune either (viewing violent porn is unlikely to make someone become violent but does increase the likelihood that they condone violence/victim blame), but kids are really susceptible to the influence of pornography. Americans don’t get good comprehensive sex education. Pornography IS sex education for our youth, and it IS a public health emergency. And yes, the euphoric experience of an orgasm does have the capabilities to condition you.

The reason research is difficult on this topic is that you can’t ethically have a control and experimental group. That would require people to watch illegal and disturbing material (like CSAM/CP) and test how they respond, which is unethical to them AND the victims in the CSAM itself. So obviously we don’t do that. We have to observe people who already did so of their own accord. I have yet to meet a hands-on offender who doesn’t cite their pornography experience as a major factor in their lives. I’ve also looked at their internet history, and you better believe it’s the most vile shit you can imagine. Starts on your average MindGeek porn site, stimulus gets habituated, and they seek out worse and worse material.

Anyway for people who actually want to know more please feel free to message me any time and I can send links to articles and studies. I’m always happy to talk more about my research interests.

[kennak]

性的搾取と戦う国際活動団体などが、クレジットカード会社に対し、ポルノサイトでの決済をブロックするよう求めている。BBCは活動家など10人による共同書簡を入手。書簡はポルトサイトについて、「性暴力や近親相姦、人種差別などを面白いものとして見せて」おり、児童性的虐待や人身売買を題材としたコンテンツを配信していると指摘している。これに対し、大手ポルノサイト「Pornhub」は、「この書簡の内容は間違っているだけでなく、意図的に誤解を招いている」としている。広告マスターカードはBBCの取材に対し、書簡の訴えを調査していると回答。カード利用者による違法な活動が確認されれば「決済ネットワークへの接続を打ち切る」と述べた。この書簡はマスターカードのほか、ビザやアメリカン・エクスプレスなど10社に送られた。イギリス、アメリカ、インド、ウガンダ、オーストラリアなどの活動家が参加し、ポルノサイトでの決済を即時停止するよう求めている。アメリカからは、保守派の非営利団体「全国性的搾取センター（NCOSE）」が参加。宗教団体や、女性・児童の権利擁護団体なども署名している。書簡では、「ポルノサイト上のすべての動画、いわんやウェブカムによる生配信について、合意の有無を判断したり認証すること」は不可能だと指摘。こうした状況の中で、「人身売買のあっ旋業者や児童虐待の加害者、合意のない動画を共有する人物などがポルノサイトを標的」にしていると述べた。NCOSEの国際部門、国際性的搾取センターのヘイリー・マクナマラ会長は、「ここ数カ月、ウェブサイト上でさまざまな形で共有されるポルノによる被害について、世界中から怒りの声が次々と上がっている」と指摘した。「国際的な児童擁護団体や反性的搾取を訴えるコミュニティーは金融機関に対し、ポルノ業界を支援しているその役割を批判的に分析し、その関係性を断ち切るよう要請する」インドの児童保護基金は4月、ポルノサイト上の児童虐待動画について報告書を発表した。それによると、インドのポルノサイトでは新型コロナウイルスによるロックダウン（都市封鎖）以降、児童虐待に関する検索が急増しているという。インターネット上のポルノをモニタリングする書簡では、業界最大手のPornhubを名指ししている。Pornhubの昨年の閲覧回数は420億回。1日当たりでは1億1500万回に上る。同サイトは昨年、コンテンツを提供している「Girls Do Porn」が米連邦捜査局（FBI）の捜査対象となったことで厳しい調査の目にさらされた。