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The Fight to Hold Pornhub Accountable

98 points by danso 4y ago

cpurdy 4y ago
A couple paragraphs was all that I could bear. Horrifying.
hi 4y ago
This article is really about testing the limits of Section 230[0][1][2]. Specifically section 47 U.S. Code § 230 "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider"[3] [0] https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46751 https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46751 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230 [2] https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 [3] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230
- Gigachad 4y ago
  This could still be true. They could not be responsible but still implement some KYC requirements so those affected have a legal entity to go after rather than just being told it’s some random account behind a vpn.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  Does that protect the users who upload these things? It seems to imply protection for users who upload this content since they are not considered the publisher.
4ad 4y ago
This is total BS. The issue is with blackmail, extortion, and sexual exploitation, all which are already highly illegal. Prosecutors should do their jobs instead of trying to pass the buck to some hosting company. In fact, bringing PornHub into it is a total moot point, just as well it could have been YouTube or FaceBook or SnapChat.
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  Like any other business: if you're profiting off a market, you need to recognize your responsibility to maintaining the health and ethics of that market. If you allow user contributions, you now own the responsibility of moderating it. Saying "I'm just a platform" can not be an excuse anymore. Not once you start making coin from it. You're not just a platform, you're a market. And you're right, could have been Facebook or YouTube, and they'd be just as responsible. Except the content can't and won't last on those platforms, because they explicitly prevent it. I'm sorry: If you're profiting from something, you are now responsible. The world of pornography streaming sites allowing free mostly unmoderated upload of content is just a bit insane.
  - jeroenhd 4y ago
    This is the verification process listed on Pornhub's website which you must complete before you're allowed to upload anything: Before you are able upload Content on the Website, you need to verify your identity. In order to do so, you need to submit to us high-res images or scans of a minimum of one to two information documents, containing your date of birth, expiration date of the ID, your photo, your full legal name and your address. This could be, for example, your driver’s license (in countries where a national ID is not mandatory), international passport, citizenship card, state ID, national passport or your national ID card. The other form of identification may be a utility bill. If all the required information is set out on your government-issued photo ID, you do not need a second document. We may, in our sole discretion, require you to provide us multiple forms of identification to establish proof of adulthood and identity. Facial verification and an assessment of the authenticity of the aforementioned documents is also required in the context of our verification of your identity. Our collection, use and disclosure of such information and documentation is governed by our Privacy Policy. Now, I obviously haven't gone through the process and I don't know how well these rules are enforced, but I don't see what more they could require except for actors/actresses to come to their offices for a direct interview. There are tons of shady and seedy websites that will explicitly reupload content banned elsewhere, but Pornhub is actually one of the few companies that seems to have their ethics in check. They've removed the majority of their library and switched to a verified-only system, wiping out over a decade of porn in one fell swoop. There are many websites that need to be kicked off the web and the owners of which should be arrested. I don't believe Pornhub is one of them. Pornhub is the most famous company, though, and it makes an easy target for the explicitly ban-all-porn organisation that's featured in this article.
HNresetPass 4y ago
Pornography as a whole should just be banned, no reason to have it in a civilized society. Imagine all of the problems that Facebook has trying to keep illegal pornography off of it's website. Multiply those problems by 1000 for a website that has non-negligible portion of it's userbase that actively wants it posted.
- dr-detroit 4y ago
- doliveira 4y ago
  Yeah, we should follow on the footsteps of the highly successful war on drugs
  - marcinzm 4y ago
    And prohibition before that.
    - golemotron 4y ago
      And soon, guns.
      - trasz 4y ago
        Except that for guns it actually works, as evidenced by entire civilised world except one country.
        Karsteski 4y ago
        Who are the non-civilized world? And why are they uncivilized?
        DuskStar 4y ago
        Your definition of "civilized" seems to be "places gun control worked", and excludes most of Central and South America.
mschuster91 4y ago
What annoys me the most is how the legal system seems to be unable to support victims. Police laugh victims out of the room ("you shouldn't have had sex in front of a camera, now get out" or worse, [4]) or use the subject as a matter of joke [3], evidence of rapes is left unprocessed in storage bins for years [2], and people who distribute sexually explicit material without the consent of all those who perform in them or extort those pictured are rarely charged with the actual crimes that they do. And while it's high time to hold Pornhub and the others accountable - the tools exist, AI can do facial recognition easily even on video - the fact that the campaigns are usually led by Exodus Cry and other outfits of questionable morality (i.e. far-right extremists, religious fundamentalists and to my personal annoyance even some anti-sexwork "feminists" from the left) doesn't help, quite to the contrary. Where is anti-trust legislation in this? Where are the calls for police reform? Why is it accepted that people like me who create (amateur, non-sale) content are caught in the crossfire of religious fundamentalism and authoritarians who are willing to exploit "think of the children!!!" [1] for their personal fascist, control-freak dreams? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children [2] https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2019/07/nationwide-epidemic-of-untested-rape-kits-atlantic-daily/594046/ https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2019/07/nati... [3] https://honey.nine.com.au/latest/police-department-slammed-over-valentines-day-revenge-porn-tweet/675e77d0-062b-42ec-9962-43c3f9eb8bdb https://honey.nine.com.au/latest/police-department-slammed-o... [4] https://www.insider.com/revenge-porn-victims-and-the-law-2019-12 https://www.insider.com/revenge-porn-victims-and-the-law-201...
- deleted 4y ago
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- colpabar 4y ago
  You claim that you don't like the people currently going after pornhub, but do you ever wonder why the people you do like don't go after them? I've always found it very odd that the left never goes after anyone in the porn industry given all the abuse that occurs.
TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago
It's essentially the same issue as with various types of… bad content… on other platforms like YouTube. There's so much uploaded all the time that nothing is reviewed by humans until it's already out there. It's just that with porn sites, sexual content isn't forbidden by the terms of service, so taking down nonconsensual sexual content requires disputing the nonconsensual part, not the sexual part. And obviously that's a much more sensitive problem than the things e.g. YouTube generally gets criticism for. It's a tricky issue. I think the measures they've announced to verify identities when uploading are probably the biggest thing they could do without a complete change of business model.
