CEO and COO of Mindgeek (Pornhub, Youporn, redtube) resign

You seem to confusing a description of “anti-porn hysteria” as an existing thing with a claim that all anti-porn inclination is hysteria, either in error or as a deliberate construction of a strawman to argue against. But, in either case, no one claimed the thing you are trying to argue against.

Note that it's not just a morality issue: porn sites have a tremendous number of chargebacks. As a result, payment processors ban categories where the risk is higher.

But I think it's only fair to hold the company to the standard they set for themself. They said that all the content was reviewed, but that definitely wasn't the case, and would've been physically impossible. That was a lie. Any sane person running or investing in a porn business that accepts user uploaded content should know that's much riskier than other user content sites because it's more inviting for this sort of thing and much harder to detect.

I would really encourage you to read that article if you haven't, I think this is beyond a question of the technical difficulties of user content filtering and crosses a line into criminal negligence. It's a hard problem to solve and every solution is imperfect, but from the information we have, they weren't really trying at all. And I say all of this as a person that thinks that most non-porn sites, especially YouTube, go way overboard with automated, proactive takedowns and am really cognizant of the encroachments on free speech.

    In 2019, the operators of Pornhub content partner Girls Do Porn would be charged with sex trafficking in the US. Following the charges, 50 women filed a class-action lawsuit against MindGeek in 2020, alleging that MindGeek knew Girls Do Porn employees were coercing and lying to performers about how their videos would be used. Still, MindGeek continued to partner with the studio, allowing their videos to be distributed on Pornhub and other tube sites. Pornhub ostensibly removed the Girls Do Porn videos after the operators were arrested, but clips remained available on the site. 

    I contacted MindGeek hoping to answer the nagging questions I had about how content moderation was handled when I worked there. Specifically, I asked: were user uploads screened by Manwin employees before being published live?

    “All content was reviewed by human moderators at that time,” a spokesperson named Ian responded, adding that this applied to all tube sites.

    Somehow, that didn’t seem right to me. Hundreds, if not thousands, of videos were uploaded to tubes every day back then, and I wasn’t aware of anyone screening the uploads. Was it feasible that every single video was reviewed and approved by someone before going live? And if that was the case, how could illegal or pirated content still end up on the sites? I followed up with more questions, trying to clarify how the process worked: Had there been a team reviewing videos before they went live working around the clock, including weekends, while I was there? Or were we after-the-fact moderators the only ones accountable for the content?

    The company didn’t respond to my follow-ups, but my questions were answered by Pornhub moderators who spoke out in December 2020. They recounted how they were handed lists of thousands of videos on the site to review and, if warranted, remove. This suggests that only once videos were on-site, ballooning Pornhub’s content offering, were they gradually reviewed, leaving wide-open windows for any type of video to exist on the site, at least for a while.