Pornhub wants proof of consent from every single performer on its platform | Hacker News Reader

Pornhub wants proof of consent from every single performer on its platform

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60 pointsgslin29 comments

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I'm not surprised. They're probably the most recognizable name in porn and undoubtedly under a lot of scrutiny.

Now if only I could tell their algorithm to stop recommending step-sibling/parent fantasy porn... yuck.

I'd love to see the meat behind those algorithms. Are the algorithms intentionally biased to prefer serving that type of content for some ideological reason? Or are we now just so far gone as a society that a significant number of users actually search for / consume that type of content, and the algorithm recommending it is actually natural/unbiased?

I wonder if there's a feedback loop in the viewer metrics. Most people are probably not interested in searching around for what they want, so they click on whatever is on the front page. So much porn is perfectly normal-looking based on the thumbnail/preview other than the creepy title, so maybe people just watch it anyway if it looks good, even if the plot premise is offputting.

Then if you're just looking at the viewer metrics, it looks like the step sibling stuff is really popular. So the algorithm prioritizes it further, so people watch it more, etc.

This is all speculation of course, but it's a cautionary tale about why statistical and causal reasoning is useful even if you're in industry, as long as you actually care about delivering a good data product.

> I wonder if there's a feedback loop in the viewer metrics. Most people are probably not interested in searching around for what they want, so they click on whatever is on the front page.

I recall reading something years ago that said some porn site that started to do data-driven analytics and found that even though "step-sibling/parent fantasy" stuff wasn't generally popular, but it was particularly good at attracting paying subscribers. I kinda wonder if that effect was overstated, but all the porn sites started cargo-culting that finding as "conventional wisdom" and made the genre a thing.

> So much porn is perfectly normal-looking based on the thumbnail/preview other than the creepy title, so maybe people just watch it anyway if it looks good, even if the plot premise is offputting.

I think of lot of that particular genre isn't normal-looking, for instance by casting size differences to creepily create the impression of an illegal age difference:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/aeygae/porns-latest-trend-is...

The step-stuff is 90% just in the title, in the "plot" there isn't anything like that. Most people in porn aren't in it for the acting. The time of porn with a plot is pretty much dead.

From what I've heard it's zero-effort marketing: you make the content and rename it to whatever you want. The people who are into that will watch it and the rest of us will tolerate it.

Similar to foot fetish stuff, there's a surprising amount of people who are specifically into it and will see/buy anything with feet. The rest will kinda tolerate it.

My 2 cents is that it's an easy way to describe/search the age and genders you want, without getting erroneous results.

So 2 younger people = bro/sis

An older man/younger woman would be Dad/daughter

A much older man/younger son would be granpda/grandson etc

It's hard to search "older man younger woman" because the adjectives will populate "younger man older women" too and skew search results.

If you search for teens, you actually get women in their 20s, which is a better result.

If you want women in their 30s, you can search for milf or wife.

If you want 40s, search for mature.

If you want 50s or older, search for gilf.

NO, it's perverted way to look for content that could be found without the weirdo/CP/incest references. There's no excuse for that language, and as far as SEO goes, are these webmasters trying to groom users, or do they really most of the world enjoys that nonsense.

So are all the increasingly vintage vhs amateur porno whose provenance can't be tracked on their way out? Are there any porn preservation movements out there?

Sometimes I wonder if there's a common porn clip that high % of world has seen growing up. The de_dust2 of porno. Arguably porn is more global mass culture than any franchise. And I guess it would be kind of a shame if all that is lost.

Never heard of de_dust2.

There is a short clip of a german porn movie that went viral (in Germany), keywords: 'Warum liegt denn da Stroh auf dem Boden?'

the sentence ends with "...Stroh rum" instead of "...Stroh auf dem Boden", which is an additional joke in austria because of a locally well known brand of rum: "Stroh Rum"

Now you forced me to search for the clip.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6foTWmryAvQ

All of the trends I see in the porn industry are moving in the right direction. Things like OnlyFans, Chaturbate, and the Pornhub shift to user-made content are resulting in more money and control for creators and, at least in my opinion, a much better marketplace for porn consumers. It's also gradually transforming/marginalizing the traditional porn industry, which is where a lot of the worst parts of the sex industry thrived.

I think some people will lament the shrinking spaces where people can produce and consume porn anonymously. But porn is a gargantuan industry. It only seems like it exists on the margins because it's been forced to act that way. In reality, it needs to be regulated like any other major industry that occupies such a sensitive area. And I think there will always be space on the true margins for people who want their sex/porn outside of the mainstream.

> Things like OnlyFans, Chaturbate, and the Pornhub shift to user-made content are resulting in more money and control for creators

How do you know that the person you see on the screen is getting the money, and someone else isn't controlling them and cashing in? As you say, it's a very unregulated industry; performers get negative consideration from 'mainstream' institutions, from banks to lawyers to courts to legislators and regulators.

