[HN Gopher] One woman's struggle to remove all traces of videota...
___________________________________________________________________
One woman's struggle to remove all traces of videotaped sexual
assault
Author : barry-cotter
Score : 164 points
Date : 2021-04-05 12:38 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ctvnews.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ctvnews.ca)
| balozi wrote:
| Definitely not an easy issue to address but for argument sake,
| shouldn't the central claim be that of copyright? Is the claimant
| the copyright owner of the material, or can they become copyright
| owner by virtue of being depicted in the material?
| nunez wrote:
| > Rachel searched for the username that her husband had used. It
| led to a video uploaded to the world's biggest porn site,
| Pornhub. In that video, it shows her, in her own bed, obviously
| unconscious. She says her husband's hands can be seen reaching in
| to move her, touch her and sexually assault her. The video titles
| include "while sleeping" and "sleeping pills."
|
| Isn't this a massive crime? How horrible.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Depends on the jurisdiction. The sexual assault is a crime,
| obviously, but very hard to prosecute even with this rare video
| evidence. Publishing nonconsensual porn surprisingly isn't a
| crime in a lot of places. Scotland recently criminalised it.
| Check your local jurisdiction.
| S_A_P wrote:
| No mention of it in the article but can't charges be brought on
| the (ex) husband for this? Pornhub definitely owns some of the
| responsibility but the dude that did this is the bad guy here.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| It seems difficult for pornhub to do anything about this(from a
| hosting perspective), considering people also will upload
| completely consensual videos along the same lines (where the
| "victim" is just pretending to be passed out and is fully
| consenting).
|
| Pornhub could make you sign an affidavit, but even then, it is
| relying on trusting the uploading party - if they are already
| breaking the law by uploading non consensual sexual assault
| videos, odds are they will probably check the affidavit box
| saying that everyone in the video has consented.
| paxys wrote:
| Pornhub has already mostly fixed this problem by only
| allowing uploads from verified accounts. It won't 100%
| eliminate it, sure, but when the site has your real name,
| picture, ID etc. you will be much less likely to upload stuff
| that you aren't completely sure is legal and consensual.
| Spivak wrote:
| Sure, but you can't just check the affidavit box when you
| have to have all parties in the video identified, registered
| with the site with government ID, and everyone in the video
| has to approve it before it goes live.
|
| It's wild that we just offload all responsibility to the
| victims who have to scour the internet and issue takedown
| requests for videos because hosting sites literally can't be
| bothered to actually get consent beforehand.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| If there is a husband who is living with his wife, and he
| drugs her and sexually assaults her, wouldn't he also have
| access to her ID to scan it and upload it? I guess at a
| certain point, any kind of roadblocks will lower the
| chances this person uploading the content.
|
| What's the alternative to victims scouring the internet and
| issuing takedown requests? Some centralized porn database
| where you can type in someone's name and see what porn
| they've done?
| totalZero wrote:
| We already have an apparatus to do this for copyrighted
| material that people go far further out of their way to
| share and download. The vast majority of porn is a
| commodity to most porn addicts/users. It should be far
| easier to get some amateur porn video off the web than a
| BDrip of Disney's _Coco_.
|
| If the question is "who should shoulder the cost of
| takedown," my suggestion is that offenders and porn
| industry behemoths should pay into a fund that finances
| redflagged content takedown efforts.
| Spivak wrote:
| > What's the alternative to victims scouring the internet
| and issuing takedown requests? Some centralized porn
| database where you can type in someone's name and see
| what porn they've done?
|
| I mean this completely unironically: ContentID. It exists
| _exactly_ for this use-case because copyright holders don
| 't want to scour the internet for violations either. If
| you're a victim and you find that someone posted a video
| of you being assaulted online you should be able to
| register that video with ContentID and have every site
| immediately and automatically take down the video
| everywhere.
|
| Yes it will only affect above-board sites but broadly
| speaking those are the sites with large audiences and the
| ones you really care about.
| Retric wrote:
| Requiring real names, age, and contact info from uploaders
| and everyone in the video would discourage people well beyond
| a simple checkbox. Similarly, adding video fingerprinting
| should make it very easy to avoid someone uploading the same
| video again.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| You could just toss anyone's contact information into a web
| form. If you really want to verify ID, you have to
| physically check it in the real world.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Real name policies in this context have an obvious flaw
| when the host gets hacked and now the ostensibly private
| records fall into the hands of criminals who start
| blackmailing everyone to reveal to their bosses and
| families that they were involved in the creation of
| pornography.
|
| The ability to remain pseudonymous is more important in
| this context than many others.
|
| > Similarly, adding video fingerprinting should make it
| very easy to avoid someone uploading the same video again.
|
| Those systems don't really work, because the uploaders can
| tell when it's rejected so they can keep messing with the
| file until it's accepted. Or they upload it to a different
| host each time, or to a file rather than video host who
| can't see the contents because it was encrypted and the key
| is distributed to the downloaders with the link but the
| host doesn't have it.
| Retric wrote:
| > core issue
|
| If people don't want to be associated with these videos
| then perhaps they shouldn't be uploaded. I think you just
| made my point for me.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > If people don't want to be associated with these videos
| then perhaps they shouldn't be uploaded.
|
| I don't often use the word privilege, but there it is.
| Thiez wrote:
| So I take it Retric is your full legal name? Or are you
| posting under a pseudonym? If you don't want to be
| associated with your comments maybe they shouldn't be
| made.
|
| Is that the point you are trying to make? Why is porn
| "special" in this regard?
| supergirl wrote:
| there are many things that PH can do. they could simply
| require verification of both participants. or they could just
| reject any such videos if there is even a doubt about
| consent. I think recently they just axed the whole "community
| videos" (only because VISA and Mastercard cut ties with
| them), so you must be a pro to upload. or did that change
| already?
|
| I think the right approach is for gov to regulate this as
| prostitution (in Europe at least). you can't just let anyone
| make porn videos because women and children will get abused,
| same as with prostitution. you regulate it so whoever wants
| to do it can do it safely. if you're not a licensed porn
| actor then you can't upload.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| If my fetish is people over-eating, does someone who stuffs
| their face with 10 Big Macs (completely clothed) need to
| get approval to upload to pornhub?
|
| Community uploads to pornhub don't feel like prostitution
| to me, because for the most part no one is doing it for
| money, merely because they're horny or enjoy it.
| supergirl wrote:
| well if it falls under the legal definition of porn then
| yes, otherwise no. I don't know what is the legal
| definition. right now there is no regulation at all,
| which is crazy. or there is but somehow it doesn't apply
| to pornhub. we could start with something simple and
| obvious that covers most videos. something is better than
| nothing.
|
| > Community uploads to pornhub don't feel like
| prostitution to me, because for the most part no one is
| doing it for money, merely because they're horny or enjoy
| it.
|
| I meant we can regulate for the same reason prostitution
| is regulated, to make it safer.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| But if there is no financial incentive in sex, then isn't
| it more like just attempting to regulate the private sex
| lives of individuals? Prostitution is regulated, but
| there is no regulation (at least in any Western country
| that I know of), that prevents a person from just going
| out and having sex with other consenting adults.
| [deleted]
| totalZero wrote:
| > private
|
| Well, this word simply doesn't apply to a company like
| pornhub, which has a
|
| > financial
|
| interest in publishing sexual content.
| sleepysysadmin wrote:
| Yes Canadian law makes this a crime including civil damages.
| gher-shyu3i wrote:
| And now with companies making it easy to make self produced porn,
| we're going to see even more levels of mental issues in the
| future when those women realize the mistakes they're making.
| darkerside wrote:
| This seems like an actual case where you could use machine
| learning to detect and remove instances of this video, or
| automate the sending of takedown requests. That would however
| require that the aggregators actually care.
| hilldude wrote:
| Looks like they are already doing it:
| https://help.pornhub.com/hc/en-us/articles/1260803955549-Tra...
