6 ms·

This is the New York Times editorial (mentioned in the 3rd paragraph) that led to this: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-rape-trafficki

This is the New York Times editorial (mentioned in the 3rd paragraph) that led to this: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-rape-trafficking.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-ra... Discussed on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25301913 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25301913

pizza234 6y ago
> I came across many videos on Pornhub that were recordings of assaults on unconscious women and girls. The rapists would open the eyelids of the victims and touch their eyeballs to show that they were nonresponsive. Either the writer is one of the few people on earth who believes that porn is real, or he's somebody who lies to push their ideology. Hard to believe that it's the first.
- trollied 6y ago
  > I came across many videos on Pornhub I bet :)
- newbie789 6y ago
  Out of curiosity, did you read the linked article? It would appear that you're implying that the women that were directly quoted as being harmed by the site were also lying. If so, I find the stance of "either the author is an idiot or there's a conspiracy" to be an interesting dichotomy that excludes a third possibility.
  - anotherman554 6y ago
    Did you notice the article is in the opinion section? I believe that means it isn't fact checked at all and there's no journalistic expectation it's anything other than fiction.
    - newbie789 6y ago
      So you are of the opinion that the women were lying. Thanks for clarifying, I was unsure what you were responding to.
      - anotherman554 6y ago
        I wasn't the person you responded to, I just wanted to point out the expectation should be the article is fiction. The women may not even exist. They may not have been quoted correctly if they even exist. There is no expectation it's been fact checked. The article is in the opinion section, which means NY Times doesn't believe it's journalism at all.
        newbie789 6y ago
        That's a really interesting take. Do you regularly read opinion pieces and take it as proof that the opposite position is correct? For example, if another writer published an article in the opinion section saying "PornHub has never even accidentally hosted illegal content, especially not child sex exploitation material. These PornHub employees that I've interviewed know this to be true" how would you interpret that?
        anotherman554 6y ago
        Your framing doesn't make sense. If someone tells me "I'm not a doctor or a scientist but you should eat 4 Apples a day" the correct response is to ignore it, not try to decide what the opposite of 4 Apples a day is and to believe that, whatever the heck the opposite of 4 Apples a day would be. If I read an article where someone says "I'm not a journalist that this isn't fact checked but ABC" it would seem the correct response is to ignore it, not assume what you read is correct or even the opposite is correct.
        newbie789 6y ago
        That's an interesting analogy, but I'm not sure how that's a response to my example question. If every opinion piece is by definition fiction (and by your reasoning should never be believed), what would your response be if you read an article positing the opposite case on this topic? Surely PornHub employees could hypothetically be made up or misquoted in the same way the women in this story possibly were. In that case, we'd know that the article was pure fiction, which indicates that the opposite case is true based on this strict ruleset of "opinion pieces are always fiction" and "fiction is always to be treated as categorically false."
  - pizza234 6y ago
