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XVideos: The porn empire next door

163 points by zwirbl 5y ago

agumonkey 5y ago
Some radio host / comic made a bit about these being banned in France, or in the process of maybe being banned. :)
bobobob420 5y ago
Do not watch porn it is terrible for your brain
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  Porn is mostly harmless if you don't spiral.
  - bobobob420 5y ago
    I disagree. Porn has long term effects on the brain. It desensitizes the mind to what the reality of sex by showing a fake reality that is maximized to drive horniness. It plays on the fantasies of the mind and makes them into a reality with the camera. I have completely stopped watching and noticed a great deal of benefit in my sex life and I am not some stereotypical internet porn addict. Porn requires a great deal of responsibility in consumption and regulation.
- crispyambulance 5y ago
  Almost anything can be "terrible for your brain" as people can become addicted to almost anything. It's more about the individual taking the substance than it is about the addictive substance itself. That said, thinking about porn as "a business" it seems like things don't add up. There are allegations about major providers being gargantuan money laundering operations. In the absence of actual facts I am inclined to believe that. It doesn't seem possible for them to grow to such scale solely on subscriptions and sex-advert related stuff.
- zthrowaway 5y ago
  Agreed. https://www.amazon.com/Your-Brain-Porn-Pornography-Addiction-ebook/dp/B00N2AH8NW https://www.amazon.com/Your-Brain-Porn-Pornography-Addiction...
  - manuelabeledo 5y ago
    I wouldn’t rely on a book essentially filled with pseudoscience and wishful thinking. Their website is also awfully militant, perhaps even worse.
    - zthrowaway 5y ago
      Sounds like you haven't read it, or bothered to look at the studies referenced within. There's plenty of research and studies showing its effect on brain matter and rewiring of the brain structure. It's akin to substance abuse. Feel free to explain to me how all of these studies are wrong.
      - npteljes 5y ago
        Toxic people can reference valid studies and make valid points. That doesn't make them non-toxic, and neither does it invalidate the studies.
        zthrowaway 5y ago
        I'm not sure how this book is toxic, or the people involved in authoring it. Any snippets of the material within that you think is toxic? Could we also define toxic in this context?
      - manuelabeledo 5y ago
        True, I haven’t read the book. I have been following the controversy, though. My gripe revolves around the fact that the author has no relevant training in the matter, but signed a highly controversial paper along with an ophthalmologist [1]. This paper was then used as the basis for both his book and his TEDx talks. Now, I’m not going to pretend that I am a psychologist myself, but for several years I authored a blog that analysed pseudoscience and cult beliefs, and the whole website and the associated Reward Foundation reek of pseudoscience cliche: * They frequently rely on self references, i.e. support their conclusions using their own prior work. * Misrepresent scientific consensus, e.g alleged that “porn addiction” is part of the DSM-5. * Any criticism on their work has been ignored, or blamed on personal vendettas or disinformation campaigns (see their opinions on Nicole Prause). Frankly, to me this looks like just another China Study. [1] https://retractionwatch.com/2018/06/13/journal-corrects-but-will-not-retract-controversial-paper-on-internet-porn/ https://retractionwatch.com/2018/06/13/journal-corrects-but-...
- gchamonlive 5y ago
  Treat what led you to porn addiction. If you "just quit" you might diverge to other escapism methods, like drinking or gambling. Don't just follow random internet advice or pseudo-science-riddled self-help books. Seek professional help, because nobody has to be alone in dealing with addiction.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- swat535 5y ago
  Says who? You? Consenting adults are capable of making their own decisions. Doing anything excessively can have a negative impact on one's psyche: video games, movies, gambling, sex, food, workaholics, .. Porn and sexual gratification has been with us since the dawn of mankind , perhaps it's time to stop waging war against the naked human body.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    > Consenting adults are capable of making their own decisions. and some of those decisions are stupid. I am not siding with OP, just outlining he could have written 'don't stick your hand into a blender', it's a reasonable reccomendation.
logifail 5y ago
- sschueller 5y ago
  Netzpolitik is German so it's definitely a translation error. The German version has "Neun Minuten, 53 Sekunden, Orgasmus."
  - eptcyka 5y ago
    I don't understand, 53 is 53 in all languages, how could it possibly be a translation error?
    - julius_deane 5y ago
      7 8 9 4 5 6 1 2 3 your finger slips, what key could it hit?
      - eptcyka 5y ago
        A typo is an error that could be made during the process of translation, but it's not a translation error, it's not something that's lost in translation or mistranslated.
        hnbad 5y ago
        I think the question whether a typo occuring during translation is a translation error is mostly a matter of perspective. If you ordered the translation and it contains a typo not present in the original article, that's an error in the translation so it's fair to consider it a translation error.