|
| CSAI Match - YouTube's proprietary technology for combating
| child sexual abuse imagery. In 2020, we scanned all video
| content previously uploaded to Pornhub against YouTube's CSAI
| Match and continue to scan all new uploads. PhotoDNA -
| Microsoft's technology that aids in finding and removing known
| images of child sexual abuse material. In 2020, we scanned all
| photos previously uploaded to Pornhub through Microsoft's
| PhotoDNA, and continue to scan all new uploads.
|
| Google's Content Safety API - Google's artificial intelligence
| (AI) technology designed to help identify online child sexual
| abuse material. Initially built to help detect all "not safe
| for work content" as well as illegal content, Google's Content
| Safety API attributes a score to content, which in turn serves
| as an additional tool available for our moderation team.
|
| MediaWise - Vobile's cyber "fingerprinting" software that scans
| all new user uploads in order to help prevent previously
| identified offending content from being re-uploaded.
|
| Safeguard - Safeguard is Pornhub's proprietary image
| recognition technology designed with the purpose of combatting
| both child sexual abuse imagery and non-consensual content,
| like revenge pornography, and helping to prevent the re-
| uploading of that content to our platform and any other
| platform that uses Safeguard. We believe in sharing this
| technology with other social media platforms, video sharing
| platforms, non-profits, and governmental organizations, free of
| charge, to help make our platform, as well as the Internet at
| large, a safer place for all by helping to limit the spread of
| this harmful content. We also will provide the Safeguard
| technology to our Trusted Flaggers so that our Trusted Flaggers
| can fingerprint content on behalf of victims or potential
| victims.
| Spivak wrote:
| So yes but I think the real answer would just be to have sites
| support ContentID and once a victim registers a video with the
| system it will automatically be taken down.
| tgv wrote:
| Only check the item of a few days ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26681936
| supergirl wrote:
| this title is pretty mild. it should be something like "One
| woman's struggle to remove her drugged rape photos from pornhub"
| xyst wrote:
| Only way to get PH to act is to threaten their bottom line. Visa
| and MC threatened to stop processing transactions related to PH
| in response to a journalist article and then in less than a few
| days PH decides to haphazardly delete all of the non-partnered
| content (which includes innocuous videos as well).
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| ..and forced them to bitcoin right before the latest massive
| uptick. If they've been sitting on them, while I'm sure only a
| tiny percentage will bother converting their account to BTC,
| and likely not enough to make up the difference, they could not
| have asked for a better timing.
| ogurechny wrote:
| I guess most posters have already forgotten the previous big
| case of Visa and Mastercard declining to do processing of a
| client organization to praise this one as if it is a good
| thing. And, no, they couldn't care less about some article, and
| they most likely deal with much sleazier companies when it's "a
| matter of national/international importance", or sufficiently
| high-ranking official asks politely for certain exempts. Such
| corporate reactions are agreed upon in advance.
|
| Even counter-terrorism arguments still mean that someone gets
| the right to define who is called a terrorist today _for you_.
| I can 't see how this is good news. If you think that this
| isn't real danger, political activists in Russia have routinely
| be placed on "extremist" lists, which means all their bank
| accounts have been frozen. I know, I know, just following the
| law, someone has to stop the bad guys, etc.
| symlinkk wrote:
| It sounds like other sites (not pornhub.com) have the porn video
| she's trying to remove, and she doesn't understand that Pornhub
| isn't in control of them. Doesn't really seem like Pornhub's at
| fault here, and I question the motives of a journalist who writes
| something like this
| mcphage wrote:
| > It sounds like other sites (not pornhub.com) have the porn
| video she's trying to remove, and she doesn't understand that
| Pornhub isn't in control of them. Doesn't really seem like
| Pornhub's at fault here
|
| (1) Given the nature of the pornography industry, most sites
| are owned by a small number of players, so it's definitely not
| clear that Pornhub isn't in control of them.
|
| (2) As the article describes, Pornhub offers a service which is
| exactly what she is demanding: 'Pornhub offers something called
| its "exclusive model program," which promises that it will send
| takedown notices to any website to "help protect your content
| from being uploaded to other websites."' And so even if Pornhub
| is not in control of the sites where the video is hosted, they
| already advertise the ability to get content taken down from
| other sites.
| claudiawerner wrote:
| >(1) Given the nature of the pornography industry, most sites
| are owned by a small number of players, so it's definitely
| not clear that Pornhub isn't in control of them.
|
| It also doesn't mean they _are_ in control of them. I think
| it 's reasonable to assume that PornHub doesn't own every
| site the video was uploaded on.
|
| >Pornhub offers a service which is exactly what she is
| demanding
|
| This is almost certainly on the basis of copyright. As in,
| those 'exclusive models' sign over the copyright to their
| content to PornHub, or authorize PornHub to act on their
| behalf as copyright holders. PornHub then issus DMCA takedown
| notices or uses some other 'takedown notice'.
|
| In order for this to work, she would have to be the copyright
| owner of the video. If anything, in a horribly ironic twist,
| her ex-husband is likely the copyright holder. She has no
| standing (speaking in terms of copyright) to get PH to
| protect her video like they do with the exclusive model
| program.
|
| If you know more about how it works, then please inform me,
| but I can only assume it's copyright.
| gccs wrote:
| If you've been paying attention to the news in the past few
| years, its been increasingly obvious the lack of research and
| effort put into new posts. We live in the era of social media
| where the headline is the only thing that 99% of people read.
| The actual content of the article is irrelevant. People will be
| outraged for a second and then continue scrolling and
| completely forget it existed 5 minutes later. There is no
| economic incentive for journalists to do any real journalism.
| supergirl wrote:
| I don't get how pornhub still exists considering it hosts so many
| illegal videos: assaults, child porn, spy cams, etc. and this is
| the premier porn site. imagine what you can find on less
| mainstream porn sites.
|
| the US gov went full on war against torrent websites and closed
| every one of them no matter how small, yet this giant website
| that literally hosts rape videos is OK.
|
| all providers of PH should follow VISA and Mastercard and cut
| ties. I realize killing PH will not end sharing of videos but at
| least there will be a lot less money made from it and a lot less
| viewers.
| totalZero wrote:
| I wonder what percentage of lawmakers are regular users of
| PornHub and its affiliates.
| kjrose wrote:
| The item I find with this is once it's online... it's never going
| away. Not without some form of incredible draconian overarching
| system. What could even be done with situations like this. Short
| of insisting that any content provider (pornhub included) be
| liable for all content posted to their site in perpetuity. (Which
| seems like a really dangerous idea and a good way to force
| extreme censorship online.)
| fencepost wrote:
| It may not be possible to eradicate it completely, but it's
| absolutely feasible to dramatically reduce its availability
| until there's no practical difference.
|
| Maybe a thousand people downloaded it and added it to personal
| collections/datahoards. The vast majority of that thousand
| would never consider uploading to a public site (possibly as a
| response to a request). Of the remainder, most probably
| wouldn't bother unless the video in question is an outstanding
| example of that particular kink (in the story sex with someone
| unconscious).
|
| The first step is undoubtedly getting and _keeping_ it off
| public sites. Once that 's done, even the few places it may
| remain effectively disappear in a vast sea of other content.
| worik wrote:
| They offer a service to paying customers, of removing content
| from all the affiliated sites.
|
| So they have more capability than they suggest. Not perfect,
| but much better
| kjrose wrote:
| They have the ability to encourage content removal. Not that
| they will be successful.
| fencepost wrote:
| Pretty sure the parent corporation owns a disturbingly high
| percentage of the video sharing sites. At the very least
| they own Pornhub, Redtube, Youporn as well as a bunch of
| others (Wikipedia about Mindgeek).
| kjrose wrote:
| That, if true, is even more disturbing to me. Imagine the
| blackmail potential of a corporation with that much data.
| hirundo wrote:
| Could this problem be largely resolved for Pornhub (at least) by
| using GAN generation to replace faces in submissions? Sort of
| "This porn star does not exist"? If done well, it could
| _increase_ the average fap-worthiness of content, while
| preserving privacy. It could also be applied to other identifying
| characteristics, like tattoos and moles.
