6 ms·

This is undoubtedly a positive move, though I do not believe it will be enough to satisfy the likes of the credit card companies. They are requiring ID verific

This is undoubtedly a positive move, though I do not believe it will be enough to satisfy the likes of the credit card companies. They are requiring ID verification (i.e. that you're 18 or over) to upload content. As much as I am privacy-minded, the idea that someone could upload an explicit video to Pornhub without verifying that they were 18 is mind-boggling. This is also a net positive for content producers on Pornhub, who often see their content pirated on the very same platform.

concordDance 6y ago
This means lots of casual exhibitionists will be reluctant to upload. It will probably cut uploads to a tiny fraction of what they were. Which could well be a net negative (I'm assuming both the viewers and exhibitionists get something out of it) given how small the positives are.
- LinuxBender 6y ago
  And that usually creates a vacuum for smaller niche sites to pop up and fill the gap.
  - threeboy 6y ago
    "Fill the gap"
  - Andrex 6y ago
    Smaller niche sites are exactly the type of pornographic sites I try to avoid (malware, etc.) And spinning up a new video host (that you intend to make money somehow) isn't cheap or easy.
    - bilbo0s 6y ago
      And spinning up a new video host (that you intend to make money somehow) isn't cheap or easy. Nor is it terribly safe right now legally speaking. Considering the child porn castoffs from pornhub will be out looking for a new place to upload their trash. Eventually, not only child pornographers, but so many other undesirables are on your site, that it's just dangerous to continue running it from a liability perspective.
      - LinuxBender 6y ago
        Agreed. I can imagine the look on a lawyers face if I said I wanted to make such a site.
    - wruza 6y ago
      >sites I try to avoid (malware, etc.) Is it still a thing? What malware can a pornsite contain that cannot be uploaded to or linked to from a regular smaller niche or bigger broader site? Do you download and run hotgirls.exe dialers or what?
      - Andrex 6y ago
        Things may have 100% changed and all porn sites are now completely safe, but I am not adventurous enough to find out.
- throw_m239339 6y ago
  > This means lots of casual exhibitionists will be reluctant to upload. You're saying it like it's a bad thing. Phub already has a process where content creators can ask their content to be verified directly. No platform should have porn on it without being able to source the origin of that content, period. (US) Studios have to retain a list of performers legally, I don't see why these free pornsites shouldn't. Countless lives have been destroyed because of revenge porn uploaded on these websites.
  - mskslal 6y ago
    Absolutely this. The benefits of "casual exhibitionists" absolutely do not outweigh the risks and costs of having unverified and possibly illegal porn on your site.
  - concordDance 6y ago
    > Countless lives have been destroyed because of revenge porn uploaded on these websites. I suspect you're getting a lot of downvotes for this. I don't know how one's life could get destroyed just by uploading a sex tape to a porn website. It's more the sending it to friends and aquaintances that causes hurt (and for the vast vast majority this would hardly "destroy their lives", very few people are that fragile), which can be accomplished easily enough without the porn website.
    - throw_m239339 6y ago
      > I don't know how one's life could get destroyed just by uploading a sex tape to a porn website You people have zero empathy provided you get your porn. You don't think that a victim of revenge porn feels like being raped everytime a stranger jerks off on her intimate image/video uploaded without her consent and it doesn't take a toll on her psyche thus destroying her life? Then shame on you.
- klyrs 6y ago
  There are other venues for this: cam sites, onlyfans, deviantart, fetlife, etc... which by and large put the subjects in the driver's seat. But a lot of those "casual exhibitionists" are unverified. Many of the photos may have been taken with consent, but are distributed without. Sometimes that's revenge porn, sometimes it's hacked/jacked content, etc. Distribution of questionably sourced content can be quite damaging to the subjects. If the "casual exhibitionist" is harmed here, it's dwarfed by the harm already being done to subjects without consent. And there are still plenty of suitable venues out there. Including verification with pornhub.
  - concordDance 6y ago
    > If the "casual exhibitionist" is harmed here, it's dwarfed by the harm already being done to subjects without consent. If you look at the actual mechanisms by which harm happens in a revenge porn case, I think you'll find it isn't dependant on pornhub at all. What do you think are the mechanisms by which revenge porn harms?
    - klyrs 6y ago
      Pornhub actively, and knowingly or negligently, facilitates it. They're accessories to the act. It doesn't matter that it could happen anywhere. It's been happening on pornhub and until now they've been reactive (responding to takedown requests) instead of proactive (requiring verification of all content).
