Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

vice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 549 posts

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#431

Post by pndy »

tyingq wrote: post #319
tmalsburg2 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Same for Pinterest.

Pinterest is even worse because it hijacks image search with their stolen content pretending it's the only available source and the source, while at same time forcing browsing users to register.

I don't think Pornhub behaves in same way neither YT or more comparable imgur.

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#432

Post by RedComet »

jackconsidine wrote: post #313
RedComet wrote: post #265

But they still made money on videos with underage runaways for years, right? Is law enforcement going to do anything about this or do they only arrest people for not wearing masks, now?

Was with you until the end

Why? Haven't you seen all of the videos of people being arrested for it? Would you have liked it better if I said "speeding tickets". Fine, speeding tickets. Yet KNOWN peddlers of child porn rake in cash like most people can't fathom. Law enforcement is a cruel joke at this point. The system is just a perpetual motion system of wickedness at this point.

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#433

Post by laumars »

nickelcitymario wrote: post #209
astrange wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t your blockchain be several PB in size right away, immediately censoring itself because nobody could store it?

What if it was only a directory of torrents? Not hosting the content itself, but indexing it. (I've never developed anything with blockchain or torrents, so my apologies if there's a technical reason why this sucks.) If I understand Pirate Bay and other torrent sites correctly, they don't host any content. They just index what's available P2P. I'm not sure how large that index would become, but I could imagine chunki…

Indexing has always been the easy part. It’s the hosting that’s the real problem.

With hosting, you can either have it centralised so users are anonymised from each other (but it’s easier to take down centralised repositories) or decentralised but where users can see each other (but then it’s easier for copyright holders to go after individuals). You can’t really have it both decentralised and anonymous.

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#434

Post by jessaustin »

arbaal wrote: post #331
dragontamer wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its been a while since those times. I remember Dattebayo fansubs, one of those torrent fansub groups you're talking about. I remember when they shutdown and announced support for Crunchyroll, suggesting that legitimate paid streaming was the future for anyone who actually wanted to support the anime subtitle community. Perhaps I wasn't remembering the full politics of mid 00s subtitle culture... its been a very long…

I think your retrospective is very Dattebayo centric and distorted. Most big fansubbing groups hated CR back in the days when CR started, since CR took their fansunbs to fuel their business. Once CR started to make/pay for their own translations (also hiring translators from some groups in the background) the situation got better, since then a clear, legal path was visible for the community.

I don't know anything about any of these groups (I do like anime), but they had to know from the beginning that voluntary subtitling would never make any money. Even if copyright law were intended to help regular people rather than giant corporations, their work was entirely based on material they had questionable "right" to use in the first place. They scratched their own itch, and later CR had an itch too. It could be that Dattebayo always had a more complete understanding of the situation than other fansub groups had.

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#435

Post by Bakary »

sequoia wrote: post #340

It's surprising to me (perhaps shouldn't be) how many people here are discussing this issue in the abstract using terms like "broadly harmless." To these commenters: are you unaware of the issue of child porn, revenge porn, stolen content* and videos of actual rapes being uploaded to Pornhub, and Pornhub making money off of this content? If you are aware of this (the core issue), you should be grappling with these is…

Even the core business of PornHub isn't exactly harmless. I don't mean in a religious/moralistic way but for the same reason eating at McDonald's every day is probably not going to be great for you.

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#436

Post by horsawlarway »

sequoia wrote: post #424
horsawlarway wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you're wrong - I think you're misunderstanding the scale of what's about to come. We can already generate realistic video/audio content based on a very small sample. We're going to get custom porn in the vein of celebrity fakes, but for EVERYONE . It was limited because it used to take time/skill to make. That's changing incredibly quickly. I'm fairly conflicted about how I feel about it, too. I'd wager…

What's your point? What does this have to do with PH hosting (and dragging their feet about taking down ) and making money off of real rape/revenge/child porn today? And out of curiosity, what makes you think I am "misunderstanding" this? You reckon I wouldn't be mad about PH making $ off rape videos if only I knew that in 15 years we could make deepfake porn for cheap? "In the future, everyone will be world-famous f…

I mean that all the things you're upset about are going to happen at scale.

Upset about revenge porn? What if it's just a really close copy of your face/body generated by machine, stitched together in a very believable fashion? You could maybe claim ownership of your likeness, but I don't think it's going to be possible to really enforce - Many people look near identical already. Or they add a mole here or there and claim - look - clearly not you!

