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Comment by Manuel_D | Hacker News Reader

> Sex slaves and porn are a thing and a problem. There's both more of it and more awareness of it. In many places there are laws about this that companies who process money have to take in to account.

Citation needed. Unless you're taking about CSAM shared on the dark web, I seriously doubt that sex slaves account for any significant portion of pornography. The only way I can see this being true is with a very wide definition of "sex slave" that includes someone doing porn to pay for rent.

#3 was no less true in the 2000s - I can attest to that myself.

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I used to have your view, then I learned about the amount of porn production that happens via organized crime that traffics young (17-22) girls for this express purpose.

It looks the same as “normal” stuff. You can’t tell from watching it.

You also can’t tell if what you’re saying is factual because you’ve provided no source

I’m not trying to persuade you to believe me.

I’m trying to persuade you to be skeptical of claims that it is approximately zero.

I assume you speak about East Europe and perhaps South America but most of them are lured into porn not forced.

Lured and forced can be very similar though. Especially if poverty, mental illness or similar are involved. Plus the fact that many people aren't really 'adults' when they turn 18.

> I learned about the amount of porn production that happens via organized crime that traffics young (17-22) girls for this express purpose.

I know of one instance [1] of criminal porn production, and it involved deception and fraud rather than kidnapping women - which, to be clear, is still terrible and should be prosecuted. And it ended with the people in charge getting convicted and imprisoned.

I am not at all convinced that a substantial portion of legal pornography involves organized crime. Again, the logistics of producing content that also serves as video evidence of a crime is difficult to overcome. If there is evidence that this is more widespread, it'd be good of you to share it.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GirlsDoPorn

GirlsDoPorn case is somewhat surprising to me because I think US regulators failed to prevent abuse of protentional and eventual victims of this porn company. The company was active from 2009 to 2020 and they only stopped their business when they ended up in court. Why weren't they earlier under legal scrutiny and why wasn't their license to do porn revoked? And it seems like most of this girls didn't have any legal advice or assistance prior, during and after of signing contracts with GirlsDoPorn. Imo amateur porn is fishy and should be more regulated.

“Amateur porn” is regulated, by the same laws in fact. People hosting such content for commercial gain are expected to obtain sufficient documentation of the performers identity, age, and consent, so as to not be liable under such laws.

As with most laws, the level to which they are enforced correctly and complied with varies.

Are you bot going to tell us what the amount is? 0.001% of the pre-pornhub scrub porn?

Come on now... Do you really think some of the pr0n out there was consented upon by all parties?

Let's be real. Even the largest pr0n sites have had a shit ton of cases come to surface, which should've put them out of business for good. And yes, some of it is about sex slavery.

The pr0n industry is all rotten. Great to see legit, humane alternatives gaining traction, don't get me wrong. But, most of it, is just pure misery.

What is the motive to producing non-consensual pornography? The risks are large: you're literally recording yourself committing a felony and publishing evidence of the crime to the world. Most porn production companies are looking to make a profit, not land themselves in jail. In the US, there's regulations to ensure all actors are of age and consented to recording [1].

1. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2257

What's the motive to producing pornography? Because it gets someone off.

People are investing in pornography production companies because they just like to get people off? No, the goal of production companies is to make money. The goal of the consumer is to get off, but the production company's goal absolutely is to money. As other commenters have pointed out [1] non-consensual pornography is indistinguishable to viewers from consensual pornography, so the risk of filming yourself commit rape and uploading evidence of the crime to the internet is not a decision I can see productions companies being keen on making.

For a very loose idea of "sex trafficking" that includes people deciding to work in porn to make ends meet - but at this point you could say your janitors are being trafficked because they wouldn't do their job if they didn't have to pay rent.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33028286

In the same way a bus company shouldn't be liable for transporting a wanted criminal a porn provider shouldn't be liable for nonconsensual porn.

They should take it down in a timely manner, which most sites do.

There are quite a few resources and stories available if you have a real interest in learning about it. The term 'sex trafficking' is more widely used than 'sex slaves' for what is being discussed.

https://theexodusroad.com/porn-and-human-trafficking-the-fac...

https://fightthenewdrug.org/by-the-numbers-porn-sex-traffick...

https://exoduscry.com/articles/here-are-the-biggest-cases-of...

https://nbc-2.com/news/2021/01/12/heres-how-your-porn-habit-...

https://www.endslaverynow.org/blog/articles/the-relationship...

To be blunt, these sorts of articles are precisely why I'm skeptical of the claim that sex-trafficking is a significant portion of pornography. Nowhere in any of these links is there a claim for what percentage of pornography features non-consensual or trafficked actors, and details about the methods used to arrive at that figure.

Instead, the articles either focus on anecdotes (e.g. "California Substitute Teacher Filmed and Profited off of Incest") or broad statistics non-specific to pornography, (e.g. "By some estimates, 4.8 million people are trapped or forced into sexual exploitation globally.) Nobody doubts that there are instances of non-consensual pornography. But 50 people out of 13 million is a small, small percentage.

It’s 0.00038462% and I completely agree with your point that the majority of this discourse is based on anecdotes and non specific statistics, I don’t support slavery of any kind but I also don’t support pressuring social change based on bullshit. I’ve had it happen to me once for a small and largely inconsequential thing arbitrarily banned by my state government and I will never stand for it again it’s a feeling of powerless violation for nearly zero genuine social good, yes there’s probably some, but it was like this, on the order of a few police officers less inconvenienced each week.

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