    Yes, I did, and I find the article very disingenous, biased, and intentionally confused (it mixes different problems in other to make the point). Considering that porn simulates reality (to various degrees), touching somebody else's eye doesn't prove anything. Also a title "very young teen" doesn't prove anything (it's pretty much standard for videos of this genre). If you want to find abusive videos, you can also find them on YouTube, which has been criticized as well, for the same reasons. The legal/moral issue is how the hosting company handles them. The author of the article mentions a low report rate, but he did not investigate the possibility that PornHub makes reporting difficult or ineffective. Ultimately, the article is intentionally ideological, and not factual, because a real investigation may hurt the point. Here's how disconnected from reality the author is: > The problem goes far beyond one company. Indeed, a rival of Pornhub, XVideos, which arguably has even fewer scruples, may attract more visitors. Depictions of child abuse also appear on mainstream sites like Twitter, Reddit and Facebook. And Google supports the business models of companies that thrive on child molestation.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  is it that hard to believe he may have come across genuine examples? I'm certainly not willing to search "14yo" on pornhub to judge for myself.
- cosmodisk 6y ago
  Forget the staged videos, there's a whole heap of categories of those. However, there are tons of real ones,where predominantly women,were duped by men and ended up on videos either by filming secretly,or agreeing on the basis it won't be shared with anyone. I remember reading a UK based woman's ordeal trying to get rid of the content hee ex uploaded. Multiple jurisdictions, variations in laws and attitudes towards such cases and the amount of money needed just so PornHub would delete the video. There are lots of issues with these platforms and people often don't quite know,or can possibly know,where the content is legit and where it's just rape videos on demand.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  User-generated content always has at least some terrible stuff. I wouldn't be surprised if it's true. The real question is whether these sites are entitled to some equivalent of the DMCA Safe Harbor if they attempt reasonable policing. I think the answer is yes and I think automated analysis and ID verification is sufficient so long as they pass human-reported cases on to law enforcement. I believe this for Pornhub but I also believe it for Youtube and Facebook or whoever else. It doesn't really matter if your site is a porn site or a family pictures site. You should be allowed to have user-generated content with some reasonably high-sensitivity auto-detector coupled with human reports that are passed on to law enforcement and be indemnified.
- colechristensen 6y ago
  I personally had a former partner put images of me on the Internet. (I got drunk, got the content taken down, and got a restraining order within 24 hours) I know people first hand who have been victims of similar situations but far worse. A lot of the content out there is indeed real, and a lot of what is “staged” is still abuse. Please try to expand your horizons.
eznzt 6y ago
Interesting article. It makes me wonder how different women are at age 14 and age 18. In other words what makes it okay for them to make the decision to go public just when they hit 18. 18 seems like a very arbitrary barrier. It is arguable that a many women are undeveloped mentally and emotionally at that age and that it is not a reasonable decision to leave in their hands.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  18 is probably the "somewhat average" line we draw from a legal sense when we decide people are able to make and be responsible for their own decisions. Some places and for some reasons it's 16, or 21. It's not a perfect method by any means, but it protects for the most part the most vulnerable of our population.