- trasz 4y ago
  It's a very simple issue: companies want to keep their operating costs as low as possible, so they don't care about reviewing the content.
  - zeroonetwothree 4y ago
    Presumably consumers also want to pay as little as possible ($0) for the content.
    - sofixa 4y ago
      And presumably most porn consumers would like that consumption to be untraceable to their real life identity.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  It should be easy enough to require companies to scan the video in their archives with AI facial detection when a person complains and supplies a picture of their face (or it can be extracted out of an existing upload). The technology is there, it works reasonably well to at least take down the majority of material, and given the impact that the circulation of non-consensually taken material has it should really be a requirement for Pornhub and friends (aren't they all one and the same holding company anyway these days?) to maintain such systems and offer reasonable turnaround times. For known material or "compilation"-type videos, it should even be possible to implement a content-id like system.
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
> Pornhub asked for a link to each video, the username of the account used to upload it, the title of the file, or screenshots of the page. Rachel sent the information when she had it, but the videos were often uploaded in tiny clips that she found impossible to track. Each time one was taken down, more appeared. This is where Pornhub should be sued. There is no recourse for victims if things like this can be re-uploaded.
- _jal 4y ago
  Feel the same way about Scihub?
  - MrGilbert 4y ago
    For me, it makes a huge difference if a paper of mine got uploaded to the internet, or a private porn video.
    - jeroenhd 4y ago
      From a legal point of view the responsibilities are very similar, if not exactly the same. Making Pornhub responsible for user uploaded content would also make Scihub/YouTube/HN responsible for user uploaded content. I'm not aware of any law that classifies porn as some kind of special responsibility (other than in areas where it's banned, i.e. when crossing the US border as a foreigner or in the more sexually repressed countries).
      - pmyteh 4y ago
        The particular Sci-Hub trade-off is one that shouldn't worry you. If Pornhub are made responsible for user uploaded content it won't make any difference to Sci-Hub because they're already flagrantly infringing. It's not a grey-zone user-upload operation, its express purpose is to "remov[e] barriers in the way of science" in defiance of copyright law. It's "black" Open Access (in the sense of the pirate flag) and not something within the reach of US regulators (otherwise it would already be toast).
Retr0id 4y ago
> At the time, Mickelwait was working for an organization called Exodus Cry, a faith-based group that seeks to “abolish commercial sexual exploitation,” This is a charitable description of the organisation. They wish to abolish the sex industry at large, and have questionable reputation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_Cry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_Cry https://web.archive.org/web/20210821140435/https://www.nydailynews.com/snyde/ny-melissa-mccarthy-exodus-cry-anti-lgbtq-abortion-charity-apology-20201113-74cssr4nrnd6djrqmknob2ac2a-story.html https://web.archive.org/web/20210821140435/https://www.nydai... https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-are-hbo-and-melissa-mccarthy-raising-money-for-exodus-cry-an-anti-abortion-group https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-are-hbo-and-melissa-mccart...
- lowkey_ 4y ago
  > abolish commercial sexual exploitation > wish to abolish the sex industry at large I see very little difference between these two sentences, and archived links to "reported ties" aren't compelling evidence, nor Melissa McCarthy having an opinion on them. I'm not personally biased against the sex industry, but I can see how a faith-based group would view the entire sex industry as commercial sexual exploitation.
  - dijit 4y ago
    Consent is the difference. If you’re willing to sell access to pictures of your naked body because you see it as worthwhile and are not coerced; that’s fine. If there’s a hint of coercion, (implied, forced economic or abusive (physically or mentally)) then it’s not ok. Sexual exploitation is not hard to define, let’s not pretend that it is.
    - cloutchaser 4y ago
      That's nice when you write it down, but the whole thing is much grayer than that. Consent isn't necessarily as clear as that, especially when you have 5-6 men in a room with a single woman who is being filmed. How do you stop coercion then? How do prove consent? There are stories on both sides. Some porn stars say they will quite easily make informed decisions in that situation. But I think that is the minority...
TheStagHeart 4y ago
Perhaps it's time to change pornography laws. Requiring a license for the creation/distribution of pornography where the actor isn't the person creating/distributing seems like a good path. Allows people to send each other their own nudes and create onlyfans of themselves but not a lot else. If independent creators wanted to get licensed then they could.
- AaronM 4y ago
  How would this help? Isn't non-consensual uploading already criminalized?
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
    It's tricky since people who reupload videos do not know if they are consensual or not.
    - jeroenhd 4y ago
      Not knowing if the other party has consented means you don't have consent.
      - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
        So somebody who reuploads a video that they like should be held to the same standard as the original uploader of revenge porn? I think this is a lot of convenient dodging and dancing around the idea that Section 230 might possibly need to be revised.
        jeroenhd 4y ago
        If someone reuploads a video they're breaking copyright law at the very least. I know it's a common occurrence in the porn industry, but taking something you don't have the rights to and uploading it to the internet is still illegal. You can't download Star Wars and put it on YouTube. Uploading someone else's porn is not only similar, it's also much more personal. I'd say that unless they know the exact circumstances and all the details about the production process, reuploading pornographic content of real people should be considered nonconsensual until consent can be proven. It's not hard to accidentally reupload content that was originally leaked by an abusive ex and you have no business choosing where to upload the content anyway. I think it's important for people in the porn industry to be able to remove as much of their released material as they want at a later date. Reproductive rights and the freedom of choice over one's body is under pressure in more and more countries in the world and an old leaked porn shoot can leave some nasty damage.
zeroth32 4y ago
Pornhub is actually a good guy in porn. They deleted junk a few years ago, added filters. Now it requires proof and has transparent monetization. Close to million sex workers would loose income, if it has to shutdown. They would go from cam to streets... There are several other websites that behave worse, even Twitter or Reddit allows non-consensual (warez) video links.
- causi 4y ago
  Yes. I've never heard of another free porn site deleting 2/3 of its total content and switching to verified-only uploads.
  - dtx1 4y ago