      - beezle 6y ago
        Newspapers, magazines and broadcast news have been actively, negligently and often knowingly defaming people and organizations for decades (centuries?), sometimes with very serious consequences for the offended parties. I've not heard anyone calling for Visa/MC to cut them off. If there is a legal case to be made against Pornhub, then the authorities should make it. Otherwise they would do better to go after those who made (or uploaded) the offending material in the first place.
Phobophobia 6y ago
Maybe I am misunderstanding something, but I feel this could be a major privacy negative if this means all platforms require identification verification (i.e all sites with an account require a cell phone number or address etc.). Currently, I can post to reddit or hackernews without my profile saying who I am or who I work for. Of course anonymity provides an environment prone to misinformation and exploitation, at the same time, so having verification on a case by case (site by site) basis would be my vote.
- ffpip 6y ago
  It already is happening https://www.neowin.net/news/youtube-will-launch-a-new-age-verification-requirement-for-some-european-users https://www.neowin.net/news/youtube-will-launch-a-new-age-ve...
- YinglingLight 6y ago
  The only sincere exchange of ideas left will be on 4chan.
- kipchak 6y ago
  It's been strange seeing internet safety advice shift so far away from "never use your real name online"
  - pixl97 6y ago
    Yep, especially when the reason is "incase the state needs to prosecute you for what you post". After this year everyone should be worried about what the future government turns into after the talk of violent overthrow of the legitimate vote.
- pixl97 6y ago
  >Of course anonymity provides an environment prone to misinformation Plenty of misinformation posted by identified accounts on FB and Twitter.
instakill 6y ago
A service that would allow users to upload their KYC info, and then provide them with unique tokens per site that can be used on 3rd party sites as nonces would be a decent way around having to verify on each site.
- mindslight 6y ago
  Or just let the whole middleman as a service industry keep rotting, and direct your technical energy towards rebuilding services on distributed technologies that won't succumb to the whims of the status quo power structure. What made the Internet great was being an unregulated frontier, and we can see that everywhere the legacy system jams its tentacles ends up turning to commercialized milquetoast shit.
  - pas 6y ago
    Power is important, but without economics, it's just an academic research project/network. Yeah, that made the Internet great in the beginning, and there are projects that don't depend on being "monetized", such as the OG hardcore F/OSS ones (GNU, Debian, KDE/Gnome, CCC, Wikipedia) and their ideological offspring (peertube, mastodon, matrix.org, blender). But the average user doesn't care and doesn't understand the importance of having a free as in "as independent from the powers that be as possible" platforms.
    - mindslight 6y ago
      The "average user" of 20 years ago was watching TV news, TV entertainment, and choosing their goods from what their local stores decided to carry. Similar arguments were made about how they wouldn't want to do a bunch of technical stuff, yet today digital technology is just part of everyday life. If the middleman as a service industry could have held itself to ~2010 levels of intrusiveness, then I'd say perhaps there might not be enough of an advantage to pull people into newer technologies. Alas, every bit of top-down meddling seems to beget even more top-down meddling, as the powermongers discover that the nouveau middlemen can be pressured just as easily as the old set.
tomjen3 6y ago
>As much as I am privacy-minded, the idea that someone could upload an explicit video to Pornhub without verifying that they were 18 is mind-boggling. You make it sound like the statement requires no evidence. In reality it makes no difference if the uploader is 18 or not, but that the _recording_ is made consensually by 18+. It is not a net positive for content producers, because viewers of legal but unverified porn (ie the wast majority of the content) will go to other sites. I suspect xvideos viewership will go up, and they probably won't ally with the credit card agencies.
- appletrotter 6y ago
  > In reality it makes no difference if the uploader is 18 or not Are you for real?
buisi 6y ago
If anyone should be holding them to account, it should be the courts and / or society. Credit card companies shouldn't be able to play judge, jury and executioner. If our laws are insufficient to deal with the problem of major tube sites, we can enact new ones. Related: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/visa-and-mastercard-are-trying-dictate-what-you-can-watch-pornhub https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/visa-and-mastercard-ar...

concordDance 6y ago

This means lots of casual exhibitionists will be reluctant to upload. It will probably cut uploads to a tiny fraction of what they were. Which could well be a net negative (I'm assuming both the viewers and exhibitionists get something out of it) given how small the positives are.

