17 ms·

From the article: "I often encountered videos that were uploaded again and again, no matter how many times I removed them. One day, a woman emailed me, calmly

by prirun 5y ago

From the article: "I often encountered videos that were uploaded again and again, no matter how many times I removed them. One day, a woman emailed me, calmly explained that her ex-boyfriend had uploaded a video of them having sex, and asked me to remove it. I deleted the clip. Later that week, it was re-uploaded. The woman wrote again, I removed it, and this continued for months; I must have pulled the same video down a dozen times. This was before I had ever heard the term “revenge porn.” Requests like this were not uncommon. Once, a woman wrote to say there was a video of her on Tube8 that showed her being sexually assaulted after someone spiked her drink at a party. The video had tens of thousands of views, so I had to review it before making the call to remove it. In the clip, the woman is clearly high, laughing and head lolling, having sex on a bed surrounded by fully dressed people holding drinks and watching as colored lights flashed and music blared in the background. I took it down, but it was uploaded again repeatedly in the following months. Each time, the mortified woman flagged it, and each time, I removed it; both of us were aware that there was nothing we could do to stop the clip from resurfacing." I have read the same thing from Facebook content moderators. They got so frustrated at having to watch and take down the same videos over and over. This seems to be such a simple problem to solve: record a hash of the video file, don't allow uploading it again. That would probably get rid of most re-posting. It could be bypassed by modifying the file slightly, but the hashing could also get more sophisticated. At some point, an ex-boyfriend is not likely to want to keep modifying a video to piss off his ex.

