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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  1443 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Money talks - Pornhub Just Purged All Unverified Content From the Platform

    my other reason to post this is that I do have a concern that social conservatives have used this strategy before, and will again, with success.

Sure. Been there, done that, got the life-long hatred of Tipper Gore to prove it. Important to note, though - attacks on prurience are always leveled at an industry, not an industry player. The PMRC went after music, not Warner Brothers. The CCA went after Comics, not EC. Those attacks are now fundamentally worthless; in an era of social media, any culturally-based attack encounters the Streisand Effect early and often and before too long that idiot with the AR in the pink LaCoste shirt is speaking at the RNC.

Purse-strings attacks are third-party and don't work the same way. The Family Research Council came at Walmart to keep them from stocking PMRC-stickered albums and Walmart knuckled under. End result? The vast majority of rural America (and rural Canada) suffered under the PMRC's de-facto censorship. Comics took it in the nuts when the ECC wouldn't really approve anything more daring than Archie, which led to the downfall of the medium (Frank Miller and Alan Moore gave it a bump not unlike hipsters have given a bump to vinyl - yes it exists, no it's not financially relevant).

If you wanna drag payment networks into it, Wikileaks and Paypal are your example. Again, there was nothing keeping Wikileaks from taking money, they just couldn't accept donations from the most obvious means. Shitty? Maybe. Hot button? Sure. But that wasn't Paypal taking a stand against secrets it was Paypal taking a stand against Julian Assange.

I had to put up with 2 Live Crew, freedom fighters, once in my life. You can't make me do it again.

    Yes, PornHub deserves to burn, but it only existed in a form as shitty as it was because of all the restrictions we impose on sex workers of all kinds.

No, it exists in that shitty form through regulatory arbitrage. There is no part of Pornhub's business model that exempts it from all the 2257 stuff that literally everyone else had to put up with but since they're on the Internet they were able to Uber their way through all the regulations.

I was there a the fucking beginning. People used to confuse me for Seth Warshavsky. I've worked fifteen years in the San Fernando Valley. Porn has never not attracted power-hungry scumbags who take advantage of and abuse women because power dynamics are a big part of sex and attraction. And I mean fuck - I'm just going to quote you in rapid succession:

    Yes, PornHub deserves to burn, but it only existed in a form as shitty as it was because of all the restrictions we impose on sex workers of all kinds.

...

    Imagine, however, if we just like ... decriminalized it and put in health and safety regulations like any other job?

The restrictions ARE the health and safety regulations. Warshavsky made women share fucking dildo cams. Didn't even clean 'em. Gave an entire floor of sex workers, who weren't allowed to go to the bathroom more than twice a day, gonorrhea. I'm sorry, sunshine, but if you don't inspect that it's gonna keep happening. And if you do inspect that you have to regulate it. And if you do regulate it, shit's gonna get shut down sometimes.

It is fucking hilarious to pretend that somehow nobody can make a living in porn because it's over-regulated or some shit but also pornhub is striking a blow for individual expression by paying 0.3 cents per view for revenge porn.

Maybe Visa coming down like a shithammer on PornHub is the system working. And maybe throwing out some dumb shit "social conservative" canard when we're talking about eighteen year olds addicted to meth and living in their car because they can't get away from the upskirt they sent the cute boy in 8th grade is

just

a little

too much.

    We'd have way fewer companies that are able to host child pornography because they're supported in the main by people who just want to get off. If you set the industry up like any other, it makes it much more difficult to traffic people, to film sell and distribute child pornography, to abuse actors, to engage in non-consensual acts.

This is fucking delusional. I can call up the city, pay $25 and get a permit to shoot in a park. Then I put up signs on the sidewalk saying "we're filming, walking through this entitles us to profit off your image" and I'm fucking done. People with their clothes on? It's reality television. People with their clothes off? Girls Gone Wild. Difference? Appearing in the background of Tiny House Nation has never cost anyone their livelihood.

There is nothing liberal, compassionate or woke about always defending pornographers. Just because James Dobson hates it doesn't mean it's good.