LinuxBender 6y ago
And that usually creates a vacuum for smaller niche sites to pop up and fill the gap.
- threeboy 6y ago
  "Fill the gap"
- Andrex 6y ago
  Smaller niche sites are exactly the type of pornographic sites I try to avoid (malware, etc.) And spinning up a new video host (that you intend to make money somehow) isn't cheap or easy.
  - bilbo0s 6y ago
    And spinning up a new video host (that you intend to make money somehow) isn't cheap or easy. Nor is it terribly safe right now legally speaking. Considering the child porn castoffs from pornhub will be out looking for a new place to upload their trash. Eventually, not only child pornographers, but so many other undesirables are on your site, that it's just dangerous to continue running it from a liability perspective.
    - LinuxBender 6y ago
      Agreed. I can imagine the look on a lawyers face if I said I wanted to make such a site.
  - wruza 6y ago
    >sites I try to avoid (malware, etc.) Is it still a thing? What malware can a pornsite contain that cannot be uploaded to or linked to from a regular smaller niche or bigger broader site? Do you download and run hotgirls.exe dialers or what?
    - Andrex 6y ago
      Things may have 100% changed and all porn sites are now completely safe, but I am not adventurous enough to find out.
throw_m239339 6y ago
> This means lots of casual exhibitionists will be reluctant to upload. You're saying it like it's a bad thing. Phub already has a process where content creators can ask their content to be verified directly. No platform should have porn on it without being able to source the origin of that content, period. (US) Studios have to retain a list of performers legally, I don't see why these free pornsites shouldn't. Countless lives have been destroyed because of revenge porn uploaded on these websites.
- mskslal 6y ago
  Absolutely this. The benefits of "casual exhibitionists" absolutely do not outweigh the risks and costs of having unverified and possibly illegal porn on your site.
- concordDance 6y ago
  > Countless lives have been destroyed because of revenge porn uploaded on these websites. I suspect you're getting a lot of downvotes for this. I don't know how one's life could get destroyed just by uploading a sex tape to a porn website. It's more the sending it to friends and aquaintances that causes hurt (and for the vast vast majority this would hardly "destroy their lives", very few people are that fragile), which can be accomplished easily enough without the porn website.
  - throw_m239339 6y ago
    > I don't know how one's life could get destroyed just by uploading a sex tape to a porn website You people have zero empathy provided you get your porn. You don't think that a victim of revenge porn feels like being raped everytime a stranger jerks off on her intimate image/video uploaded without her consent and it doesn't take a toll on her psyche thus destroying her life? Then shame on you.
klyrs 6y ago
There are other venues for this: cam sites, onlyfans, deviantart, fetlife, etc... which by and large put the subjects in the driver's seat. But a lot of those "casual exhibitionists" are unverified. Many of the photos may have been taken with consent, but are distributed without. Sometimes that's revenge porn, sometimes it's hacked/jacked content, etc. Distribution of questionably sourced content can be quite damaging to the subjects. If the "casual exhibitionist" is harmed here, it's dwarfed by the harm already being done to subjects without consent. And there are still plenty of suitable venues out there. Including verification with pornhub.
- concordDance 6y ago
  > If the "casual exhibitionist" is harmed here, it's dwarfed by the harm already being done to subjects without consent. If you look at the actual mechanisms by which harm happens in a revenge porn case, I think you'll find it isn't dependant on pornhub at all. What do you think are the mechanisms by which revenge porn harms?
  - klyrs 6y ago
    Pornhub actively, and knowingly or negligently, facilitates it. They're accessories to the act. It doesn't matter that it could happen anywhere. It's been happening on pornhub and until now they've been reactive (responding to takedown requests) instead of proactive (requiring verification of all content).
    - beezle 6y ago
      Newspapers, magazines and broadcast news have been actively, negligently and often knowingly defaming people and organizations for decades (centuries?), sometimes with very serious consequences for the offended parties. I've not heard anyone calling for Visa/MC to cut them off. If there is a legal case to be made against Pornhub, then the authorities should make it. Otherwise they would do better to go after those who made (or uploaded) the offending material in the first place.

