what matters Millionaire’s Peak: The Pornhub Storywhich debuted Netflix, not finished yet. If pornography, with the site pornhubexploded on the internet and empowered prostitutes, he was also accused of aiding and abetting sex traffickers.
It is certainly not new. The most popular pornography platform has long been accused of sex trafficking, posting non-consensual content, rape and sex with minors. He uploaded millions of videos, many linked via credit card payment to prostitute sites, but most were posted anonymously and for free.
The documentary features testimonials from people working in the porn industry and many from Pornhub. Among the pornstars is Siri Dahl, who before the removal of Pornhub rates the penises of his followers on OnlyFans.
Pornhub, created 15 years ago, is an adult platform that has revolutionized the porn industry. While, on the one hand, creators of erotic content have been allowed to reach an unusual mass (a sex worker says that thanks to uploading her videos to Pornhub she was able to buy her own house), the platform founded in Montreal, Canada, she became a multimillionaire.
Is that in the age of the Internet, pornography “has evolved”. Pornhub is a subsidiary of MindGeek, a privately held company based in Montreal. The site receives 3.5 billion visits a month, more than Netflix, Yahoo or Amazon. He has had a billboard in Times Square and a large part of his profits come from advertising. The site works like other Internet monsters: data collection, preferences, marketing and search engine optimization.
The problem with Pornhub, and it’s what the documentary points out, which is controversial, is that it included videos showing victims of trafficking, child sexual abuse, and rape.
The attacks were not long in coming, with Laila Mickelwait at the head of the activists. Or Nicholas Kristof, from The New York Times, which in December 2020 he published in the newspaper Los niños de Pornhub, in which he put everything in black and white. Kristof didn’t stop at exposing the issue: he asked the site for three things: content moderation, a ban on downloads and that only verified users be allowed to post videos.
The immediate aftermath was that credit cards were cut off from issuance. But since one of Pornhub’s biggest sources of income is advertising—it collects nearly three billion dollars from advertising—the main victims have been sex workers.
Suzanne Hillinger’s documentary (Emmy nominee and producer of Morgan Spurlock inside man) offers testimonials from people working in the pornography industry, as well as those who have investigated the site, be it the reporter of the The New York Times to employees of US state agencies.
Some are lapidary: “They are responsible for profiting from sex trafficking.”
Labor and sex trafficking
The phrase “Anything can be porn”, said by one of the interpreters who lives off pornography, certainly does not help to clarify anything. Perhaps more accurate is what one Pornhub “ambassador” says: “(critics) fail to see that sex work and sex trafficking are two completely different things.”
Any sexual act without consent is rape. This is illegal. Thousands of women have asked for the removal of videos uploaded to the site without their consent. And if they succeeded, they came back online.
But the issue of minors is the toughest. A Pornhub moderator, who appears with a distorted voice and a blurred face, claims that each moderator checked 700 videos a day. They worked 8 hours and guessed the age of those seen in the pictures.
controversial, climax of a million it won’t leave anyone numb.
“Slumdog Millionaire Climax: The Story of Pornhub”
Documentary. USA, 2023. Original title: “Money Shot: The Story of Pornhub”. 93′, SAM 16. From: Suzanne Hillinger. With: Gwen Adora, Asa Akira, Siri Dahl. Available in: Netflix.
Source: Clarin