    - numlock86 5y ago
      Depending on typeface, your eye's performance and distance a 5 could be mistaken for a 9 easily.
staticelf 5y ago
I have a hard time feeling sympathy with people who tries to include non-violence actions as violence. Either it's violence or it's not, stop trying to muddy the water. Since I think those people already lie in the first accusation I wonder what else they may be lying about.
EdwardDiego 5y ago
I followed a link from this to another article and Jesus Christ. > I’ve been nursing a serious prolapse injury from one shoot for Legal Porno. It was supposed to be one of 4. I’ve been dealing with blood and shit since the scene. Can’t believe they can sell my pain online but they can Then the bits about applying lidocaine to anuses to help them get through the shoot... I'm gobsmacked... if you need a local anaesthetic, it somewhat implies that you're doing dangerous stuff. LegalPorno (now renamed AnalVids apparently) is also owned by the people who own XVideos. https://denikn.cz/552186/i-was-bleeding-and-ended-up-in-hospital-women-accuse-producers-of-xvideos-of-violent-porn-shooting/ https://denikn.cz/552186/i-was-bleeding-and-ended-up-in-hosp...
- ilaksh 5y ago
  If that second article is not fabricated then I believe the producers of that should be in jail. Forcing someone to do something that will injure them or they won't get paid anything, after lying about it. I'm sure the whole industry is horrible but this seems pretty clearcut and high profile.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  >if you need a local anaesthetic, it somewhat implies that you're doing dangerous stuff. It explains why porn is mostly made in low income regions like Eastern Europe and South-East Asia. Lots of desperate people trying to get by who will get into dangerous activities trying to make ends meet. Although the economy is now much better than it was in the 90's, even today in my Eastern European college town, the university campuses are full of adverts for "modelling agencies" that are basically fronts for bating young women into the porn industry. Back in the 90's to the 00's, human trafficking here was rampant, with pimp gangs baiting young women from poor villages under the lie that they will work in hospitality in Western Europe to send money back home, but instead, taking their passports away, and sending them to forced prostitution in Western Europe, under punishments of beatings if they try to tell anyone or escape.
  - robinsoh 5y ago
    > It explains why porn is mostly made in low income regions like Eastern Europe and South-East Asia. Citation needed. Your claim doesn't match commonly reported data. --- The global leaders in porn are the U.S, taking a 60 per cent share of global internet pornography, Two thirds of all U.S porn sites are hosted in California with the country hosting a total of 4.2 million domains containing porn. ---
mccorrinall 5y ago
> Until late last year, it probably didn’t take more than an email address to post photos and videos on XVideos. Accessible to a potential audience of millions. These were very low hurdles for people who wanted to distribute recordings of others without their consent, so-called voyeur recordings or „revenge porn.“ So what? Even if I'd require e.g. a phone number of every uploader it wouldn't change a thing. XVideos would still only be able to react, not preact. Content would still remain online, until someone reports it. If someone uploads your porn tape and you're the original author, just send a DMCA and it gets taken down. No problemo.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  > XVideos would still only be able to react, not preact. The less anonymous the poster is, the easier it gets for law enforcement to find them and enforce the laws against posting revenge porn or unconsented videos. Once a video is marked that way, it's relatively trivial to remove other instances of it.
  - transforming 5y ago
    > The less anonymous the poster is, the easier it gets for law enforcement But this would have a horrifying, chilling effect on marginalized communities. Anonymity allows for one to publish marginalized interest works and trans-oriented contents. This is especially important for less-than-safe jurisdictions, for which even bog-standard sex workers may well find themselves in the crosshairs of a fascist government, or even grass-roots persecution from far-right sources using hacked data! It is, after all, only a matter of time for most any web site in this day and age for a user-data compromise. These kinds of policies lead to harassment, violence, and imprisonment for many.
    - AlecSchueler 5y ago
      Agreed but the lack of these kinds of policies also lead to harassment and violence for many, so it's clear a discussion needs to be had.
    - strangeattractr 5y ago
durnygbur 5y ago
jdrc 5y ago
there isnt much of incriminating evidence in the article to justify the writing as if they discovered some terrorist cell or sth. searching for revenge porn and banning shady stuff is laudable, but there s so many people willing to make porn nowadays that it doesnt justify creating panics around it. even facebook and google have corporate structures in the carribean. The names they are printing are probably the owners of companies who serve as directors. I mean it's cool if you want to fight the global shell company system and all, but starting with a medium euro porn site doesnt seem particularly fruitful. I wonder whose audience is this article; i don't think germans are so scared of porn