FBIは、女性に不当な要求を行いポルノ映像を作るよう誘導したとして、Girls Do Pornの従業員4人を訴追。Pornhubは訴追直後にこのチャンネルを削除した。また、昨年10月には米フロリダ州で、15歳の未成年を性的暴行したとしてクリストファー・ジョンソン被告（30）が訴追された。ジョンソン被告の犯行を収めた動画はPornhubに投稿されていた。2月にBBCが行った取材でPornhubは、「認定されていないコンテンツは見つけ次第削除している。今回の件もその通りに行った」と話した。インターネット上の性的虐待のモニタリングを専門とする英「インターネット監視財団」は、2017～2019年の間にPornhubで118件の児童性的虐待や児童に対するレイプ動画を発見したとBBCに認めた。この団体は各国政府や警察と協力し、こうした違法コンテンツを通報している。Pornhubの広報担当者はBBCに宛てた声明で、同社は「合意のないコンテンツや未成年を扱ったコンテンツなど、違法コンテンツの根絶に断固として立ち向かっている。そうでないという指摘は根本的に間違っている」と述べた。「我々のコンテンツ・モデレーション（内容確認）システムは業界最先端で、最新の技術とモデレーション手法を用い、違法コンテンツを検知しプラットフォームから削除する包括的なプロセスを作り出している」また、今回クレジットカード各社に書簡を送った団体は「人々の性的指向や活動を監視しようとしている。書簡の内容は間違っているだけでなく、意図的に誤解を招いている」と指摘した。クレジットカード会社の対応はアメリカン・エクスプレスのグローバル・ポリシーでは2000年以降、オンラインポルノの決済を全面禁止しているほか、リスクが異常に高いとみなされる成人向けデジタルコンテンツの決済も禁じている。2011年に「Smartmoney」に掲載されたインタビューで同社の広報担当者は、このポリシーは議論が高まっているために取り入れられたもので、児童ポルノ撲滅に向けた安全施策だと説明している。それでもアメリカン・エクスプレスに書簡が送られたのは、ポルノサイトで同社のクレジットカードが選択肢に含まれているからだという。アメリカン・エクスプレスが利用できるとするサイトには、10代を専門とするチャンネルも含まれていると、書簡を送付した団体は説明している。アメリカン・エクスプレスの広報担当者はBBCの取材で、オンラインポルノの決済を禁じたグローバル・ポリシーはなお有効だと話した一方、アメリカ国内でアメリカで発行されたクレジットカードから決済された場合に限り、一部のポルノ配信サイトでの決済を認める試験運用を1社と行なったと話した。一方、ビザやマスターカードを含む他社は、クレジットカードやデビットカードでのオンラインポルノ購入を認めている。マスターカードの広報担当者はBBC宛ての電子メールで、「書簡で提示された内容について調査を進めている」と述べた。「我々の決済システムでは、銀行がカード決済を受け付けるために店舗を我々のネットワークに接続している」「（カード利用者による）違法行為やポリシー違反を確認した場合、店舗が口座を持つ銀行と協力し、順守をお願いするか、決済ネットワークへの接続を打ち切る」「こうした対処は、全米行方不明・被搾取児童センターや国際行方不明・被搾取児童センターなどとの過去の協力体制とも一致する」ポルノ業界から距離を置いているオンライン決済会社もある。ペイパルは2019年11月、同社ポリシーが「特定の性的コンテンツやサービス」の支援を禁止しているとして、Pornhubでの決済から撤退した。この決定についてPornhubは「落胆した」と表明。Pornhubで活動し、定額サービスの収入に依存している何千人ものモデルやパフォーマーが収入を受け取れなくなると述べた。Pornhubでコンテンツを公開しているパフォーマーの1人は、支払い停止は収入に大きな影響を与えると話した。このパフォーマーは匿名を希望している。「正直に言ってボディーブローのようなもの。私の収入が全てなくなってしまうし、ロックダウンの中でどうやって稼げばいいか分からない」ポルノサイトの説明責任をめぐる圧力が高まる中、アメリカのベン・サス上院議員（ネブラスカ州選出）は3月にウィリアム・バー司法長官宛ての書簡で、レイプや性的搾取の動画を配信した疑いでPornhubを調査するよう求めた。カナダでも3月、超党派の議員9人がジャスティン・トルドー首相に対し、Pornhubの親会社「MindGeek」の門取れある本社を調査するよう要請している。書簡に署名した活動家・団体：国際性的搾取センター（イギリス）、全米性的搾取センター（アメリカ）、Collective Shout（オーストラリア）、欧州移民女性ネットワーク（ベルギー）、Word Made Flesh Bolivia（ボリヴィア）、Media Health for Children and Youth（デンマーク）、FiLiA（イングランド）、Apne Aap（インド）、Survivor Advocate（アイルランド）、アフリカ児童虐待・ネグレクト防止保護ネットワーク（リベリア）、リワード財団（スコットランド）、Talita（スウェーデン）、The Boys' Mentorship Programme（ウガンダ）（英語記事 Call for credit card freeze on porn sites）

クレジット会社はポルノサイトから撤退を　権利団体など要請 - BBCニュース

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

Sickening...

