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To say this is a hit piece against PornHub is to oversimplify the issue. The parent company MindGeek (Revenue: 460 million USD) formerly known as ManWin has b

To say this is a hit piece against PornHub is to oversimplify the issue. The parent company MindGeek (Revenue: 460 million USD) formerly known as ManWin has been receiving such criticisms for years now. This is not a hit-piece against a small streaming start-up. It's a wake-up call to monitor a tech giant. https://nymag.com/news/features/70985/ https://nymag.com/news/features/70985/ 2011 https://www.philosophyforlife.org/blog/porn-corporations-stop-selling-rape-fantasies https://www.philosophyforlife.org/blog/porn-corporations-sto... 2012 https://slate.com/technology/2014/10/mindgeek-porn-monopoly-its-dominance-is-a-cautionary-tale-for-other-industries.html https://slate.com/technology/2014/10/mindgeek-porn-monopoly-... 2014 etc.

claudeganon 6y ago
Jon Ronson's podcast "The Butterfly Effect" also does a great job of breaking down how damaging MindGeek's practices have been to workers and legitimate players in the industry: https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Butterfly-Effect-with-Jon-Ronson-Audiobook/B073JS84YF?qid=1500046538&sr=1-4 https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Butterfly-Effect-with-Jon-Ron...
miracle2k 6y ago
These seem all very different critiques. The Nick Kristof article is based on the work of Laila Mickelwait, who has for the last couple of years worked tirelessly on her campaign to shutdown Pornhub. I twas her who has surfaced all the victims in the article. Though I doubt she will succeed now, she is very clear that the end-goal is not to monitor Pornhub, but to criminally charge it's owners. This is because a criminal case against them, similar to Backpage, would essentially make all tube-porn sites legal unviable.
- tomjen3 6y ago
  And a very quick google search confirmed what I suspected: she works for a christian organization. I thought that we had effectively neutered the religious right.
  - Andrex 6y ago
    > I thought that we had effectively neutered the religious right. How could you pay attention to American politics in the last 30 years and possibly still think this?
  - Karunamon 6y ago
    And? How is that relevant? I really quite loathe this line of argument that the source or even the intentions behind a probably factual statement should be taken into account when evaluating the truthfulness of the statement. It's textbook ad hominem, literally argument to the person. PH has a demonstrable problem with child porn on its service. I don't care if it's the US government, a different government, a religious fundamentalist, a competitor, a lobbying group, or some random anonymous internet user surfacing that problem so long as it's verifiably true. Intention factors into evaluation of the speaker, not the content. To do otherwise is to discard important, actionable facts because you dislike the speaker. In other words, it discards logic.
    - wolco2 6y ago
      The stats compared to facebook show the opposite. 100 or so items over three years is a success story compared to any other social network. You need trust in the messager. If this person has religious objections ignoring that is ignoring reality. The messager is the message
      - Raphmedia 6y ago
        1 rape or child-porn video is already too much. Comparing to other websites is meaningless and insensitive. We are not comparing performance statistics but broken lives. Telling the judge that your neighbor is more criminal than you won't help you in any court case.
        wolco2 6y ago
        Comparing social media sites incidents and take down polcies for these types of sites are not meaningless. If someone emailed you some material should your emailbox, you or all email be taken away from society? The reality of user generated content being uploaded and breaking a sites tos is all too common.
- kmonsen 6y ago
  Kristof's end goal (at least as he states, and based on the reporting) is not to shut down Pornhub, and he tried to balance it with talking to Pornstars to make sure there would be a balance. I think you are attacking the person instead of the issue. It doesn't matter what her background is as long as there are legitimate issues. And that was certainly the case with backpage, and seems like it was true for Pornhub as well. I would say Pornhub either is more serious or learned the lesson from backpage, and is moving very fast in shutting illegal things down. I don't think it currently looks like the outcome right now looks like they will be declared illegal.
manquer 6y ago
It is hit piece in the sense, it focused a lot on PornHub while arguably the other players are worse in terms of the standards the article stated this as well. Was it well deserved ? Certainly, they could have been doing more lot earlier. However there are lot worse players and the focus has been a lot more on Pornhub rather than industry in general. Self regulation by Pornhub is good step forward, but a model which enables only change from one player after pressure from the payment providers is not reliable model. There has to be regulatory change to really protect the victims.

claudeganon 6y ago

Jon Ronson's podcast "The Butterfly Effect" also does a great job of breaking down how damaging MindGeek's practices have been to workers and legitimate players in the industry: https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Butterfly-Effect-with-Jon-Ronson-Audiobook/B073JS84YF?qid=1500046538&sr=1-4 https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Butterfly-Effect-with-Jon-Ron...

miracle2k 6y ago

These seem all very different critiques. The Nick Kristof article is based on the work of Laila Mickelwait, who has for the last couple of years worked tirelessly on her campaign to shutdown Pornhub. I twas her who has surfaced all the victims in the article. Though I doubt she will succeed now, she is very clear that the end-goal is not to monitor Pornhub, but to criminally charge it's owners. This is because a criminal case against them, similar to Backpage, would essentially make all tube-porn sites legal unviable.

tomjen3 6y ago
And a very quick google search confirmed what I suspected: she works for a christian organization. I thought that we had effectively neutered the religious right.
- Andrex 6y ago
  > I thought that we had effectively neutered the religious right. How could you pay attention to American politics in the last 30 years and possibly still think this?
- Karunamon 6y ago
  And? How is that relevant? I really quite loathe this line of argument that the source or even the intentions behind a probably factual statement should be taken into account when evaluating the truthfulness of the statement. It's textbook ad hominem, literally argument to the person. PH has a demonstrable problem with child porn on its service. I don't care if it's the US government, a different government, a religious fundamentalist, a competitor, a lobbying group, or some random anonymous internet user surfacing that problem so long as it's verifiably true. Intention factors into evaluation of the speaker, not the content. To do otherwise is to discard important, actionable facts because you dislike the speaker. In other words, it discards logic.
  - wolco2 6y ago
    The stats compared to facebook show the opposite. 100 or so items over three years is a success story compared to any other social network. You need trust in the messager. If this person has religious objections ignoring that is ignoring reality. The messager is the message
    - Raphmedia 6y ago
      1 rape or child-porn video is already too much. Comparing to other websites is meaningless and insensitive. We are not comparing performance statistics but broken lives. Telling the judge that your neighbor is more criminal than you won't help you in any court case.
      - wolco2 6y ago
        Comparing social media sites incidents and take down polcies for these types of sites are not meaningless. If someone emailed you some material should your emailbox, you or all email be taken away from society? The reality of user generated content being uploaded and breaking a sites tos is all too common.
kmonsen 6y ago
Kristof's end goal (at least as he states, and based on the reporting) is not to shut down Pornhub, and he tried to balance it with talking to Pornstars to make sure there would be a balance. I think you are attacking the person instead of the issue. It doesn't matter what her background is as long as there are legitimate issues. And that was certainly the case with backpage, and seems like it was true for Pornhub as well. I would say Pornhub either is more serious or learned the lesson from backpage, and is moving very fast in shutting illegal things down. I don't think it currently looks like the outcome right now looks like they will be declared illegal.

manquer 6y ago

It is hit piece in the sense, it focused a lot on PornHub while arguably the other players are worse in terms of the standards the article stated this as well. Was it well deserved ? Certainly, they could have been doing more lot earlier. However there are lot worse players and the focus has been a lot more on Pornhub rather than industry in general. Self regulation by Pornhub is good step forward, but a model which enables only change from one player after pressure from the payment providers is not reliable model. There has to be regulatory change to really protect the victims.