rhizome 5y ago
I would think that either FB-level facial recognition, or Disney-level copyright/ContentID frame recognition would be helpful for all this. I don't suppose they're thinking of open-sourcing it.
willcipriano 5y ago
I've never used it, but apparently you can hash a image in such a way that small changes will result in the same hash. I think that is what Apple was doing with it's child abuse filter announced earlier this year.
- mannykannot 5y ago
  In a sense, image recognition is like that - multiple different images hash to "cat", for example. For the purpose here, robust hashing seems to be the relevant term: https://www.netclean.com/netclean-report-2019/robust-hashing/ https://www.netclean.com/netclean-report-2019/robust-hashing...
- shakna 5y ago
  You're probably thinking of a perceptual hash. [0] It's a relatively new field, academically speaking, so only a few players dominate, and there is a huge amount of research going into it. There are other techniques for automatic flagging of similar files, like PhotoDNA's [1] enormous database - which I believe PornHub are already using. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_hashing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_hashing [1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/photodna https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/photodna
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    It seems like a natural evolution of PhotoDNA to have this content (non consensual adult content) flagged programmatically, with a flow for folks to attest to content to be fingerprinted and scanned for.
- tomatotomato37 5y ago
  I don't know if perpetual hashes will work with full videos though, and linking the hash to a singular frame seems very unreliable, especially considering how randomly lossy video compression is
  - shakna 5y ago
    Most video-based perceptual hashes work by taking a series of thumbnails at set intervals, say every 5% of the video, assembling a collage, and then making the perceptual hash against the collage. As you note, it isn't particularly reliable, but it does actually tend to work fairly well against the loss of video compression. However, it doesn't tend to work well when the video is recut, with time added or removed. There is some research trying to combine approaches for finding important keyframes (ML-powered thumbnail searching) with perceptual hashing [0], which is looking promising, but it's still fairly unreliable. [0] https://doi.org/10.1007/s10207-013-0211-z https://doi.org/10.1007/s10207-013-0211-z
EnKopVand 5y ago
I think the only real solution to this is going to be once we hold platforms accountable for the content they let people host. I know the general HN crowd is very much against this, but it’s the standard we hold every other media platform and I don’t see why things should get a free pass just because they pretend to be platforms.
- bilekas 5y ago
  > I think the only real solution to this is going to be once we hold platforms accountable for the content they let people host. I really don't see this as a solution, it's not going to stop the reposts laid out above. I think reporting the infringing uploader to authorities etc would be more appropriate given revenge pr0n is a crime in most places. This would act as at least a deterant for some. The hashing seems like it would filter out at least a few more, but there are a lot of patterns that could be picked up, audio track recognition, frame counts etc. There are better ways than manual intervention on every re-upload.
- gruturo 5y ago
  Would you agree to go to jail if a user posts something illegal on a forum you run? No? Fair and reasonable. Neither do I. Now let's ask ourselves - would ANYONE reply yes? A bit unlikely? Therefore the result is absolutely no more forums/hosting of any kind. I'm not talking pornhub here - even a cake recipe sharing site, a scientific forum, a community of model train enthusiasts, Stack Overflow, your MMO guild's site, even HN itself... nothing. No Discord, no Slack, obviously no social media (which I happen to dislike, but I'm quite firmly in the minority, I'm told), nothing at all.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
    There might be a middle ground between what you suggested and letting harmful content run hog wild on your platform. You should always have a right to sue if you are harmed.
nix23 5y ago
Don't they have any fingerprinting software for videos? Should not be too difficult.
- jrockway 5y ago
  It turns out that it's quite difficult, because people modify the videos before re-uploading. Search YouTube for something like "Bob's Burgers full episode" and you will find plenty despite the uploaders not having the right to upload those videos to YouTube. And if you look in a week, those exact video files will be gone, but the same episodes will all be there again, with different edits and different uploaders. It's a hard problem to solve, that even the biggest tech company in the world is not entirely successful with.
  - takeda 5y ago
    But they are very successful taking down my dashcam video, because there was a song that played in a radio. And of course, appealing is automatic so it doesn't work either.
    - jrockway 5y ago
      Yeah, you didn't edit it in any way to disguise the song. In these pirated videos on YouTube, any music sections are replaced with different music. It's quite weird.
AnthonyMouse 5y ago
> It could be bypassed by modifying the file slightly, but the hashing could also get more sophisticated. Which is the same thing as saying "have a higher false positive rate," and then we have the problem. This is exacerbated by the same kind of system having the same application for copyright infringement, which means there will be a large community of people dedicated to defeating it. Every time they find another workaround, you have to increase the false positive rate. It only ever goes up. This is why everyone hates Content ID. The pirates know how to defeat it, meanwhile it regularly flags public domain works and recordings of randomly generated white noise to say nothing of fair use etc. The solution to revenge porn isn't platforms, it's why isn't the ex getting called "defendant" by a judge for making the recording without permission?
- ppeetteerr 5y ago
  Isn't a high false positivity rate favorable to revenge porn being uploaded? Shouldn't it be on the uploader to prove that a scene depicting sex is legally filmed rather than assuming that it is?
  - samhw 5y ago
    > Shouldn't it... Yes. Will it? No.
- rectang 5y ago
  > The solution to revenge porn isn't platforms, it's why isn't the ex getting called "defendant" by a judge for making the recording without permission? The court system's responsiveness to sex crimes could be greatly improved if we had the collective will to do so. But the problem is both in the courts specifically (because of who the judges are, and who the legislators who write our laws are), and also the wider world. Victim blaming and dismissal/minimizing of the harm inflicted are par for the course everywhere, in the justice system, in the general population, and in many subgroups. (You'll see them here on HN all the time.)
  - tharne 5y ago
_8j50 5y ago
There are inaccurate hash algorithms like ahash for images, isn't there something like this or even ML to detect this? Why just delete instead if blacklist?
astange 5y ago
How is this not the same as spam, and with the same solution: require some cost to be borne by the uploader. The video hosting site can require a credit card and a small fee, like $1, and this problem will go away. But Pornhub won't do that because it will cut profits. Which is the real problem here. Pornhub is making $$$ off the victim of sexual assault. They will do just enough to pretend that they are fighting the problem, but not do the one thing that will actually end it.
- FDSGSG 5y ago
  >But Pornhub won't do that because it will cut profits. Try to upload a video to pornhub right now. Go on. (Perhaps next time do the tiniest amount of research before throwing around nonsense like this?)
  - boznz 5y ago
    For those of us that dont want to do this (I assume that would be 100% of us) what happens?