An undercover video purports to show multiple employees of Pornhub’s parent company Aylo, formerly known as MindGeek, admitting that the corporation’s pornography websites are easily accessible to children and that gay and trans porn can help LGBT kids find their “kink.”

Sound Investigations published a video and report on its website this month featuring one of its undercover journalists...

[battleangel]

You Have to Earn The Right To Live

Nobody ever has to die again from houselessness, famine, poverty or lack of adequate medical care.

How?

💗Universal Housing

💗Universal Healthcare

💗Free College

💗Universal Basic Income

Specifically:

💗Increase personal income taxes to 70% to 85%+ for upper middle class and high net worth individuals to fund the above.

They would have less so that others could literally live and not die. Theres nothing unfair about that.

💗Increase personal income taxes to 75%+ for individual millionaires and billionaires (Elon Musk, Bezos, Vince McMahon, Roger Goodell, Mindgeek CEO, Waltons, Hiltons, CEOs, professional athletes, actors and actresses, singers, Hollywood studio heads, record label executives, etc.).

They would still have so much without other people being forced to go without to the point where thousands and thousands every year are dying needlessly where housing, basic medical care and food would have saved their lives.

The US has the number one economy in the world -- the money is there to prevent these senseless deaths, it is just being hoarded and passed down generationally to stay within these families by a select few, by the 1%.

People dont have to die of houselessness or preventable illnesses or because they couldnt afford needed surgery or from hunger.

Look at all the abandoned buildings that sit empty that could be converted into free housing. Look at abandoned shopping malls.

Look at all the food we throw away unused in our fridges and all the food that restaurants throw out from ridiculously oversized portions that guarantee needless and senseless waste.

We have the money, resources, food, medicine, doctors, land and building space to address these issues and stop these preventable deaths today.

There is no scarcity issue in the United States when it comes to these resources!

Instead, capitalism is a zero sum game and a death cult where you have to "earn" the right to live -- thats pro-life for ya.

You have to "earn" the "right" to be housed and sheltered, to be protected from the elements, to not sleep on a sidewalk, on the gutters, under a bridge, near a trashcan, defenseless and possibly alone, open to being raped, abducted, robbed, beaten, kidnapped, assaulted and murdered with no protections.

Many houseless shelters are unsafe, especially for women, overcrowded and at capacity.

You have to "earn" the "right" to be given food and sustenance, to literally be allowed to eat, to live.

Most Americans live paycheck to paycheck and layoffs happen consistently in cycles to increase shareholder returns, they are never necessary at the rate and volume we see where thousands are laid off for a temporary reduction in the rate of increase of profits year over year -- not a decrease in profits, a reduction in the rate that the profits increased.

Dips and lulls are to be expected in any business.

To get rid of thousands of employees with decades of experience, knowledge of the company, culture, processes, philosophy, management style that is literally irreplaceable is incredibly shortsighted and reactionary but they do it anyway for a temporary pop -- stocks temporarily increase, the board and shareholders are temporarily sated, they wait a few years then do it all over again, destroying thousands of lives, careers and their own companys intellectual cache, culture and morale but they dont care because of the pursuit of the almighty dollar.

Thats more of a cult than Jim Jones ever was. If thats not drinking the Kool-Aid, what is?

Employees know they are completely expendable under capitalism so they live in fear hoping that they've kissed enough ass and sucked enough dick for clout that they wont be laid off and when they inevitably are, they turn into those creepy people on LinkedIn, smiling through their tears on their profile pictures, profusely thanking and sucking off the company that just kicked them in the teeth. Never bite the hand that feeds.