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  > i don't think germans are so scared of porn I don't think this is the issue at all to be honest. It's not about puritanism or anti-pornography or whatever, it's about the people involved, the victims who are forced into prostitution (on camera or otherwise), or those who get their private videos published as revenge or as a consequence (blackmailing).
- berkes 5y ago
  > to justify the writing as if they discovered some terrorist cell or sth I read it as whilst trying to uncover the people behind those businesses, we found those spend effort to not be uncovered. Like a reverse "I don't need privacy because I have nothing to hide" fallacy. Only that the reverse isn't that much a fallacy: if you spend this amount of money, effort, technology, and legal structures to hide yourselves, in an industry that is in trouble because of people who do want to hide their privacy but cannot (revenge porn etc. all mentioned in the article), there is something amiss.
  - jdrc 5y ago
    i think the main reason is tax avoidance. These porn sites have so much content anyway that they dont stand to gain from distributing revenge porn. Unless they are super-shady, they remove stuff with a DMCA request
    - 5y ago
polote 5y ago
> These days, authorities are also investigating XVideos. Survivors of sexualized violence are going public. Are we going to sue Twitter too for keeping videos of killed Russian and Ukrainian people ? Because XVideos as far as I know is not only about sexualized violence.
- emteycz 5y ago
  It's not just a platform, it's a producer too. They have many subsidiaries.
- jug 5y ago
  In fact, Twitter has both. A lot of porn on Twitter as well. Even underage in a sort of porn rings. I'm surprised it hasn't blown up in their face yet like it did with Vine. Maybe it's because it just hasn't reached the mainstream news threshold yet. Right now Twitter is being very quiet about this issue and just trying and failing to block accounts in time.
  - nullc 5y ago
    > I'm surprised it hasn't blown up in their face yet There is an ongoing federal lawsuit against twitter for refusing to remove extortion generated child pornography when requested by the victim and their parent. https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/31302014/doe-v-twitter-inc/ https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/31302014/doe-v-twitter-...
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    > Right now Twitter is being very quiet about this issue and just trying and failing to block accounts in time. Twitter is doing two things at the moment: first, offering the ability for uploaders to mark photos and videos as sensitive (nudity, violence, general [1]), and second, at least in Germany they're hiding accounts based on complaints of our youth protection agency [2]. [1]: https://www.androidpolice.com/twitter-adds-granular-content-warnings-to-tweets/ https://www.androidpolice.com/twitter-adds-granular-content-... [2]: https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-porn-block-germany-age-verification/ https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-porn-block-germany-age-v...
eurasiantiger 5y ago
> Nine minutes, 93 seconds, orgasm. This is the average visit duration of the world’s biggest porn site XVideos Slightly sus from the get-go.
vbaguru 5y ago
- jdrc 5y ago
  flamebait should be banned too because it encourages brain abuse
  - vbaguru 5y ago
gigatexal 5y ago
This exploitation wouldn't have a market without consumers. Same idea with drugs -- handle the demand side and the production should diminish. I feel bad for the women thrown into this. It's disgusting.
- npteljes 5y ago
  "Handle the demand" does a lot of work here. What's the demand in your opinion, and how would you handle it?
  - gigatexal 5y ago
    I don’t know exactly. There’s a difference between this exploitative shit and say only fans. Assuming a creator on only fans is not being extorted in any way and understands what they’re doing they get to keep much much more of the upside and have creative control over the content. I don’t see that here. So I guess handle the demand means shape or encourage consumption of more creator friendly content than this xvideos stuff.
newaccount74 5y ago
I really think that consensual pornography should be allowed, but considering how much coercion and abuse there is in the field it's pretty obvious that there is no way around regulation. I really hope that the EU finds a way to regulate the business without killing it. I think consensual sex work should be allowed, especially if it's in a way where sex workers are in control of their own image. But if the big platforms all ignore the problem and refuse to proactively do something against abuse, then the religious fundamentalists will win. A lot of platforms have started outright banning pornography and/or sex work, which just pushes people to less scrupulous sites.
- zwirbl 5y ago
  Consensual, sure, but the issues go much deeper. Take Youtube and the issues with copyrighted content, swap copyright for violence/rape/voyeurism/underage/revenge porn and the likes, then you start grasping how bad these issues get on porn sites.
- girafffe_i 5y ago
  Will this get solved with Blockchain/NFTs? If every image is legered, it could also need consent forms tied to the it, which could also be legered.
- slothtrop 5y ago