This is what “moving in the right direction” is though.

I know as a fact that what you are saying does happen. I also know as a fact that many creators and performers are not being controlled by anyone and are in complete control of their own decisions and finances. Like with everything, we have to use our own judgement. But it's undeniable that there are now many more routes for individuals to pursue sex work independently and that is a very good thing.

fwiw - porn industry has been heavily regulated for a long time, US 2257 was passed in 1988, rights to the likeness of your image have been around longer I think, Visa/MC, operation chokepoint, various threats from various people and orgs have kept banks and payments processors uber paranoid, and quick to cancel (and fees to process payments higher than they should be)..

and most players in English-first countries are fine with getting an ID and model release (It is a hindrance trying to get 2 picture IDs in many cases though, states are odd with that sometimes)

However the combination of international borders, semi-decentralized internet, and most importantly the lack of will from police organizations to help porn performers, have created the situation that has destroyed 'the traditional porn industry' - ( some of which I am happy to see go )

The DMCA is weaponized against porn creators, while it's used to protect Hollywood and the RIAA.

It's the lawlessness of (former-pornhub) and the ones like that, that still don't follow the before mentioned 2257 / legit model release / etc that is the real problem,

and that the international cops don't do squat to the companies that steal and republish content.

(which leads to more abuse like porn published that may not have had the proper consents all the way around)

There is a ton of regulation that people in the states or the UK must follow, but there will always be countries that don't prioritize servers hosting porn.. so unless you can kick them all off the internet there are those who will not abide by the regulations of the US/UK.

Pornhub I believe is only going through these motions because they can win visa/mc processing, which was sizeable for them semi-uniquely, AND they have been in the crosshairs of multiple high profile investigations from politicians, big name newspapers, and several 'faith warrior organizations' - they can win a reprieve from all that, which means they can also keep their brand.

Honestly, it's not regulation that is moving it 'in the right direction' - it's the technology that is allowing cbate style individual promotion which is leading to better live performing which is taking back some of the power, and the only thing that can compete with the tons of sites that are stealing full length vids and releasing them to the masses for free.

> Things like OnlyFans, Chaturbate, and the Pornhub shift to user-made content are resulting in more money and control for creators and, at least in my opinion, a much better marketplace for porn consumers.

I don't think that's specifically better because it has led to a massive industrial fragmentation of the industry with Pareto distribution. The top 20% of creators of OnlyFans make up 80% of the platform's revenue, and maybe we could even double-Pareto it, with 4% of the creators making 64% of the revenue.

To be in the 66th percentile of OnlyFans, you must earn at least USD 100 monthly, meaning everyone behind it makes less than that.

> It's also gradually transforming/marginalizing the traditional porn industry, which is where a lot of the worst parts of the sex industry thrived.

I kind of agree, but at the same time, creators/models who don't know how to manage themselves are getting managed by the so-called OnlyFans Agencies. These agencies have strong incentives to be exploitative towards the model, and especially towards the chat agents that sell the content.

The usual deal I've seen is that the model gets taken away as a percentage of the total revenue produced on her account (nothing wrong with that), but I've seen it's about 50%. OnlyFans takes 20%, then the agency takes 40%. That means the model is down 70% of the revenue, getting her the remaining 30%. Models that don't want to pay their own staff to do the chatting for them end up getting the short end of the deal.

As for the chatter, I applied for a job on one to understand how it works, and the shifts are at least 8 hours and at most 14 hours continuously (with low base pay of course, around USD 400 monthly for a junior chatter and averaging out from USD 600 to USD 1100.

I'm not saying the chatter should be a highly paid professional, but do you see where this goes south regarding sweatshops?

> In reality, it needs to be regulated like any other major industry that occupies such a sensitive area.

I'm not against regulation in general, but I suspect this is one of these cases where regulation will do more harm to the industry rather than help. People have in their nature to act under certain circumstances and act under a set of incentives. And whilst there are some incentives for human/sex trafficking (and I'm not saying we should let it regulate itself), I have this opinion that, in this case, even more regulation will make it almost impossible to do porn as a business.

PornHub was not a heaven, I know, but PornHub is already crippled. Asking for the devil to come is different from the devil actually coming.

Agree, it's become much more ethical for the better.

Here is their announcement:

https://www.pornhub.com/blog/co-performer-verification-updat...

Sounds like an ethical thing to do.

Now, whats the deal with recommending all the incest and trans stuff?

This is great news. Finally some accountability from what is almost a de facto organization that feels as big as Youtube.

Hopefully this will promote actual sex positivity.

Good for them

Finally, a community to embrace and possibly improve the UX for signing digital documents with public/private keypairs.

/s(?)

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