| ljp_206 wrote:
| "Solving" a problem deeply intwined with bodily autonomy and
| consent with 'obfuscate it until its no longer your body and
| face to abdicate you of control' seems like... The wrong
| approach. If actors/actresses are okay with it then let's go
| right ahead.
| [deleted]
| leetcrew wrote:
| if they could identify the face with sufficient accuracy, why
| not just take down the video?
| dTal wrote:
| You'd be happy with people jackin it to a video of you being
| sexually assaulted if they just obscured your face? In that
| case why bother with the fancy neural network stuff, just make
| sure to wear a paper bag over your head when you're being
| raped! Problem solved.
|
| /s
|
| Your proposal has merit as a privacy measure - but this isn't
| about privacy. This is about consent.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Whilst you've a point here, there's also he case that revenge
| porn for which the subject isn't actually identifiable ...
| loses some of its punch.
|
| There's attacking the supply-side aspect.
|
| Though yes, masked assault remains assault
| ogurechny wrote:
| What a nice manipulative article perfectly targeted at clueless
| general public.
|
| So the criminal was her husband, the video was reposted by random
| users or just bots (probably not illegal, but can start a long
| talk about personal moral obligations), and the blame is on...
| Pornhub (because all other porn sites are supposedly very noble).
| First, because it is silently implied that all good websites
| should collect and check the official IDs of all good citizens
| uploading any data to them (what a great perspective), and,
| second, because it had The Download Button (this lame Don't-Copy-
| That-Floppy point gets stressed in most of the articles in anti-
| Pornhub campaign -- bravo, incorruptible journalists). But what
| is the alternative? Of course, it's good old trusted porn studios
| that have all the papers to prove that women (and men) pretending
| to have sex on camera and even destroying the functions of their
| body parts have legal contract. Hooray!
|
| It is amusing how porn industry leveraged anti-porn, women's
| rights, and other groups to kill the competition from amateur and
| no-name internet content. It is clear that Pornhub owners
| understood that they can not refuse the offer, and the goal was
| reached: now Porn Site #1 is mostly a shop-front for big porn
| studios (and you can be sure they get their share of those
| horrible, horrible ad revenue money).
| onion2k wrote:
| _First, because it is silently implied that all good websites
| should collect and check the official IDs of all good citizens
| uploading any data to them (what a great perspective)..._
|
| There's a significant difference between "uploading any data"
| and "uploading porn". Suggesting someone who is uploading porn
| should have to prove that they're entitled to, and that the
| people in the video have consented to be put online in the
| context of a porn video, is not unreasonable given the weight
| of evidence that "revenge porn" is incredibly damaging to
| victims.
| ogurechny wrote:
| You are probably guided by the false dilemma presented by
| that or similar articles. I doubt any porn service on the
| internet in the last 25 years did anything like that, just
| like no web hosting service has checked that each image and
| each piece of text on your web site is legally owned or
| distributed by you. This is by no means a recent problem,
| naked pictures were leaked intentionally or unintentionally
| long before internet existed. However, the discussion implies
| that all of the sudden porn sites appeared, you can be on
| them, and wegottadosomethingfast!
|
| I don't think there is much difference between your naked
| body and other information you might want to keep private.
| "Porn" triggers people (most often American people, I have to
| admit as a distant observer), makes them reason like there is
| some inherent difference between "porn" and "not porn", and
| makes manipulation easier. Basically, what you're saying is
| that there should be more (indirect) censorship and real-life
| identity matching on the Web -- but it's for an Obvious Good
| Cause! The problem is that Good Causes get forgotten quite
| fast, and the one who benefits from it is the entity in
| control of the system that gained power. Here we have porn
| studios dictating previously independent Mindgeek (former
| pain in their asses) which content should be on the biggest
| porn streaming sites under new system. The speed and scale of
| the attack, and the concerned voices from various directions,
| hint there was a lot of high-level lobbying involved.
|
| Here's no less thrilling example. Suppose that Rick Astley
| wakes up tomorrow and decides to point out that he has always
| been a singer and not some kind of internet joke. Perfectly
| understandable impulse. Then he proceeds to remove all the
| non-musical uses of his songs (let's forget about corporate
| ownership). How would you react to that? What would results
| be? There's certainly more people with similar wishes --
| basically the whole genre of "viral videos" is one big zero
| consent heap. When you are having a laugh at someone's
| expense, do you worry about them? When you watch videos of
| Beirut explosion, do you think about all the dead people who
| never gave consent for their last moment to be your
| entertainment? Should we ban the uploading of such videos
| without explicit source checks, then?
| Mirioron wrote:
| What's the significant difference? I've seen viral videos of
| people in compromising or embarrassing situations. Some have
| even lost their jobs as a result. Should all video uploading
| sites demand documentation that every person in the video
| consents to it?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| If the law requires it, yes. The uploader should be the
| liable party if the subject or subjects didn't consent.
|
| Why is this a strange concept? Why should someone be able
| to upload whatever they want to platforms with no
| responsibility for what they're uploading?
| Mirioron wrote:
| The whole question here is whether the law _should_
| require it. The reason why it 's a strange concept is
| that it would severely limit the spread of information.
| The same avenues that a regular person can get content
| about them deleted can be used by politicians or
| criminals to do the same. Not only that, these levers can
| also be abused to simply target somebody with false
| claims. Furthermore, it also places trust onto the video
| hosting website to keep all of that information safe. If
| they get hacked, then all of that documentation and
| images of IDs get leaked.
|
| > _Why should someone be able to upload whatever they
| want to platforms with no responsibility for what they're
| uploading?_
|
| This isn't in question though. The question is whether
| sites need to be preemptive or reactive. Illegal content
| is illegal even right now and these websites will delete
| it. If they don't then you can take them to court and the
| content will get deleted. However, the thread suggests
| that these websites should be forced to be preemptive -
| to demand documentation upfront. That's a whole different
| situation.
| brayhite wrote:
| I'm not comfortable being liable to being sued because my
| cousin decided to let us know after the fact he didn't
| want to be in any of the pictures uploaded to
| Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/tumblr/Flickr/etc.
|
| I admittedly didn't read the article, so maybe your
| comment's sentiment isn't meant to include these
| scenarios.
| [deleted]
| kbenson wrote:
| What if your cousin is doing something frowned upon by
| society (wearing blackface, spouting racial epithets,
| etc)? What if it's not frowned upon now, but is at a
| later date? What if you don't find anything
| objectionable, but they wouldn't want it shown, and their
| concerns are borne out later? What if it's completely
| benign but out of context appears problematic (goofing
| around with a good friend of a different race and it
| comes across as something different when only a portion
| of it is represented)? What if they just have a personal
| objection to having heir picture posted?
|
| There are many reasons why it's a good idea to at least
| check that the person is comfortable with it. You
| shouldn't be liable if they've said it's okay.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Absolutely. Good UX would be the subject receiving a
| notification that a photo of them has been uploaded,
| requesting whether they should be scrubbed/blurred from
| the photo or not before it's made public. It's about
| consent and agency.
| brayhite wrote:
| I'd argue the tech to support this would require much
| more to be known about me by another entity and system
| than likely any picture taken by someone would share. No
| thanks.
| brayhite wrote:
| And all those tourists in the background of your selfie
| at the Statue of Liberty. Need their permission, too?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| If it's out in public and non commercial, no. If
| commercial, a release form is required. Assumes US law
| as-is today.
|
| https://www.format.com/magazine/resources/photography/pho
| to-...
