They are requiring ID verification (i.e. that you're 18 or over) to upload content. As much as I am privacy-minded, the idea that someone could upload an explicit video to Pornhub without verifying that they were 18 is mind-boggling.
This is also a net positive for content producers on Pornhub, who often see their content pirated on the very same platform.
Which could well be a net negative (I'm assuming both the viewers and exhibitionists get something out of it) given how small the positives are.
And spinning up a new video host (that you intend to make money somehow) isn't cheap or easy.
Nor is it terribly safe right now legally speaking. Considering the child porn castoffs from pornhub will be out looking for a new place to upload their trash. Eventually, not only child pornographers, but so many other undesirables are on your site, that it's just dangerous to continue running it from a liability perspective.
Is it still a thing? What malware can a pornsite contain that cannot be uploaded to or linked to from a regular smaller niche or bigger broader site? Do you download and run hotgirls.exe dialers or what?
But a lot of those "casual exhibitionists" are unverified. Many of the photos may have been taken with consent, but are distributed without. Sometimes that's revenge porn, sometimes it's hacked/jacked content, etc. Distribution of questionably sourced content can be quite damaging to the subjects.
If the "casual exhibitionist" is harmed here, it's dwarfed by the harm already being done to subjects without consent. And there are still plenty of suitable venues out there. Including verification with pornhub.
If you look at the actual mechanisms by which harm happens in a revenge porn case, I think you'll find it isn't dependant on pornhub at all.
What do you think are the mechanisms by which revenge porn harms?
If there is a legal case to be made against Pornhub, then the authorities should make it. Otherwise they would do better to go after those who made (or uploaded) the offending material in the first place.
Of course anonymity provides an environment prone to misinformation and exploitation, at the same time, so having verification on a case by case (site by site) basis would be my vote.
After this year everyone should be worried about what the future government turns into after the talk of violent overthrow of the legitimate vote.
Plenty of misinformation posted by identified accounts on FB and Twitter.
You make it sound like the statement requires no evidence. In reality it makes no difference if the uploader is 18 or not, but that the _recording_ is made consensually by 18+.
It is not a net positive for content producers, because viewers of legal but unverified porn (ie the wast majority of the content) will go to other sites.
I suspect xvideos viewership will go up, and they probably won't ally with the credit card agencies.
Are you for real?
Yeah, that made the Internet great in the beginning, and there are projects that don't depend on being "monetized", such as the OG hardcore F/OSS ones (GNU, Debian, KDE/Gnome, CCC, Wikipedia) and their ideological offspring (peertube, mastodon, matrix.org, blender).
But the average user doesn't care and doesn't understand the importance of having a free as in "as independent from the powers that be as possible" platforms.
In the dumbed down form. TV 2.0 (Netflix), grocery 2.0 (Amazon), news 2.0 (whatever YouTube/FB/twitter recommends).
The same people who did not care about stepping outside their comfort zone to get a bit more out of those aspects of life still don't do. (And sure, on one hand it's completely understandable, many people don't have the need, ability, resources and time (the good old privilege) to even do so; and ... there's no other hand, even if we know long term being closed in a walled garden will lead to problems, it's hard to make people understand it when they are inside.)
Related: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/visa-and-mastercard-ar...