6 ms·

Laws hold the porn industry accountable for dangerous content

54 points by whatthe91 7y ago

anovikov 7y ago
xHamster is Russian owned and controlled. I know all of their C-levels, they are here in Cyprus. It is really a brilliant company and they perfectly know what we are doing. Quite unlike Facebook - there is a Russian company that makes and sells fake Facebook accounts, and being used correctly, they can live for months and even years without being banned (used to buy ads advertising dodgy stuff). Facebook is really helpless to stop it.
mtgx 7y ago
The answer has always been obvious. Facebook (and Google, etc) would rather keep the tens of billions of dollars in profit they make each year and keep growing that number, too. They don't have need for "cost centers" such as customer support, moderation teams, etc. Facebook doesn't even have a large enough support team for advertisers let alone anyone else that might have some real issues with their accounts, which I think should probably be illegal. You can't offer a service and then not respond to your customers issues/problems, especially if they pay for it. There definitely needs to be more regulation in tech regarding this aspect. These companies have all the money they need to solve some of these issues, and then some. They'd rather keep that money for themselves and try to enter completely different markets so they can become an even bigger monopoly instead, though (which is yet another good reason to put restrictions on this stuff, because the goal should be to minimize the number of monopolies).
- frereubu 7y ago
  I vouched for this comment, because I don’t see what was so objectionable about it. It seems like a genuinely held opinion, expressed in a relatively measured tone. If you disagree, reply with your reasons rather than trying to get it removed.
  - varjag 7y ago
    Plenty of Facebook/Google employees over here.
    - kaoD 7y ago
      Plus he said it should be regulated. Plenty of laissez-faire folk over here too.
  - icebraining 7y ago
    Nobody tried to get that comment removed.
    - altacc 7y ago
      Downvoting is effectively voting for a comment to removed.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        How so? Downvoted comments can still be seen.
      - ryanlol 7y ago
        When was the comment downvoted?
    - y4mi 7y ago
      hmm, it does look like they did though. looking at @mtgx's history, almost all comments have been flagged and downvoted until they're [dead]
      - icebraining 7y ago
        No, the account was banned, therefore his comments are automatically dead unless vouched for. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20587230 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20587230
planb 7y ago
"We have had a legion of volunteers... who review uploads in exchange for in-site rewards, as well as the health of the community." ...or in exchange to see the stuff they can't get to see anywhere else? I wonder for how many of these "volunteers" this is the main motivation - is this a quasi-legal way to see illegal content?
- gambiting 7y ago
  That's a really weird assumption - if you're looking for dodgy videos it's trivial to find them the dark web. Volunteers who do the same jobs for companies like google or facebook frequently say they are traumatized by content they see - it's not just sexual stuff, there's plenty of really explicit gore and abuse videos that come through. And if you're the kind of person who gets off on that stuff then like I said, it's not exactly difficult to find on the dark web. My point is - doing this like you said "quasi-legally" must be the worst way of doing it, as you're giving the company all your real details to be employed - the very second anyone suspects you're doing it for the thrills(maybe you are the only employee who actually watches every video to the end?) you'd be in deep trouble.
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    > the very second anyone suspects you're doing it for the thrills (maybe you are the only employee who actually watches every video to the end?) This would be unlikely. Stipulating that ordinary xHamster users are watching the ordinary videos for the thrills... how many of them watch every video to the end?
    - gambiting 7y ago
      I mean - if you see an abuse video, a regular employee would flag it immediately and stop watching. Someone doing it for the thrill would watch it till the end and then flag it. It would be pretty obvious from the data I think.
      - thaumasiotes 7y ago
aurea 7y ago
Of course porn websites will say they have advanced measures to moderate content. The reality is that these platforms do host illegal content [1]. Even beyond child pornography, they facilitate the sharing of revenge porn which content-wise might not be considered illegal, so I don't see any way an algorithm would remove it on its own (even a human would probably be unable to do so without additional information). Once that is out, victims are unable to do much about it. Perhaps the original video might be deleted but copies can spread around, even on the same website and are not taken down. [1] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/766b96c0-fdb0-11e9-8343-786bb3fac9c1 https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/766b96c0-fdb0-11e9-8343-7...
- nostrebored 7y ago
  Beyond facilitation of child pornography distribution, there have been lawsuits related to rape being filmed and distributed. During the course of these lawsuits the videos typically remain up for streaming. There's also the underlying human trafficking problem that makes consumption of any pornography, even mainstream, a probabilistic endorsement and generation of demand for trafficking.
  - mam2 7y ago
    Most of pornography involves willing young girls who just want money and dont care about sex.. just watch the netflix docs. Not saying its better, but its not clear at all pornography drives human trafficking. Prostitution however...
  - Freak_NL 7y ago
    > There's also the underlying human trafficking problem that makes consumption of any pornography, even mainstream, a probabilistic endorsement and generation of demand for trafficking. That does not sound like a common perception of pornography. There are a number of quantifiable potential problems with the consumption of porn, but correlating porn consumption and human trafficking seems like a stretch.
  - JamesBarney 7y ago
    Would you mind linking to some resources? I've heard this before but could never track down any good sources.
sytelus 7y ago
TLDR; 1. They don't have to worry about latency due to review delays. 2. They can use vision based detection algos for classification which are much reliable than NLP based understanding. 3. They recruit users to do reviews for in-site benefits. Unsaid but I suspect they also don't have to worry about user driven random virality for any content.