Phobophobia 6y ago

Maybe I am misunderstanding something, but I feel this could be a major privacy negative if this means all platforms require identification verification (i.e all sites with an account require a cell phone number or address etc.). Currently, I can post to reddit or hackernews without my profile saying who I am or who I work for. Of course anonymity provides an environment prone to misinformation and exploitation, at the same time, so having verification on a case by case (site by site) basis would be my vote.

ffpip 6y ago
It already is happening https://www.neowin.net/news/youtube-will-launch-a-new-age-verification-requirement-for-some-european-users https://www.neowin.net/news/youtube-will-launch-a-new-age-ve...
YinglingLight 6y ago
The only sincere exchange of ideas left will be on 4chan.
kipchak 6y ago
It's been strange seeing internet safety advice shift so far away from "never use your real name online"
- pixl97 6y ago
  Yep, especially when the reason is "incase the state needs to prosecute you for what you post". After this year everyone should be worried about what the future government turns into after the talk of violent overthrow of the legitimate vote.
pixl97 6y ago
>Of course anonymity provides an environment prone to misinformation Plenty of misinformation posted by identified accounts on FB and Twitter.

instakill 6y ago

A service that would allow users to upload their KYC info, and then provide them with unique tokens per site that can be used on 3rd party sites as nonces would be a decent way around having to verify on each site.

mindslight 6y ago
Or just let the whole middleman as a service industry keep rotting, and direct your technical energy towards rebuilding services on distributed technologies that won't succumb to the whims of the status quo power structure. What made the Internet great was being an unregulated frontier, and we can see that everywhere the legacy system jams its tentacles ends up turning to commercialized milquetoast shit.
- pas 6y ago
  Power is important, but without economics, it's just an academic research project/network. Yeah, that made the Internet great in the beginning, and there are projects that don't depend on being "monetized", such as the OG hardcore F/OSS ones (GNU, Debian, KDE/Gnome, CCC, Wikipedia) and their ideological offspring (peertube, mastodon, matrix.org, blender). But the average user doesn't care and doesn't understand the importance of having a free as in "as independent from the powers that be as possible" platforms.
  - mindslight 6y ago
    The "average user" of 20 years ago was watching TV news, TV entertainment, and choosing their goods from what their local stores decided to carry. Similar arguments were made about how they wouldn't want to do a bunch of technical stuff, yet today digital technology is just part of everyday life. If the middleman as a service industry could have held itself to ~2010 levels of intrusiveness, then I'd say perhaps there might not be enough of an advantage to pull people into newer technologies. Alas, every bit of top-down meddling seems to beget even more top-down meddling, as the powermongers discover that the nouveau middlemen can be pressured just as easily as the old set.

tomjen3 6y ago

>As much as I am privacy-minded, the idea that someone could upload an explicit video to Pornhub without verifying that they were 18 is mind-boggling. You make it sound like the statement requires no evidence. In reality it makes no difference if the uploader is 18 or not, but that the _recording_ is made consensually by 18+. It is not a net positive for content producers, because viewers of legal but unverified porn (ie the wast majority of the content) will go to other sites. I suspect xvideos viewership will go up, and they probably won't ally with the credit card agencies.

appletrotter 6y ago
> In reality it makes no difference if the uploader is 18 or not Are you for real?

buisi 6y ago

If anyone should be holding them to account, it should be the courts and / or society. Credit card companies shouldn't be able to play judge, jury and executioner. If our laws are insufficient to deal with the problem of major tube sites, we can enact new ones. Related: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/visa-and-mastercard-are-trying-dictate-what-you-can-watch-pornhub https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/visa-and-mastercard-ar...