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

Pornhub wants to buy Tumblr

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 191 posts

Re: Pornhub wants to buy Tumblr

#91

Post by DisruptiveDave »

Angostura wrote: post #39

If there’s one thing PornHub is good at, it’s generating positive PR for itself. I’m always very impressed how much of Reddit - often very skeptic all about corporate manipulation- will roll over to have its tummy tickled by Pornhub.

I always giggle at the concept that Reddit is anti-corporate, because they are the easiest people to advertise to if you do it correctly. Generally speaking, they already pre-assemble into groups that are very often themed by patronage to the Corporate Gods (marvel, GoT, video games, whatever), and it becomes their entire identity.

Re: Pornhub wants to buy Tumblr

#92

Post by kartan »

MrMember wrote: post #49
Angostura wrote: post #39

If there’s one thing PornHub is good at, it’s generating positive PR for itself. I’m always very impressed how much of Reddit - often very skeptic all about corporate manipulation- will roll over to have its tummy tickled by Pornhub.

Reddit has quite a few blind spots when it comes to obvious advertising. Disney properties get a free pass, for example.

https://www.reddit.com/r/hailcorporate started to gain some momentum and was killed fast.

My guess is that the professional community, people that earn money manipulating/contributing paid-content to Reddit, is quite big. Or, at least, their impact is really big. Most people are just readers and Reddit professionals have time, motivation and knowledge to game the system.

I have fun reading Reddit. And I read it very often. But, I do not trust all the enthusiasm about any movie/service/app or similar that the community generates. It is usually over the top and not very useful to actually get a good idea of the quality of such a product.

I think that as a society we need to develop new mechanisms to deal with the situation. Probably regulation is one of them. But, for people to able to understand that not everything in the internet is true is also important. It will take time, people still think that reality shows are real, but I think that is feasible.

Re: Pornhub wants to buy Tumblr

#93

Post by asdff »

partiallypro wrote: post #12

I think the only problem with this, is that there is still a solid 35% of the user base that doesn't want porn. So, there is a very fine line.

Is it so hard to just put up an optional explicit content filter? I don't know why it has to be all or nothing when you can just serve the "Yes I am 18 and agree to see adult content" popup that's been around for decades now. Reddit seems to be doing OK with that system.

Re: Pornhub wants to buy Tumblr

#95

Post by SimonPStevens »

djsumdog wrote: post #78
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, the biggest issue is saying the team is affiliated with a porn site. But if "MindGeek" sponsored an eSports team, my guess is most people would be fine with it, in part because they didn't know that it was a company that owns porn sites. While obviously they'd restore adult content to Tumblr, my guess is they'd keep Tumblr as a somewhat mainstream brand, and not let it be too directly associated with their ex…

It would get out though. There'd be a lot of hoops that PornHub would have to go through to make a wholly owned subsidiary they could use to spin-up a YouTube/Vimeo like platform on and it not come back to pornhub in the PR/advert sense. Although we all know a few people here and there who don't know YouTube is owned by Google, the majority of people do understand the YouTube + Google/Alphabet relationship.

> the majority of people do understand the YouTube + Google/Alphabet relationship

I think this is very tech centric view. I asked my wife (tech savy enough but doesn't work in the industry) and she didn't have any idea who owned Youtube, and had never heard of Alphabet.

I know it's only one data point, but I think it's easy to be blinkered when actually the truth is probably that most people outside of tech have no idea about tech company relationships.

Re: Pornhub wants to buy Tumblr

#96

Post by zaksoup »

kartan wrote: post #92
MrMember wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit has quite a few blind spots when it comes to obvious advertising. Disney properties get a free pass, for example.

https://www.reddit.com/r/hailcorporate started to gain some momentum and was killed fast. My guess is that the professional community, people that earn money manipulating/contributing paid-content to Reddit, is quite big. Or, at least, their impact is really big. Most people are just readers and Reddit professionals have time, motivation and knowledge to game the system. I have fun reading Reddit. And I read it very…

> [...] and was killed fast.

I'm /r/OutOfTheLoop... what happened that Hail Corporate was killed?

Re: Pornhub wants to buy Tumblr

#97

Post by jonlucc »

olivermarks wrote: post #30

pornhub is one of Mindgeek's properties. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MindGeek I've never understood their business model - they seem to host endless illegally uploaded porn yet more and more porn seems to be being created. Not clear where the money is made ultimately. Mindgeek dominate the online porn world which gets huge traffic. https://www.pornhub.com/insights/2018-year-in-review Tumblr was historically another…

If you're interested, you should find Jon Ronson's podcast on the topic. It's a finite series of shows called "The Butterfly Effect", and it covers what happened to the porn industry as it was overrun by Mindgeek. If I remember correctly, the gist is that the consolidation of the industry drove down rates for production and pushed a lot of participants into independent projects like custom videos.

Re: Pornhub wants to buy Tumblr

#98

Post by falcolas »

michaelchisari wrote: post #76
no1youknowz wrote: post #21

If I were Pornhub, I'd really low-ball them. After all Verizon wrote down the purchase by 30%? [0] and I'm sure they just want rid by now. So between 10% - 50% is a good offer. On Pornhubs side, it's essentially a steal. They could very well foster a good atmosphere when it comes to porn and then offer through their mindgeek advertising platform access to Tumblr for their marketing affiliates. These marketing affilia…

Also, the whole issue that sparked Tumblr's decision was illegal content, and Pornhub most likely has the resources and technical capability to detect and remove it quickly, whereas Tumblr was a ghost town of moderation that attracted the worst types of content. Of course, Tumblr needed a sheriff but they chose a nuclear weapon and the rest is history.

Illegal content? I am under the impression that it was more about the advertiser unfriendly content.

Re: Pornhub wants to buy Tumblr

#99

Post by vinkelhake »

stcredzero wrote: post #66
Mirioron wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it worth it to compete with YouTube though? We've heard about how YouTube didn't make Google money in the past. Now we even had news about how the way they handled YouTube caused the evaluation of the company to drop by $70 billion. So the question is whether it would be worth it to even try.

Is it worth it to compete with YouTube though? The issue with YouTube in recent years, is that it's been treating its content creators and viewers as "product" and the advertisers as the users. YouTube has been pandering to executives in media and their particular thought bubbles while throwing users and content creators under the bus. (Or doing things specifically to increase centralized control for the sake of pand…

YouTube is still very permissive about what content can be uploaded. What type of content can be monetized has changed.

Advertisers don't want their brand associated with content they find questionable. They pulled their advertising or at least threatened to. This lead to the "Adpocalypse".

A lot of creators argue that content is unfairly or incorrectly demonetized. That's an area where a competitor could improve. The competitor would still have to deal with the fact that advertisers are sitting on the money and want a say in how their ads are showing up.

Re: Pornhub wants to buy Tumblr

#100

Post by DoreenMichele »

I hope they succeed.

Tumblr is not really my thing and neither is porn, but I have been dismayed by the seeming trend to criminalize and stamp out all expressions of consenting adult sexual behavior on the internet. It would be nice to see some successful push back.

Post reply on HN