- gwd 7y ago
  > They recruit users to do reviews for in-site benefits. I think this would be the best thing for a social media platform. Using a site requires using credits, and you can get credits one of three ways: 1. Paying a monthly fee 2. Performing maintenance activities like content reviews 3. Opting-in to advertising
- noselasd 7y ago
  Surely there's a volume difference too ? I would expect images, videos etc. that people post to facebook outnumbers what people post to porn sites by many orders of magnitudes.
  - novok 7y ago
    There is also the issue where a lot of data posted on FB is meant to be semi-private, while content posted on these websites are meant to be public.
dustinmoris 7y ago
I have a Facebook account, but I've not logged in for many years now, I've never had the app installed on any of my phones (last time I used Facebook the chat app was still working in the mobile version of the web app) and recently some kids seriously asked me what Facebook even is. As far as I'm concerned it's dead and I wonder how they are still even making any money? Is it really just some old people there now and a bunch of influenza seeking self confirmation through meaningless likes and then the majority which is left is perhaps some bots and political activits to spam those few old people with shit that nobody outside their bubble gives a damn? This is a serious question, what's happening on Facebook nowadays that still keeps that domain alive? > If a porn site were the subject of an investigation that revealed it had been home to millions of images of child abuse content, its parent company probably wouldn’t remain in business for much longer. For Facebook, however, a Times piece that alleged an epidemic of child abuse on its platform was just a bad news day. That’s a stark difference in reaction to the same offense, and one that should give us all pause. So true. How is Facebook not being penalised really badly for this? Facebook distributing child absue through their unmoderated platform is the same as if Facebook would have build a bunch of robots who would have handed out child abuse magazines to millions of households. It is literally the same - a machine, which allegedely can't see - publicising horrendous content to millions of people. In the latter case Zuck would be locked into a prision cell on Guantanamo Bay for the rest of his life, in the former he just shruggs it off like nothing and keeps being one of the richest people on earth because of it. Quite stark contrast.
- ourlordcaffeine 7y ago
  >I wonder how they are still even making any money? Instagram is how they are making money
  - mrfoobar70 7y ago
    Doesn't look to be the case https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2019/07/average-annual-revenue-per-user-in-the-united-states-on-facebook-and-instagram.html https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2019/07/average-annu...
  - 7y ago
dna_polymerase 7y ago
While there might be some legal factors to it, I think the problem spaces are a little different on these two websites (or generally speaking any porn site compared to facebook). Facebook revolves around user interaction, that is videos, photos and text (in various forms, even links to external sources). Adult entertainment deals with those too, but those sites are mostly used like YouTube with lower session times. Every minute "510,000 comments are posted, 293,000 statuses are updated, and 136,000 photos are uploaded"[0] on facebook, on Pornhub it is 22 video comments and 122 messages[1]. Xhamster should be comparable to that. The difference in volume is striking. Now with lower volume it is easier to moderate. Scanning videos isn't easy but AI should help, but AI these days fails for text, at least for anything else than an easy classification task. Hate speech isn't just random insults, there is more to it, and current AI systems can't possibly understand the whole context to something. Even if content wasn't released immediately on facebook, there aren't enough people in the world to moderate the amount of content posted on facebook everyday. I really think the comparison of those sites doesn't make sense. [0]: https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/ https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/ [1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/curtissilver/2018/12/11/pornhub-2018-year-in-review-insights-report/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/curtissilver/2018/12/11/pornhub...
jakestuart 7y ago
This is the same strategy Google and Apple use with their app stores. This level of moderation is definitely possible in the valley.
- buboard 7y ago
  i absolutely don't want the web to end up like shitty walled gardens
  - K0balt 7y ago
    Facebook isn't the web, it's already a shitty walled garden.
    - buboard 7y ago
      the problem is that any regulation that affects FB will affect the web
- tsanummy 7y ago
  Ah yes, the very properly moderated Google Play Store.
- scarface74 7y ago
  To get on the Apple Store you have to pay $99 a year and show some type of proof of identity. Not to mention that you have to have a Mac and know how to code. I don’t see any similarities between what Apple does and a social media site.
matheusmoreira 7y ago
The author is essentially arguing that it's okay to regulate the tech industry because the porn industry survived regulation. It's fine to try to do good by regulating an industry but it doesn't free us from the burden of evaluating the value of each proposed law. Just because it's okay to regulate in general doesn't mean every law is reasonable. It sounds like a pretext for end-to-end encryption regulation.
Kaveren 7y ago
This is one of the worst articles I've read in a long time. The author is able to weasel their way out of holding them accountable to their opinions when they say that if porn can "thrive" with such extreme moderation, social media can "thrive" with a lesser degree. The problem with this is that they don't specify what in particular social media companies should do. The inability to post content without it being moderated beforehand is treated as if it's a good thing, suggesting it's something social media companies should do but distancing themselves from the implication enough to maintain plausible deniability. Especially ironic is that many porn sites make much of their money through ads that harvest personal data or prey on male insecurity. There are strong arguments I disagree with in favor of regulating social media. Those arguments are also prescriptive, not general "we should do something". This is a very weak one. Downvotes are the single best indicator of the problem with volunteer content moderation. People don't just downvote for bad comments, they downvote for comments they disagree with. Good luck getting edgy content through YouTube's Volunteer Force, it'll hurt causes you may agree with.