And it won't be you, but does it really matter? How do you prove it's not you to other people without stripping down?

Upset about rape videos? I am too when it's a real person. I find it much harder to argue against when it's a performance (current porn) or when it's not any person at all. Who has standing in court? No one was harmed. Are you upset that someone was raped, or are you upset that someone is making money off of rape videos? Because there will be generated videos of this content, and it will absolutely be customizable to look like people want it to. Does it matter if the video is real? And removing this content won't stop rapes at all. So is it somehow worse if a real rape victim has fake rape porn made of them? If so, why?

---

Basically - My point is that you're making an appeal based on a moral system that I don't think is going to survive the coming wave of generated imagery.

I too have serious issues with all of the real crimes you dislike, but I don't think you can genuinely equate video content with the crime itself - They happen to be tightly coupled now, but that's going to change.

This is NOT an open and shut victory here. I'm not really sure there's a victory to be had.

Maybe the best we'll get is a world where even when real revenge porn is uploaded, no one will believe it's real...

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#437

Post by ce4 »

mrkeen wrote: post #378
sequoia wrote: post #340

It's surprising to me (perhaps shouldn't be) how many people here are discussing this issue in the abstract using terms like "broadly harmless." To these commenters: are you unaware of the issue of child porn, revenge porn, stolen content* and videos of actual rapes being uploaded to Pornhub, and Pornhub making money off of this content? If you are aware of this (the core issue), you should be grappling with these is…

Two points of contention: 1) How wide do you cast the net for accountability? Bad content is a subset of unverified content, unverified content is a subset of Pornhub, Pornhub is a subset of an ISP's traffic and a subset of CC companies' revenue. How much good do you want to ban with the bad? 2) Why not actual law & order? I would guess a lot of fans of unverified content also dislike bad actors, and would like to se…

Pornhub and the (formerly named) company Manwin grew their business mostly on pirated content only to buy large porn studios later on with the gains. It surely helped that the industry wasnt too litigous and judges surely were reluctant to support such cases where the whole industry may be perceived as morally objectionable and indecent by parts of the society. Der Spiegel Magazin has an 8 year old article on Pornhub and its German founder, it's lengthy but worth a read:

https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/fabian-thylma...

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#438

Post by nickelcitymario »

YokoZar wrote: post #377
nickelcitymario wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if it was only a directory of torrents? Not hosting the content itself, but indexing it. (I've never developed anything with blockchain or torrents, so my apologies if there's a technical reason why this sucks.) If I understand Pirate Bay and other torrent sites correctly, they don't host any content. They just index what's available P2P. I'm not sure how large that index would become, but I could imagine chunki…

You're about 50% of the way to reinventing 2000s era peer to peer filesharing programs here.

...you're not wrong.

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#439

Post by nickelcitymario »

laumars wrote: post #433
nickelcitymario wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if it was only a directory of torrents? Not hosting the content itself, but indexing it. (I've never developed anything with blockchain or torrents, so my apologies if there's a technical reason why this sucks.) If I understand Pirate Bay and other torrent sites correctly, they don't host any content. They just index what's available P2P. I'm not sure how large that index would become, but I could imagine chunki…

Indexing has always been the easy part. It’s the hosting that’s the real problem. With hosting, you can either have it centralised so users are anonymised from each other (but it’s easier to take down centralised repositories) or decentralised but where users can see each other (but then it’s easier for copyright holders to go after individuals). You can’t really have it both decentralised and anonymous.

Good point

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#440

Post by ogre_codes »

jjk166 wrote: post #218
wittyreference wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

The only way this comparison to drug companies makes sense is if the drug companies had community sourced supply lines and were selling drugs a third party contributor had made in their bathtub alongside their normal drugs.

> "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.

This would be a reasonable argument for a company like YouTube which has spent tens (hundreds?) of millions of dollars putting controls in place. If PornHub had iron tight controls and one of the actors was caught using a fake ID, then it might be reasonable. But they didn't have iron tight controls... or apparently any controls. There was zero verification that participants had signed releases or were of age.

PornHub's controls were complete shit.

Maybe some people want drugs from Pfizer's "Community Sourced" drug program... I sure don't.

Post reply on HN