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Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

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Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#471
post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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! People make all kinds of claims all the ti…

Because we've seen this so clearly with fake celebrity porn?

And those are folks with the actual resources to go after it in courts.

> In most cases, the people with the motive an ability to make machine-generated porn of a particular person will be relatively easy to find.

I just find this incredibly difficult to believe, unless this "ban on user content" extends to a ban on general computing. And maybe that's where we'll end up, but I think that's a much more malicious result than generated porn. Or maybe anonymity will disappear online, which I find fairly scary, but is another clear thrust we're seeing.

Also - What about the absolutely bonkers industry that will be consent based generated porn? We're already headed that route now with 3d scanning of actors/actresses, and lord knows - I think a lot of folks in the porn industry would be happy to get digitally imaged and then not have to actually engage in the physical process of making porn.

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I think this is a real and genuine ethics question that we don't have good answers to right now.

I don't really have a problem with PH pulling down anonymous user content (hell - private company, they can make their own decisions) but I also don't really think it's going to stop this kind of behavior, and it certainly doesn't untangle complex social questions around what's right and wrong in this space.

I will say - I think we're undergoing another sexual revolution right now, it's just more subtle because it's less about what folks do or wear in public, and more about what folks do in private.

I'm not entirely sure how you legislate on this topic either - What's art? What's porn? can you really "Know it when you see it"? What if you unintentionally make imagery that just resembles a real person?

Those are all questions that depend on social context at the time they're legislated on, and they set a tone going forward.

Basically - My whole point is that this is not some clear win, and again - I'm not entirely sure there's a win anywhere in this discussion. I think this is just PH skirting around the issue for monetary reasons because they happen to be big enough at this point that they can do without anonymous submissions.

I will say - I'm fairly sure any "it's simple and this will solve it!" response is utter bullshit.

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two more likely possibilities: (1) Pornhub wasn't really checking, which is an easy way to get good stats.* (2) Many of Facebook's 84 million incidents took place on private groups or Messenger chats with small numbers of participants, whereas a single PornHub upload (counted as "1 incident") could easily reach hundreds of thousands of people. Fundamentally difficult to compare private communications networks with br…

I've personally reported child pornography on Pornhub several times that wasn't removed. Pornhub also required you to have an account to report content if I'm not mistaken.

Ive personally taken dozens of reports where people were 100% sure and disgusted, even from some moderators who were supposed to know more about this - and it turned out the people were all over 18.

anecdotal indeed.

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#474
post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But roughly, there seems to be no strong evidence that Pornhub did not remove illegal content they became aware of. It's delusional to think that Pornhub did not know about this content. They only cared when the credit card companies threatened to withhold payments.

This is clearly false, they've claimed to be using a lot of technologies to preventively detect these issues. Visa has threatened to destroy not only Pornhub, but the whole parent company now. They'll just shut down Pornhub before destroying their company. Looking forward to the next russian-hosted site. It will surely be better, right?

> This is clearly false, they've claimed to be using a lot of technologies to preventively detect these issues.

Either the technology didn't work, or the claims were false. Either way, Pornhub knew that they were hosting these videos. They just didn't care.

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've personally reported child pornography on Pornhub several times that wasn't removed. Pornhub also required you to have an account to report content if I'm not mistaken.

Ive personally taken dozens of reports where people were 100% sure and disgusted, even from some moderators who were supposed to know more about this - and it turned out the people were all over 18. anecdotal indeed.

I'm sure we can find stories on both sides of this argument.

I lived in South East Asia for a while and the cell phone footage of sexual interactions between middle school students is what I reported. These are girls wearing middle school uniforms embroidered with the school's name on the shirt [1] which indicates that the woman is under 18.

Nobody would bother to replicate the uniform for 2 minutes of shaky cell phone footage. It was underage material. Plain and simple.

[1] - https://favpng.com/png_view/t-shirt-t-shirt-school-uniforms-...

My own ex-girlfriend's photographs were uploaded to XHamster by her ex-boyfriend along with a copy of her passport. She's 17 in the images. Took us over a year to get them taken down.

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#476
post #422

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…

How does this have anything to do with REAL rape and REAL stolen video and images being uploaded NOW? Just because you can theoretically, in the future, make a fake video of someone having sex doesn't mean it's in any way justifiable to allow actual video of real violent crimes on your platform now. And even when this future does happen, do people no longer have a right to their own image and likeness? Is it okay sim…

Is it okay to imagine? To think whatever you feel like to think at the moment? Rhethorical. The future that gp describes simply helps with it. Not questioning real harm to somebody ofc (as in physical/personal harm).

People never had a right to their image, because it is neither unique, nor is really theirs with all these enhancements that we call “image”. Nobody can dictate you what to think. One little step from here and we’ll quite seriously discuss thought crimes.

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#477
post #378

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…

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 issues rather than ignoring them.

Sure I’ll answer your questions, but you go first & answer mine :)

Agree that jail is better, if that’s an option I’ll take it. But if the options are “let a company make money off rape/cp/etc” or don’t let them do that, I’ll take the latter.

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Horseshoe-theory is indeed a thing. As for where it stops; we've already seen Mastercard/Visa force platforms like Patreon to blacklist users, Cloudflare pulling routing to sites, registrars willing to essentially dox owners of 'bad sites', social media blacklisting links to stories hosted on gov websites, Chase-bank closing the accounts of people associated with controversial political groups.. Kind of makes you mis…

Since you know the phrase "horseshoe theory" I'm a bit surprised you don't know that no one actually on the "far left" in USA proposes censorship. Instead it is a particular flavor of centrist identitarians who couldn't care less about freedom or class consciousness. They're just striving for a bit of attention like everyone else. If you accused them of leftism they would probably take offense. I'm not saying the far…

Far-left are usually anti-statist and therefore would be against censorship on the principal that the enforcer (the State) shouldn't exist.

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> scale.

This is the error. The problem isn't scale. If YouTube has 500 hours of video uploaded per minute and some other site has only one minute of video uploaded per minute, the smaller site is no better able to handle it, because they don't have proportionally any more staff than YouTube.

The actual problem is marginal cost.

If you have a Walmart store, it probably costs over a million dollars to construct it, and takes in several million dollars a year in revenue. A $10,000 fire suppression system may be expensive, but it's manageable. And if there are a thousand Walmart stores all over the country that each need a $10,000 fire suppression system, that scales just fine. You have a choice between an unsafe Walmart and a safe Walmart whose proprietors make slightly less profit.

The marginal profit from hosting a given video is pennies. That means any solution that costs more than pennies isn't a choice between unsafe and safe video hosting, it's a choice between having video hosting and not having it. Scale has nothing to do with it; greater or lesser scale doesn't save you from a cost that exceeds your entire margin.

Re: Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

#480
post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>sites I try to avoid (malware, etc.)

Is it still a thing? What malware can a pornsite contain that cannot be uploaded to or linked to from a regular smaller niche or bigger broader site? Do you download and run hotgirls.exe dialers or what?

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