54 points by whatthe91 7y ago

xHamster is Russian owned and controlled. I know all of their C-levels, they are here in Cyprus. It is really a brilliant company and they perfectly know what we are doing. Quite unlike Facebook - there is a Russian company that makes and sells fake Facebook accounts, and being used correctly, they can live for months and even years without being banned (used to buy ads advertising dodgy stuff). Facebook is really helpless to stop it.

mtgx 7y ago

The answer has always been obvious. Facebook (and Google, etc) would rather keep the tens of billions of dollars in profit they make each year and keep growing that number, too. They don't have need for "cost centers" such as customer support, moderation teams, etc. Facebook doesn't even have a large enough support team for advertisers let alone anyone else that might have some real issues with their accounts, which I think should probably be illegal. You can't offer a service and then not respond to your customers issues/problems, especially if they pay for it. There definitely needs to be more regulation in tech regarding this aspect. These companies have all the money they need to solve some of these issues, and then some. They'd rather keep that money for themselves and try to enter completely different markets so they can become an even bigger monopoly instead, though (which is yet another good reason to put restrictions on this stuff, because the goal should be to minimize the number of monopolies).

frereubu 7y ago
I vouched for this comment, because I don’t see what was so objectionable about it. It seems like a genuinely held opinion, expressed in a relatively measured tone. If you disagree, reply with your reasons rather than trying to get it removed.
- varjag 7y ago
  Plenty of Facebook/Google employees over here.
  - kaoD 7y ago
    Plus he said it should be regulated. Plenty of laissez-faire folk over here too.
- icebraining 7y ago
  Nobody tried to get that comment removed.
  - altacc 7y ago
    Downvoting is effectively voting for a comment to removed.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      How so? Downvoted comments can still be seen.
    - ryanlol 7y ago
      When was the comment downvoted?
  - y4mi 7y ago
    hmm, it does look like they did though. looking at @mtgx's history, almost all comments have been flagged and downvoted until they're [dead]
    - icebraining 7y ago
      No, the account was banned, therefore his comments are automatically dead unless vouched for. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20587230 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20587230

planb 7y ago

"We have had a legion of volunteers... who review uploads in exchange for in-site rewards, as well as the health of the community." ...or in exchange to see the stuff they can't get to see anywhere else? I wonder for how many of these "volunteers" this is the main motivation - is this a quasi-legal way to see illegal content?