  As I understand it, professional studio pornography itself is regulated (but needs more), while streaming businesses that overwhelmingly rely on pirated content are even less regulated, to the extent that there is always an issue with revenge porn or abusive/non-legal uploads (this led to the blow-up with PornHub, which started using verified accounts, but users just flocked elsewhere because: piracy). The political football surrounding this has led to proposed bills that tend to increase surveillance powers / impact privacy, rather than mitigate issues like trafficking and abuse. My impression is that the OnlyFans/Chaturbate approach to porn is more kosher to the extent that women overwhelmingly seem to work for themselves (verified accounts by default). They become "personalities". Coercion is still possible here, but really, it will never be zero. The surprising thing when watching docs for porn (like Hot Girls Wanted or whatever), even under a negative light, is there doesn't seem to be much persuasion needed; they answer ads that are clearly for porn, and get on a flight. Consent gets murkier surrounding the more extreme options available.
zwirbl 5y ago
There is another article concerning xvideos from netzpolitik.org. It's mostly about the same stuff that forced pornhub to remove videos by non-verified accounts (if my memory servers me well), including rape videos, hidden cam, underage videos etc. https://netzpolitik.org/2022/how-xvideos-does-very-little-against-sexualized-violence/ https://netzpolitik.org/2022/how-xvideos-does-very-little-ag...
BoppreH 5y ago
I didn't see any mentions, but xvideos.com and others are already blacklisted from Google in some countries[1]. You never see results from the domains xvideos.com, xhamster.com or youporn.com, but mirrors and pornhub.com are still there. The search pages contain reference that some results were removed "because that URL was reported as illegal under German youth protection laws"[2]. There's been news about a campaign about strict age checks[3], as mentioned in the article, but no reports of the final decision, and the list of sites doesn't match what is actually banned. I also don't see how pornhub.com is different from the others in this regard. I wonder what else is blacklisted... [1] They are blocked in Germany and Greece, but not in the US, UK, and France, from a quick VPN test. [2] https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/9415 https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/9415 [3] https://happymag.tv/pornhub-and-xhamster-germany/ https://happymag.tv/pornhub-and-xhamster-germany/
- forgotpwd16 5y ago
  Pornhub recently purged all unverified content from the platform whereas in other platforms you can still make account and upload whatever you want. Maybe it's because of that.
  - BoppreH 5y ago
    That would indeed fall under "German youth protection laws". But it doesn't match what the articles claimed, that the proposed law was to add stronger age checks. And it's a hilariously ineffective law if clicking the first google search result still takes you to the same website, but at a different domain.
Havoc 5y ago
Kinda surprised they haven’t gone full verified
- sonicggg 5y ago
  I don't think it's common for porn websites to do these sort of verifications. Also, who would trust a sketchy porn website with their id? Remember the Ashley Madison incident?
  - NoGravitas 5y ago
    I believe they mean full verification for uploaders (as PornHub has been pressured into), not for viewers.
imglorp 5y ago
> Ranked 10th most visited website in the world. Not even amazon.com gets this many clicks. Not only is it ranked 10th but also xnxx.com is ranked 12th. Same ip block, same company I think. Amazon is 13 on that list and pornhub 17. This stuff is popular. https://www.similarweb.com/en/top-websites https://www.similarweb.com/en/top-websites
- bytehorde 5y ago
  Wow, I'm amazed to see https://powerlanguage.co.uk/ https://powerlanguage.co.uk/ listed as 49th on that list.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - irishcule 5y ago
    It's likely because that's where "Wordle" used to be hosted before it moved to NYT
rvba 5y ago
The article mentions that sone sites were banned by Visa and Mastercard. This is quite distopian. If those sites are illegal, then they should be closed by the court. Now it looks that credit card companies are moral police who can close whoever they dont like (mostly because of some bad press that looked like a "hit piece" by other porn site competition). Payment processors should start be consodered utilities at this point. One cannot run a business without that and without a bank account. Yet those processors seem to think that they are moral police.
- TheCoelacanth 5y ago
  Payment processors aren't shutting them down because of morality. They're doing it because of high risk of chargebacks.
  - Beltalowda 5y ago
    So they stopped taking payments for PornHub due to the high risk of chargebacks after people campaigned for them to stop taking PornHub payments for entirely different reasons. Right. That's one hell of a coincidence.
    - ilove196884 5y ago
      An expensive lawsuit is a no go.
- qball 5y ago
  >One cannot run a business without that and without a bank account. Yet those processors seem to think that they are moral police. A fact that the US government has been most eager to exploit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point). Whether the most recent denial of service attacks by payment processing utilities on pornography-serving sites are back-channel mandates or not, of course, is still an open question- but to the citizen the result is the same.
forgotpwd16 5y ago
>Web Group Czech, an inconspicuous name. „Web Group“ – that sounds like an average internet company Not unusual for a porn-related company to have such a generic name. Another example, Pornhub is owned by MindGeek.

