Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform • Hacker News Board

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#181

Post by sp332 » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 5:33 PM UTC

tmalsburg2 wrote: post #74

pyrophane wrote: post #47

I don't have any sympathy for Pornhub here. Their entire business is built on stolen content uploaded by anonymous users, and it wasn't until they hollowed out the rest of the industry through theft that they started looking beyond it. I would go so far as to say that the reason Pornhub and other tube sites haven't taken problems like child porn and revenge porn seriously is because doing so would undermine the found…

> Their entire business is built on stolen content uploaded by anonymous users, Not disagreeing with you, but, to be fair, that was exactly Youtube's recipe for success, and still is to some extent. I never understood how Youtube could get away with that.

I mean, they were facing down a bilion-dollar lawsuit and only avoided that on a technicality. Then spent a huge amount of money (and reputation) on ContentID.

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#182

Post by tristor » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 5:33 PM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #151

jchw wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is, for better or mostly worse, how a lot of sites bootstrap. Crunchyroll is another example.

Crunchyroll at least needed a team of translators to create subtitles for Naruto (and other anime circa the mid 00s). That is to say: Crunchyroll may have copyrihgt-infringed upon anime, but they added value. Naruto and Shippuden never would have found a subtitled audience without that team of translators. (And the English dub was relatively low quality back then, believe it) I'm not sure how Youtube or Pornhub adds…

> Crunchyroll at least needed a team of translators to create subtitles for Naruto (and other anime circa the mid 00s). That is to say: Crunchyroll may have copyrihgt-infringed upon anime, but they added value.

Most of the content on Crunchyroll was fansubbed by various IRC and torrent groups and used without permissions of the original copyright holders or of the fansub groups and without credit to the fansubbers. So, actually, no, they didn't need a team of translators, and there's a lot of anime fans who refuse to do business with Crunchyroll because of their betrayal of the fansub community.

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#183

Post by iwasakabukiman » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

alphachloride wrote: post #120

I am speaking here as a hypocrite. I think porn is wrong and I don't pay for it on principle. I pirate it instead when I succumb to my baser urges. What I'm saying is that I have mixed feelings.

So you disagree with it morally but watch it anyway? And then don't even pay the people who produced it? Isn't that even worse?

I think there's nothing wrong with porn in general and the people who create it - just like other artists, performers, actors, etc - should be paid for it.

Just because it's "morally disagreeable" doesn't make it okay to pirate it. Then you've committed two "sins" instead of one.

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#184

Post by tempsy » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 5:35 PM UTC

pyrophane wrote: post #47

I don't have any sympathy for Pornhub here. Their entire business is built on stolen content uploaded by anonymous users, and it wasn't until they hollowed out the rest of the industry through theft that they started looking beyond it. I would go so far as to say that the reason Pornhub and other tube sites haven't taken problems like child porn and revenge porn seriously is because doing so would undermine the found…

you can say this same thing about Airbnb. how many listings are illegal? and yet they don’t proactively purge illegal listings unless some city aggressively goes after them in court.

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#185

Post by oivey » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 5:35 PM UTC

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #131

ebiester wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why bother with blockchain? This is a torrent use case because nobody wants to share their record of porn ownership.

Torrent aggregator sites/discords have small groups of people behind them to arrest or sue. A blockchain would have a large impractical group of people to arrest or sue, it would be like when the RIAA tried to sue Kazaa users.

It’s unclear how this is true. You would still need tools to search the blockchain for the content you’re looking for. Someone would also need to curate and coordinate the format for embedding this information. Anyone involved with either of those steps could be targeted. Those are just off the top of my head. There are likely more holes than that.

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#186

Post by preinheimer » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 5:36 PM UTC

Larrikin wrote: post #88

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question: how do you scale content moderation to millions of posts without hiring millions of workers at astronomical cost (who can make mistakes, like we’ve seen with DMCA take down notices, YouTube censorship when not justified, AppStore censorship,even GitHub made these mistakes, etc... some of these mistakes ruin peoples’ livelihoods). Is there a “right way” to do this that protects everyone?

This question presumes that they have some inalienable right to scale despite not having solved this problem

I think this is a point that tech folks like to sweep under the rug all too often.

All of these sound wrong:

- Walmarts are huge! It's impossible to build fire suppression at that scale.

- Ford builds an insane number of cars every year, it's not possible to ensure each car is safe at that scale.

- The United States burns 20,000 barrels of oil PER DAY. It's simply not possible to ensure a "safe" product at that scale.