💗Increase corporate tax for Fortune 500 companies, FAANG, big agriculture, big pharma, big box retail, top banks & financial services company, big 4 consulting to 50%+ to fund the above.

These are multi-billion and even trillion dollar companies. They would still have the money to innovate, create, expand, compete in their industries and pay their employees. The money is there to fund these programs.

💗Stop relying as a society on people "giving to charity", non-profits and churches to not fill the gap that the socialist programs listed above could completely close.

Right now, everything is up to chance and the individual.

If you dont find a soup kitchen or houseless shelter or join a church, if you die you die, thats on you, thats your ass -- you should have worked harder.

Noone should have to look for any of this, it should be freely provided to all citizens in a communal society that has businesses that generates profits but then distributes those profits to do the most good.

Capitalism scoffs at this and says, we are businesses not charities. Its for profit, not non-profit.

It doesnt have to be zero sum or one of the other.

We could embrace innovation and competition while not letting people die needlessly in the streets.

It doesnt have to be like this.

Theres enough to go around for everyone without anyone in the US having to needlessly die.

Outside of the US, if foreign aid went directly to non-profits like Doctors Without Borders and not to corrupt governments that hoard the money and dont give it to their citizens, world poverty, hunger, starvation, malnutrition, houselessness would be eliminated, malaria nets & basic medicine could be provided, needed surgeries, clean drinking water.

1% of people of the world hold 99% of the wealth.

It doesnt have to be this way!

[burythecarnival]

93, 96, 100?

oh hi, you beautiful being 🤗 my answers might sound like chaotic babble because of new meds & almost no sleep but, here we go 🥂

93. have you ever forgotten your own birthday?

iiii...have not. however, my birthdays are a bit cursed & end up making me sad partly because others typically forget. my birthday is mad hatter day (october 6th) & that helps some remember.

96. do you like carnival rides?

for the most part, i do. i just can't handle the spin wheel or any rides that have super bright lights or my audhd brain will malfunction. the last carnival thing i did was bungee jump while blue oyster cult was performing. i also love clowns & one left the haunted house to walk me around like a gentleman.

100. what's on your anti-bucket list (things you never want to do in your life)?

oh fuck, like...so many things 😅 i know i sound cantankerous but, i'm pretty much a hermit now & don't like going far from home. i have naught interest in ever going on a cruise ship. i will never own an alexa, talk to siri or anything similar because i don't trust them. i do not want to ever live in the southern united states; my NY ass was miserable in california & the deep south makes me feel icky (no offense meant to the kind, tolerant people who live there, of course.) i will never buy apple products. i will never sell content on pornhub because mindgeek is a horrendous, exploitative company that puts minors in danger & turns actual abuse into their own financial gain. my brain is mush & can't think of other things but between having a disease eating away at my insides & my severe social anxiety, lots of things are off the table.

[mariacallous]

It was evening in Berlin, and Alex Kekesi was surrounded by porn stars. Venus, the international adult entertainment convention, was underway, and Kekesi happened to be at dinner with several well-known creators when the discussion shifted to generative AI.

Kekesi listened as a few of the women shared similar stories from set. They expressed frustrations about their likeness being exploited. They talked of having to physically cross out language in their contract before filming. “Essentially, it was, ‘We’re gonna pay you for today’s stuff,’” one woman said. “And then it’s a free-for-all after that. We can use this to create whatever we want.”

Kekesi empathized with the performers. It’s part of her job. As vice president of brand and community at Pornhub, the monstrously popular adult entertainment site, she puts in plenty of face time with creators, as well as fans of the platform, the press, and critics. Sometimes “that involves taking flack from them,” she told me over Zoom recently from her home office in Montreal. And there has been a lot of “flak” the past few years, even as she downplays Pornhub’s persistent troubles.

She was thrust into the role in 2023, following a particularly turbulent period for the company. On some level, Pornhub has always been controversial—it comes with the territory—but the problems of the platform in recent years represented an existential threat.