    - FDSGSG 5y ago
      Pornhub only allows uploads from verified users. You have to upload your ID to the verification service run by yoti.com before you can upload videos. This has been the case for over a year https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Pornhub-Statement-%E2%80%94-February-2-2021.pdf https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Pornh... Also FWIW they also allow non-porn content. For example https://www.pornhub.com/view_video.php?viewkey=ph604a53bb0c9cb https://www.pornhub.com/view_video.php?viewkey=ph604a53bb0c9... And as you can see, it gets a plenty of views.
      - bb611 5y ago
        One piece of context that's important is Pornhub only submitted to those changes due to mass public demands for credit card processors to cut them off, largely due to reporting on this exact problem by Nicholas Kristoff[1] in the opinion section of the New York Times. 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-rape-trafficking.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-ra...
boneitis 5y ago
I've always been interested in the technical problems in the adult entertainment industry, so I tend to read all the porn-related submissions here. Along with the quoted passage in the parent post, I think adding a couple more for TLDR will do justice in relaying much of the author's intended conveyance of sentiment/sorrows (note the original headline's mention of `moderation problems`): ``` When you work at a company that is doing well, that showers employees with generous pay and a sense of belonging, you become saturated with the sense that what you’re doing is right. Even as performers shouted from rooftops that we were destroying their livelihoods and people begged us to remove videos that showed them in their most intimate moments without consent, those negatively impacted [..] were shrugged off as an afterthought, unfortunate collateral damage to a great undertaking. [..] I’d like to think that if I hadn’t been “Nate-Tube8” for those two years, the women I tried to help perhaps wouldn’t have had an ally on the other side of the screen to help them regain their dignity. But maybe I’m just trying to convince myself I was the good guy, despite the fact I was tweeting to promote the company in between video takedowns. ```
ericmcer 5y ago
Wouldn't it be easier to make acquiring upload permissions tedious and then permanently ban violations?
- AlwaysRock 5y ago
  What website, whose revenue comes from engagement and engagement from content, is going to do that?
  - samhw 5y ago
    And more importantly: it doesn't matter what Pornhub.com does. If they develop ethical scruples, another site will simply spring up to serve that supply and demand. Like a gas, the market will expand to fill the legal space available to it.
    - dwaltrip 5y ago
      There is some truth to this idea, but it doesn't trump all other dynamics, always. These markets can have their structure changed by evolving cultural effects / morals / etc.
manquer 5y ago
> At some point, an ex-boyfriend is not likely to want to keep modifying a video to piss off his ex It is not only the ex who keeps uploading again and again. Once videos get into the wild, you have all sorts of people/bots who do this, some just for the kinks, some for money / promoting the next pill/crypto whatever spam, some "fans" genuinely wouldn't know that the video was made without consent and that she is really high, There is so much "situational" or "incest" porn out there many cannot differentiate acting high and being actually high. Also lines get blurry, how much of any actual porn (amateur or professional) is with real informed consent, do actors really know what they are getting into? . How many young OF streamers are doing it for small money and it will haunt them later in life ? A ton of legal porn is exploitative too, we don't have solutions for any of this.
- sandworm101 5y ago
  >> A ton of legal porn is exploitative too, we don't have solutions for any of this. Money. That is why they get paid. We can debate how much and tell stories about porn stars who are stuck in bad contracts, but the systemic answer to exploitation is the exchange of money.
  - berdario 5y ago
    Money is an answer to exploitation about as much as A slaver feeding their slaves is an answer to slavery. Just because you get something in exchange, doesn't mean that there's no power imbalance, the exploitation doesn't exist, and the people with less power don't actually have few alternatives to survive. If you're arguing for: "they should be paid more!" Because currently the pay is unfair and doesn't take into account potential long term damage, that's fair... But it's not a realistic solution (how do you unionize gig workers? Because at the end of the day, people on OF have more in common with the gig economy than with porn actors of yore)
    - sandworm101 5y ago
      No. With money comes contracts and consent. The contract (offer and acceptance) creates evidence of intent. Then after things go horribly wrong and courts get involved, money is used to provide compenation for wrongs done. The system exists. It is an imperfect answer but it does function.
pronlover723 5y ago
Yes, if you can hash then that would help. People then turn to putting the video in a frame and adding some music in order to repost it. I suspect the hash though gets rid of most reposts Another hard problem is user based tags. Many users are basically advertising. They post a clip of something and then say "for the full thing, go here". They then tag their video with as many tags as possible to spam the site. Now a user comes by and searches for their favorite tag and the tag is filled with stuff that has nothing to do with that tag. I've seen this issue on Soundcloud, Pornhub, XVideos, and others. As it affects my favorite tags I often which I had the guts to make a pornhub clone, somehow make it popular, and basically ban/demote or in some way discourage anyone who tags things wrong. I also think I wish pornhub had content id so that creators could somehow get compensated regardless of who posts their content. Something I see a lot is people posting collections of other people's content and asking for you to support them on patreon to post more collections of other people's content ?!??!?! People suck! >:(
throwitawaynow9 5y ago
It seems like facial recognition would actually be useful in this case. Rather than ban a hash of the video itself, ban a specific face appearing in any content on the platform.
- mcbutterbunz 5y ago
  Facial recognition would be really tough to get right, but maybe the opposite would work. All faces are blurred unless uploaded by a known performer or verified account.
- snek_case 5y ago
  I don't think you need facial recognition at all. You need a robust video hash. Need a way to map videos to a perceptual space that's independent of the resolution, the exact length and the colors. Seems very doable to me. IMO the answer here is probably to use deep learning, which would likely turn out to be very effective.
teawrecks 5y ago
> This seems to be such a simple problem to solve: record a hash of the video file Oh honey...
staticautomatic 5y ago
I wonder if you could shadow ban the videos, like by spoofing a page only the uploader can see.
johnnyApplePRNG 5y ago
They're totally already doing this. Have you ever seen spam advertising videos on the free porn sites? A good chunk of the spam/advertising videos are cropped/edited/blurred/sharpened/what-have-you copies of copies of copies. Most likely because their similar hashed copies get flagged.
rasz 5y ago
>This seems to be such a simple problem to solve: record a hash of the video file, don't allow uploading it again. You cant do that without big recording studio claiming copyright, its the Law!
redcodenl 5y ago
There are many ways to properly implement content-id, for example using fingerprinting (like Shazam does). These methods are able to detect matches even with a lot of noise and changes... I hope they implement something like this, to make detecting duplicates and blocking "revenge porn" much easier and to have regression against re-uploading.

