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

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#211

Post by Andrex » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 5:51 PM UTC

cjohansson wrote: post #67

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…

Both Google and YouTube contain stolen and illegal content. There are lots of full length pirate movies on YT for instance. It doesn’t make it right but I just mean all companies should be equally judged by rules and regulations

What you may not realize is that if that "stolen" media is logged in ContentID, both Google and the proper rightsholders are making money by running ads off every view (if they decide not to block it outright.)

That's mostly why YouTube still exists.

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#212

Post by dasudasu » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 5:53 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 not a tech issue. You can target anyone that’s part of a disaggregated network and broadcasts it. That’s true for torrents, TOR nodes, or blockchains.

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#213

Post by Andrex » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 5:53 PM UTC

tomjen3 wrote: post #205

miracle2k wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These seem all very different critiques. The Nick Kristof article is based on the work of Laila Mickelwait, who has for the last couple of years worked tirelessly on her campaign to shutdown Pornhub. I twas her who has surfaced all the victims in the article. Though I doubt she will succeed now, she is very clear that the end-goal is not to monitor Pornhub, but to criminally charge it's owners. This is because a crim…

And a very quick google search confirmed what I suspected: she works for a christian organization. I thought that we had effectively neutered the religious right.

> I thought that we had effectively neutered the religious right.

How could you pay attention to American politics in the last 30 years and possibly still think this?

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#214

Post by powersnail » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 5:53 PM UTC

serial_dev wrote: post #192

powersnail wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the general idea that a life spent alone, consuming pornography all day is unfulfilling should not be controversial 1). I don't see why that's not controversial. It doesn't seem self-evident. If a person can fulfill the need by watching porn, then by definition, it is fulfilled. If a person finds it unfulfilling, well, such a person will be motivated to branch out and start doing something else. 2). OP claimed that…

> If a person can fulfill the need by watching porn, then by definition, it is fulfilled. If a person finds it unfulfilling, well, such a person will be motivated to branch out and start doing something else. Depends on what we are "fulfilling". Just think about an extremely overweight person who cannot stop overeating. Yes, they are fulfilled in terms of food, but (sometimes) they are self-loathing and consider the…

Sure, nobody would expect porn to fill desires other than sexual. But, one can do other things to fulfill other desires.

> there are other facets of life where regular porn consumption or masturbation might have a negative effect

If there is a pathological addiction, yes, it will have a negative effect on one's life, just like most other addictions. (Addiction to sex, for instance)

But, otherwise, I can't really think of masturbation interfering with life that much. People frequently waste away 10 minutes in all kinds of ways.

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#215

Post by tomjen3 » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 5:54 PM UTC

ianhawes wrote: post #12

This is undoubtedly a positive move, though I do not believe it will be enough to satisfy the likes of the credit card companies. They are requiring ID verification (i.e. that you're 18 or over) to upload content. As much as I am privacy-minded, the idea that someone could upload an explicit video to Pornhub without verifying that they were 18 is mind-boggling. This is also a net positive for content producers on Por…

>As much as I am privacy-minded, the idea that someone could upload an explicit video to Pornhub without verifying that they were 18 is mind-boggling.

You make it sound like the statement requires no evidence. In reality it makes no difference if the uploader is 18 or not, but that the _recording_ is made consensually by 18+.

It is not a net positive for content producers, because viewers of legal but unverified porn (ie the wast majority of the content) will go to other sites.

I suspect xvideos viewership will go up, and they probably won't ally with the credit card agencies.

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#216

Post by null0pointer » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 5:54 PM UTC

wittyreference wrote: post #127

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?

If a business can't run profitably and legally at scale, then that business model is a bad fit for that scale and shouldn't exist at that scale (presuming the laws in question are reasonable, which I think 'banning child porn' qualifies as.) It's super weird that people seem to constantly start from the premise of, "But their business couldn't possibly [comply with law] profitably at scale! Oh well. I guess until som…

This is an extremely weak argument. At a certain scale, policy becomes about statistics rather than absolutes. This applies to absolutely everything, including the laws themselves. Companies in all industries have to occasionally issue recalls on dangerous or faulty products, just like PornHub or Reddit have to occasionally delete stolen or illegal content.

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#217

Post by Andrex » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 5:56 PM UTC

LinuxBender wrote: post #40

concordDance wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This means lots of casual exhibitionists will be reluctant to upload. It will probably cut uploads to a tiny fraction of what they were. Which could well be a net negative (I'm assuming both the viewers and exhibitionists get something out of it) given how small the positives are.

And that usually creates a vacuum for smaller niche sites to pop up and fill the gap.

Smaller niche sites are exactly the type of pornographic sites I try to avoid (malware, etc.)

And spinning up a new video host (that you intend to make money somehow) isn't cheap or easy.

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#218

Post by jjk166 » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 5:56 PM UTC

wittyreference wrote: post #127

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?

If a business can't run profitably and legally at scale, then that business model is a bad fit for that scale and shouldn't exist at that scale (presuming the laws in question are reasonable, which I think 'banning child porn' qualifies as.) It's super weird that people seem to constantly start from the premise of, "But their business couldn't possibly [comply with law] profitably at scale! Oh well. I guess until som…

> Imagine if pharma companies went "gosh, but hiring quality inspectors to make sure all of our drugs are untainted just doesn't scale!" I have trouble imagining you saying, "Well, they obviously can't sacrifice scale, so let's just wait and see if a better quality inspection solution comes up."

Every drug has acceptable levels of impurities. There is a non-zero acceptable level of rat feces in your food. Your bank rounds the value of your account to some decimal place. The various parts of your car have some mean time between failures.

In the real world we place bounds on how much bad stuff is acceptable, and these bounds are determined mostly by practicality and economics. "Ban all childporn" is certainly a reasonable philosophy, but it is no better a law than "ban all impurities" which would shut down every drug manufacturer in the world. A real law takes the form "perform these steps or reasonable equivalents to limit X to a tolerable level." You can claim that reddit is not taking a step it is required to by law, but it's not breaking the law just because it hasn't developed a perfect solution to a problem that likely can only be solved approximately.

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#219

Post by SoSoRoCoCo » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 5:57 PM UTC

zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #85

Now that Visa/MasterCard have dropped them, how are they going to get paid? Are they going to have to implement ACH and equivalent around the world? Just switch to a different payment processors? Move to billing to an intl visa subsidiary? Appeal to Visa/MasterCard now that they have policies in place? Or does advertising cover their costs and charging users was just an add-on?

probably ccbill. it's a third party. and they take 30% of the bill and require 6-12 month rolling escrow (where they hold all the money).

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#220

Post by tempsy » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 5:57 PM UTC

zaroth wrote: post #206

tempsy wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

None of AirBnb listings were likely illegal in the early days, because what they were doing was not regulated. Also, I’d say there’s a big difference between the homeowner choosing to list their home against a city regulation that the homeowner is choosing to violate, versus users uploading content that they don’t own in the first place. Even a tenant who is AirBnb’ing their unit against their lease terms is at least…

it’s not a big difference. both platforms are looking the other way when it comes to policing illegal content on their platforms because they make money off it whether it’s legal or not. they are choosing to offload the responsibility to the users as much as possible.