    And if you really think about it, that makes it a much more relaxed wank. I'm mostly into very normie porn but i'd imagine the BDSM Community wouldn't mind being pretty sure that the content is consensual and verifiably so. Especially when it comes to edge cases like "consensual non-consent" etc.
    - mschuster91 4y ago
      Unfortunately, even with studio-shot material there is an unholy lot of content floating around where the performers were coerced, exploited or sometimes outright raped [1] [2]. [1] https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/reports/a30806689/james-deen-porn-me-too/ https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/reports/a30806689/james-deen... [2] https://www.news9live.com/art-culture/metoo-france-porn-industry-130014 https://www.news9live.com/art-culture/metoo-france-porn-indu...
      - dtx1 4y ago
        Sadly that's always a possibility. Oversharing a little bit here but i personally prefer pseudo-amateur content made by the people that upload it and interact with the community. One can't guarantee it's not such a situation but it's at least a lot less likely
- 4y ago
0x38B 4y ago
> There were occasional videos depicting rape, child sexual abuse, and the torture of animals. In obvious cases involving minors, the videos were taken down, and the accounts of the users who uploaded them were deleted. But, according to the former employee, the formatters did not notify law enforcement, ostensibly because many uploaders use virtual private networks to disguise their identities and locations, which could cause the police to target the wrong person. Ugh. Their incentive was (and is?) to not report crimes to law enforcement or promptly take down exploitive videos.
torpid 4y ago
- seibelj 4y ago
  It’s also very focused on women being victims and exploited - but there is tons of male on male porn. So should only gay porn be legal because the men couldn’t possibly be exploited? Or is anyone on the receiving end by-definition being exploited? The whole argument collapses on itself in contradictions.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    I think you skipped some premises in your argument. I don't see anything that would say this would apply to only women, nor does it say the exploitation/abuses only happen to women.
  - Spooky23 4y ago
    It’s a numbers game, not a statement that one group of people is ok to exploit. There are more young women eligible for exploitation than young men. In a given cohort, ~50% of people are female. I would guess if you surveyed young women, ~30% were in a situation that put them at risk for this type of exploitation. I’d venture to guess in a given cohort, ~5% are gay. Even though gay teens are probably more vulnerable on average, many are effectively hidden because of stigma, subculture etc and their situations aren’t known. That’s one of the reasons the LGBT community is still fighting for awareness.
- 4ad 4y ago
  That's exactly right. They are using the quaint puritanism of US (porn is bad) combined with the growing anti-free speech sentiment of the modern left as a vehicle into introducing mandatory censorship mechanisms into online platforms.
  - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    That's some crazy backwards contortionist thinking you've managed to tie yourself into to somehow link a "they" that includes the religious far right with "the left" (whatever that means) We on "the left" are not "calling for" the banning of porn or "mandatory censorship" of it. Nor are we puritans. In fact you can probably thank "the left" (again, eyeroll) for the liberalization of sexuality in the west. When "the right" was "in charge" it was an era of sodomy laws, anti-pornography "decency" etc. Mostly struck down by liberals. Expecting ethical and legal behaviour around consent and people's private rights to their bodies and images of their bodies is not censorship or puritanism. It's not "left wing" either -- it's fundamental small-l liberalism. Dear god, I'd expect libertarians of all people to be up in arms about the private property rights and violated individual liberties of people having their personal bodies and sex lives sold against their will. Somewhere Locke et al are spinning in their graves.
NoblePublius 4y ago
I think focusing on the revenge porn angle is a fake out to distract from the disgusting availability of all of this. porn should be forced into a .xxx TLD, and this domain should be opt-in only at the ISP level. Let dad explain to mom why he wants it.
- HNresetPass 4y ago
  This is possibly the best solution that doesn't violate the 1st amendment, Thank you for this comment
  - NoblePublius 4y ago
    How does making you ask your ISP to turn on porn infringe anyone’s rights?
    - pajamanaut 4y ago
      That is the opposite of what they're saying.
  - yieldcrv 4y ago
    and then it all moves to more resilient equally accessible filesystems like IPFS where no reporting necessarily takes anything down Pinning services are getting more resilient, cheaper, and unmoderated too
- linuxdude314 4y ago
  - NoblePublius 4y ago
jeroenhd 4y ago
Next up: Facebook, Twitter, Google liable for content indexed on internet, millions of lawsuits launched. Then follows every cloud provider for abusive content hosted on S3 buckets and eventually we'll have some three of four companies that run The Internet according to Internet Law. Sorry, but you can't just hold a provider accountable for user uploaded content. Sure, you could argue for further abuse scanning like Google foolishly tries with content ID but the real solution is to go after the uploaders. If Pornhub is required to ask for special validation so is every single service with user postable content. I imagine the end goal here is to require government ID for every Pornhub account which will definitely not be abused in an inevitable hack. Similarly, Reddit, Instagram, Tiktok and Onlyfans will all follow in requiring ID before being able to do anything. After all, why post revenge porn on Pornhub when you can sell it on Onlyfans? What's stopping you from creating fake Reddit accounts and posting to NSFW subs? Plenty of stolen content on there already! There's not quick and easy solution. Pornhub is not your problem, your abusive ex or the guy who found your cloud storage password is. Have the police solve these problems instead of forcing the responsibility to uphold the law to a random company that happens to be the biggest distribution of free porn.
- tomjen3 4y ago
  I feel like there is a difference between hosting something and recommending content. One is neutral and the other is an editorial decision, even if done by a bot. Sue over the latter, maybe. Sue over the first? You should be laughed out the room.
- mbg721 4y ago
  The real problem in this case is that an abusive ex has way more leverage than before. We can't say "stop providing that leverage", because it's victim-blaming, but those backward social norms were there for a reason.
  - jeroenhd 4y ago
    It all depends on what you qualify as "before", sharing leaked videos has been a thing since the early days of online porn, be it abusive exes or "hackers" humiliating their victims. As always, the internet brings out the very best and the absolute worst of humanity. I personally hopetthat soon enough we'll be able to move on to a post-blackmail society with the advance of deep fakes. When anybody has the ability to paste any face onto any movie, no video can be trusted (it already can't be, to be fair) and everything should be covered under plausible deniability. Just declaring something a fake by some Facebook creep that wants your money should hopefully be enough to wars off any confrontation from friends or family about leaked explicit content. It's really the best I can think of to hope for. Banning porn won't help, putting up red tape will only spawn more websites outside enforcing jurisdictions, and the perfect deep fake singularity may be mere years of not months away.