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| Your link says:
|
| "If someone is in a public space, like a park, beach, or
| sidewalk, it is legal to photograph them. They shouldn't
| expect privacy laws to prevent them from being
| photographed. That means a street photographer can
| publish candids taken in public spaces, as long as those
| images are only being used for editorial purposes."
|
| It'd be impossible to photograph a protest, rally,
| sporting event, or basically any long shot of a public
| area if you had to get individual consent from every
| person in the frame.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Sporting events and similar usually have blanket photo
| permission grants on them.
| kbenson wrote:
| I agree with this stance, but I also think it's
| beneficial to explore whether "there's a significant
| difference between 'uploading any data' and 'uploading
| porn'" is true in part or whole, and whether the "porn"
| part of it is a red-herring.
| scarmig wrote:
| It's a balance. Suppose you add this proof requirement. What
| happens then? It's not as simple as lots of legitimate
| amateur content producers facing additional friction. Most
| will make the explicit decision not to have their legal name
| and address associated with pornographic content. Others will
| upload their content anyway, without doing an audit of the
| different platforms' security postures or being aware of the
| likelihood of and outcomes from breaches.
|
| What happens in a breach? Now, you're probably thinking, just
| require the platforms to be secure! But you can't simply will
| that into existence, and I guarantee you it's impossible. So
| ultimately you've made people vulnerable when they weren't
| before, and you're setting up a situation where it's pretty
| much inevitable that they'll be exposed and threatened by
| stalkers, deranged fans, and ideological zealots.
|
| Let's suppose you bite the bullet, and say turning all the
| porn platforms into outlets for major porn production
| companies is the way to go. At least we've eliminated revenge
| porn, right? No. Large masses of people really hate that kind
| of mass produced porn, so they jump to foreign platforms that
| don't require complicated ID verification. These sites end up
| with the large majority of amateur porn content, along with
| the revenge porn. But they're now out of the reach of US law
| enforcement, so the victims of revenge porn would then be in
| a worse position than they are today.
|
| Now we're getting to even more extreme measures. Maybe the US
| needs to build a national firewall to prevent the foreign
| criminals from penetrating our great nation and undermining
| our morals with porn that's unapproved by the Feds? China is
| way ahead of the game on this, in that pornography is
| outright illegal, and it has sophisticated internet security
| measures that are exceptional in breadth and depth by Western
| standards. How's its war on porn going? Spoiler alert: it's
| lost it. Perhaps it could be a moment to build cross-cultural
| empathy, as Chinese netizens exchange tips with Americans on
| how to use Shadowsocks to avoid the censors and access
| amateur porn.
|
| Requiring ID verification is one of those things that sounds
| good and moral on its face, but has so many unintended
| downstream consequences that exacerbate the original problem
| while making things generally worse.
| lostcolony wrote:
| So all professional porn already requires identification
| and age checks. I'm...not convinced it's the end of the
| world if amateur ones do too. The considerations are the
| same.
| scarmig wrote:
| People appearing in professional porn today are almost by
| definition those who are most comfortable getting
| identification and age checks; the ability to maintain
| anonymity is a key concern for most amateurs. Adding the
| same verification process to amateur porn is more or less
| making all porn professional porn, not mildly tweaking
| the nature of amateur porn. Amateurs would be faced with
| a choice of 1) effectively going pro, 2) fleeing to a
| different platform, or 3) exiting porn production
| altogether. I'm fairly confident that 2) would be the
| largest proportion of people, closely followed by 3),
| with 1) a distant third.
| Ceezy wrote:
| Yes, any normal porn company make performer sign specific
| contract, it should just be the same for porn sites
| pgsimp wrote:
| How could that even work in practice? Everybody who is
| visible in a video has to do some kind of VideoIdent and
| clearly state their consent? YouTube should have to do the
| same, btw.
| Traster wrote:
| You have this almost exactly backwards- PH now own (or are
| responsible for) their entire industry because they take all
| the profit.
| ogurechny wrote:
| That's what I'm talking about: real stories of regular people
| are cynically used to negotiate new porn profit deals.
| LanceH wrote:
| The obvious step would be to require the uploader to be
| responsible for their content. Less so than youtube, ph's
| content would generally imply that the owner has secured the
| rights of its participants.
| pc86 wrote:
| > _What a nice manipulative article perfectly targeted at
| clueless general public._
|
| This could describe approximately 100% of local news
| articles/segments on any topic even remotely political or
| controversial. And maybe 75% of the remaining.
| mattbee wrote:
| Is your diatribe an argument that Pornhub _should_ have the
| right to distribute pictures of a sexual assault?
| dustinmoris wrote:
| I bet if someone uploaded a video of all the dodgy tax avoidance
| these crooks do a spree gun it all over the internet these
| bastards would find a way to trace it and take it down in less
| than 24h. Maybe someone needs to start physically harassing all
| the CEOs of those shit companies and video document it so that
| they can't live a single day of their lives without being
| violently attacked and harassed before they will find a way to
| take harassment serious.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| This problem is fundamentally impossible to solve. Once data has
| been created, it's trivial to make and transmit copies. Complete
| tyranny would be necessary to erase all illegal data from all
| computers in the world. The best people can hope for is removal
| of data from popular centralized services.
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| The 'good' news is that with deepfakes everyone will (soon) at
| least have the veneer of plausible deniability. I know there
| will always be ways to determine whether something is a
| deepfake via adversarial detection but perhaps in the future so
| much content will be faked that unless it is a head of state or
| other renowned person, only then would it then be worth
| checking.
| blackbrokkoli wrote:
| That is honestly just the same old big tech story I've must have
| read a thousand times now.
|
| Sure, it is a little bit more sinister than usual even, but
| that's just because the company in question serves a market with
| some very dark corners, like the assault featured in the article.
|
| People here argue pro or contra porn prohibition or platform
| specifics, but it comes down to this: The Western world decided
| that giant multinationals sitting above countries, laws, ethics
| and responsibility holding _all_ the data are the ultimate
| expression of the American Dream and should therefore exist
| undisturbed forever, growing bigger and bigger. Shit like this is
| just fallout from the gargantuan power distance between megacorp
| and human you get, _by design_.
|
| Sure, there are probably ways to get PornHub to be sorry for
| that, make amends, change some rules. Whatever. Last week it was
| Uber discriminating, here it's PornHub violating, maybe next week
| it will be someone having his business destroyed because he
| associated with a scammer in 2004 again.
|
| Every time there is juicy drama and a micro-outcome in this or
| that direction, but for someone reason the macro-problem gets
| mostly ignored.
| grecy wrote:
| Though it starts out feeling a little dismissive, I think your
| comment does a good job of explaining the problem we have now
| is not limited to the _mico_ level, but that it 's a _macro_
| level problem.
|
| Now it's time to start talking about how we're going to fix
| that problem you have so rightly pointed out.
|
| It's clear the rules _need_ to change, and it 's clear we need
| to claw back the gargantuan power we gave over to mega-corps.
| pgsimp wrote:
| Or maybe it is just media companies trying to exert power and
| blowing up issues out of proportion. Just because some media
| outlet writes a dramatic article, doesn't mean politicians
| should rush to instantiate new laws to appease the journalists.
|
| I'm not defending the hosting of revenge porn, but that
| specific issue does not seem to rely on the existence of porn
| sites.
|
| It does rely on sites where people can upload stuff. Maybe
| media companies don't really like that such sites exist,
| because it destroys their information monopoly.
| true_religion wrote:
| It is hardly just changing some rules. Pornhub killed off the
| majority of their content, and removed the permissive copyright
| system that enabled them to become dominant in the market in
| the first place.
|
| For them, it's a huge change.
| [deleted]
| routerl wrote:
| > The Western world decided...
|
| It's not so simple[1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
| brailsafe wrote:
| Perhaps a bit pedantic, but the American Dream isn't
| necessarily wholly applicable in Canada. Uber was very slowly
| allowed in, and developer salaries are kilometers behind the
| US.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Serious question: there used to be in US law a record keeping
| requirement
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Protection_and_Obscenity...
| ; what happened to that which meant Pornhub could just publish
| whatever with no attempt at verifying legitimacy?
| 0cVlTeIATBs wrote:
| Does PornHub "publish" the videos on their site?
| totalZero wrote:
| My gut tells me that yes, they do. What's the alternative?
|
| "We're just a platform your honor. We are not responsible
| for the rape content that we host on our website."
|
| Seems like an unsatisfactory standard.
| brailsafe wrote:
| US law only applies to US companies
| pjc50 wrote:
| Well, up to a point; there are plenty of laws which apply
| to anyone deemed to be marketing to the US, especially
| financial services and online gambling, and Megaupload got
| raided by the FBI despite being in New Zealand.
| hluska wrote:
| Mindgeek has a very interesting corporate past. This FT
| article is the closest I've ever found to an investigation
| but honestly, it reads more like a really bad soap opera than
| an FT article:
|
| https://financialpost.com/financial-times/the-secretive-
| worl...