- This buffet serves 20,000 plates per day, it's impossible to ensure food safety at that scale.

Each of those problems has been ~solved. Or those business wouldn't be operating. You only need to moderate a million messages if your customers are posting that many. If you can't afford to hire moderators to handle those million messages maybe it's your business model that's the problem, not moderation.

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#187

Post by ralfn » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 5:36 PM UTC

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #62

headmelted wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might be missing something here, but if that kind of stuff really is on Reddit then I would want them to be made to take responsibility for having it on their site and suffer the consequences if it is not removed and reported to the authorities.

Genuine question: how do you scale content moderation to millions of posts without hiring millions of workers at astronomical cost (who can make mistakes, like we’ve seen with DMCA take down notices, YouTube censorship when not justified, AppStore censorship,even GitHub made these mistakes, etc... some of these mistakes ruin peoples’ livelihoods). Is there a “right way” to do this that protects everyone?

You do realize the success of the platforms is the result of finding legal loopholes.

That's the innovation. What if we are a media publisher but than without worker rights and unions? Youtube.

What if we start a hotel franchise but without any regulation or oversight or liability? Airbnb.

What if we start a cab company but make all our employees independent contractors, ignore all regulations and put all liability and legal risk on the independent contractors?

Silicon Valley is nothing but a bunch of young spoiled boys asking themselves the most American business question of all: have you tried slavery yet?

Business model innovations where you make money while someone pays all the costs.

>Is there a “right way” to do this that protects everyone

There is no investment if you do that, because the competitive advantage comes from the stealing. Nobody is investing in technology. Nobody is doing actual R&D. It's all about the viability of the scam. How profitable is this loophole?

We go out of our way to engineer protocols and technology and platforms that make it impossible to do that the right thing (by design). From p2p networks in the 90ties to crypto currencies. From YouTube to Spotify.

It's a dog eat dog world and I'm not here judging any individual. But let's not be naive.

Theft is the plan. Abuse is the strategy. Fortunes are not built on sweat. The people who work hard are the ones you hire to clean our house. The ones that pick our vegetables.

But we at least show the respect to others to not lie about the true nature of the successes of our industry.

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#188

Post by wmf » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 5:37 PM UTC

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #90

pyrophane wrote: post #47

I don't have any sympathy for Pornhub here. Their entire business is built on stolen content uploaded by anonymous users, and it wasn't until they hollowed out the rest of the industry through theft that they started looking beyond it. I would go so far as to say that the reason Pornhub and other tube sites haven't taken problems like child porn and revenge porn seriously is because doing so would undermine the found…

With all this talk about various corporations policing copyright, censoring political content, and whatnot, I think it's only a matter of time until someone makes an anonymous blockchain content aggregator that's impossible to censor. Then when it becomes the modern equivalent of Usenet/IRC/Napster/PirateBay, people will just shrug and say "don't blame the protocol". The demand exists and the technology exists, but n…

Freenet has existed for a long time but it hasn't really taken off.

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#189

Post by freehunter » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 5:37 PM UTC

claudeganon wrote: post #4

I’d like to see some kind of platform penalties that are redistributed toward victims. Pornhub has made millions off things like pirated sex work and revenge uploads, while wiping out legitimate players in the industry and driving down wages and working conditions [0] Now, having wrought all that destruction, they’re returning to what? Exactly what a regulated, verified industry looks like. It’s unconscionable that w…

That's pretty much the MO of a lot of SV companies. I remember when Uber came to my city and there were news articles about police officers ordering a ride and ticketing the driver afterwards because unlicensed taxis were against the law. The city claims Uber never petitioned them to change the law, Uber just knowingly broke the law and paid the fines on behalf of their drivers until the city changed the law. Airbnb has done similar things in the past in cities where subleasing and short-term rentals are regulated, but they skipped the regulation and just broke the law until the law changed.

Youtube does the same, Facebook does the same. Laws and regulations are seen as things to disrupt rather than rules to follow or petition for changing. And if you have a billion dollars of VC money in your pocket, who cares about a $100 ticket?

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#190

Post by jlgaddis » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 5:38 PM UTC

ffpip wrote: post #130

Blikkentrekker wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wondered why YouTube was required to be quite strict with policing such matters but many pornography websites somehow remain quite operational despite the vast amount of obviously infringing material.

Google has more money, and it doesn't come from porn

Worse, it comes from advertising!