Rumblings began in 2019, when the owners of the GirlsDoPorn and GirlsDoToys websites were charged in a sex trafficking conspiracy for deceiving and forcing women to perform in adult films, which they then uploaded online, including to platforms like Pornhub. In March 2020, Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska urged the US Department of Justice to open an investigation into Pornhub, citing incidents from “the past year,” including the GirlsDoPorn case. A New York Times column by Nicholas Kristoff that December brought even more attention to accusations that Pornhub hosted videos depicting sexual abuse, including of children. At first Pornhub denied any wrongdoing, but reaction swiftly snowballed.

In Canada, where Pornhub is based, a parliamentary committee launched an investigation into the allegations. Visa and Mastercard suspended payment processing. Dozens of women sued Pornhub’s parent company, then called MindGeek and since renamed Aylo Holdings, alleging it had created and profited from a “bustling marketplace for child pornography, rape videos, trafficked videos, and every other form of nonconsensual content.” That lawsuit is still ongoing. Aylo also reached a deal with the US government last year, agreeing to pay a fine and install an independent monitor for three years in exchange for avoiding prosecution. In court, the company acknowledged that it had indeed made money off videos of sex-trafficking victims. There were other controversies, too: In 2022, Instagram banned Pornhub for violating its terms of service. (“We actually still don’t know to this day why we were banned,” Kekesi says.) In 2023 the site was accused of illegally collecting user data in the European Union.

Pornhub has taken steps to address at least some of these problems. Following the Times article, it scrubbed the site of all “unverified content,” Kekesi said. Now anyone who wants to upload content to Pornhub has to not only verify their own identity; they also must supply proof of consent for everyone who appears in the scene, including documentation, IDs, and other paperwork. Pornhub also started issuing annual “transparency reports,” which it now does twice a year, publishing its content moderation practices. In 2022, the site introduced a chatbot intended to encourage people searching for child sexual abuse content to get help. Still, its lack of past oversight remained a hot topic—and a steady concern. In 2023, Aylo was acquired by Ethical Capital Partners, a Canadian private equity firm. “When they took ownership of the company, it really ushered in this new, I guess, era for Aylo—but I think for Pornhub, specifically—with a mandate very dedicated to transparency,” Kekesi said.

In the business of bodies and desire, everything has to be packaged just right for the fantasy to work. Presentation is what sells. Perfect lighting. Exact camera angles. Image also matters—just as much, it seems, if not more—to the companies behind your favorite X-rated content. At least, that’s the gist I got when I spoke with Kekesi.

To rebuild that trust—with creators, with users, with governments—Pornhub has leaned into a strategy of open communication. Kekesi was promoted from her previous role as marketing director to her current, more public-facing one. (Many sex-forward companies—Sniffies, for example—trot out executives in similar roles.) “You know, because we’re from the adult industry, people—point blank—do not want to hear what we have to say,” she said. So the company launched Terms of Service, a podcast cohosted by Kekesi and adult film star Asa Akira, to “set the record straight on things when it comes to Pornhub,” she said. Company ethics, moderation, sex worker rights; all of it is fair game on the show.

When I asked Kekesi if the previous ownership, capsized by a storm of allegations, had failed to be as open as it could, she didn’t hesitate. “Yes, there were obstacles,” she said.

Still, ongoing threats loom. Project 2025, the Republican playbook for a second Trump term, wants to criminalize porn nationwide. (Trump denied any connection to Project 2025 while campaigning, but he has been putting its authors forward for key government positions.) Already, 12 US states have instituted age-verification laws around porn consumption. Because PornHub doesn’t want to open itself to litigation under these new laws, it went on the offensive, blocking all access to its site in those states regardless of age. Kekesi said the company is in favor of the concept; it is “a good thing when it’s done properly.” Only, that’s not the case. “Look at how it’s happening now—it’s ineffective.”

In general, though, porn is more accessible than ever. Platforms like OnlyFans customize desire for a small fee. The riskier side of the social media site X operates in the vein of the former Backpage.com, where creators use the app to promote their work, engage with fans, and find gigs. That has also meant more competition for Pornhub. Kekesi never says it outright, but this is likely why the company has made a noticeable effort to appease the concerns of adult creators. “We are catching up and trying to be more visible and more present with the creator community,” she said. Netflix understood it. TikTok got it. The game is the game, no matter the industry. Healthy growth depends on original—and compelling—content, and Pornhub needs creators for that.

