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--:-- Host: Support for Today Explained comes from BetterHelp. Let me tell you a true story. Last weekend, I got an email from a listener who wanted to discuss their problems with me. And I said, look, I don't think that this is about me personally. At least I hope it's not. Why don't you try BetterHelp.com slash Explained? Absolute truth. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Find the one with BetterHelp. The one is not me, guys. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash explain. That's BetterHelp.com slash explain.
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--:-- Host: Heads up, today's show is about porn. Consider yourself warned. Pornhub isn't your average porn site. It's kind of like YouTube, but for porn. People upload millions of videos each year. Some of it's professional and a lot of it's not. Pornhub is self-aware. It added flowers next to its logo once for Mother's Day. A few years ago, the site helped clear snow off Boston streets, saying they'd help anyone who wanted to get plowed. Pornhub wants to be your friend. And it's working. According to their own data, which they share every year as a form of self-promotion, I guess, there were 42 billion visits to Pornhub in 2019. The site gets more hits per month than Netflix, than Amazon. It is, without a doubt, one of the most popular websites on the internet.
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--:-- Host: It might be the best-known place to go look for porn. But over the past few days, the site has been jeopardizing its own dominance. Pornhub has been purging millions of videos. Like 10 million videos. That's something like 80% of the site. And no one even forced them to do it. Pornhub announced on Tuesday of last week that they were going to change the way their uploads and downloads work. Samantha Cole covers sex and technology for Motherboard at Vice. Before this, they were letting anyone upload content onto the site and then moderating it from there. Now they are making it so only verified users can upload, which means content partners and people who have gone through the process of verifying themselves and their identity on the platform.
--:-- Samantha Cole: So they're not only kicking off a bunch of videos, but they're limiting who can upload new ones? How come?
--:-- Host: So that was to kind of respond to some of these allegations that there was rampant child sexual abuse imagery on the site. The New York Times published an op-ed chronicling firsthand accounts of child sexual abuse published on the site. New York Times had a big investigation about them. It was an expose about the victims of child sexual abuse having their images on Pornhub. One survivor told him Pornhub became my trafficker. And here's why. Like YouTube, users can upload videos themselves and you can upload without a review. And users can also download content. So in most cases, according to this reporting, it's uploaded again and again and again. So it's a very hard cycle to break.
--:-- Samantha Cole: So they were kind of doing some damage control and saying, you know, we're going to make this big change where only people who are legit can put any content on the site.
--:-- Host: I think people who casually look at pornography might be surprised to hear that a site where you can casually look at pornography also has child pornography on it.
--:-- Samantha Cole: Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people were surprised to hear this. A lot of the stuff that's on Pornhub is pirated content, so it's stolen from people who actually made it and sold it. And it's also just abusive imagery and harassment and non-consensual imagery, non-consensual porn. Non-consensual porn being like maybe something that a couple of people made in a hotel room one time that only one of those people uploaded?
--:-- Host: Right. Yeah. I mean, the term for it would be revenge porn. It's content that you don't want up there that's intimate, that isn't there with your consent. A jilted boyfriend put your sex tape online or you stole a video from a sex worker and put it online without their permission. And it all ends up on there because there weren't these kind of stopgats in place. That verified the content before it went up. And that's part of what Pornhub has been criticized for in the past is it so hard to get those images taken down even when they are child sex abuse images.
--:-- Samantha Cole: It doesn't matter. It's a lot of the times just a game of just picking out what you can find. And that requires a lot of work and a lot of responsibility on the victims to go through their most traumatic moments and find them on porn sites, which a lot of victims have spoken out and said, you know, this isn't working.
--:-- Host: How big a deal are these policy changes? Is this something that has been done before? Or is this sort of a sea change moment?
--:-- Samantha Cole: It's a really big deal. And that's why it was very shocking to a lot of people who follow the industry. It's probably the most thorough moderation announcement of any social media platform.
--:-- Host: You know, it would make everyone on the platform safer. It ensures that the content that goes up belongs to that person and isn't just stolen pirated content that somebody else is losing money on. And it also stops a lot of the non-consensual stuff. So it makes it so you have to be accountable for what you put on the platform, which a lot of people wanted for a very long time.
--:-- Samantha Cole: So in making this change, Pornhub is going further in moderating its platform than even a Facebook or Instagram or YouTube.
