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Comment by rasz | Hacker News Reader

>Unlike YouTube, Pornhub allows these videos to be downloaded

My God, its full of stupid!

> but Mindgeek is a porn titan

No its not, its the second fiddle to WGCZ, with Amazon and Netflix trailing far behind in web video rankings. Not to mention Hammy Media, Multi Media LLC, IG Media, etc. Seems being a winner of two Pulitzer Prizes gives you leeway from researching stuff properly.

Is this poorly informed article a hit piece on Section 230?

>We’re already seeing that limiting Section 230 immunity leads to better self-policing.

yep

> If PayPal can suspend cooperation with Pornhub, so can American Express, Mastercard and Visa.

send in moral deplatforming police

>YouTube thrives without downloads.

umm, there is this program that recently got a lot of press over RIAA actions. I guess it wasnt sexy or clickbaity enough for nytimes or Pulitzer winners to cover.

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Not sure if it's a dig against section 230, or just the sex industry. The journalist of this op-ed was instrumental in creating the moral panic to push through the SESTA legislation a few years ago. This legislation turned out to do nothing for victims and only damaged the safety of sex workers.

He also sources and mentions a petition from an evangelical group trying to shut down the sex industry. https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-exodus-cry-the-shady-ev...

So what's your plan to solve the problem? The kids should just try harder not to have their videos end up on pornhub?

Pornhub should handle takedowns more efficiently, but getting rid of a download button on a website is pointless... at the end of the day, if it’s on your screen, it’s your data

I’m not sure what they can do pre upload. I think moderation is not really realistic or even possible in many cases

Legalize consenting-adult-sex-work and remove the regulatory barriers that force these sites to use usurious, alternative payment processors.

If you must, tax these services to fund investigations and prosecution of abuse and trafficking. Note that the savings these services would enjoy from being able to use mainstream financial services would be so enormous that even with some kind of "sin tax" they'd still come out ahead.

(note, I generally don't approve of sin taxes, but since you asked, I think this is one option)

Insisting there is some simple top-down solution is nothing but inflammatory. Once data is out there, people sharing it is inevitable. The way to stop there being a video of yourself is to never let one be made in the first place, especially by someone you can't trust. The only way out of that cold hard fact is a worldwide data control regime enforced on our personal computers, which we should all be against.

At least with Youtube's censorship push, there's an argument to be made that it's not so much about the hosting, but the recommendation system giving extra attention to misleading videos. This article doesn't even attempt to make that point, instead repeatedly deferring to innuendo that the mere act of hosting is itself bad. Whereas in reality that's simply intractable, and pretending it isn't will lead to nothing good (ie another "war on drugs").

Certainly there are things Pornhub could do to help, like making it easier for people to find and report videos of themselves, or working with reputation management firms. But feigning as if there's some magical solution that Pornhub can come up with to prevent every bad thing from happening ("solve the problem") is not a way to have a constructive conversation.

Also the article skips dwelling on how most of the harm is actually being caused - the bullying. Like when yet another kid shoots up a school, the actual dynamic is brushed away as "kids being kids" and somehow uncontrollable, despite school administrators have great visibility into students' activities and a wide range of sanctions. Meanwhile we're all told that we should give up our societal rights to fix the resulting mess.

I think we need to invest more in investigating the criminals making and uploading the content. Millions and millions of child abuse material are reported to NCMEC but less than 2% are investigated. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/28/us/child-sex-...

> I think we need to invest more in investigating the criminals making and uploading

Agreed, but in this specific case it would be the child, herself, that made and distributed the original content. How would these cases be handled?

It all starts with sex education, both in school and home.

Sex education will stop rapists and child abusers from uploading videos of their victims to the Internet?

I don't think Kristof's solution is necessarily the best one, but you sound like you don't take the problem seriously at all.

>Sex education will stop rapists and child abusers from uploading videos of their victims to the Internet?

No, but sex education is great at preventing rape and child abuse. For the rest there is the report button...and the police.

Maybe law enforcement should try harder to find abusive content on pornhub and track who made it and how they profit from it?

If you want a good (bad) laugh, search for mentions of "Libya" by this NY Times author (Nicholas Kristof). He wrote a series of articles promoting military intervention in Libya. And after the Obama-Hillary administration did, and Libya fell apart, and millions of refugees were created, he stopped mentioning Libya. Hasn't mentioned it in years.

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