gambiting 7y ago
That's a really weird assumption - if you're looking for dodgy videos it's trivial to find them the dark web. Volunteers who do the same jobs for companies like google or facebook frequently say they are traumatized by content they see - it's not just sexual stuff, there's plenty of really explicit gore and abuse videos that come through. And if you're the kind of person who gets off on that stuff then like I said, it's not exactly difficult to find on the dark web. My point is - doing this like you said "quasi-legally" must be the worst way of doing it, as you're giving the company all your real details to be employed - the very second anyone suspects you're doing it for the thrills(maybe you are the only employee who actually watches every video to the end?) you'd be in deep trouble.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  > the very second anyone suspects you're doing it for the thrills (maybe you are the only employee who actually watches every video to the end?) This would be unlikely. Stipulating that ordinary xHamster users are watching the ordinary videos for the thrills... how many of them watch every video to the end?
  - gambiting 7y ago
    I mean - if you see an abuse video, a regular employee would flag it immediately and stop watching. Someone doing it for the thrill would watch it till the end and then flag it. It would be pretty obvious from the data I think.
    - thaumasiotes 7y ago

aurea 7y ago

Of course porn websites will say they have advanced measures to moderate content. The reality is that these platforms do host illegal content [1]. Even beyond child pornography, they facilitate the sharing of revenge porn which content-wise might not be considered illegal, so I don't see any way an algorithm would remove it on its own (even a human would probably be unable to do so without additional information). Once that is out, victims are unable to do much about it. Perhaps the original video might be deleted but copies can spread around, even on the same website and are not taken down. [1] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/766b96c0-fdb0-11e9-8343-786bb3fac9c1 https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/766b96c0-fdb0-11e9-8343-7...

nostrebored 7y ago
Beyond facilitation of child pornography distribution, there have been lawsuits related to rape being filmed and distributed. During the course of these lawsuits the videos typically remain up for streaming. There's also the underlying human trafficking problem that makes consumption of any pornography, even mainstream, a probabilistic endorsement and generation of demand for trafficking.
- mam2 7y ago
  Most of pornography involves willing young girls who just want money and dont care about sex.. just watch the netflix docs. Not saying its better, but its not clear at all pornography drives human trafficking. Prostitution however...
- Freak_NL 7y ago
  > There's also the underlying human trafficking problem that makes consumption of any pornography, even mainstream, a probabilistic endorsement and generation of demand for trafficking. That does not sound like a common perception of pornography. There are a number of quantifiable potential problems with the consumption of porn, but correlating porn consumption and human trafficking seems like a stretch.
- JamesBarney 7y ago
  Would you mind linking to some resources? I've heard this before but could never track down any good sources.

sytelus 7y ago

TLDR; 1. They don't have to worry about latency due to review delays. 2. They can use vision based detection algos for classification which are much reliable than NLP based understanding. 3. They recruit users to do reviews for in-site benefits. Unsaid but I suspect they also don't have to worry about user driven random virality for any content.

gwd 7y ago
> They recruit users to do reviews for in-site benefits. I think this would be the best thing for a social media platform. Using a site requires using credits, and you can get credits one of three ways: 1. Paying a monthly fee 2. Performing maintenance activities like content reviews 3. Opting-in to advertising
noselasd 7y ago
Surely there's a volume difference too ? I would expect images, videos etc. that people post to facebook outnumbers what people post to porn sites by many orders of magnitudes.
- novok 7y ago
  There is also the issue where a lot of data posted on FB is meant to be semi-private, while content posted on these websites are meant to be public.