163 points by zwirbl 5y ago

agumonkey 5y ago

Some radio host / comic made a bit about these being banned in France, or in the process of maybe being banned. :)

bobobob420 5y ago

Do not watch porn it is terrible for your brain

Cthulhu_ 5y ago
Porn is mostly harmless if you don't spiral.
- bobobob420 5y ago
  I disagree. Porn has long term effects on the brain. It desensitizes the mind to what the reality of sex by showing a fake reality that is maximized to drive horniness. It plays on the fantasies of the mind and makes them into a reality with the camera. I have completely stopped watching and noticed a great deal of benefit in my sex life and I am not some stereotypical internet porn addict. Porn requires a great deal of responsibility in consumption and regulation.
crispyambulance 5y ago
Almost anything can be "terrible for your brain" as people can become addicted to almost anything. It's more about the individual taking the substance than it is about the addictive substance itself. That said, thinking about porn as "a business" it seems like things don't add up. There are allegations about major providers being gargantuan money laundering operations. In the absence of actual facts I am inclined to believe that. It doesn't seem possible for them to grow to such scale solely on subscriptions and sex-advert related stuff.
zthrowaway 5y ago
Agreed. https://www.amazon.com/Your-Brain-Porn-Pornography-Addiction-ebook/dp/B00N2AH8NW https://www.amazon.com/Your-Brain-Porn-Pornography-Addiction...
- manuelabeledo 5y ago
  I wouldn’t rely on a book essentially filled with pseudoscience and wishful thinking. Their website is also awfully militant, perhaps even worse.
  - zthrowaway 5y ago
    Sounds like you haven't read it, or bothered to look at the studies referenced within. There's plenty of research and studies showing its effect on brain matter and rewiring of the brain structure. It's akin to substance abuse. Feel free to explain to me how all of these studies are wrong.
    - npteljes 5y ago
      Toxic people can reference valid studies and make valid points. That doesn't make them non-toxic, and neither does it invalidate the studies.
      - zthrowaway 5y ago
        I'm not sure how this book is toxic, or the people involved in authoring it. Any snippets of the material within that you think is toxic? Could we also define toxic in this context?
    - manuelabeledo 5y ago
      True, I haven’t read the book. I have been following the controversy, though. My gripe revolves around the fact that the author has no relevant training in the matter, but signed a highly controversial paper along with an ophthalmologist [1]. This paper was then used as the basis for both his book and his TEDx talks. Now, I’m not going to pretend that I am a psychologist myself, but for several years I authored a blog that analysed pseudoscience and cult beliefs, and the whole website and the associated Reward Foundation reek of pseudoscience cliche: * They frequently rely on self references, i.e. support their conclusions using their own prior work. * Misrepresent scientific consensus, e.g alleged that “porn addiction” is part of the DSM-5. * Any criticism on their work has been ignored, or blamed on personal vendettas or disinformation campaigns (see their opinions on Nicole Prause). Frankly, to me this looks like just another China Study. [1] https://retractionwatch.com/2018/06/13/journal-corrects-but-will-not-retract-controversial-paper-on-internet-porn/ https://retractionwatch.com/2018/06/13/journal-corrects-but-...
gchamonlive 5y ago
Treat what led you to porn addiction. If you "just quit" you might diverge to other escapism methods, like drinking or gambling. Don't just follow random internet advice or pseudo-science-riddled self-help books. Seek professional help, because nobody has to be alone in dealing with addiction.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
swat535 5y ago
Says who? You? Consenting adults are capable of making their own decisions. Doing anything excessively can have a negative impact on one's psyche: video games, movies, gambling, sex, food, workaholics, .. Porn and sexual gratification has been with us since the dawn of mankind , perhaps it's time to stop waging war against the naked human body.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  > Consenting adults are capable of making their own decisions. and some of those decisions are stupid. I am not siding with OP, just outlining he could have written 'don't stick your hand into a blender', it's a reasonable reccomendation.

logifail 5y ago

sschueller 5y ago
Netzpolitik is German so it's definitely a translation error. The German version has "Neun Minuten, 53 Sekunden, Orgasmus."
- eptcyka 5y ago
  I don't understand, 53 is 53 in all languages, how could it possibly be a translation error?
  - julius_deane 5y ago
    7 8 9 4 5 6 1 2 3 your finger slips, what key could it hit?
    - eptcyka 5y ago
      A typo is an error that could be made during the process of translation, but it's not a translation error, it's not something that's lost in translation or mistranslated.
      - hnbad 5y ago
        I think the question whether a typo occuring during translation is a translation error is mostly a matter of perspective. If you ordered the translation and it contains a typo not present in the original article, that's an error in the translation so it's fair to consider it a translation error.
  - numlock86 5y ago
    Depending on typeface, your eye's performance and distance a 5 could be mistaken for a 9 easily.

staticelf 5y ago

I have a hard time feeling sympathy with people who tries to include non-violence actions as violence. Either it's violence or it's not, stop trying to muddy the water. Since I think those people already lie in the first accusation I wonder what else they may be lying about.