pizza234 6y ago

> I came across many videos on Pornhub that were recordings of assaults on unconscious women and girls. The rapists would open the eyelids of the victims and touch their eyeballs to show that they were nonresponsive. Either the writer is one of the few people on earth who believes that porn is real, or he's somebody who lies to push their ideology. Hard to believe that it's the first.

trollied 6y ago
> I came across many videos on Pornhub I bet :)
newbie789 6y ago
Out of curiosity, did you read the linked article? It would appear that you're implying that the women that were directly quoted as being harmed by the site were also lying. If so, I find the stance of "either the author is an idiot or there's a conspiracy" to be an interesting dichotomy that excludes a third possibility.
- anotherman554 6y ago
  Did you notice the article is in the opinion section? I believe that means it isn't fact checked at all and there's no journalistic expectation it's anything other than fiction.
  - newbie789 6y ago
    So you are of the opinion that the women were lying. Thanks for clarifying, I was unsure what you were responding to.
    - anotherman554 6y ago
      I wasn't the person you responded to, I just wanted to point out the expectation should be the article is fiction. The women may not even exist. They may not have been quoted correctly if they even exist. There is no expectation it's been fact checked. The article is in the opinion section, which means NY Times doesn't believe it's journalism at all.
      - newbie789 6y ago
        That's a really interesting take. Do you regularly read opinion pieces and take it as proof that the opposite position is correct? For example, if another writer published an article in the opinion section saying "PornHub has never even accidentally hosted illegal content, especially not child sex exploitation material. These PornHub employees that I've interviewed know this to be true" how would you interpret that?
        anotherman554 6y ago
        Your framing doesn't make sense. If someone tells me "I'm not a doctor or a scientist but you should eat 4 Apples a day" the correct response is to ignore it, not try to decide what the opposite of 4 Apples a day is and to believe that, whatever the heck the opposite of 4 Apples a day would be. If I read an article where someone says "I'm not a journalist that this isn't fact checked but ABC" it would seem the correct response is to ignore it, not assume what you read is correct or even the opposite is correct.
        newbie789 6y ago
        That's an interesting analogy, but I'm not sure how that's a response to my example question. If every opinion piece is by definition fiction (and by your reasoning should never be believed), what would your response be if you read an article positing the opposite case on this topic? Surely PornHub employees could hypothetically be made up or misquoted in the same way the women in this story possibly were. In that case, we'd know that the article was pure fiction, which indicates that the opposite case is true based on this strict ruleset of "opinion pieces are always fiction" and "fiction is always to be treated as categorically false."
- pizza234 6y ago
  Yes, I did, and I find the article very disingenous, biased, and intentionally confused (it mixes different problems in other to make the point). Considering that porn simulates reality (to various degrees), touching somebody else's eye doesn't prove anything. Also a title "very young teen" doesn't prove anything (it's pretty much standard for videos of this genre). If you want to find abusive videos, you can also find them on YouTube, which has been criticized as well, for the same reasons. The legal/moral issue is how the hosting company handles them. The author of the article mentions a low report rate, but he did not investigate the possibility that PornHub makes reporting difficult or ineffective. Ultimately, the article is intentionally ideological, and not factual, because a real investigation may hurt the point. Here's how disconnected from reality the author is: > The problem goes far beyond one company. Indeed, a rival of Pornhub, XVideos, which arguably has even fewer scruples, may attract more visitors. Depictions of child abuse also appear on mainstream sites like Twitter, Reddit and Facebook. And Google supports the business models of companies that thrive on child molestation.
leetcrew 6y ago
is it that hard to believe he may have come across genuine examples? I'm certainly not willing to search "14yo" on pornhub to judge for myself.
cosmodisk 6y ago
Forget the staged videos, there's a whole heap of categories of those. However, there are tons of real ones,where predominantly women,were duped by men and ended up on videos either by filming secretly,or agreeing on the basis it won't be shared with anyone. I remember reading a UK based woman's ordeal trying to get rid of the content hee ex uploaded. Multiple jurisdictions, variations in laws and attitudes towards such cases and the amount of money needed just so PornHub would delete the video. There are lots of issues with these platforms and people often don't quite know,or can possibly know,where the content is legit and where it's just rape videos on demand.
renewiltord 6y ago
User-generated content always has at least some terrible stuff. I wouldn't be surprised if it's true. The real question is whether these sites are entitled to some equivalent of the DMCA Safe Harbor if they attempt reasonable policing. I think the answer is yes and I think automated analysis and ID verification is sufficient so long as they pass human-reported cases on to law enforcement. I believe this for Pornhub but I also believe it for Youtube and Facebook or whoever else. It doesn't really matter if your site is a porn site or a family pictures site. You should be allowed to have user-generated content with some reasonably high-sensitivity auto-detector coupled with human reports that are passed on to law enforcement and be indemnified.
colechristensen 6y ago
I personally had a former partner put images of me on the Internet. (I got drunk, got the content taken down, and got a restraining order within 24 hours) I know people first hand who have been victims of similar situations but far worse. A lot of the content out there is indeed real, and a lot of what is “staged” is still abuse. Please try to expand your horizons.

eznzt 6y ago

Interesting article. It makes me wonder how different women are at age 14 and age 18. In other words what makes it okay for them to make the decision to go public just when they hit 18. 18 seems like a very arbitrary barrier. It is arguable that a many women are undeveloped mentally and emotionally at that age and that it is not a reasonable decision to leave in their hands.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
18 is probably the "somewhat average" line we draw from a legal sense when we decide people are able to make and be responsible for their own decisions. Some places and for some reasons it's 16, or 21. It's not a perfect method by any means, but it protects for the most part the most vulnerable of our population.