by prirun 5y ago

rhizome 5y ago

I would think that either FB-level facial recognition, or Disney-level copyright/ContentID frame recognition would be helpful for all this. I don't suppose they're thinking of open-sourcing it.

willcipriano 5y ago

I've never used it, but apparently you can hash a image in such a way that small changes will result in the same hash. I think that is what Apple was doing with it's child abuse filter announced earlier this year.

mannykannot 5y ago
In a sense, image recognition is like that - multiple different images hash to "cat", for example. For the purpose here, robust hashing seems to be the relevant term: https://www.netclean.com/netclean-report-2019/robust-hashing/ https://www.netclean.com/netclean-report-2019/robust-hashing...
shakna 5y ago
You're probably thinking of a perceptual hash. [0] It's a relatively new field, academically speaking, so only a few players dominate, and there is a huge amount of research going into it. There are other techniques for automatic flagging of similar files, like PhotoDNA's [1] enormous database - which I believe PornHub are already using. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_hashing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_hashing [1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/photodna https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/photodna
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  It seems like a natural evolution of PhotoDNA to have this content (non consensual adult content) flagged programmatically, with a flow for folks to attest to content to be fingerprinted and scanned for.
tomatotomato37 5y ago
I don't know if perpetual hashes will work with full videos though, and linking the hash to a singular frame seems very unreliable, especially considering how randomly lossy video compression is
- shakna 5y ago
  Most video-based perceptual hashes work by taking a series of thumbnails at set intervals, say every 5% of the video, assembling a collage, and then making the perceptual hash against the collage. As you note, it isn't particularly reliable, but it does actually tend to work fairly well against the loss of video compression. However, it doesn't tend to work well when the video is recut, with time added or removed. There is some research trying to combine approaches for finding important keyframes (ML-powered thumbnail searching) with perceptual hashing [0], which is looking promising, but it's still fairly unreliable. [0] https://doi.org/10.1007/s10207-013-0211-z https://doi.org/10.1007/s10207-013-0211-z