Quality is also a selling point in the era of generative AI, when depicting any fantasy could be just a few prompts away. Forecasting the next year, Kekesi said “moderation is the greatest place that we stand to win when it comes to AI.” Some creators have complained about the additional steps required to upload to Pornhub, Kekesi says, but she thinks the system is a success. “We were told over and over by different people—and competition—that that was the death knell. And we’ve proven otherwise.”

Pornhub’s brand reset—better transparency, stricter moderation and verification, creator-friendly—won’t entirely shift the conversation from where the company has fallen short. I wonder if it even matters. Negative public view didn’t hurt the company’s bottom line as much as public perception led many to believe. The company had an operating margin of 30 percent in 2022, according to Semafor.

Still, I admit, it’s a little silly to think that the most famous porn site in the world wants you to like them—and more than that, to trust them—given that porn, for the consumer, has never really been about mass consensus but rather private satisfaction. But it’s the reason—one of many, anyway—Kekesi is everywhere these days. AVN, XBIZ, “all the trade shows,” she said. It’s about more than good press. To continue to compete, and to hold onto its dominance, most of all it needs the trust of creators, old and new. Without that, well, Pornhub’s next chapter is nothing more than a dream.

[koronkowy]

Summary

🔍 Secretive Monopoly Behind Free Porn Sites The global online porn industry, particularly free sites like PornHub, is largely monopolized by a single corporation, originally named MindGeek, now Aylo. It was heavily funded by hedge fund Colbeck Capital and secret investors including JP Morgan Chase and Cornell University.

🕵️ Opaque Ownership and OSINT Discoveries The true majority owner was Bernd Bergmair, an Austrian living partly in Hong Kong. His identity was hidden until an investigative effort dubbed the “Hunt for the Porn King” uncovered him. He once worked at Goldman Sachs and acquired RedTube before consolidating various major porn brands under one umbrella.

💸 Financial Power and Ecosystem MindGeek created a tightly integrated ecosystem of free tube sites and premium pay sites, driving traffic internally. Their flagship site, PornHub, alone generated over 4.6 billion impressions daily, raking in hundreds of millions annually.

🚨 Massive Content Takedown Amid Legal Scrutiny Facing backlash for hosting non-consensual and potentially illegal content, PornHub deleted 10 million videos and over 30 million images in one of the largest internet content purges ever. This was done to regain favor with credit card companies after public scandals.

⚖️ Inadequate Moderation and Exploitation Risks At the time, only 30 moderators handled millions of videos—each watching up to 2,000 videos per shift without sound, making subjective judgments on consent and age. The lack of due diligence posed ethical and legal risks, which whistleblowers later exposed.

🧠 Trauma and Whistleblower Courage Some moderators were victims of abuse themselves. One particularly compelling testimony came from a survivor-turned-moderator who exposed internal practices, motivated by a desire for justice despite personal trauma.

⚙️ Rebrand Attempt with “Ethical” Capital After legal trouble and public scrutiny, MindGeek was sold (internally) to a firm dubbed Ethical Capital Partners, led by Canadian Solomon Friedman, a criminal defense attorney. Critics argue it's a façade, since the same executives (like CFO Eddie Danto and CPO Kareem Al Marazzi) still operate the platform.

👨‍⚖️ Legal Action and Civil Discovery Today, the former leadership is facing 25 lawsuits involving nearly 300 victims, including class actions. Discovery, a process allowing legal access to internal documents, has unveiled deeply incriminating evidence.

Insights Based on Numbers

4.6 Billion Impressions Daily: Demonstrates the scale and global reach of MindGeek’s operations, making it a prime platform for influence—and exploitation.

10 Million Videos Deleted in 24 Hours: Signifies a massive operational failure in verifying and moderating content.

30 Moderators vs. 15,000 on Facebook: Highlights a stark imbalance, raising questions of negligence and systemic risk.

Over 300 Victims in 25 Lawsuits: Legal action underscores the scale of harm and the possible liabilities for the company.