--:-- Host: What about other porn sites or is Pornhub getting all the attention because it's so dominant?
--:-- Samantha Cole: I would say people go after Pornhub because Pornhub is one of the biggest names in porn. It's a very recognizable name in the States. And Pornhub has this kind of pressure to change because Pornhub gets a lot of shit from a lot of directions. They get a lot of shit from journalists. This site is so big and powerful. There must be something the company itself can do, right? And also from activists and people who want to abolish the porn industry altogether.
--:-- Host: So what finally clicked? Is all it took an op-ed in the New York Times?
--:-- Samantha Cole: I don't think it was just that. I think that probably put a lot of pressure on. You know, you had senators and people talking about this suddenly on Twitter again. I will introduce legislation to create a federal right to sue for every person coerced or trafficked or exploited by sites like Pornhub.
--:-- Host: Okay, so Pornhub makes like a raft of changes to its policies, including no more porn from unverified uploads and more content moderation. Is everyone happy?
--:-- Samantha Cole: Performers and people making money on the site were very happy with those changes. But some of the fallout from all this criticism of Pornhub in the last month could end up being dangerous to their livelihoods.
--:-- Host: Wait, so the content moderation is good and groundbreaking but this is somehow also going to be bad and dangerous even for sex workers?
--:-- Samantha Cole: On Monday last week, MasterCard and Visa both announced that they were going to investigate the allegations of child abuse on the platform. And then on Tuesday, the next day, Pornhub made these policy changes, which seemed like it was going to be enough. But then on Thursday, both Visa and MasterCard cut ties with Pornhub completely and said they were going to terminate processing payments through the site.
--:-- Host: Wait, Visa and MasterCard? Isn't porn free on the internet?
--:-- Samantha Cole: No. Porn is definitely not free for a lot of people on the internet. People put free porn on the internet to kind of generate attention and income for their paid stuff. But a lot of Pornhub is paid content. There are subscription models. There are ad revenues. There are a lot of ways that people were using Pornhub as a source of income before all of these changes.
--:-- Host: So what does this move from Visa and MasterCard mean? Does that put consensual internet porn in a precarious place?
--:-- Samantha Cole: I mean, I don't think that porn is going to end because Visa and MasterCard made this decision with Pornhub. I know that it's a very scary trend because it's just a continuation of what we've been seeing with lobbyists who don't want sex work or porn to exist at all.
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--:-- Host: After the break, how all this Pornhub MasterCard business could hurt sex workers explained by a sex worker.
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--:-- Gwen Adora: My name is Gwen Adora. I am an online adult content creator. I make porn in my bedroom and I sell it on the internet. My porn that I create is very campy. The most recent video that I made is actually a porn parody of, this is very specific, but the snake from the jungle book. Look me in the eye when I'm speaking to you. Who is like a hypnotic animal. A lot of people have a fetish for him, apparently.
--:-- Host: So I was commissioned to make a custom video where I got this gigantic plush snake to wrap myself up in. All my years in the jungle, I have never seen a snake as big as you. And basically have it like, you know, hypnotize me. I'm in the jungle a lot. And I think I would have noticed someone like you. Definitely that's one of my more elaborate creations for sure. Just you wait till I get you in my quills.
--:-- Gwen Adora: I very much do consider myself a small business owner. I am someone who I work for myself. Although there are certain websites that I use to sell my content through, that's no different than an artist making something and putting it on Etsy or someone making a YouTube video and putting it on YouTube to distribute and reach a new audience. That's how I make my money is through making my own content in my room, producing my own content, doing costumes for my own content, uploading, marketing, creating a social media following.
--:-- Host: So as a sex worker, it's very important for us to have multiple different streams of income coming in just in case something does happen like a site going down for example. I use a variety of different websites to facilitate selling my videos. Many vids is one of them that's popular clips for sale. I want clips there's a couple others out there but my two primary sources of clip sales come from ManyVids and Model Hub, which is a part of the Pornhub network, which is being affected.
--:-- Gwen Adora: Pornhub is very important to my business, I would say. I think it's like a perfect complementary site to the other sites that I use to generate income. And one of the main reasons is because Pornhub has such a robust audience and such a huge amount of traffic comparatively to other sites on the internet.