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| This isn't a BigCo's specific failure.
|
| They're just following in the footsteps of the precedent set by
| the DMV et al who themselves are standing on a long and storied
| tradition of bureaucratic ineptitude. Heck, this crap goes back
| at least as far as the ancient Roman administrative state if
| not further. The fact that the bureaucratic run-around flies
| from department to department in the form of 1's and zeros
| instead of dried tree pulp or waxed stone tablets doesn't
| really make a substantial difference. This isn't anything new.
| elmomle wrote:
| I think the argument is that if companies feared consequences
| from an engaged government that actively protected its
| private citizens' rights, this specific issue would not exist
| (since the company's continued functioning could then depend
| on its efficiently cooperating with such requests).
| abakker wrote:
| I think the issue being discussed here is also, "how can we
| make a government whose bureaucracy will be able to be
| engaged?" So many examples show bureaucracy and the
| abdication of responsibility go hand in hand. In order for
| the government to be empowered, its workers need to be
| empowered, and we have few cultural narratives of how rule
| following enabled great outcomes.
|
| Instead, almost fetishistically, we embrace rule breaking
| as the ultimate expression of self actualization, from
| forming businesses to bureaucrats who actually took time
| during their breaks to help.
|
| IMO, working for a company and working for the government
| are both exercises in limiting personal liability, and I've
| not yet encountered a construct that allowed people to
| limit liability without also limiting their agency. I also
| think it is important that we as a modern democracy do work
| to solve this issue.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| > Pornhub has recently removed that download button.
|
| News flash: there are many ( _many many many_ ) softwares out
| there that can 'catch'/downlaod a video, mp3, etc. from a
| website.
|
| I listen a daily radio show. Not live though. I wait till the
| recording is done, then wait till they upload it on the
| station's website, and I am using a SW to 'catch' the mp3,
| download it, and listen to it later at my convenience (and
| offline). I have written and asked them to make a podcast for
| each of their radio shows, they're in the process of setting it
| up, I just cannot listen to them live, so I do this 'illegal
| workaround'.
|
| That same software can catch videos (and streams) from YT,
| Vimeo, and most sites I visit. I don't 'pirate', but I do
| download some old-time music videos because I fear that one day
| they will disappear (e.g. Van Halen - Right now, Chicane -
| Saltwater). I want to be able to watch them when I'm (very)
| old, and I don't know how 'old music' videos will be treated. I
| do pay for Spotify, so I do pay for the music I enjoy (to avoid
| any responses to the contrary).
|
| > Every time there is juicy drama and a micro-outcome
|
| (not picking a fight with you): If that was your sister,
| mother, daughter you wouldn't even think of writing something
| like that. It is cases like this though, that can bring a $50m
| penalty to the big bullies and their minions ("marios",
| "kevin"). And large corp don't give a poop for the little
| people. They care to _not lose money_. Slap a $50m penalty to
| PornHub, and see them changing their tune within 24h and fixing
| _this_ problem within 2-3 months.
| Dirlewanger wrote:
| The macro-problem gets ignored because we have baby boomer
| politicians that are maliciously negligent in their concern for
| the well-being of society and have selfishly pillaged America
| for the past 50 years. You want to see change? Get rid of all
| 535 members of Congress tomorrow, and don't allow anyone over
| the age of 50 in their place.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| This is so messed up. I can't even imagine what that must be
| like. The dark side of "the Internet never forgets."
| cblconfederate wrote:
| > However, when she searched for the name of the video on Google
| in January, it still returned 1,900 results. It seems that
| although Pornhub had removed the video, it still kept thumbnails
| of the naked images. Because those thumbnails still existed, a
| Google search would find - and display - those naked images. She
| realized the only way to eliminate those was to get Pornhub to
| remove all traces of the thumbnail images.
|
| It seems the problem was / is Google (and not pornhub), because
| makes it impossible to remove stuff from the internet fast enough
| to prevent damage. I wonder why the article doesn't consider it.
| Google should have an on demand mechanism to instantly deletes
| all text/images that match a fingerprint .
| mrweasel wrote:
| Google do have to comply with EUs right to be forgotten, but I
| don't know how they deal with images.
|
| Your right that we really can't remove stuff fast enough. There
| will almost always be a copy somewhere.
| zakki wrote:
| If Google removed it from their search result it is true that
| most people will not see/find it. But her video/thumbnail is
| still all over the internet. But if the (porn) sites removed
| the video/ thumbnail it will be gone from google search as well
| visarga wrote:
| and only live on archive.org and other places
| ggggtez wrote:
| As far as I understand it, if PH stopped hosting the
| thumbnails, then Google would stop showing them.
|
| The problem is that PH didn't actually remove the thumbnails.
| nunez wrote:
| I don't even think they own all of them? There are a
| billionty porn site aggregators that pull from Pornhub and
| get ranked on Google, Bing, and other search engines.
|
| Is removing _all_ traces of this video even a tractable
| problem?
| zepto wrote:
| Yes - the video / thumbnails to be removed can be hashed in
| various ways. The hashes can be made public.
|
| A court can order videos or thumbnails matching the hash to
| be removed, and levy penalties against anyone still hosting
| them after a period of time.
|
| It's a less complex problem than policing use of
| copyrighted music on YouTube videos, and that has been
| achieved.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Perhaps I'm not understanding but why couldn't PH just remove
| the thumbnails so they couldn't be indexed anymore? Sure,
| Google should have a mechanism so material like that isn't
| indexed but Google isn't the only search engine and PH
| shouldn't be hosting that content, not even as a thumbnail.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > why couldn't PH just remove the thumbnails so they couldn't
| be indexed anymore?
|
| > Kevin responded again, insisting that Pornhub "can NOT"
| remove content from other sites. However, that doesn't seem
| to be completely accurate. Pornhub offers something called
| its "exclusive model program," which promises that it will
| send takedown notices to any website to "help protect your
| content from being uploaded to other websites."
|
| I am not sure that PornHub actually hosts those thumbnails or
| necessarily controls them. Sending a takedown notice
| indicates to me that they don't control that content. They
| would just be requesting removal.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Even if they did remove it, how long would it take for google
| to remove their copy? That's why it's better to have an on-
| demand mechanism to remove content.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| It sucks that this is a case where no amount of money & no
| punishment of anyone involved can really make the victim whole.
| Some things require a time machine to fix.
| KozmoNau7 wrote:
| It shows how much our societal norms and laws were - and still
| are - completely unprepared for the implications of everyone
| being able to effortlessly copy and distribute images and video
| all over the world. We're still in a sort of local to national
| mindset, but international and virtual issues completely
| shortcut a lot of the foundations of that, and the people who
| get caught in that friction get hurt, sometimes _very_ badly.
|
| If someone wants to ruin your reputation and cause you immense
| grief, they can very easily do that, and there is basically
| nothing you can do once the material is out there, _especially_
| if it is pornographic in nature.
|
| Privacy is a basic human right, and yet we are trampling all
| over it. I wish I knew what we as humanity could do about this,
| because shitty people aren't just magically going to stop
| existing, and the internet is an extremely powerful tool for
| abuse in their hands.
|
| Facilitating abuse by sharing abuse materials should be subject
| to just as hard punishment as uploading them in the first
| place.
| ogurechny wrote:
| The subjects of Nick Ut's "The Terror of War" didn't sign
| consent papers, the same with countless other famous photos.
| There is no doubt you have seen it. Aren't you the one of the
| "shitty people"? Will you repent?