dncornholio 4y ago
Some stranger send you a picture that was pretty much public already, and you respond by giving him even more exposing pictures? Anyway, be careful who you send your pictures to!!!! Do it only when you 10000% trust the person and even then you should be reluctant. Or when you send out something, just assume it's going to be public. So much of this is totally preventable with the right education...
- stef25 4y ago
  Kids don't have much common sense. Some friends invited us over for lunch, our kids are 3 - 5 years old. One of the older ones got hold of his dad's phone and got one of the younger ones to "show your butt" and he took a picture of it. The dad discovered it by accident on his camera roll. That act was fairly innocent but going from there to posting it online is only a very small step. > Do it only when you 10000% trust the person and even then you should be reluctant. Even if you trust the person, their device could get stolen, their significant other could find it and blow a fuse ... it's best to just not ever do it.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - npteljes 4y ago
    And people can access their cloud storage, like what happened with the Fappening scandal. So the provider itself is a liability. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_celebrity_nude_photo_leak#Procurement_and_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_celebrity_nude_photo_leak...
oxff 4y ago
You would need pretty strict laws against pornography to reduce this degeneracy, I don't think there's any hope. Your kids gonna have a smart phone by age 8 and get his or hers retina blasted with man made horrors.
polote 4y ago
We should also have the fight to hold journalists accountable for writing BS. Anything this article talks about can be said about Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Pinterest, VK, Telegram and any company that allow user submitted content.
- Chris2048 4y ago
  twitter is text only afaik, so it can't be said that they host child porn.
  - BeefWellington 4y ago
    People post porn videos to Twitter all the time. They have a thumbnail service specifically for video.
    - Chris2048 4y ago
      but will they host the original video/images?
      - npteljes 4y ago
        Yes.
  - yieldcrv 4y ago
    afaik == idk
  - npteljes 4y ago
    Twitter hosts text, images, and video. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter#Integrated_photo-sharing_service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter#Integrated_photo-shari... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter#Non-tweet_content https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter#Non-tweet_content
    - Chris2048 4y ago
thirtyfivecent 4y ago
itvision 4y ago
To fuck with karma, I'll tell you what, this is the wrong story, the wrong conclusions, the wrong pretty much everything with our society. In most cultures people are raised such a way, the naked body is something "forbidden", "bad", "immoral", "shameful", etc. That's only part of the issue. Another part of the issue is that in terms of having sex women have an ultimate monopoly - especially in the Instagram era they've taken the position that if you're born a female you can ultimately get the right to "sell" access to your body to the highest bidder. Nothing needs to be done to claim that, just being born the right sex. These two things lead to the conclusion that nude pictures/videos first of all, are for sale, second, can cause a lot of drama and moral pain, and as a result can be used for blackmail. If we had a society where the naked body was not something immoral, where sexes were truly equal (aside from strength and mass) and people were equally worthy of one another, there would be no such issue. There's no shame in being naked. There's no shame in being seen this way.
- notadev 4y ago
  There is no shame in your naked body. Is there shame in a 18 year old participating in a 10 person gangbang? Is there shame in sex between step-siblings or step-parents? Is there shame in anonymous unprotected sex with multiple strangers? Is there shame in a Black woman having oral sex until she vomits into a dog bowl for a “Ghetto Gaggers” scene? How about rough anal sex until the bottom “prolapses”? I apologize for being graphic, but I’m making a point. Those extreme examples are much more prevalent on these sites than someone who is just embracing their own naked body.
  - pajamanaut 4y ago
    These all seem subjective. Why should it be up to one person to decide what another should be ashamed of?
    - notadev 4y ago
      It’s not that I think people should be ashamed of those things if they do it with consenting adults in private, it’s when it’s broadcast and easily available that it becomes something shameful IMHO. I’m not advocating for the banning of so-called kinks, just the easy access to (and I suppose the normalization/mainstreaming of) those kinks. When a 12 year old can access any of these extreme sex videos easier than they access a NYTimes article, then something has to change.
numpad0 4y ago
A major fraction of content on many of these sites, thus the source of their ad revenues, are pirated content. I think that creates conflict of interest between company operations and rule enforcement in strong favor of the former.
qwerty456127 4y ago
The root of the problem here is in our culture which attaches intense artificial meaning to the idea of being seen naked or having sex. In the past I used to dread that, but I thought about what sense does that make and now I don't care. The whole problem is in our heads: it makes a victim to struggle and the villain to consider this a crime worth committing. And it doesn't occur in our heads naturally, we are taught this way. I would bet this generally is much less of a problem in the EU than it is in the US.
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  > I would bet this generally is much less of a problem in the EU than it is in the US. It depends on the country. UK and in particular Ireland are very traditional countries. The UK has their renaissance of victorian morals through the conservative party and Ireland has the catholic morals weighing down on it. I remember living in Ireland and a sex shop opened in the town. Not even a cinema/video booth kinda place, but just one selling toys. And pretty suave ones too (think Lelo, not Tarzan), the kind where the actual purpose is not blindingly obvious :) The whole neighbourhood had sit-ins to protest, it was ridiculous to me, to be honest. The Netherlands and Germany are very liberal with these things. In other countries it differs. In Spain it's frowned upon by the traditionalists and strict catholics but other groups are more free. Other countries I don't have enough experience with to comment. PS: I assume there is a huge difference in the US between states too. I can't imagine a state like Utah having the same morals as New York.
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  Consent is important no matter what the subject or content is. I agree that the concern of this content shouldn't have the effect that it does for many people, like there should be no consequence towards the victim just because their family or coworkers saw the content without their consent (or at all.) For most people, this is currently an aspirational reality to suggest.
yieldcrv 4y ago
0daystock 4y ago
> Later, her mother came in to say good night. Rachel pretended that everything was fine. Negligent mother allows underage daughter to use Internet connected device to talk to strangers and possess unlimited access to social media. Resulting horror ensues.
yieldcrv 4y ago
Didn't SOSTA and FESTA Acts make a Section 230 exception? Many sites hot super skittish based on the mere idea of liability Even OnlyFans’ fake pivot was partially based on that