--:-- Host: Recently, Pornhub released the Model Hub aspect. So it's the pay-per-video stuff, which is where I sell my videos. But I also use the Pornhub for putting out free videos so that I can kind of expand my reach on the internet as a small business. Sometimes you have to put out a little bit of free product to get people in, right? So yeah, I use it for marketing. And I think it's something that's very, very valuable for me because sex workers, we have a really hard time marketing on other social media networks and other normal places, like YouTubers can market themselves and easily do a swipe up link in their story to their YouTube video they just posted.
--:-- Gwen Adora: I can't do that to my porn videos. I would immediately get deleted and have to be very careful in terms of the way that I present myself on social media to people so that my accounts don't get taken down. So last week Visa and MasterCard both made decisions based on the New York Times article and also public outcry against Pornhub and they decided to pull their services from the Pornhub platform.
--:-- Host: I immediately was like, oh, I'm not getting half of my pay this month, and who knows if I will ever be paid for my videos on that platform ever again. But as of now, if you go to my Model Hub page, go to my clip store and attempt to buy a video, it says purchasing temporarily disabled. So people who are going to and looking for my content to purchase with their wallets open, ready to pay me, they can't do that.
--:-- Gwen Adora: Now I have to figure out alternative ways that I can make up the loss of income that's coming in how my strategy is going to be on the website moving forward, just like other options as well. Like Pornhub is a giant in the industry. And if they can be affected by this, any other site can easily be affected by it because Pornhub is the most resources to fight this stuff. So if they could get affected, anything's on the hit list, if you will.
--:-- Host: The first thought that came through my mind was considering doing like in-person work as well, which is something that I personally, that's out of my comfort zone to consider usually. But I would definitely, if all my income was gone tomorrow, I have to pay my rent. So I'm going to have to find other ways to survive. And definitely in-person work is something I considered. But it also puts me in a more precarious situation. In-person sex workers experience more violence than I do. And I don't have a lot of the skills that in-person sex workers have in dealing with, you know, volatile clients or, you know, even just as simple as like finding places to host people. I'm not familiar with any of that.
--:-- Gwen Adora: So I would myself and I'm sure other workers as well would have a hard time adjusting to a different world where we couldn't sell our porn online. Online. The people who are purchasing porn, I feel like they're painted as perverts a lot in certain movies and the media and stuff like that. It's like, oh, this vision of a lonely guy jerking off and he's so sad that he has to buy porn. When realistically, it's supporting small businesses. It's making a very ethical, the most ethical choice that you can in terms of porn consumption.
--:-- Host: If you want porn for free, who do you expect to make it? How do you expect them to make it with what budgets? Like, who's going out there making this porn for free for you with nothing in return for them? And how can you assure that that porn is being made in a consensual and ethical way if there's no money involved, right? So it's kind of ridiculous that Visa and MasterCard would decide that taking away people's legal ability to purchase consensual legal porn is a solution to the issue at hand.
--:-- Gwen Adora: If you're watching from a verified performer, that stuff is like stuff that we choose for you to see. We would like you to consume that content. And you can consume so knowing that we are putting that out consensually for you. Whether you like it or not, sex work is a field that is there out of necessity for people's needs. So whether you're not buying sex from someone or not, like other people are and they're wanting it. There's a market for it, which is why we have jobs. The only thing that oppression from government, from platforms, from religious groups, the only thing that does to sex workers is push us into more precarious situations. It does not eliminate the market. It will never eliminate the market. There will always be a market for selling sex online, in person, but it will just be harder to do. And oftentimes, like in much scarier circumstances.
--:-- Host: Gwen Adora is an adult content creator. You can find her online on Twitter at Gwen is adorable. Today Explained is on Twitter at today underscore explained. I'm at Ramis for him. You can email us too. We're today explained at vox.com. The rest of the team includes Will Reed, Amina Al-Sadi, Halima Shah, Muj Zadi, and Noam Hassenfeld. Noam contributes music here and there. Breakmaster Cylinder contributes the lion's share. Extra help this week from Bert Pinkerton, Lauren Katz, Paul Mounsey, and Cecilia Lay, who's also our fact checker. Afim Shapiro's our engineer. Golda Arthur's our supervising producer. And Liz Kelly Nelson is Vox's editorial director of podcasts. Today Explained is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
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--:-- Host: Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you want to support the show, you can subscribe to Vox on YouTube, or support us on Patreon. We'll be back tomorrow with another episode of Today Explained.
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