EnKopVand 5y ago

I think the only real solution to this is going to be once we hold platforms accountable for the content they let people host. I know the general HN crowd is very much against this, but it’s the standard we hold every other media platform and I don’t see why things should get a free pass just because they pretend to be platforms.

bilekas 5y ago
> I think the only real solution to this is going to be once we hold platforms accountable for the content they let people host. I really don't see this as a solution, it's not going to stop the reposts laid out above. I think reporting the infringing uploader to authorities etc would be more appropriate given revenge pr0n is a crime in most places. This would act as at least a deterant for some. The hashing seems like it would filter out at least a few more, but there are a lot of patterns that could be picked up, audio track recognition, frame counts etc. There are better ways than manual intervention on every re-upload.
gruturo 5y ago
Would you agree to go to jail if a user posts something illegal on a forum you run? No? Fair and reasonable. Neither do I. Now let's ask ourselves - would ANYONE reply yes? A bit unlikely? Therefore the result is absolutely no more forums/hosting of any kind. I'm not talking pornhub here - even a cake recipe sharing site, a scientific forum, a community of model train enthusiasts, Stack Overflow, your MMO guild's site, even HN itself... nothing. No Discord, no Slack, obviously no social media (which I happen to dislike, but I'm quite firmly in the minority, I'm told), nothing at all.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  There might be a middle ground between what you suggested and letting harmful content run hog wild on your platform. You should always have a right to sue if you are harmed.

nix23 5y ago

Don't they have any fingerprinting software for videos? Should not be too difficult.

jrockway 5y ago
It turns out that it's quite difficult, because people modify the videos before re-uploading. Search YouTube for something like "Bob's Burgers full episode" and you will find plenty despite the uploaders not having the right to upload those videos to YouTube. And if you look in a week, those exact video files will be gone, but the same episodes will all be there again, with different edits and different uploaders. It's a hard problem to solve, that even the biggest tech company in the world is not entirely successful with.
- takeda 5y ago
  But they are very successful taking down my dashcam video, because there was a song that played in a radio. And of course, appealing is automatic so it doesn't work either.
  - jrockway 5y ago
    Yeah, you didn't edit it in any way to disguise the song. In these pirated videos on YouTube, any music sections are replaced with different music. It's quite weird.

AnthonyMouse 5y ago

> It could be bypassed by modifying the file slightly, but the hashing could also get more sophisticated. Which is the same thing as saying "have a higher false positive rate," and then we have the problem. This is exacerbated by the same kind of system having the same application for copyright infringement, which means there will be a large community of people dedicated to defeating it. Every time they find another workaround, you have to increase the false positive rate. It only ever goes up. This is why everyone hates Content ID. The pirates know how to defeat it, meanwhile it regularly flags public domain works and recordings of randomly generated white noise to say nothing of fair use etc. The solution to revenge porn isn't platforms, it's why isn't the ex getting called "defendant" by a judge for making the recording without permission?