EdwardDiego 5y ago

I followed a link from this to another article and Jesus Christ. > I’ve been nursing a serious prolapse injury from one shoot for Legal Porno. It was supposed to be one of 4. I’ve been dealing with blood and shit since the scene. Can’t believe they can sell my pain online but they can Then the bits about applying lidocaine to anuses to help them get through the shoot... I'm gobsmacked... if you need a local anaesthetic, it somewhat implies that you're doing dangerous stuff. LegalPorno (now renamed AnalVids apparently) is also owned by the people who own XVideos. https://denikn.cz/552186/i-was-bleeding-and-ended-up-in-hospital-women-accuse-producers-of-xvideos-of-violent-porn-shooting/ https://denikn.cz/552186/i-was-bleeding-and-ended-up-in-hosp...

ilaksh 5y ago
If that second article is not fabricated then I believe the producers of that should be in jail. Forcing someone to do something that will injure them or they won't get paid anything, after lying about it. I'm sure the whole industry is horrible but this seems pretty clearcut and high profile.
ChuckNorris89 5y ago
>if you need a local anaesthetic, it somewhat implies that you're doing dangerous stuff. It explains why porn is mostly made in low income regions like Eastern Europe and South-East Asia. Lots of desperate people trying to get by who will get into dangerous activities trying to make ends meet. Although the economy is now much better than it was in the 90's, even today in my Eastern European college town, the university campuses are full of adverts for "modelling agencies" that are basically fronts for bating young women into the porn industry. Back in the 90's to the 00's, human trafficking here was rampant, with pimp gangs baiting young women from poor villages under the lie that they will work in hospitality in Western Europe to send money back home, but instead, taking their passports away, and sending them to forced prostitution in Western Europe, under punishments of beatings if they try to tell anyone or escape.
- robinsoh 5y ago
  > It explains why porn is mostly made in low income regions like Eastern Europe and South-East Asia. Citation needed. Your claim doesn't match commonly reported data. --- The global leaders in porn are the U.S, taking a 60 per cent share of global internet pornography, Two thirds of all U.S porn sites are hosted in California with the country hosting a total of 4.2 million domains containing porn. ---

mccorrinall 5y ago

> Until late last year, it probably didn’t take more than an email address to post photos and videos on XVideos. Accessible to a potential audience of millions. These were very low hurdles for people who wanted to distribute recordings of others without their consent, so-called voyeur recordings or „revenge porn.“ So what? Even if I'd require e.g. a phone number of every uploader it wouldn't change a thing. XVideos would still only be able to react, not preact. Content would still remain online, until someone reports it. If someone uploads your porn tape and you're the original author, just send a DMCA and it gets taken down. No problemo.

rbanffy 5y ago
> XVideos would still only be able to react, not preact. The less anonymous the poster is, the easier it gets for law enforcement to find them and enforce the laws against posting revenge porn or unconsented videos. Once a video is marked that way, it's relatively trivial to remove other instances of it.
- transforming 5y ago
  > The less anonymous the poster is, the easier it gets for law enforcement But this would have a horrifying, chilling effect on marginalized communities. Anonymity allows for one to publish marginalized interest works and trans-oriented contents. This is especially important for less-than-safe jurisdictions, for which even bog-standard sex workers may well find themselves in the crosshairs of a fascist government, or even grass-roots persecution from far-right sources using hacked data! It is, after all, only a matter of time for most any web site in this day and age for a user-data compromise. These kinds of policies lead to harassment, violence, and imprisonment for many.
  - AlecSchueler 5y ago
    Agreed but the lack of these kinds of policies also lead to harassment and violence for many, so it's clear a discussion needs to be had.
  - strangeattractr 5y ago

durnygbur 5y ago

jdrc 5y ago

there isnt much of incriminating evidence in the article to justify the writing as if they discovered some terrorist cell or sth. searching for revenge porn and banning shady stuff is laudable, but there s so many people willing to make porn nowadays that it doesnt justify creating panics around it. even facebook and google have corporate structures in the carribean. The names they are printing are probably the owners of companies who serve as directors. I mean it's cool if you want to fight the global shell company system and all, but starting with a medium euro porn site doesnt seem particularly fruitful. I wonder whose audience is this article; i don't think germans are so scared of porn