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| What a shitty attitude. Once a victim, forever a victim? I
| propose to you a simple yet powerful idea: _Shit happens, get
| over it._ Life goes on. New experiences.
| qzx_pierri wrote:
| I suspect you'll be downvoted, but I agree. People take the
| internet waaaaaaay too seriously now. Not downplaying their
| trauma. Crazy stuff happens online, but everyone's attention
| span lasts for 30 seconds, so just move on, get some therapy,
| and try to 'let it be'. I suspect stories like this will
| facilitate additional mass-censorship via complaints similar
| to "think of the children!!", but framed towards adults who
| don't understand how web archival works.
|
| But is this what we want? Don't we love the internet because
| everything lives forever? Remove the story in the OP from
| your mind and respond without any emotion. I know I sound
| like a contrarian, but I really miss when the internet felt
| more dangerous and unhinged. People starting these justice
| campaigns for every little thing about the internet is not
| only futile, but also short sighted. Do we want more "mass
| deletions" of content like Tumblr, Pornhub, etc ? This is
| what happens when the internet is slowly homogenized into
| this business friendly, marketable, "safe space" for casual
| users. Sorry for the rant, but I've noticed this so much
| lately.
|
| YES terrible stuff happens online. YES it has been happening
| since before the author of this story was born. Deal with it
| the best you can, but stop using emotion to convince everyone
| that you will be "fixed" until every "bad" site is fully
| regulated and monitored.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I'd really rather my employer not stumble upon someone's
| revenge porn of me, and I'd like the ability to get that
| removed, yes.
| qzx_pierri wrote:
| Submit a request to have it removed. Lawyer up if the
| site doesn't comply. If the site is overseas and doesn't
| comply, then you'll have to just deal with it. Google
| even has their own methods to have a URL removed. I've
| done this before myself. I agree content should have
| mechanisms which allow takedowns to occur. Taking
| Google's approach and delisting certain websites from
| their search results seems a bit much (this refers to the
| mass censorship in my original comment)
|
| Stories like this cater to people who aren't savvy enough
| to do the work to get the content removed. I said I miss
| when the internet felt more dangerous and wasn't catered
| to casuals. I think both of us have the same beliefs, I
| just think there should be a bit more freedom online, but
| these "platforms" are publicly traded companies now, so
| my thoughts don't matter.
| notyourday wrote:
| > I suspect you'll be downvoted, but I agree. People take
| the internet waaaaaaay too seriously now. Not downplaying
| their trauma. Crazy stuff happens online, but everyone's
| attention span lasts for 30 seconds, so just move on, get
| some therapy, and try to 'let it be'. I suspect stories
| like this will facilitate additional mass-censorship via
| complaints similar to "think of the children!!", but framed
| towards adults who don't understand how web archival works.
|
| This will stop being a big deal as the boomers die out and
| GenX gets into a nursing home age. My wife is a millennial.
| She grew up with the internet and cameras -- the number of
| photos that would make Gen X ers blush that she has is
| insane and that's nothing compared to what an average gen Z
| has.
| pocket_cheese wrote:
| Asking someone experiencing sexual trauma to 'let it be' is
| such a dismissive take.
|
| Being a victim of revenge porn means that you can be
| blackmailed at anytime. Most people do not want to be
| sexualized, and it's humiliating to have to live with the
| fact that your coworkers will now have ammo to harass over
| you if they discover your videos. Don't get me started on
| what happens if you have kids, and their friends find out
| you were in porn.
|
| Realistically, you can't scrub the internet of a video. I
| personally feel like the solution is that porn should be
| highly regulated. A formalized content upload process,
| licensing, required staff to deal with these types of
| complaints. It should be impossible to upload a video
| without a signed waver from the participants. Sure, this
| might remove pure anonymity, but you can still have
| mechanisms in place to protect your identity if you want to
| make amateur content without divulging your identity to the
| public.
| qzx_pierri wrote:
| "Asking someone experiencing cyber bullying to 'let it
| be' is such a dismissive take. Realistically, you can't
| scrub the internet of cyber bullying. I personally feel
| like the solution is that comments should be highly
| regulated. A formalized posting process, licensing,
| required staff to deal with these types of complaints. It
| should be impossible to comment referencing someone else
| without a signed waver from the participants. Sure, this
| might remove pure anonymity, but you can still have
| mechanisms in place to protect your identity if you want
| to post comments without divulging your identity to the
| public."
|
| This sound similar to any other regimes in recent memory?
| Porn isn't the argument I'm responding to, it's short
| sighted bandaid solutions which require ADDITIONAL
| regulation and government control. We all know these
| systems of regulation bleed into other parts of the
| internet. Are you willing to start this trend and put it
| into the hands of someone whom you disagree with?
| pocket_cheese wrote:
| You are equating mean youtube comments to revenge porn.
| This is the whole "We should just ban cars" response when
| someone brings up gun control.
|
| >It should be impossible to comment referencing someone
| else without a signed waver from the participants
|
| If the comment is a nude picture of myself and I didn't
| give you permission to post it the law already agrees
| that this should be illegal. All I'm asking is to make it
| enforceable.
|
| Porn is shady industry ripe with abuse and exploitation.
| How do you know the person you are watching is over 18?
| Let me answer that... You don't. Some industries should
| be given more regulatory scrutiny than others.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| When I try to respond `without any emotion` to the question
| `Do we want more "mass deletions" of content like Tumblr,
| Pornhub, etc ?' , the answer that first comes up is `why
| not?`.
|
| The Spock couldn't care less about these websites -- they
| are mostly entertainment, after all -- and on the other
| hand the risk that they someday archive something that may
| damage you is not nil. So there is one clear cold, logical
| conclusion.
| AltruisticGapHN wrote:
| I agree that she should move on but the porn industry also
| needs regularization, random people should not be able to
| upload anything they wish at the click of a button.
|
| While I agree with your sentiment, we will miss the early
| days, but internet was in its "teenager" phase, wild
| chaotic, fun, but not sustainable.
|
| The fact that small sites have been swallowed by facebook &
| co. , the knowledge bubbles cause by "smart" search
| engines, etc. those are another topic entirely.
| qzx_pierri wrote:
| "X needs more regulation"
|
| This is not the internet that I remember from 2004, and
| that was my only point. The internet feels too "safe"
| now.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| Takedowns are a perfectly valid thing to have for something
| like pornography websites. Its not life threatening if it
| vanished for a few hours, but it can be devastating if it
| stays on long-term.
|
| Another comment correctly pointed out that we would not
| treat this as laissez faire if it was a child, but we
| should. There is a victim who has had harm done to them
| during the creation of the video.
| qzx_pierri wrote:
| "Another comment correctly pointed out that we would not
| treat this as laissez faire if it was a child, but we
| should. There is a victim who has had harm done to them
| during the creation of the video."
|
| 'Think of the children!' is such an overused moral
| bulwark. The people in power who would handle this
| regulation others in this thread are begging for are
| using that argument to defeat encryption.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| You should really reword that, because now it sounds as an
| incredibly insensitive thing to say. She was a child when it
| happened. Bad things hurt so much more when you're a child.
| fastball wrote:
| She was not a child when it happened, FWIW.
| jhgb wrote:
| > She was a child when it happened
|
| I'm confused. The article is talking about her ex-husband.
| Did she marry as a child? Or did some things happen to her
| as a child and later her husband of all people got his
| hands on some recordings? Or are you talking about some
| other person than the woman in the article?
| Toutouxc wrote:
| I'm even more confused, I only saw a seemingly fullscreen
| video, didn't know there was an article below.
| jhgb wrote:
| Well, _I_ only saw an article and didn 't even know there
| was a video. ;) I guess blocking JavaScript will do that.
| 12ian34 wrote:
| What a shitty attitude. Have you been raped on video and
| revealed online?
| blfr wrote:
| Pornography is bad for its consumers, bad for willing actors, and
| obviously terrible for people featured without consent.
| Tolerating it will be one of the great shames of our time.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| There are countries where porn is blocked. VPN software is very
| popular in those countries.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| I'm genuinely curious, how do you feel about erotica or written
| smut? How about drawn porn?
| sunsetMurk wrote:
| Can you elaborate a bit more?
|
| I'm very curious because I think the existence and availability
| of porn and the sex industry is very important for the well-
| being of lots of people. Definitely some problems.. but I'd
| parallel those to problems with prohibition and suppression.