98 points by danso 4y ago

A couple paragraphs was all that I could bear. Horrifying.

hi 4y ago

This article is really about testing the limits of Section 230[0][1][2]. Specifically section 47 U.S. Code § 230 "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider"[3] [0] https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46751 https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46751 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230 [2] https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 [3] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230

Gigachad 4y ago
This could still be true. They could not be responsible but still implement some KYC requirements so those affected have a legal entity to go after rather than just being told it’s some random account behind a vpn.
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
Does that protect the users who upload these things? It seems to imply protection for users who upload this content since they are not considered the publisher.

4ad 4y ago

This is total BS. The issue is with blackmail, extortion, and sexual exploitation, all which are already highly illegal. Prosecutors should do their jobs instead of trying to pass the buck to some hosting company. In fact, bringing PornHub into it is a total moot point, just as well it could have been YouTube or FaceBook or SnapChat.

cmrdporcupine 4y ago
Like any other business: if you're profiting off a market, you need to recognize your responsibility to maintaining the health and ethics of that market. If you allow user contributions, you now own the responsibility of moderating it. Saying "I'm just a platform" can not be an excuse anymore. Not once you start making coin from it. You're not just a platform, you're a market. And you're right, could have been Facebook or YouTube, and they'd be just as responsible. Except the content can't and won't last on those platforms, because they explicitly prevent it. I'm sorry: If you're profiting from something, you are now responsible. The world of pornography streaming sites allowing free mostly unmoderated upload of content is just a bit insane.
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  This is the verification process listed on Pornhub's website which you must complete before you're allowed to upload anything: Before you are able upload Content on the Website, you need to verify your identity. In order to do so, you need to submit to us high-res images or scans of a minimum of one to two information documents, containing your date of birth, expiration date of the ID, your photo, your full legal name and your address. This could be, for example, your driver’s license (in countries where a national ID is not mandatory), international passport, citizenship card, state ID, national passport or your national ID card. The other form of identification may be a utility bill. If all the required information is set out on your government-issued photo ID, you do not need a second document. We may, in our sole discretion, require you to provide us multiple forms of identification to establish proof of adulthood and identity. Facial verification and an assessment of the authenticity of the aforementioned documents is also required in the context of our verification of your identity. Our collection, use and disclosure of such information and documentation is governed by our Privacy Policy. Now, I obviously haven't gone through the process and I don't know how well these rules are enforced, but I don't see what more they could require except for actors/actresses to come to their offices for a direct interview. There are tons of shady and seedy websites that will explicitly reupload content banned elsewhere, but Pornhub is actually one of the few companies that seems to have their ethics in check. They've removed the majority of their library and switched to a verified-only system, wiping out over a decade of porn in one fell swoop. There are many websites that need to be kicked off the web and the owners of which should be arrested. I don't believe Pornhub is one of them. Pornhub is the most famous company, though, and it makes an easy target for the explicitly ban-all-porn organisation that's featured in this article.

HNresetPass 4y ago

Pornography as a whole should just be banned, no reason to have it in a civilized society. Imagine all of the problems that Facebook has trying to keep illegal pornography off of it's website. Multiply those problems by 1000 for a website that has non-negligible portion of it's userbase that actively wants it posted.

dr-detroit 4y ago
doliveira 4y ago
Yeah, we should follow on the footsteps of the highly successful war on drugs
- marcinzm 4y ago
  And prohibition before that.
  - golemotron 4y ago
    And soon, guns.
    - trasz 4y ago
      Except that for guns it actually works, as evidenced by entire civilised world except one country.
      - Karsteski 4y ago
        Who are the non-civilized world? And why are they uncivilized?
      - DuskStar 4y ago
        Your definition of "civilized" seems to be "places gun control worked", and excludes most of Central and South America.

mschuster91 4y ago

What annoys me the most is how the legal system seems to be unable to support victims. Police laugh victims out of the room ("you shouldn't have had sex in front of a camera, now get out" or worse, [4]) or use the subject as a matter of joke [3], evidence of rapes is left unprocessed in storage bins for years [2], and people who distribute sexually explicit material without the consent of all those who perform in them or extort those pictured are rarely charged with the actual crimes that they do. And while it's high time to hold Pornhub and the others accountable - the tools exist, AI can do facial recognition easily even on video - the fact that the campaigns are usually led by Exodus Cry and other outfits of questionable morality (i.e. far-right extremists, religious fundamentalists and to my personal annoyance even some anti-sexwork "feminists" from the left) doesn't help, quite to the contrary. Where is anti-trust legislation in this? Where are the calls for police reform? Why is it accepted that people like me who create (amateur, non-sale) content are caught in the crossfire of religious fundamentalism and authoritarians who are willing to exploit "think of the children!!!" [1] for their personal fascist, control-freak dreams? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children [2] https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2019/07/nationwide-epidemic-of-untested-rape-kits-atlantic-daily/594046/ https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2019/07/nati... [3] https://honey.nine.com.au/latest/police-department-slammed-over-valentines-day-revenge-porn-tweet/675e77d0-062b-42ec-9962-43c3f9eb8bdb https://honey.nine.com.au/latest/police-department-slammed-o... [4] https://www.insider.com/revenge-porn-victims-and-the-law-2019-12 https://www.insider.com/revenge-porn-victims-and-the-law-201...

deleted 4y ago
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colpabar 4y ago
You claim that you don't like the people currently going after pornhub, but do you ever wonder why the people you do like don't go after them? I've always found it very odd that the left never goes after anyone in the porn industry given all the abuse that occurs.

TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago

It's essentially the same issue as with various types of… bad content… on other platforms like YouTube. There's so much uploaded all the time that nothing is reviewed by humans until it's already out there. It's just that with porn sites, sexual content isn't forbidden by the terms of service, so taking down nonconsensual sexual content requires disputing the nonconsensual part, not the sexual part. And obviously that's a much more sensitive problem than the things e.g. YouTube generally gets criticism for. It's a tricky issue. I think the measures they've announced to verify identities when uploading are probably the biggest thing they could do without a complete change of business model.

trasz 4y ago
It's a very simple issue: companies want to keep their operating costs as low as possible, so they don't care about reviewing the content.
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  Presumably consumers also want to pay as little as possible ($0) for the content.
  - sofixa 4y ago
    And presumably most porn consumers would like that consumption to be untraceable to their real life identity.
mschuster91 4y ago
It should be easy enough to require companies to scan the video in their archives with AI facial detection when a person complains and supplies a picture of their face (or it can be extracted out of an existing upload). The technology is there, it works reasonably well to at least take down the majority of material, and given the impact that the circulation of non-consensually taken material has it should really be a requirement for Pornhub and friends (aren't they all one and the same holding company anyway these days?) to maintain such systems and offer reasonable turnaround times. For known material or "compilation"-type videos, it should even be possible to implement a content-id like system.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

> Pornhub asked for a link to each video, the username of the account used to upload it, the title of the file, or screenshots of the page. Rachel sent the information when she had it, but the videos were often uploaded in tiny clips that she found impossible to track. Each time one was taken down, more appeared. This is where Pornhub should be sued. There is no recourse for victims if things like this can be re-uploaded.

_jal 4y ago
Feel the same way about Scihub?
- MrGilbert 4y ago
  For me, it makes a huge difference if a paper of mine got uploaded to the internet, or a private porn video.
  - jeroenhd 4y ago
    From a legal point of view the responsibilities are very similar, if not exactly the same. Making Pornhub responsible for user uploaded content would also make Scihub/YouTube/HN responsible for user uploaded content. I'm not aware of any law that classifies porn as some kind of special responsibility (other than in areas where it's banned, i.e. when crossing the US border as a foreigner or in the more sexually repressed countries).
    - pmyteh 4y ago
      The particular Sci-Hub trade-off is one that shouldn't worry you. If Pornhub are made responsible for user uploaded content it won't make any difference to Sci-Hub because they're already flagrantly infringing. It's not a grey-zone user-upload operation, its express purpose is to "remov[e] barriers in the way of science" in defiance of copyright law. It's "black" Open Access (in the sense of the pirate flag) and not something within the reach of US regulators (otherwise it would already be toast).

Retr0id 4y ago

> At the time, Mickelwait was working for an organization called Exodus Cry, a faith-based group that seeks to “abolish commercial sexual exploitation,” This is a charitable description of the organisation. They wish to abolish the sex industry at large, and have questionable reputation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_Cry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_Cry https://web.archive.org/web/20210821140435/https://www.nydailynews.com/snyde/ny-melissa-mccarthy-exodus-cry-anti-lgbtq-abortion-charity-apology-20201113-74cssr4nrnd6djrqmknob2ac2a-story.html https://web.archive.org/web/20210821140435/https://www.nydai... https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-are-hbo-and-melissa-mccarthy-raising-money-for-exodus-cry-an-anti-abortion-group https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-are-hbo-and-melissa-mccart...

lowkey_ 4y ago
> abolish commercial sexual exploitation > wish to abolish the sex industry at large I see very little difference between these two sentences, and archived links to "reported ties" aren't compelling evidence, nor Melissa McCarthy having an opinion on them. I'm not personally biased against the sex industry, but I can see how a faith-based group would view the entire sex industry as commercial sexual exploitation.
- dijit 4y ago
  Consent is the difference. If you’re willing to sell access to pictures of your naked body because you see it as worthwhile and are not coerced; that’s fine. If there’s a hint of coercion, (implied, forced economic or abusive (physically or mentally)) then it’s not ok. Sexual exploitation is not hard to define, let’s not pretend that it is.
  - cloutchaser 4y ago
    That's nice when you write it down, but the whole thing is much grayer than that. Consent isn't necessarily as clear as that, especially when you have 5-6 men in a room with a single woman who is being filmed. How do you stop coercion then? How do prove consent? There are stories on both sides. Some porn stars say they will quite easily make informed decisions in that situation. But I think that is the minority...

TheStagHeart 4y ago

Perhaps it's time to change pornography laws. Requiring a license for the creation/distribution of pornography where the actor isn't the person creating/distributing seems like a good path. Allows people to send each other their own nudes and create onlyfans of themselves but not a lot else. If independent creators wanted to get licensed then they could.

AaronM 4y ago
How would this help? Isn't non-consensual uploading already criminalized?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  It's tricky since people who reupload videos do not know if they are consensual or not.
  - jeroenhd 4y ago
    Not knowing if the other party has consented means you don't have consent.
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
      So somebody who reuploads a video that they like should be held to the same standard as the original uploader of revenge porn? I think this is a lot of convenient dodging and dancing around the idea that Section 230 might possibly need to be revised.
      - jeroenhd 4y ago
        If someone reuploads a video they're breaking copyright law at the very least. I know it's a common occurrence in the porn industry, but taking something you don't have the rights to and uploading it to the internet is still illegal. You can't download Star Wars and put it on YouTube. Uploading someone else's porn is not only similar, it's also much more personal. I'd say that unless they know the exact circumstances and all the details about the production process, reuploading pornographic content of real people should be considered nonconsensual until consent can be proven. It's not hard to accidentally reupload content that was originally leaked by an abusive ex and you have no business choosing where to upload the content anyway. I think it's important for people in the porn industry to be able to remove as much of their released material as they want at a later date. Reproductive rights and the freedom of choice over one's body is under pressure in more and more countries in the world and an old leaked porn shoot can leave some nasty damage.

zeroth32 4y ago

Pornhub is actually a good guy in porn. They deleted junk a few years ago, added filters. Now it requires proof and has transparent monetization. Close to million sex workers would loose income, if it has to shutdown. They would go from cam to streets... There are several other websites that behave worse, even Twitter or Reddit allows non-consensual (warez) video links.

