Comment by ravenstine | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ravenstine | Hacker News Reader

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> Pornhub had over 2B visits last year and 100M+ daily active users

Is it just me or does that seem remarkably low? I wonder if "active users" only includes users with accounts. I'm sure plenty of people lurk such sites but never sign in.

> AI deepfakes and Generative AI means that anyone can create custom porn for themselves.

Admittedly, and somewhat embarrassingly, this is something I looked into with all the AI hubub going on this year.

While it's interesting what Stable Diffusion is capable of in terms of generating images of naked people, it's not that impressive what it comes to creating something that can actually compete with what humans can currently create. Every example of AI-generated pr0n I've seen looks erotically generic and uninteresting. On top of that, the AI seems to still not understand what a nipple or vagina is actually supposed to look like. It can't even do video yet outside of blurry "flipbooks" of multiple prompts in succession. Though I have no doubt that AI will eventually shake things up, we are a ways off from AI making human-made porn obsolete.

> To put the nail in the coffin, Netflix made a documentary about how Pornhub was the worst.

Well yeah, the problem with porn is it can't be (easily) used to push a narrative. Porn is hyper-reality. Porn doesn't pretend that people don't see race. Porn doesn't pretend that men and women aren't different, unless you're into that sort of thing. Porn isn't known for its intricate storytelling. Porn isn't pretentious. Porn doesn't pretend that penises are "gross." Porn doesn't pretend that human beings aren't animals that have irrational motivations. Porn is largely apolitical.

No wonder the mainstream wants it gone, despite being guilty of many of the same transgressions as sites like Pornhub. Nobody's gonna stop giving their money to Hollywood despite all the sexual abuse and child molestation.

> Porn is largely apolitical

Porn is practically the frontier of social politics.

Care to elaborate? I'm curious what you mean by this.

If you mean by the fact that gay and genderqueer porn have become more accessible, I'm not sure that's pushing an ideology rather than responding to a market demand (and society changing by other means).

In a puritanical society, vice by nature is a counter-cultural act. Especially when in one of the most hegemonic societies on earth consider sex to be the greatest taboo. This counter-culture creates a culture of pushing boundaries and exploring the unsaid in polite society.

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.

There's still the question of the objectification of women.

As for visits, you have to consider demographic splits. 50% of people are female who's viewing is going to be relatively minuscule, another x% are too young to be interested, another y% are going to be too old to be regularly interested, and so on. You get a surprisingly small slice of society. And now factor in the fact that there are about 8 zillion other sites. There's also the issue that when any country decides to ban porn, Pornhub almost always going to be target #1. For instance it's banned in India and China, so you're losing potentially billions of people from stuff like that.

> people are female who's viewing is going to be relatively minuscule

Why do you assume that?

> Is it just me or does that seem remarkably low?

It seems high, after the fallout from the NYT piece. Last I had read, unverified (e.g. pirated) content was all removed, leaving mostly studios and community power users. Like YT, piracy is the reason it flourished. Most immediately flocked to rival streaming sites that as of yet have not received the same level of scrutiny.

They lost literally billions of impressions by removing the non-consensual stuff?

You're saying "e.g. pirated" but let's be real it's "e.g. Amateur porn where the women didn't know she'd be filmed/shared, upskirt videos, revenge porn, sleeping assault videos etc"

No, I mean pirated content made by professional studios. That is far and away the largest driver of traffic and it's not even close. Check the trending videos for other large streaming sites e.g. spankbang that still host pirated content. Much of what falls into the amateur banner is just small-studio content, which has also been pirated.

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.

I assume there's little reason to visit that site after they removed 90% of their content

You mean the non-consensual stuff is what made it worth visiting?

I've seen a tonne of comments on reddit complaining that they took "the good stuff" away.

By proxy, in part. But my understanding is that they took away anything that was unverified, meaning a lot of amateur or reuploaded stuff probably disappeared, not necessarily just what was exploitative.

There were millions of hours of unverified footage, I assume that was the main reason the site became so big. You cant just remove all of it and expect to stay the leader, especially with the competition in this space

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