Pornhub: The Corrupt Company That Changed the Internet
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Regardless of your stance on pornography, you’ve definitely heard of Pornhub. The site has become a household name – an integral part of 21st century culture. It’s meant an entire generation of young adults have grown up with graphic sexual content at their fingertips, their parents often clueless about the dark realities of the Internet. Its history is riddled with controversy, ranging from sex trafficking to racketeering, yet despite this, the site is ever popular, and still lacks sufficient moderation, age verification policies, and autonomy for performers. With the industry monopolised by a corrupt institution, what does the future of online pornography look like?
MindGeek is the Montreal-based company who own Pornhub, in addition to multiple other online porn sites. Their marketing tactics are impressive; stunts such as a huge billboard in Times Square have made Pornhub the go-to porn site, and have helped to lift the stigma around the topic. It left performers with little alternative than to switch to the site, essentially putting an end to the reign of studio-filmed porn.
The result is that MindGeek’s owners became multi-millionaires, with Feras Antoon building a $16m mansion in Montreal (which was later burnt down, allegedly by anti-Pornhub protesters). Yet the complete monopolisation of an entire industry is not unique. In fact, some have dubbed Pornhub the ‘Monsanto of Porn’, after the agrochemical company known for their genetically engineered ‘terminator seeds’, which force farmers to buy from Monsanto year after year.
New York Times op-ed ‘The Children of Pornhub’ by Nicholas Kristof was a major trigger for the growing criticism of Pornhub; it detailed how the site has become a hotbed of revenge porn, spy-cam footage, underage pornography, and sex trafficking. For one, videos can be downloaded and re-uploaded time and time again, meaning victims can rarely escape their trauma, even if the video is initially removed. The most significant problem is content moderation; MindGeek reportedly only employs around 80 moderators – who are supposed to flag and remove inappropriate content – whereas Facebook has over 15,000. This decision, which undoubtedly saves MindGeek an enormous amount of money, means the majority of illegal content goes undetected.
A 2022 lawsuit regarding abuse claims led to Visa and Mastercard removing themselves from Pornhub’s advertising network. Yet, verified users who upload their own content have not been able to monetise their videos since 2020. For a while, Pornhub gave performers more autonomy than ever before, as they no longer had to rely on often-exploitative studios, yet these sanctions have left them with no alternative than to turn to other sites (such as OnlyFans).
The decision was part of a wider war on pornography, led primarily by far-right Christian group ‘Exodus Cry’, who want to abolish the site entirely, along with all forms of sex work and pornography. There are claims that the organisation is also anti-abortion and anti-LGBT, leading many to believe that they are masquerading their political motives as an effort to stop trafficking and abuse. In reality, the ban on monetisation for age-verified users did little to help victims and caught legitimate performers in the crossfires of a far wider moral debate.
Those who want to ban online pornography entirely are allowing idealism (or in some cases puritanism) to stand in the way of progress; offering few constructive solutions to improve the situation. Like it or not, online porn is here to stay. Rather than fighting to wipe it off the face of the earth, efforts should be made to increase regulation: fair pay for those involved consensually, and immediate action and justice for those who aren’t. Yet, it is unlikely that MindGeek will ever jeopardise profits to fulfil their ethical responsibilities. At its core, the story of Pornhub is not a cautionary tale about the dangers of pornography, but rather the dangers of corporate greed at enormous human cost.