causi 4y ago
Yes. I've never heard of another free porn site deleting 2/3 of its total content and switching to verified-only uploads.
- dtx1 4y ago
  And if you really think about it, that makes it a much more relaxed wank. I'm mostly into very normie porn but i'd imagine the BDSM Community wouldn't mind being pretty sure that the content is consensual and verifiably so. Especially when it comes to edge cases like "consensual non-consent" etc.
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    Unfortunately, even with studio-shot material there is an unholy lot of content floating around where the performers were coerced, exploited or sometimes outright raped [1] [2]. [1] https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/reports/a30806689/james-deen-porn-me-too/ https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/reports/a30806689/james-deen... [2] https://www.news9live.com/art-culture/metoo-france-porn-industry-130014 https://www.news9live.com/art-culture/metoo-france-porn-indu...
    - dtx1 4y ago
      Sadly that's always a possibility. Oversharing a little bit here but i personally prefer pseudo-amateur content made by the people that upload it and interact with the community. One can't guarantee it's not such a situation but it's at least a lot less likely
4y ago

0x38B 4y ago

> There were occasional videos depicting rape, child sexual abuse, and the torture of animals. In obvious cases involving minors, the videos were taken down, and the accounts of the users who uploaded them were deleted. But, according to the former employee, the formatters did not notify law enforcement, ostensibly because many uploaders use virtual private networks to disguise their identities and locations, which could cause the police to target the wrong person. Ugh. Their incentive was (and is?) to not report crimes to law enforcement or promptly take down exploitive videos.

torpid 4y ago

seibelj 4y ago
It’s also very focused on women being victims and exploited - but there is tons of male on male porn. So should only gay porn be legal because the men couldn’t possibly be exploited? Or is anyone on the receiving end by-definition being exploited? The whole argument collapses on itself in contradictions.
- giantg2 4y ago
  I think you skipped some premises in your argument. I don't see anything that would say this would apply to only women, nor does it say the exploitation/abuses only happen to women.
- Spooky23 4y ago
  It’s a numbers game, not a statement that one group of people is ok to exploit. There are more young women eligible for exploitation than young men. In a given cohort, ~50% of people are female. I would guess if you surveyed young women, ~30% were in a situation that put them at risk for this type of exploitation. I’d venture to guess in a given cohort, ~5% are gay. Even though gay teens are probably more vulnerable on average, many are effectively hidden because of stigma, subculture etc and their situations aren’t known. That’s one of the reasons the LGBT community is still fighting for awareness.
4ad 4y ago
That's exactly right. They are using the quaint puritanism of US (porn is bad) combined with the growing anti-free speech sentiment of the modern left as a vehicle into introducing mandatory censorship mechanisms into online platforms.
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  That's some crazy backwards contortionist thinking you've managed to tie yourself into to somehow link a "they" that includes the religious far right with "the left" (whatever that means) We on "the left" are not "calling for" the banning of porn or "mandatory censorship" of it. Nor are we puritans. In fact you can probably thank "the left" (again, eyeroll) for the liberalization of sexuality in the west. When "the right" was "in charge" it was an era of sodomy laws, anti-pornography "decency" etc. Mostly struck down by liberals. Expecting ethical and legal behaviour around consent and people's private rights to their bodies and images of their bodies is not censorship or puritanism. It's not "left wing" either -- it's fundamental small-l liberalism. Dear god, I'd expect libertarians of all people to be up in arms about the private property rights and violated individual liberties of people having their personal bodies and sex lives sold against their will. Somewhere Locke et al are spinning in their graves.

NoblePublius 4y ago

I think focusing on the revenge porn angle is a fake out to distract from the disgusting availability of all of this. porn should be forced into a .xxx TLD, and this domain should be opt-in only at the ISP level. Let dad explain to mom why he wants it.

HNresetPass 4y ago
This is possibly the best solution that doesn't violate the 1st amendment, Thank you for this comment
- NoblePublius 4y ago
  How does making you ask your ISP to turn on porn infringe anyone’s rights?
  - pajamanaut 4y ago
    That is the opposite of what they're saying.
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  and then it all moves to more resilient equally accessible filesystems like IPFS where no reporting necessarily takes anything down Pinning services are getting more resilient, cheaper, and unmoderated too
linuxdude314 4y ago
- NoblePublius 4y ago

jeroenhd 4y ago

Next up: Facebook, Twitter, Google liable for content indexed on internet, millions of lawsuits launched. Then follows every cloud provider for abusive content hosted on S3 buckets and eventually we'll have some three of four companies that run The Internet according to Internet Law. Sorry, but you can't just hold a provider accountable for user uploaded content. Sure, you could argue for further abuse scanning like Google foolishly tries with content ID but the real solution is to go after the uploaders. If Pornhub is required to ask for special validation so is every single service with user postable content. I imagine the end goal here is to require government ID for every Pornhub account which will definitely not be abused in an inevitable hack. Similarly, Reddit, Instagram, Tiktok and Onlyfans will all follow in requiring ID before being able to do anything. After all, why post revenge porn on Pornhub when you can sell it on Onlyfans? What's stopping you from creating fake Reddit accounts and posting to NSFW subs? Plenty of stolen content on there already! There's not quick and easy solution. Pornhub is not your problem, your abusive ex or the guy who found your cloud storage password is. Have the police solve these problems instead of forcing the responsibility to uphold the law to a random company that happens to be the biggest distribution of free porn.

tomjen3 4y ago
I feel like there is a difference between hosting something and recommending content. One is neutral and the other is an editorial decision, even if done by a bot. Sue over the latter, maybe. Sue over the first? You should be laughed out the room.
mbg721 4y ago
The real problem in this case is that an abusive ex has way more leverage than before. We can't say "stop providing that leverage", because it's victim-blaming, but those backward social norms were there for a reason.
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  It all depends on what you qualify as "before", sharing leaked videos has been a thing since the early days of online porn, be it abusive exes or "hackers" humiliating their victims. As always, the internet brings out the very best and the absolute worst of humanity. I personally hopetthat soon enough we'll be able to move on to a post-blackmail society with the advance of deep fakes. When anybody has the ability to paste any face onto any movie, no video can be trusted (it already can't be, to be fair) and everything should be covered under plausible deniability. Just declaring something a fake by some Facebook creep that wants your money should hopefully be enough to wars off any confrontation from friends or family about leaked explicit content. It's really the best I can think of to hope for. Banning porn won't help, putting up red tape will only spawn more websites outside enforcing jurisdictions, and the perfect deep fake singularity may be mere years of not months away.