|
| Have you always held this opinion? Are you religious?
| nunez wrote:
| I think pornography has also helped bolster sexual freedom to
| new heights, which I think has been a good thing for humanity.
| weswpg wrote:
| Trying to decide for other people which parts of their
| sexuality are "tolerable" or not is actually a far bigger
| mistake, historically and presently
| pxue wrote:
| Blaming porn is like blaming cheeseburger for obesity. While
| you're not wrong but it's hardly the root cause.
| blfr wrote:
| You're right, fast food is probably not the primary offender,
| and there are many causes (HFCS, seed oils, not cooking,
| abundance in general), and future is overdetermined... but
| fast food definitely carries some responsibility for the
| obesity epidemic.
|
| Same with porn and Pornhub. But it is the mental tobacco of
| our time.
| viraptor wrote:
| > mental tobacco [of] our time
|
| You may want to check how early does porn (or sexualised
| images) exist. "our time" may turn out to be "since we
| discovered drawing".
| blfr wrote:
| I don't see your point. Tobacco use is prehistoric,
| barely more recent than drawing.
| viraptor wrote:
| What was your intended meaning for "of our time" in that
| case?
| blfr wrote:
| It was in relation to widespread use and availability of
| pornography, like tobacco was in the 20th century. Or
| like obesity is now.
|
| We had obese people since at least the first settled
| societies. But it was nothing like today, both in how
| widespread and how extreme is has become.
|
| Same with drugs. An opioid epidemic pushed by mega pharma
| is nothing like a shaman serving ayahuasca.
|
| A nude cave painting or a figurine is nothing like
| thousands of hours of streaming porn. Barely related.
| WindyLakeReturn wrote:
| If a war on drugs has taught us anything, a war on porn is
| going to lead to far worse porn being spread further than ever
| before while innocent lives are ruined, much like how teenagers
| are already being charged as adults for sexting while not
| adults. There are likely places the law can be improved but a
| blanket ban would be a large step backwards even if we ignore
| freedom of speech implications.
| blfr wrote:
| In the world where entire sites are pulled over some silly Q
| conspiracy theory, we can surely do more to combat porn.
| We've largely dealt with smoking, also addictive, also once
| prevalent, also while cigarettes are still available at every
| gas station and grocery store.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| >entire sites are pulled over some silly Q conspiracy
| theory, we can surely do more to combat porn.
|
| Remember that time the pornographers tried to overthrow the
| US government? Me neither.
| pvaldes wrote:
| > Remember that time the pornographers tried to overthrow
| the US government?
|
| Like mass blackmailing top politicians with sexual videos
| involving minors?, Yep, I remember the last week.
| blfr wrote:
| Trashing some offices is nowhere near overthrowing a
| government.
|
| And pornographers did much, much worse. They trafficked
| underage women, misrepresented the contracts, routinely
| provided drugs to dull their actors' senses, and engaged
| in all kinds of underhanded or outright criminal conduct.
|
| The guy who made (super mild by today's standards) Girls
| Gone Wild videos has a whole Criminal section in his wiki
| bio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Francis#Criminal
|
| Here's GirlsDoPorn
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GirlsDoPorn#Legal_action
|
| And these are the "legitimate" ones who can be sued.
| watwut wrote:
| The vote counting was target of the overthrow part.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Trashing some offices is nowhere near overthrowing a
| government.
|
| A comically bad attempt at murder is still attempted
| murder.
| blfr wrote:
| I genuinely don't agree with this. Just like FBI
| providing a 78 IQ unfortunate loser with explosives is
| not an attempted terrorist attack.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Entrapment is an entirely different issue.
| WindyLakeReturn wrote:
| Those cases generally aren't entrapment. They get pretty
| close, but they don't include the final push. The other
| party is free to walk away without taking the bait.
| Granted, I've only read the details on a few cases but in
| the ones I read the FBI is clear to not cross the legal
| boundary.
| totalZero wrote:
| Legally that's a fair argument, but there's an ethical
| hazard in law enforcement catalyzing a crime that may not
| otherwise occur, in order to bag a person who may not
| otherwise be a criminal.
|
| Some of those setups discriminate based on ethnicity,
| such as those that target Islamic radicals and black
| nationalists. In my mind, this further deepens the
| ethical quandary.
|
| Sometimes a solution in search of a problem is itself a
| problem.
|
| _"...the FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs)
| have approached multiple activists organizing for justice
| for George Floyd--who was killed by Minneapolis police
| officers--and have alternatively attempted to entrap them
| or pushed them to work as informants. "_
|
| http://hrlr.law.columbia.edu/hrlr-online/the-anatomy-of-
| a-fe...
| weswpg wrote:
| Given the state of the war on drugs and the war on human
| trafficking, do you think that there would be less drugs
| and human trafficking if people were not allowed to watch
| porn as you suggest?
|
| I suspect that because criminals tend to ignore the law
| anyway, placing restrictions on pornography will
| completely fail to reduce any harm as bad people will
| continue to do those things regardless of whether PornHub
| exists or not
|
| If pornography were not legal, then production would move
| underground and would probably involve even more harm.
|
| Some might suggest that there needs to be heavier
| regulation and more protection for the women involved but
| banning porn would mean zero protection for the women and
| an unregulated trade
| WindyLakeReturn wrote:
| We can definitely do better, but you have to allow for
| legal porn with consent to remain or else you will push
| everything to an underground market where the end result
| will be far less rules to control content.
|
| One thing that would be nice is an automated take down.
| Anyone who no longer consents to their porn being hosted
| (or who never consented) can have the selected files added
| to a database and all porn sites would have to take down
| based upon matches to this database. This technology
| already exists with PhotoDNA for fighting known child porn
| (though I think the technical details are kept secret to
| avoid people finding work arounds).
|
| As long as one draws a line between consensual and
| nonconsensual porn then I think you'll be able to crack
| down on the non-consensual material without having to worry
| about the failures of a 'war on x'.
|
| Think of it like the difference between cracking down on
| weed and cracking down on synthetic 'weed' that is killing
| people. Or just look at stores that are able to sell
| alcohol. Because it is generally allowed, specific bans are
| much easier to enforce because business likes keeping the
| legal status.
| blfr wrote:
| Alcohol and weed are not good examples because these are
| failed interventions if you consider them harmful.
| Consumption of both exploded in the last few decades.
|
| This is why I use smoking: it's also legal or semi-legal,
| it used to be prevalent but its popularity cratered.
| PeterisP wrote:
| "Consumption of both exploded in the last few decades."
| -> I don't know about weed, but it's definitely not true
| for alcohol, it's roughly stable; in USA there has been
| some decrease in per capita consumption since a peak in
| 1980s - see https://www.who.int/substance_abuse/publicati
| ons/global_alco... for example.
| gsich wrote:
| Why? Is porn bad per se?
| totalZero wrote:
| Philip Zimbardo, the psychologist behind the Stanford
| Prison Experiment, seems to think so. He has written a
| couple of books on the subject of deteriorating
| development of young men, and has suggested a correlation
| to the advent of high-speed internet.
|
| Not sure if he's right, but it's certainly a reasonable
| theory.
|
| He also did a TED talk briefly touching on the subject.
|
| https://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_the_demise_of_g
| uys
| lamp987 wrote:
| I bet you support gun control.
| kjrose wrote:
| Especially with environments where anyone can upload anything
| without proof of consent. Essentially you have a system where
| producing and distributing this regardless of consideration is
| maximized. However, even if pornhub et al. required proof of
| consent for every video it would still likely lead to many
| situations where the actor was "willing" for bad reasons which
| will play out over time with an increasingly negative effect.
|
| As I get older I'm expecting more and more to have a future
| generation look at our with quite a dark opinion.
| jessaustin wrote:
| "A future generation" will think poorly of our mass
| incarceration and meat consumption, but they won't have our
| body image hangups and literally every second of their lives
| will be recorded from multiple angles so they won't care
| about porn.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| 'normal' link: https://www.ctvnews.ca/w5/i-will-always-be-
| someone-s-porn-on...