Cthulhu_ 5y ago
> i don't think germans are so scared of porn I don't think this is the issue at all to be honest. It's not about puritanism or anti-pornography or whatever, it's about the people involved, the victims who are forced into prostitution (on camera or otherwise), or those who get their private videos published as revenge or as a consequence (blackmailing).
berkes 5y ago
> to justify the writing as if they discovered some terrorist cell or sth I read it as whilst trying to uncover the people behind those businesses, we found those spend effort to not be uncovered. Like a reverse "I don't need privacy because I have nothing to hide" fallacy. Only that the reverse isn't that much a fallacy: if you spend this amount of money, effort, technology, and legal structures to hide yourselves, in an industry that is in trouble because of people who do want to hide their privacy but cannot (revenge porn etc. all mentioned in the article), there is something amiss.
- jdrc 5y ago
  i think the main reason is tax avoidance. These porn sites have so much content anyway that they dont stand to gain from distributing revenge porn. Unless they are super-shady, they remove stuff with a DMCA request
  - 5y ago

polote 5y ago

> These days, authorities are also investigating XVideos. Survivors of sexualized violence are going public. Are we going to sue Twitter too for keeping videos of killed Russian and Ukrainian people ? Because XVideos as far as I know is not only about sexualized violence.

emteycz 5y ago
It's not just a platform, it's a producer too. They have many subsidiaries.
jug 5y ago
In fact, Twitter has both. A lot of porn on Twitter as well. Even underage in a sort of porn rings. I'm surprised it hasn't blown up in their face yet like it did with Vine. Maybe it's because it just hasn't reached the mainstream news threshold yet. Right now Twitter is being very quiet about this issue and just trying and failing to block accounts in time.
- nullc 5y ago
  > I'm surprised it hasn't blown up in their face yet There is an ongoing federal lawsuit against twitter for refusing to remove extortion generated child pornography when requested by the victim and their parent. https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/31302014/doe-v-twitter-inc/ https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/31302014/doe-v-twitter-...
- mschuster91 5y ago
  > Right now Twitter is being very quiet about this issue and just trying and failing to block accounts in time. Twitter is doing two things at the moment: first, offering the ability for uploaders to mark photos and videos as sensitive (nudity, violence, general [1]), and second, at least in Germany they're hiding accounts based on complaints of our youth protection agency [2]. [1]: https://www.androidpolice.com/twitter-adds-granular-content-warnings-to-tweets/ https://www.androidpolice.com/twitter-adds-granular-content-... [2]: https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-porn-block-germany-age-verification/ https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-porn-block-germany-age-v...

eurasiantiger 5y ago

> Nine minutes, 93 seconds, orgasm. This is the average visit duration of the world’s biggest porn site XVideos Slightly sus from the get-go.

vbaguru 5y ago

jdrc 5y ago
flamebait should be banned too because it encourages brain abuse
- vbaguru 5y ago

gigatexal 5y ago

This exploitation wouldn't have a market without consumers. Same idea with drugs -- handle the demand side and the production should diminish. I feel bad for the women thrown into this. It's disgusting.

npteljes 5y ago
"Handle the demand" does a lot of work here. What's the demand in your opinion, and how would you handle it?
- gigatexal 5y ago
  I don’t know exactly. There’s a difference between this exploitative shit and say only fans. Assuming a creator on only fans is not being extorted in any way and understands what they’re doing they get to keep much much more of the upside and have creative control over the content. I don’t see that here. So I guess handle the demand means shape or encourage consumption of more creator friendly content than this xvideos stuff.

newaccount74 5y ago

I really think that consensual pornography should be allowed, but considering how much coercion and abuse there is in the field it's pretty obvious that there is no way around regulation. I really hope that the EU finds a way to regulate the business without killing it. I think consensual sex work should be allowed, especially if it's in a way where sex workers are in control of their own image. But if the big platforms all ignore the problem and refuse to proactively do something against abuse, then the religious fundamentalists will win. A lot of platforms have started outright banning pornography and/or sex work, which just pushes people to less scrupulous sites.

