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Comment by sebmellen | Hacker News Reader

Pornhub is full of child porn and does very little about it. This is a good choice. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-ra....

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They do as much as any UGC platform (auto scanning with photoDNA, reviewing, flags etc) and just committed to doing even more like forcing users to give ID to upload https://help.pornhub.com/hc/en-us/categories/360002934613 This was a long campaign by anti-sex work campaigners.

Here's an anecdote from Carrie Goldberg about how Pornhub compares to FB and Instagram:

I'm a victims rights lawyer. For every 1 case involving a rape tape on Pornhub, I have 50 involving rape and CSAM being disseminated on Insta and FB. Pornhub is far from perfect. But mainstream big tech is far worse and have a built-in mechanism for harassing victims directly. https://twitter.com/cagoldberglaw/status/1337026875441491973

Users who desire to upload content should be forced to provide ID to comply with US law as it relates to age verification of adult talent (2257 Regulation) [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adult_film_industry_regulation...

Should they also comply with $pick_a_dictatorship_you_find_reprehensible 's laws?

Edit: The comment I replied to has been edited and originally explained the owner was Canadian but serves US customers and so should abide by US law.

I don't want to claim to agree or disagree, I'm just not sure how to work out what's right.

Yes. You comply with the laws of the jurisdiction you operate in. You have the freedom to not operate where you don't want to obey local law.

EDIT: I edited my comment as I'm not willing to argue the merits of cross border law enforcement actions in this thread.

I think that's a perfectly reasonable stance for more physical businesses, e.g. shipping products.

Really though, how does it work for a business like this? How do you not serve a specific country on the internet? I'm not aware of any technical solution to this - geoip databases simply aren't accurate.

For businesses where most customers pay, perhaps you can gate the site and verify payment details but that plainly doesn't work for the business model we're discussing as most people surely don't pay anything by design? This isn't Netflix?

It's not our job to enforce Iran's or Saudi Arabia's sharia code. Nor is it a Canadian's job to enforce America's 2257 regime.

So, no more gay porn if your site is accessible from the UAE ?

> Should they also comply with $pick_a_dictatorship_you_find_reprehensible ‘s laws?

To be fair, MindGeek has an office in the US. Now, if they closed that office, the argument that they were subject to US law would be weaker.

Pornhub does verify its uploaders, requiring IDs for performers and affidavits of consent for all involved. Obviously some bad actors slip through. But far less than these pearl clutchers would have you believe.

No, they don't. Speaking from experience, I've uploaded plenty of personal content on PH without showing ID.

Hm, then your experience was different from mine. When did you get approved as a model? Because I certainly did have to show IDs back in... January I think it was. And my partner and I were initially rejected, then we had to appeal. For us at least there definitely was a process.

You're right, it seems to have changed recently. Meh, I just opened an account on xvideos and could upload within 5 minutes...

> Users who desire to upload content should be forced to provide ID to comply with US law as it relates to age verification of adult talent (2257 Regulation)

2257 requirements even on primary producers have been struck down on First Amendment grounds for material containing a wide class of performers; Free Speech Coalition vs. Attorney General of the United States (3d Cir. 2020.) And, serious Constitutional issues have been raised about the application of 2257 to “secondary producers” like individual users.

And, even under 2257, covered “secondary producers” aren’t required to provide their ID, they are required to have specific information about the maintenance of records related to the perfomers age affixed to the content.

A Third Circuit ruling applies to the whole US now?

Yes, now that they got caught they've started doing this stuff. They weren't before, such was the whole point of the (first) NYT article.

They were using photoDNA and Youtube CSAI Match before the article. This is the same as what Reddit uses. I see it mentioned here back in March https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN21D3E9

How do you know they dont do anything about it though? I’d wager they try

FTA, the amount of hires they have to weed out visually intensive and traumatic material was listed at 80 worldwide. The article compares it to Facebook's hires for similar weeding out and there was a couple of orders of magnitude difference. I recommend reading the article - it was sobering how bad it is and how it continues to traumatize its victims.

Given the sizes of the two companies I'd expect Facebook to have one or two orders of magnitude more employees for most roles.

Facebook is full of sedition and does nothing about it.

Sexual assault of children is illegal. Sedition is only illegal in rare circumstances. In the US anyway.

Do you think any of those circumstances are happening on FB? Does the supposed rarity make them harder or easier to find?

If FB is unaware of the illegal sedition they have plausible deniability.

In this case, MasterCard no longer has plausible deniability. This increases their liability.

Imagine someone at a liquor store sells beer to someone. Then, they learn the ID is fake and the person is lying about their age. Once they know someone is doing something illegal they can be held liable if they continue to sell the person beer.

Note, I'm not getting into right an wrong here. I'm getting into legal liabilities. Large companies like MasterCard are conservative (legally speaking) in how they handle this stuff.

Did you notice that article is in the opinion section? That implies it's a work of fiction. No fact checking needed.

> Did you notice that article is in the opinion section? That implies it's a work of fiction. No fact checking needed.

That is factually untrue (as I also pointed out in the other sub-thread where you made the same claim): they do fact check their opinion section:

The below quote is from a previous NYT Op-ed editor that describes their editorial process. Emphasis is mine.

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/opinion/op-ed-and-you.htm...:

> What happens when your article is accepted? First, you’ll get a contract giving us the right to publish it and laying out some of your responsibilities. The most important ones have to do with originality and truthfulness. You can’t plagiarize yourself, or someone else, and we won’t run something that has appeared in another publication, either print or digital. We request that you disclose anything that might be seen as a conflict of interest, financial or otherwise: Did you invest in a company that you praise in passing? Did you once work with a public official you mention in flattering or critical terms? Could you or an organization or company you represent benefit from the stance you take in an Op-Ed? We need to know. That doesn’t mean we’ll throw out your article on that basis — in most cases it just means disclosing the relationship to the reader. We also need all of the material that supports the facts in your story. That’s the biggest surprise to some people. Yes, we do fact check. Do we do it perfectly? Of course not. Everyone makes mistakes, and when we do we correct them. But the facts in a piece must be supported and validated. You can have any opinion you would like, but you can’t say that a certain battle began on a certain day if it did not.

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