We don’t know enough about the Pornhub acquisition

If you’re only demanding “statistical evidence, please” from the people questioning if something is really happening contrary to policies and procedures, you’re asking the wrong people.

PornHub has transparency reports tracking how many upload there are to the system, where they come from, how many uploads get removed, how the removals were detected (e.g. by your user report, detected by internal tools before anyone saw them, etc.) they also discuss and the automated systems and manual processes they use. It’s all rather sophisticated, including an AI train system that does age estimation to detect, previously unknown, CSAM material.

I'm extremely sex work and porn positive, but the current status quo doesn't mean they're doing all they can. This is a bit of a distracting comment, because indeed, things are better than most expect, but could always be better.

Saying that it has a position of responsibility against trafficking is not saying it's equal to trafficking.

I would argue that Pornhub is trying though, whether it's their best effort I don't know.

In many cases, like how one would expose a more emotional an vulnerable verison of themselves via kink and sex. The lack of inhibitions may lead one to exposing their social and political values as well. Whether it is egalitarian equality (e.g. a lack and blending of social roles regardless of social or political identity); or an enforced heirarchy (i.e. that denegrate and or subjugate certain social and political identities).

Most porn does sits somewhere far more moderate, in-line with social values in mainstream society; monogamous and conventional man-on-woman sex where the man is a strong actor while the woman is a to be obtained and ogled.. But just because it's "morderate" does not mean it does not have a political perspective and message. Just like how many major Hollywood movies perpetuate mainstream American values by portraying them uncritically (e.g. "police and military are necessary if flawed institutions", "the highest virtue to be an individual fighting against a world that is against you", and "wealth and prestige are good and valuable things to have, up until you become an asshole."). Typical pornography uncritically accepts and portrays mainstream values and perpetuates them; especially since it is in an uninhibited.

Not to say that mainstream values are necessarily bad or need to be critically attacked or subverted in any and all media (including pornography); but merely an explanation of how porn is a social and political frontier.

Users did not complain about the slow-to-react takedown requests at PH, but as was made clear this was an inadequate means to deal with non-consensual content, when videos can be reposted. Short of a more intelligent scanning system, the only way to do so was to nuke it all, which they did. And if they did happen to have a more robust automatic detection for that sort of thing, porn producers would certainly expect that it would be used for their content as well, which makes it completely redundant in the end.

If you don't want a wackamole game with non-consensual content, you can't allow piracy - this is what they realized.

We literally speculate on this kind of thing daily on HN but I only see this defense of the company when it pertains to Pornhub.

I can look up some other threads about acquisitions, like Libery Media buying Formula 1, and we can quantify how many of these comments are present in those threads. Or one of the many acquisitions Google have made that have been discussed here ad nauseum.

I've seen this kind of legalistic defense of pornography on HN every time it comes up on discussion. Worries about AI replacing developers are given time and nuanced discussion but any concern about women being abused with deep fakes are dismissed on these kind of technical terms. It's not surprising as the demographic of HN has a pretty big overlap with porn users (male, single, chronically online, etc.) so the people here are some of the biggest beneficiaries of the porn industry while the people who suffer are almost entirely unrepresented.

No one's saying it explicitly today and I am indeed drawing conclusions based on my experience but that's a normal human thing to do.