zwirbl 5y ago
Consensual, sure, but the issues go much deeper. Take Youtube and the issues with copyrighted content, swap copyright for violence/rape/voyeurism/underage/revenge porn and the likes, then you start grasping how bad these issues get on porn sites.
girafffe_i 5y ago
Will this get solved with Blockchain/NFTs? If every image is legered, it could also need consent forms tied to the it, which could also be legered.
slothtrop 5y ago
As I understand it, professional studio pornography itself is regulated (but needs more), while streaming businesses that overwhelmingly rely on pirated content are even less regulated, to the extent that there is always an issue with revenge porn or abusive/non-legal uploads (this led to the blow-up with PornHub, which started using verified accounts, but users just flocked elsewhere because: piracy). The political football surrounding this has led to proposed bills that tend to increase surveillance powers / impact privacy, rather than mitigate issues like trafficking and abuse. My impression is that the OnlyFans/Chaturbate approach to porn is more kosher to the extent that women overwhelmingly seem to work for themselves (verified accounts by default). They become "personalities". Coercion is still possible here, but really, it will never be zero. The surprising thing when watching docs for porn (like Hot Girls Wanted or whatever), even under a negative light, is there doesn't seem to be much persuasion needed; they answer ads that are clearly for porn, and get on a flight. Consent gets murkier surrounding the more extreme options available.

zwirbl 5y ago

There is another article concerning xvideos from netzpolitik.org. It's mostly about the same stuff that forced pornhub to remove videos by non-verified accounts (if my memory servers me well), including rape videos, hidden cam, underage videos etc. https://netzpolitik.org/2022/how-xvideos-does-very-little-against-sexualized-violence/ https://netzpolitik.org/2022/how-xvideos-does-very-little-ag...

BoppreH 5y ago

I didn't see any mentions, but xvideos.com and others are already blacklisted from Google in some countries[1]. You never see results from the domains xvideos.com, xhamster.com or youporn.com, but mirrors and pornhub.com are still there. The search pages contain reference that some results were removed "because that URL was reported as illegal under German youth protection laws"[2]. There's been news about a campaign about strict age checks[3], as mentioned in the article, but no reports of the final decision, and the list of sites doesn't match what is actually banned. I also don't see how pornhub.com is different from the others in this regard. I wonder what else is blacklisted... [1] They are blocked in Germany and Greece, but not in the US, UK, and France, from a quick VPN test. [2] https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/9415 https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/9415 [3] https://happymag.tv/pornhub-and-xhamster-germany/ https://happymag.tv/pornhub-and-xhamster-germany/

forgotpwd16 5y ago
Pornhub recently purged all unverified content from the platform whereas in other platforms you can still make account and upload whatever you want. Maybe it's because of that.
- BoppreH 5y ago
  That would indeed fall under "German youth protection laws". But it doesn't match what the articles claimed, that the proposed law was to add stronger age checks. And it's a hilariously ineffective law if clicking the first google search result still takes you to the same website, but at a different domain.

Havoc 5y ago

Kinda surprised they haven’t gone full verified

sonicggg 5y ago
I don't think it's common for porn websites to do these sort of verifications. Also, who would trust a sketchy porn website with their id? Remember the Ashley Madison incident?
- NoGravitas 5y ago
  I believe they mean full verification for uploaders (as PornHub has been pressured into), not for viewers.

imglorp 5y ago

> Ranked 10th most visited website in the world. Not even amazon.com gets this many clicks. Not only is it ranked 10th but also xnxx.com is ranked 12th. Same ip block, same company I think. Amazon is 13 on that list and pornhub 17. This stuff is popular. https://www.similarweb.com/en/top-websites https://www.similarweb.com/en/top-websites

bytehorde 5y ago
Wow, I'm amazed to see https://powerlanguage.co.uk/ https://powerlanguage.co.uk/ listed as 49th on that list.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- irishcule 5y ago
  It's likely because that's where "Wordle" used to be hosted before it moved to NYT

rvba 5y ago

The article mentions that sone sites were banned by Visa and Mastercard. This is quite distopian. If those sites are illegal, then they should be closed by the court. Now it looks that credit card companies are moral police who can close whoever they dont like (mostly because of some bad press that looked like a "hit piece" by other porn site competition). Payment processors should start be consodered utilities at this point. One cannot run a business without that and without a bank account. Yet those processors seem to think that they are moral police.

TheCoelacanth 5y ago
Payment processors aren't shutting them down because of morality. They're doing it because of high risk of chargebacks.
- Beltalowda 5y ago
  So they stopped taking payments for PornHub due to the high risk of chargebacks after people campaigned for them to stop taking PornHub payments for entirely different reasons. Right. That's one hell of a coincidence.
  - ilove196884 5y ago
    An expensive lawsuit is a no go.
qball 5y ago
>One cannot run a business without that and without a bank account. Yet those processors seem to think that they are moral police. A fact that the US government has been most eager to exploit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point). Whether the most recent denial of service attacks by payment processing utilities on pornography-serving sites are back-channel mandates or not, of course, is still an open question- but to the citizen the result is the same.

forgotpwd16 5y ago

>Web Group Czech, an inconspicuous name. „Web Group“ – that sounds like an average internet company Not unusual for a porn-related company to have such a generic name. Another example, Pornhub is owned by MindGeek.