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Comment by jchw | Hacker News Reader

The article actually covers it:

> Pornhub's announcement also cites a report by third-party Internet Watch Foundation, which found 118 instances of child sexual abuse material on Pornhub in the last three years, and notes that in the same period, Facebook's own transparency report found 84 million instances of child sexual abuse material on the social media platform.

There was also such an issue with it cropping up on Tumblr and not being removed in short enough order that Tumblr was briefly removed from the iOS app store.[1]

[1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46275138

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Yeah I read that, but I don't think that single statistic necessarily tells us a whole lot, the extreme disparity also makes me think there might be something unexpected going on underneath the tabulation of those numbers. Intuitively, I'd expect user upload porn sites to have a lot more illegal content since its much easier for it to blend in there compared to most other places on the internet, the problem is greatly magnified at scale since distinguishing between legal pornographic imagery and illegal pornographic imagery is not trivial problem.

Well my intuition says the opposite and that those numbers seem to track with my expectations.

A large bulk of users likely never sign up for PH, making it harder to vet individuals to make sure they wont report the content. People show up with pretty much one thing in mind when going to PH and it's not really to interact with communities. Facebook has so much reach and such a large userbase that it's harder to moderate, and it's used for exactly what these groups want to do.

If we were only talking about close to 18 yo CSAM, sure that I could believe might be something that is more common on PH. But when looking at the entirety of CSAM, I just find it hard to believe that people would risk uploading a video that clearly has a child in it to a service that actively moderates video content primarily to a community that, en masse, doesn't like the content.

There could be some tabulation issues, but I find it hard to believe it's so poorly counted that it would make up a meaningful difference between the two numbers provided.

Consider:

- Most popular social media websites allow adult content in some forms.

- It is no easier to tell illicit content from legal content on one site versus another.

- There is likely not just far more content, but far more adult content on Twitter and Facebook than dedicated porn websites.

- Sites like Twitter and Facebook better facilitate private conversation (presumably.)

I don’t think you can make money on Pornhub without verification, so there’s probably not a money incentive to intentionally post illicit content. In fact I’m not entirely sure why you would at all, but my best guess is in hopes of trading with others. In that case, social media is actually perfect: draw people in with carefully constructed fronts, do dealings in private groups and try to fly as much under the radar as possible.

It’s hard to say and probably silly to speculate but I just don’t see the point of using a pornography website for this.

Most popular media sites do not allow adult content, nudity or other forms. Instagram,tiktok,facebook,apps stores while others like youtube may allow some suggested content if logged in but many would not classify these as porngraphic but more content geared towards adults. Whatever porngraphic material can be found is in the process of being removed.

I was talking about Facebook and Twitter. Admittedly, I am used to the world where these services basically define social media. I think I am a bit too old to be in the demographic TikTok seems to be appealing to.

Still, Facebook and Twitter just have way more content and users than porn websites, and it’s going to be easier to fly under the radar. Twitter accounts with fewer than 500 followers are basically invisible.

Of course, banning pornography really does roughly solve this problem, but it’s a pretty nuclear solution... (I would prefer a world where we’re less weird about erotic content, not more. I get why it’s complicated, but I still think we can do better.)

But what sense does it make to blend in anything? If you are a pedophile you want pedophilic content, not blended in, difficult to tell apart, perhaps illegal content. And if the uploader is a pedophile why'd he upload to such a public and traceable place instead of using some private group or some kind or anonimizing software like Tor? Doesn't make any sense. Pedophiles are not out there begging to be arrested.

> but I don't think

> makes me think

> Intuitively, I'd expect

Why do you think all these things?

The numbers that are reported are reported by the company. When Pornhub says "118", they're telling you they really didn't try particularly hard. When FB says 84 million, that tells you there's a whole team writing algorithms to detect and report. It's nearly impossible to determine the actual numbers

Those numbers actually prove that PornHub is doing next to nothing to police its content. And the average video posted to PornHub is probably far, far more likely to contain CP/Revenge Porn than the average social media post.

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