In case you hadn’t heard, Pornhub, Xtube, and many other porn video sites (specifically all sites owned by the Mindgeek network, which includes Redtube, Youporn, XTube, Brazzers, and likely more) recently purged nearly all their content, unless from a verified user.
You can read the article yourself here, but the short version of the story is that the credit card companies were investigating the sites after complaints of child sexual abuse videos going up. And because it’s too difficult to examine each and every one of the millions of vids out there, they just decided to purge the whole thing.
While I suppose the initial reaction is outrage (which can be quite justified if you had a lot of content there which is now all gone), it should bring back the tumblr porn purge from a few years ago, which was under very similar circumstances. And put of me thinks that it’s only a matter of time before twitter gets hit the same way.
This leads to the bigger issue: how can this be prevented? If people are able to share vids of any content, how can you control videos of child abuse? Of non-consensual content? Of stealing and reposting videos of paid content? And then balance that with people who are legitimately uploading their own work and scenes, and sex workers.
I don’t know if there’s a good answer for that. One would have to simultaneously find a way to protect the rights and property of your own work, and weed out illegitimate content… and on a site where people upload with very little screening, that doesn’t seem possible. On the other hand, too much screening may find your rights and privacy at stake.
The twitter profile @tallglassofoj is always smart and insightful about his responses. I recommend you visit his short thread on the matter below.
