5 ms·

I get the feeling this is a “fuck it” exit. They don’t appear to have fallen out with the rest of management, since the two would basically control the corporat

I get the feeling this is a “fuck it” exit. They don’t appear to have fallen out with the rest of management, since the two would basically control the corporate direction, and if they were disagreeing with each other then why would both leave since the company would likely side with one and the other would leave. I can imagine they got sick of fighting for their company against the ongoing campaign to make them Pay for their past transgressions. It’s kinda hard to really sum up the whole situation now, you have spineless credit card processing companies, duopolistic credit card companies, religious anti-porn activists, feminist anti-porn activists, porn industry advocates, individual porn performers (“amateurs” ), the traditional porn studios, the end user customers, and the news media … all in one huge pot stewing over complex issues that most people don’t really bother digging into. Yes they did bad things, but they also weren’t as bad as some were painting them, and they also destroyed a chunk of the entire porn industry in one fell swoop as a knee jerk reaction to frantically damage control an issue that was primarily pushed by a smear campaign by a religiously funded group that wants to end all porn… they were an easy target due to social stigmas and they basically had a near lethal blow dealt to them, which had knock on effects to the entire industry they were the dominant player in. It’s not a great situation and I don’t blame them for want the hell out of it. I’d probably have burned out too.

4oo4 4y ago
This wasn't just anti-porn hysteria, they lied about their content filtering process for user uploads, so it was full of underage and revenge porn. Those in particular are against the law and harmful regardless of how one feels about porn in general. I totally agree that it's messed up that payment processors are now the internet morality police, but hosting those two kinds of harmful and illegal porn are 100% on MindGeek. Dissemination of those kinds of porn is very illegal, and as far as I know no one at MindGeek ever faced legal consequences, even though they were recklessly negligent and did it and on such a large scale for so many years. These guys were running things during this whole time and don't deserve any sympathy. Had MindGeek been following the law, moralist anti-porn crusaders would probably have had far less success than they did. https://www.theverge.com/c/22925906/pornhub-mindgeek-content-moderation https://www.theverge.com/c/22925906/pornhub-mindgeek-content...
- alldayeveryday 4y ago
  Why is being anti-porn a kind of hysteria? Can a person not object to it based upon their personal values, and participate in collectivized political action just as other interest groups do to create change in favor of their values? What I would like to know, is who the leaders of this company are politically connected to in order to not be held accountable for their actions.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > Why is being anti-porn a kind of hysteria? You seem to confusing a description of “anti-porn hysteria” as an existing thing with a claim that all anti-porn inclination is hysteria, either in error or as a deliberate construction of a strawman to argue against. But, in either case, no one claimed the thing you are trying to argue against.
    - alldayeveryday 4y ago
      I would like to respond but your comment makes almost zero logical sense.
      - Schiendelman 4y ago
        It made sense to me. They’re saying that not all anti-porn people are engaging in anti-porn hysteria. Ergo, your argument doesn’t make sense - you’re relying on all anti-porn being hysteria.
- hulitu 4y ago
  > I totally agree that it's messed up that payment processors are now the internet morality police The payment processors are the internet morality police since at least 10 years. Paypal did this 10 years ago.
  - bdcravens 4y ago
    Been like that for well beyond that, 20+ years (probably since the first porn site went online). In the late 90s, early in the career, I was brought into an adult website project. You were limited to working with a few payment processors that were willing to work with the industry, and the integration was pretty rudimentary, even for the time. Note that it's not just a morality issue: porn sites have a tremendous number of chargebacks. As a result, payment processors ban categories where the risk is higher.
SilverBirch 4y ago
>Yes they did bad things, but they also weren’t as bad as some were painting them, I think you're glossing over this. They systematically allowed and profited from obviously illegal content. For years there was essentially not even an attempt to really prevent child porn on their site. It's one thing to go the Youtube route for civil stuff like copyright violations, but there's no putting the genie back in the bottle with child porn and rape. If an individual were found to have the videos that MindGeek had, they would've spent a lifetime in prison, not become millionaires.

4oo4 4y ago

This wasn't just anti-porn hysteria, they lied about their content filtering process for user uploads, so it was full of underage and revenge porn. Those in particular are against the law and harmful regardless of how one feels about porn in general. I totally agree that it's messed up that payment processors are now the internet morality police, but hosting those two kinds of harmful and illegal porn are 100% on MindGeek. Dissemination of those kinds of porn is very illegal, and as far as I know no one at MindGeek ever faced legal consequences, even though they were recklessly negligent and did it and on such a large scale for so many years. These guys were running things during this whole time and don't deserve any sympathy. Had MindGeek been following the law, moralist anti-porn crusaders would probably have had far less success than they did. https://www.theverge.com/c/22925906/pornhub-mindgeek-content-moderation https://www.theverge.com/c/22925906/pornhub-mindgeek-content...

alldayeveryday 4y ago
Why is being anti-porn a kind of hysteria? Can a person not object to it based upon their personal values, and participate in collectivized political action just as other interest groups do to create change in favor of their values? What I would like to know, is who the leaders of this company are politically connected to in order to not be held accountable for their actions.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Why is being anti-porn a kind of hysteria? You seem to confusing a description of “anti-porn hysteria” as an existing thing with a claim that all anti-porn inclination is hysteria, either in error or as a deliberate construction of a strawman to argue against. But, in either case, no one claimed the thing you are trying to argue against.
  - alldayeveryday 4y ago
    I would like to respond but your comment makes almost zero logical sense.
    - Schiendelman 4y ago
      It made sense to me. They’re saying that not all anti-porn people are engaging in anti-porn hysteria. Ergo, your argument doesn’t make sense - you’re relying on all anti-porn being hysteria.
hulitu 4y ago
> I totally agree that it's messed up that payment processors are now the internet morality police The payment processors are the internet morality police since at least 10 years. Paypal did this 10 years ago.
- bdcravens 4y ago
  Been like that for well beyond that, 20+ years (probably since the first porn site went online). In the late 90s, early in the career, I was brought into an adult website project. You were limited to working with a few payment processors that were willing to work with the industry, and the integration was pretty rudimentary, even for the time. Note that it's not just a morality issue: porn sites have a tremendous number of chargebacks. As a result, payment processors ban categories where the risk is higher.

SilverBirch 4y ago

>Yes they did bad things, but they also weren’t as bad as some were painting them, I think you're glossing over this. They systematically allowed and profited from obviously illegal content. For years there was essentially not even an attempt to really prevent child porn on their site. It's one thing to go the Youtube route for civil stuff like copyright violations, but there's no putting the genie back in the bottle with child porn and rape. If an individual were found to have the videos that MindGeek had, they would've spent a lifetime in prison, not become millionaires.