| INTPenis wrote:
| Not trying to belittle this womans struggle but there are videos
| online where people are being hurt real bad and those videos will
| forever be someone's entertainment.
|
| World star hip-hop, and other sites like it, have almost made a
| business out of showing people be knocked out, kicked, punched
| and assaulted.
|
| That's what the internet is. A global network that spreads
| information at light speed.
|
| So I don't think attacking Pornhub specifically is the right
| thing to do here.
|
| That sort of smells of someone trying to make waves by going
| after one of the more established players in the internet porn
| business.
|
| What happened was awful but it has nothing to do with Pornhub.
| They're doing their best to police a giant platform that everyone
| in the world wants to use and abuse. They're not alone in this
| challenge.
| elliekelly wrote:
| > They're doing their best to police a giant platform that
| everyone in the world wants to use and abuse.
|
| It doesn't really sound like they're doing their best though,
| when they offer an aggressive content take-down service to
| their paying customers but not to victims of exploitation from
| whom they've (knowingly or unknowingly) profited.
| INTPenis wrote:
| Sure but put yourself in their position for a minute.
|
| How does pornhub even receive notice of this video being
| posted? How many others contact ph through this channel? How
| many of these cases are bogus and lead nowhere?
|
| Remember that this is the internet. If you open up any
| communication channel to your massive website you will be
| flooded with junk.
|
| So just to maintain a communication channel with the outside
| world is an entire project in itself. Probably requires its
| own manager and employees working full time with nothing but
| handling cases.
|
| And despite all this ph did respond on this case, they even
| tried sending takedown requests to OTHER SITES.
|
| Imo they did truly do their best.
|
| But the problem goes beyond pornhub. It's an internet
| problem. There is no simple resolution to this problem,
| unless you want to lock down the entire internet.
|
| And despite all these difficulties the stories posted still
| mention Pornhub as the problem.
|
| Pornhub is not the problem here.
|
| But I would not be surprised if Pornhub comes up with a
| solution. if coinbase can verify your identity to open an
| account with them then surely Pornhub can do the same for
| uploaders.
| symlinkk wrote:
| They already have a program that verifies the identity of
| uploaders called Verified Amateurs, and last year after the
| NYT published their hit piece and Visa stopped processing
| payments to them, they removed all amateur videos that
| weren't Verified Amateurs, which was most of them.
|
| What's sad is that you're having to read this from me,
| instead of from the original article linked above, that
| someone who has a college degree in journalism was paid to
| write.
| [deleted]
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The article pretty clearly indicates that they're not "doing
| their best":
|
| > Kevin responded again, insisting that Pornhub "can NOT"
| remove content from other sites. However, that doesn't seem to
| be completely accurate. Pornhub offers something called its
| "exclusive model program," which promises that it will send
| takedown notices to any website to "help protect your content
| from being uploaded to other websites."
|
| The logical step here would seem to be to extend that takedown
| program to victims as well as their models.
| weswpg wrote:
| While I agree with your suggestion, the article notes that PH
| did request removals for her and still concludes by
| attributing blame to PH for the video being newly uploaded
| elsewhere (despite the fact that her ex husband likely has a
| copy which he may have uploaded again)
| WindyLakeReturn wrote:
| I don't see why non-consensual gore isn't treated the same as
| child porn.
|
| Both are done without consent.
|
| Both require someone to be hurt to be created.
|
| Both either have a victim who is dead or who is harmed by the
| continue spread of the video for entertainment purposes.
|
| Both cross the threshold for obscenity.
|
| Political and historical exceptions would still apply, just
| like the photo taken of Phan Thi Kim Phuc fleeing a napalm
| attack is legal since it serves significant political and
| historic significance, despite it being a literal picture of a
| naked child being harmed.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Is a lot of gore footage created for the sake of selling
| videos? Allowing child porn has the consequence of
| incentivizing more to be produced. Is anyone producing gore
| videos in any quantity?
| WindyLakeReturn wrote:
| The incentivizing argument seems to be a red herring
| because in no universe would we legalize some subset of
| child porn that is shown to not incentivize more being
| produced, no matter how clearly such a case was shown.
| retrac wrote:
| Drawn and computer generated images of that kind are
| legal under the First Amendment in the USA. I mention it
| because they are, in contrast, illegal in Canada.
| claudiawerner wrote:
| The other argument is that it inflames and encourages
| desire to assault children in a significant subset (in
| the sense of risk; i.e. the population doesn't have to be
| large, only the risk) of those who consume it, and that
| it does so in a unique way, compared to other forms of
| media. The other argument is that it's a particularly
| grave violation of the child's privacy, one they cannot
| consent to.
|
| Alternatively, we could just bite the bullet and conclude
| (perhaps rightly) that maybe porn _in general_ has the
| same negative effects we allege CP to have. I 'm not sure
| if that's true, but if it is, then I think it would make
| a good case for banning it.
| [deleted]
| thereare5lights wrote:
| > They're doing their best to police a giant platform that
| everyone in the world wants to use and abuse.
|
| There are many citations to the contrary.
|
| This is just one
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-51391981
|
| They didn't just go and delete millions of videos for the fun
| of it.
|
| It's because they let their platform turn into a cesspool of
| illegal content.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| If you have serious points to make about a porn issue, perhaps
| you should use a throaway account rather than 'INTPenis'. joke
| that's mildly amusing in other contexts seems tasteless when it
| shows up in a discussion on sexual assault, and that's probably
| outweighing the substance of your argument.
| luckylion wrote:
| > They're doing their best to police a giant platform that
| everyone in the world wants to use and abuse.
|
| [citation needed]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| luckylion wrote:
| The whole "we're just a platform" thing makes it incredibly easy
| for Pornhub & co to just say "wasn't us, it was some user" and
| not even handle the deletion process on their affiliates' sites
| (who they provided the video + images to). It's like Mega Upload,
| which was obviously made for copyright infringement but
| successfully hid behind the platform-excuse for years.
|
| I'm not a friend of far-reaching regulation, but it seems that we
| don't have sufficient processes in place to deal with these
| companies unless there's gigantic financial interest involved
| that makes the state feel motivated to intervene.
| darkerside wrote:
| You can say the same of Google in this instance
| yummypaint wrote:
| I would argue the copyright argument goes the other way. If
| you're a big vertically integrated corporation who has greased
| the right cogs it's incredibly easy to get content taken down
| wholesale without any oversight or accountability. Whether it's
| having content removed or restored, the burden somehow always
| falls on the individual.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Future prediction: This would be a good application of some thing
| like Ethereum NFT.
|
| Verified individuals could license their content, and it would be
| illegal to host anything unverified.
|
| This would make it harder to widely distribute illegal content
| and abuse. (it will never completely remove, but it raises the
| bar just like any law).
| perlgeek wrote:
| What would prevent a bad actor from getting verified, and then
| uploading material that they don't have consent/license for?
|
| What would prevent anybody from claiming they were the "talent"
| in the material and giving consent?
|
| Where would the "verified individuals" and their verification
| even come from?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The same thing we do to try to limit fraud in the banking
| system, use that.
|
| We aren't going for perfect fraud protection, because that's
| impossible. But just raising the bar would be useful.
| stale2002 wrote:
| But that has nothing to do with crypto.
|
| I agree that it is possible to use the law to take down
| infringing content. But cryptocurrency and NFTs do nothing
| to help that.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It does when you automate takedowns, because it is just a
| verified lookup table.
| folli wrote:
| Hosting illegal content is already illegal. How would NFTs
| solve this?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| If any uploaded videa were assigned a token, and one turned
| out to be illegal, any matches against the original token
| would trigger an auto-deletion.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| This, the AI police of the future that automatically take
| down copyrighted information will just check against the
| chain.
| datavirtue wrote:
| The monetary barrier to attaining the NFT. I doubt her
| husband would have uploaded it if he had to pay $100-200 to
| do so. In general this is not a practical solution.
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| Most NFTs are just a link to the content, or a hash of the
| content. They're not literally storing the data.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| One could set up a system that requires verified linkage.
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