Comments

You must log in or register to comment.

BrowseDuringClass1917 wrote (edited )

to then get policies created that harm sex workers & force more regulation and repression of sex in general, that do nothing to address their alleged concerns.

All pornhub has done is make a required verification process for a user to begin posting, this will have little to no effect on legitimate sex workers. This will only affect people who make an account just to post revenge porn, rape, and other illegal shit.

−1

ruin wrote

I agree with your take and that moral panic is a very fitting description.

It always strikes me as odd when anarchists use the same arguments and logic for social controls that libs use to discredit anarchy.

One would assume that “Think of the children” being widely recognized as a flawed rhetorical tactic would prevent leftists from so quickly adopting it. That and it’s popularity with the evangelicals and right wing reactionaries.

4

GlangSnorrisson wrote

I’m assuming that most people aren’t into revenge porn, which means that it’s more of a niche thing for horrible misogynists. This would suggest that not being able to use this specific site would only be a minor inconvenience. I might be wrong but I don’t see this actually helping much of anyone.

3

GlangSnorrisson wrote (edited )

That’s possible tbh. But I would suspect that removing huge amounts of content would send a lot of traffic to other sites. So yeah, don’t really know.

Honestly it’s not a problem that I expect can be solved by religious zealots, lawmakers or corporations.

2

celebratedrecluse wrote (edited )

In the future, videos will be shared with increasingly distributive technologies.

The logic of prohibition is, use your resources to shut down the centers and hubs of the problem's distribution. What this produces is higher-intensity behaviors which are hidden from any social accountability, and distributed more evenly throughout society.

For example, in some countries, you cannot even buy opium anymore. You must, as an opioid user, buy heroin, of disgusting quality as well. If you want to simply consume something safer, too bad-- your choice is to cease use, or use something horrible for your health in comparison. And the drug is seemingly more widespread than ever. The policy, ostensibly to protect public health, does the opposite, precisely to the degree which it is intensified.

I predict this action of removing all unverified videos will lead to hyperexploitation of sex workers, who will increasingly be coerced into working with established studios and producers rather than being able to release their own content. It will also lead to the replacement websites and services moving further out of the reach of legal accountabiity, while the content remains accessible to the people who want to find it. In the consumers, it will encourage some toward the consumption of more problematic types of content, as the service now providing it will have fewer reasons to limit or combat the presence of abuse on its platform; the point of such a platform would be to react against content limitation, and its internal culture will resemble that of Eightchan and those sort of places given the overal social context of the internet, and especially porn consumer's social communities.

Given that this ban and reaction are going to happen now, I think the best approach is to create worker's cooperative organization(s) which promote sex worker's content independently of these websites, and allow them to own and control their content. Perhaps an app, or a website, maybe it uses p2p swarms to self-host the content, maybe crypto is involved to get around the credit companies, maybe there are multiple approaches, whatever. It's a great opportunity to form a worker's cooperative, but it requires the investment (literally in money, and probably in skilled labor) of both producers and consumers of this type of content. I feel strongly that it should be sex workers who own the service; that would be the best outcome, and could even be written into the structure of such an organization through creative legal language. Alternatively, it could be run as a not-profit, although I think people have good reason to be sceptical of NGO-industrial complex. Regardless, the structural element should not take a significant cut of the profits from the content, and if possible should scale to subsidize and stabilize sex workers' income (especially important due to corona highlighting how vulnerable the industry is to fluctuations in social conditions)

3

celebratedrecluse wrote

Some people do not put their face in their content, including some of the most popular content producers.

This also begs a question: If it is such a limited verification, how does this really combat abuse and trafficking?

3

celebratedrecluse wrote (edited )

Perhaps it will stop the revenge videos on the site, and limit their reach to some extent, but there will always be another place these scumbags can flee to unfortunately.

On the other hand, what if the people running the site and the verification process, are part of the abuse?

I think the only sustainable solution is to put sex workers themselves in charge of the industry, rather than allow these people who aren't content producers to have such influence and power over the workers. There's no easy solution to this like /u/bloodrose mentioned, but I think this as a guiding principle would be a good idea for an organization to not only compete with the existing and emerging capitalist platforms in terms of content serving, but also for a counter-hegemonic, pro-laborer social culture for online spaces which serve sex workers' content.

The latter point is important. It confronts the demand, the source of the abuse sold and monetized online. Change people's preferences. Change people's tolerances. De-normalize violence and lack of consent etc. The right wing, pedo, abusers of the world are doing this all the time. the consumers of sex work should stand in solidarity with the workers, and confront the socialities which encourage production of abuse. Refuse complicity, pornhub visitors! We will all benefit from the society this produces!

3

minkim244 wrote

even the pornhub has to make a quality check, I guess

1