ppeetteerr 5y ago
Isn't a high false positivity rate favorable to revenge porn being uploaded? Shouldn't it be on the uploader to prove that a scene depicting sex is legally filmed rather than assuming that it is?
- samhw 5y ago
  > Shouldn't it... Yes. Will it? No.
rectang 5y ago
> The solution to revenge porn isn't platforms, it's why isn't the ex getting called "defendant" by a judge for making the recording without permission? The court system's responsiveness to sex crimes could be greatly improved if we had the collective will to do so. But the problem is both in the courts specifically (because of who the judges are, and who the legislators who write our laws are), and also the wider world. Victim blaming and dismissal/minimizing of the harm inflicted are par for the course everywhere, in the justice system, in the general population, and in many subgroups. (You'll see them here on HN all the time.)
- tharne 5y ago

_8j50 5y ago

There are inaccurate hash algorithms like ahash for images, isn't there something like this or even ML to detect this? Why just delete instead if blacklist?

astange 5y ago

How is this not the same as spam, and with the same solution: require some cost to be borne by the uploader. The video hosting site can require a credit card and a small fee, like $1, and this problem will go away. But Pornhub won't do that because it will cut profits. Which is the real problem here. Pornhub is making $$$ off the victim of sexual assault. They will do just enough to pretend that they are fighting the problem, but not do the one thing that will actually end it.

FDSGSG 5y ago
>But Pornhub won't do that because it will cut profits. Try to upload a video to pornhub right now. Go on. (Perhaps next time do the tiniest amount of research before throwing around nonsense like this?)
- boznz 5y ago
  For those of us that dont want to do this (I assume that would be 100% of us) what happens?
  - FDSGSG 5y ago
    Pornhub only allows uploads from verified users. You have to upload your ID to the verification service run by yoti.com before you can upload videos. This has been the case for over a year https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Pornhub-Statement-%E2%80%94-February-2-2021.pdf https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Pornh... Also FWIW they also allow non-porn content. For example https://www.pornhub.com/view_video.php?viewkey=ph604a53bb0c9cb https://www.pornhub.com/view_video.php?viewkey=ph604a53bb0c9... And as you can see, it gets a plenty of views.
    - bb611 5y ago
      One piece of context that's important is Pornhub only submitted to those changes due to mass public demands for credit card processors to cut them off, largely due to reporting on this exact problem by Nicholas Kristoff[1] in the opinion section of the New York Times. 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-rape-trafficking.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-ra...

boneitis 5y ago

I've always been interested in the technical problems in the adult entertainment industry, so I tend to read all the porn-related submissions here. Along with the quoted passage in the parent post, I think adding a couple more for TLDR will do justice in relaying much of the author's intended conveyance of sentiment/sorrows (note the original headline's mention of `moderation problems`): ``` When you work at a company that is doing well, that showers employees with generous pay and a sense of belonging, you become saturated with the sense that what you’re doing is right. Even as performers shouted from rooftops that we were destroying their livelihoods and people begged us to remove videos that showed them in their most intimate moments without consent, those negatively impacted [..] were shrugged off as an afterthought, unfortunate collateral damage to a great undertaking. [..] I’d like to think that if I hadn’t been “Nate-Tube8” for those two years, the women I tried to help perhaps wouldn’t have had an ally on the other side of the screen to help them regain their dignity. But maybe I’m just trying to convince myself I was the good guy, despite the fact I was tweeting to promote the company in between video takedowns. ```

ericmcer 5y ago

Wouldn't it be easier to make acquiring upload permissions tedious and then permanently ban violations?

AlwaysRock 5y ago
What website, whose revenue comes from engagement and engagement from content, is going to do that?
- samhw 5y ago
  And more importantly: it doesn't matter what Pornhub.com does. If they develop ethical scruples, another site will simply spring up to serve that supply and demand. Like a gas, the market will expand to fill the legal space available to it.
  - dwaltrip 5y ago
    There is some truth to this idea, but it doesn't trump all other dynamics, always. These markets can have their structure changed by evolving cultural effects / morals / etc.