dustinmoris 7y ago

I have a Facebook account, but I've not logged in for many years now, I've never had the app installed on any of my phones (last time I used Facebook the chat app was still working in the mobile version of the web app) and recently some kids seriously asked me what Facebook even is. As far as I'm concerned it's dead and I wonder how they are still even making any money? Is it really just some old people there now and a bunch of influenza seeking self confirmation through meaningless likes and then the majority which is left is perhaps some bots and political activits to spam those few old people with shit that nobody outside their bubble gives a damn? This is a serious question, what's happening on Facebook nowadays that still keeps that domain alive? > If a porn site were the subject of an investigation that revealed it had been home to millions of images of child abuse content, its parent company probably wouldn’t remain in business for much longer. For Facebook, however, a Times piece that alleged an epidemic of child abuse on its platform was just a bad news day. That’s a stark difference in reaction to the same offense, and one that should give us all pause. So true. How is Facebook not being penalised really badly for this? Facebook distributing child absue through their unmoderated platform is the same as if Facebook would have build a bunch of robots who would have handed out child abuse magazines to millions of households. It is literally the same - a machine, which allegedely can't see - publicising horrendous content to millions of people. In the latter case Zuck would be locked into a prision cell on Guantanamo Bay for the rest of his life, in the former he just shruggs it off like nothing and keeps being one of the richest people on earth because of it. Quite stark contrast.

ourlordcaffeine 7y ago
>I wonder how they are still even making any money? Instagram is how they are making money
- mrfoobar70 7y ago
  Doesn't look to be the case https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2019/07/average-annual-revenue-per-user-in-the-united-states-on-facebook-and-instagram.html https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2019/07/average-annu...
- 7y ago

dna_polymerase 7y ago

While there might be some legal factors to it, I think the problem spaces are a little different on these two websites (or generally speaking any porn site compared to facebook). Facebook revolves around user interaction, that is videos, photos and text (in various forms, even links to external sources). Adult entertainment deals with those too, but those sites are mostly used like YouTube with lower session times. Every minute "510,000 comments are posted, 293,000 statuses are updated, and 136,000 photos are uploaded"[0] on facebook, on Pornhub it is 22 video comments and 122 messages[1]. Xhamster should be comparable to that. The difference in volume is striking. Now with lower volume it is easier to moderate. Scanning videos isn't easy but AI should help, but AI these days fails for text, at least for anything else than an easy classification task. Hate speech isn't just random insults, there is more to it, and current AI systems can't possibly understand the whole context to something. Even if content wasn't released immediately on facebook, there aren't enough people in the world to moderate the amount of content posted on facebook everyday. I really think the comparison of those sites doesn't make sense. [0]: https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/ https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/ [1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/curtissilver/2018/12/11/pornhub-2018-year-in-review-insights-report/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/curtissilver/2018/12/11/pornhub...

jakestuart 7y ago

This is the same strategy Google and Apple use with their app stores. This level of moderation is definitely possible in the valley.

buboard 7y ago
i absolutely don't want the web to end up like shitty walled gardens
- K0balt 7y ago
  Facebook isn't the web, it's already a shitty walled garden.
  - buboard 7y ago
    the problem is that any regulation that affects FB will affect the web
tsanummy 7y ago
Ah yes, the very properly moderated Google Play Store.
scarface74 7y ago
To get on the Apple Store you have to pay $99 a year and show some type of proof of identity. Not to mention that you have to have a Mac and know how to code. I don’t see any similarities between what Apple does and a social media site.

matheusmoreira 7y ago

The author is essentially arguing that it's okay to regulate the tech industry because the porn industry survived regulation. It's fine to try to do good by regulating an industry but it doesn't free us from the burden of evaluating the value of each proposed law. Just because it's okay to regulate in general doesn't mean every law is reasonable. It sounds like a pretext for end-to-end encryption regulation.

Kaveren 7y ago

This is one of the worst articles I've read in a long time. The author is able to weasel their way out of holding them accountable to their opinions when they say that if porn can "thrive" with such extreme moderation, social media can "thrive" with a lesser degree. The problem with this is that they don't specify what in particular social media companies should do. The inability to post content without it being moderated beforehand is treated as if it's a good thing, suggesting it's something social media companies should do but distancing themselves from the implication enough to maintain plausible deniability. Especially ironic is that many porn sites make much of their money through ads that harvest personal data or prey on male insecurity. There are strong arguments I disagree with in favor of regulating social media. Those arguments are also prescriptive, not general "we should do something". This is a very weak one. Downvotes are the single best indicator of the problem with volunteer content moderation. People don't just downvote for bad comments, they downvote for comments they disagree with. Good luck getting edgy content through YouTube's Volunteer Force, it'll hurt causes you may agree with.