dncornholio 4y ago

Some stranger send you a picture that was pretty much public already, and you respond by giving him even more exposing pictures? Anyway, be careful who you send your pictures to!!!! Do it only when you 10000% trust the person and even then you should be reluctant. Or when you send out something, just assume it's going to be public. So much of this is totally preventable with the right education...

stef25 4y ago
Kids don't have much common sense. Some friends invited us over for lunch, our kids are 3 - 5 years old. One of the older ones got hold of his dad's phone and got one of the younger ones to "show your butt" and he took a picture of it. The dad discovered it by accident on his camera roll. That act was fairly innocent but going from there to posting it online is only a very small step. > Do it only when you 10000% trust the person and even then you should be reluctant. Even if you trust the person, their device could get stolen, their significant other could find it and blow a fuse ... it's best to just not ever do it.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- npteljes 4y ago
  And people can access their cloud storage, like what happened with the Fappening scandal. So the provider itself is a liability. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_celebrity_nude_photo_leak#Procurement_and_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_celebrity_nude_photo_leak...

oxff 4y ago

You would need pretty strict laws against pornography to reduce this degeneracy, I don't think there's any hope. Your kids gonna have a smart phone by age 8 and get his or hers retina blasted with man made horrors.

polote 4y ago

We should also have the fight to hold journalists accountable for writing BS. Anything this article talks about can be said about Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Pinterest, VK, Telegram and any company that allow user submitted content.

Chris2048 4y ago
twitter is text only afaik, so it can't be said that they host child porn.
- BeefWellington 4y ago
  People post porn videos to Twitter all the time. They have a thumbnail service specifically for video.
  - Chris2048 4y ago
    but will they host the original video/images?
    - npteljes 4y ago
      Yes.
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  afaik == idk
- npteljes 4y ago
  Twitter hosts text, images, and video. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter#Integrated_photo-sharing_service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter#Integrated_photo-shari... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter#Non-tweet_content https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter#Non-tweet_content
  - Chris2048 4y ago

thirtyfivecent 4y ago

itvision 4y ago

To fuck with karma, I'll tell you what, this is the wrong story, the wrong conclusions, the wrong pretty much everything with our society. In most cultures people are raised such a way, the naked body is something "forbidden", "bad", "immoral", "shameful", etc. That's only part of the issue. Another part of the issue is that in terms of having sex women have an ultimate monopoly - especially in the Instagram era they've taken the position that if you're born a female you can ultimately get the right to "sell" access to your body to the highest bidder. Nothing needs to be done to claim that, just being born the right sex. These two things lead to the conclusion that nude pictures/videos first of all, are for sale, second, can cause a lot of drama and moral pain, and as a result can be used for blackmail. If we had a society where the naked body was not something immoral, where sexes were truly equal (aside from strength and mass) and people were equally worthy of one another, there would be no such issue. There's no shame in being naked. There's no shame in being seen this way.

notadev 4y ago
There is no shame in your naked body. Is there shame in a 18 year old participating in a 10 person gangbang? Is there shame in sex between step-siblings or step-parents? Is there shame in anonymous unprotected sex with multiple strangers? Is there shame in a Black woman having oral sex until she vomits into a dog bowl for a “Ghetto Gaggers” scene? How about rough anal sex until the bottom “prolapses”? I apologize for being graphic, but I’m making a point. Those extreme examples are much more prevalent on these sites than someone who is just embracing their own naked body.
- pajamanaut 4y ago
  These all seem subjective. Why should it be up to one person to decide what another should be ashamed of?
  - notadev 4y ago
    It’s not that I think people should be ashamed of those things if they do it with consenting adults in private, it’s when it’s broadcast and easily available that it becomes something shameful IMHO. I’m not advocating for the banning of so-called kinks, just the easy access to (and I suppose the normalization/mainstreaming of) those kinks. When a 12 year old can access any of these extreme sex videos easier than they access a NYTimes article, then something has to change.

numpad0 4y ago

A major fraction of content on many of these sites, thus the source of their ad revenues, are pirated content. I think that creates conflict of interest between company operations and rule enforcement in strong favor of the former.

qwerty456127 4y ago

The root of the problem here is in our culture which attaches intense artificial meaning to the idea of being seen naked or having sex. In the past I used to dread that, but I thought about what sense does that make and now I don't care. The whole problem is in our heads: it makes a victim to struggle and the villain to consider this a crime worth committing. And it doesn't occur in our heads naturally, we are taught this way. I would bet this generally is much less of a problem in the EU than it is in the US.

GekkePrutser 4y ago
> I would bet this generally is much less of a problem in the EU than it is in the US. It depends on the country. UK and in particular Ireland are very traditional countries. The UK has their renaissance of victorian morals through the conservative party and Ireland has the catholic morals weighing down on it. I remember living in Ireland and a sex shop opened in the town. Not even a cinema/video booth kinda place, but just one selling toys. And pretty suave ones too (think Lelo, not Tarzan), the kind where the actual purpose is not blindingly obvious :) The whole neighbourhood had sit-ins to protest, it was ridiculous to me, to be honest. The Netherlands and Germany are very liberal with these things. In other countries it differs. In Spain it's frowned upon by the traditionalists and strict catholics but other groups are more free. Other countries I don't have enough experience with to comment. PS: I assume there is a huge difference in the US between states too. I can't imagine a state like Utah having the same morals as New York.
yieldcrv 4y ago
Consent is important no matter what the subject or content is. I agree that the concern of this content shouldn't have the effect that it does for many people, like there should be no consequence towards the victim just because their family or coworkers saw the content without their consent (or at all.) For most people, this is currently an aspirational reality to suggest.

yieldcrv 4y ago

0daystock 4y ago

> Later, her mother came in to say good night. Rachel pretended that everything was fine. Negligent mother allows underage daughter to use Internet connected device to talk to strangers and possess unlimited access to social media. Resulting horror ensues.

yieldcrv 4y ago

Didn't SOSTA and FESTA Acts make a Section 230 exception? Many sites hot super skittish based on the mere idea of liability Even OnlyFans’ fake pivot was partially based on that