manquer 5y ago

> At some point, an ex-boyfriend is not likely to want to keep modifying a video to piss off his ex It is not only the ex who keeps uploading again and again. Once videos get into the wild, you have all sorts of people/bots who do this, some just for the kinks, some for money / promoting the next pill/crypto whatever spam, some "fans" genuinely wouldn't know that the video was made without consent and that she is really high, There is so much "situational" or "incest" porn out there many cannot differentiate acting high and being actually high. Also lines get blurry, how much of any actual porn (amateur or professional) is with real informed consent, do actors really know what they are getting into? . How many young OF streamers are doing it for small money and it will haunt them later in life ? A ton of legal porn is exploitative too, we don't have solutions for any of this.

sandworm101 5y ago
>> A ton of legal porn is exploitative too, we don't have solutions for any of this. Money. That is why they get paid. We can debate how much and tell stories about porn stars who are stuck in bad contracts, but the systemic answer to exploitation is the exchange of money.
- berdario 5y ago
  Money is an answer to exploitation about as much as A slaver feeding their slaves is an answer to slavery. Just because you get something in exchange, doesn't mean that there's no power imbalance, the exploitation doesn't exist, and the people with less power don't actually have few alternatives to survive. If you're arguing for: "they should be paid more!" Because currently the pay is unfair and doesn't take into account potential long term damage, that's fair... But it's not a realistic solution (how do you unionize gig workers? Because at the end of the day, people on OF have more in common with the gig economy than with porn actors of yore)
  - sandworm101 5y ago
    No. With money comes contracts and consent. The contract (offer and acceptance) creates evidence of intent. Then after things go horribly wrong and courts get involved, money is used to provide compenation for wrongs done. The system exists. It is an imperfect answer but it does function.

pronlover723 5y ago

Yes, if you can hash then that would help. People then turn to putting the video in a frame and adding some music in order to repost it. I suspect the hash though gets rid of most reposts Another hard problem is user based tags. Many users are basically advertising. They post a clip of something and then say "for the full thing, go here". They then tag their video with as many tags as possible to spam the site. Now a user comes by and searches for their favorite tag and the tag is filled with stuff that has nothing to do with that tag. I've seen this issue on Soundcloud, Pornhub, XVideos, and others. As it affects my favorite tags I often which I had the guts to make a pornhub clone, somehow make it popular, and basically ban/demote or in some way discourage anyone who tags things wrong. I also think I wish pornhub had content id so that creators could somehow get compensated regardless of who posts their content. Something I see a lot is people posting collections of other people's content and asking for you to support them on patreon to post more collections of other people's content ?!??!?! People suck! >:(

throwitawaynow9 5y ago

It seems like facial recognition would actually be useful in this case. Rather than ban a hash of the video itself, ban a specific face appearing in any content on the platform.

mcbutterbunz 5y ago
Facial recognition would be really tough to get right, but maybe the opposite would work. All faces are blurred unless uploaded by a known performer or verified account.
snek_case 5y ago
I don't think you need facial recognition at all. You need a robust video hash. Need a way to map videos to a perceptual space that's independent of the resolution, the exact length and the colors. Seems very doable to me. IMO the answer here is probably to use deep learning, which would likely turn out to be very effective.

teawrecks 5y ago

> This seems to be such a simple problem to solve: record a hash of the video file Oh honey...

staticautomatic 5y ago

I wonder if you could shadow ban the videos, like by spoofing a page only the uploader can see.

johnnyApplePRNG 5y ago

They're totally already doing this. Have you ever seen spam advertising videos on the free porn sites? A good chunk of the spam/advertising videos are cropped/edited/blurred/sharpened/what-have-you copies of copies of copies. Most likely because their similar hashed copies get flagged.

rasz 5y ago

>This seems to be such a simple problem to solve: record a hash of the video file, don't allow uploading it again. You cant do that without big recording studio claiming copyright, its the Law!

redcodenl 5y ago

There are many ways to properly implement content-id, for example using fingerprinting (like Shazam does). These methods are able to detect matches even with a lot of noise and changes... I hope they implement something like this, to make detecting duplicates and blocking "revenge porn" much easier and to have regression against re-uploading.