Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of Iheartrading.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noel.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben.
Speaker 4: We're joined as always with our super producer Max, the
Speaker 4: Free Train Williams. Most importantly, you are here. That makes
Speaker 4: this the stuff they don't want you to know. Fellow
Speaker 4: conspiracy realist. Tonight's episode is not pleasant. There's no two
Speaker 4: ways about it. It's a natural follow up to some
Speaker 4: of the previous explorations we've had on the nature of
Speaker 4: the Internet, technology and online communication. We've talked about this
Speaker 4: at length in the past. Base human tendencies tend to
Speaker 4: drive innovation. I mean, war, for example, almost always leads
Speaker 4: to tremendous scientific breakthroughs. But one thing we don't talk
Speaker 4: about as often is how it's a reciprocal relationship. You know,
Speaker 4: technology also exacerbates and affects those natural human tendencies. I mean,
Speaker 4: some scientific breakthroughs also lead to war. Is very much
Speaker 4: a two way street. We could say this about any tendency,
Speaker 4: including the human drive, for reproduction, for lust. From the
Speaker 4: early days of film to the rivalry of VHS and Betamax,
Speaker 4: sex has always been a great decider of technology. Do
Speaker 4: you guys remember hearing about the Beta Max VHS thing.
Speaker 5: Oh, I mean, yeah, I guess just in terms of
Speaker 5: like the battle for supremacy of format.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was ultimately the adult entertainment industry that decided that. Ultimately,
Speaker 4: the reason the reason VHS tapes ascended or VHS technology
Speaker 4: was because it was that that format the industry chose.
Speaker 4: And we're exploring a very dark and disturbing aspect of
Speaker 4: technology and sex. We need to say at the very top,
Speaker 4: this is important information. It is quite disturbing. This is
Speaker 4: not for everybody. Tonight's show contains descriptions of sexual material
Speaker 4: and abuse. However, we believe it is mission critical and
Speaker 4: as always, there is stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, we're just gonna do Let's do it this way.
Speaker 2: This episode is about porn. If you do not want
Speaker 2: to listen to an episode about porn, turn this one off.
Speaker 3: If you've got kids in their teen plus.
Speaker 2: Just you know, if this episode is just like rolling
Speaker 2: as you're listening, or you know, you've you're just continually
Speaker 2: playing episodes. This is the one, so turn it off
Speaker 2: if you don't want to listen to information about porn.
Speaker 3: Here are the facts.
Speaker 4: The Internet and sex have always been intertwined, kind of
Speaker 4: like lovers.
Speaker 3: You could say.
Speaker 4: You could check out our Dead Internet Theory episode for
Speaker 4: more on the origin of the modern Internet. You can
Speaker 4: get real deep in the weeds if you go to
Speaker 4: our pal Jonathan Strickland show Tech Stuff. But for our
Speaker 4: purposes today, we need to realize that at the beginning
Speaker 4: of the World Wide Web, very few people outside of
Speaker 4: maybe the military industrial complex and the tech world in academia,
Speaker 4: very few John and Jane Q public types realized how
Speaker 4: big this would be, that it would be an information
Speaker 4: revolution that would make it possible for a single person
Speaker 4: or group or government to communicate with billions of other
Speaker 4: entities near instantly. They also may not have realized it
Speaker 4: would become one of the horniest inventions in human history,
Speaker 4: but sex was an inherent piece of the equation early on.
Speaker 4: There's a person that we're leaning on a lot in
Speaker 4: Tonight's exploration Fantastic. Author and journalist Samantha Cole wrote a
Speaker 4: book called How Sex Changed the internet and the Internet
Speaker 4: changed sex and unexpected history. Cole delves into this narrative
Speaker 4: that I think is tacitly acknowledged but not widely expressed,
Speaker 4: and maybe this is how we get into it. I
Speaker 4: was not aware of this. Cole found through intense research
Speaker 4: that the first form of quote unquote pornography shared online
Speaker 4: was likely the equivalent of typing eight zero zero eight
Speaker 4: five on a calculator.
Speaker 3: Yeah boobbs, Yeah, sorry.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, but you can you can create pretty complex
Speaker 2: images with ASKI. It's just all the different characters that
Speaker 2: you can potentially type with a keyboard into a mah
Speaker 2: and you can create pictures.
Speaker 5: Yeah, by spacing things out and you know, distributing various
Speaker 5: characters in rows and columns, you know, over the course
Speaker 5: of a giant kind of block of this text. And honestly,
Speaker 5: it's kind of come back in a sort of you know,
Speaker 5: retro Internet kind of way. You know, the Internet loves
Speaker 5: to throw back, and you see these in meme form
Speaker 5: or in like text form. People will text you these
Speaker 5: things sometimes. I've definitely seen a resurgence in the sort
Speaker 5: of horny asky art of late.
Speaker 4: Ask you ar yeah, and this is this is a
Speaker 4: great point because if we think about it like digital graffiti,
Speaker 4: how some of the first written scripts or rooms where
Speaker 4: things like Vugner was here, then we see we see
Speaker 4: this pursuing the same kind of process. It only grew,
Speaker 4: as you said that in complexity over time. And Samantha
Speaker 4: Cole also points out that sex or that human impulse
Speaker 4: continues to drive innovation on the Internet. And so it
Speaker 4: might surprise I almost said some of us, but it
Speaker 4: might surprise no one to learn that some of the
Speaker 4: biggest most popular sites in the world today are straight
Speaker 4: up pornography. In porn Hub, by the way, is one
Speaker 4: of the number one things. It's I guess it's old
Speaker 4: for the Internet now, but in the grand scheme of things,
Speaker 4: it's very recent. It was launched on May twenty fifth,
Speaker 4: two thousand and seven, by a web developer and foosball
Speaker 4: legend by the way, named Matt Keezer. He created it
Speaker 4: as a website within a larger company called inter Hub,
Speaker 4: and there's a lot more history there. But the guys
Speaker 4: who ultimately the guys who founded the site brassers, which
Speaker 4: is kind of a pun. Once you get into the weeds,
Speaker 4: they it's a it's like pronouncing brothers with an accent.
Speaker 4: But they met via foosball, which I was not aware
Speaker 4: of it. You don't really equalize there, miss ball.
Speaker 5: Is there a certain form of nominative determinism in the
Speaker 5: name Keyser?
Speaker 3: It sure is close to skeezee? I don't know.
Speaker 5: It's neither here nor there, but yeah, I mean maybe
Speaker 5: this individual didn't have a full, you know, vision of
Speaker 5: where this would go. We're just trying to make a
Speaker 5: quick buck, but it certainly evolved or devolved should we say,
Speaker 5: into something entirely monstrous.
Speaker 4: One could argue, yeah, yeah, I'm tivoted to agree with
Speaker 4: you there in old because we could ask if Keyser
Speaker 4: was simply doing something that history would prove inevitable. Right,
Speaker 4: YouTube came to the forefront or YouTube launched in two
Speaker 4: thousand and five, and if you take the larger view
Speaker 4: of history, it seems statistically certain that a sex centric
Speaker 4: version of YouTube would follow. And that's what porn hub
Speaker 4: is slash was. Viewers would find adult content from a
Speaker 4: growing list of categories.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: These categories are based on any number of things. And then,
Speaker 4: in another like YouTube mimicry situation, you could, as a
Speaker 4: user choose to upload and share your own videos.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's go just go back a little bit
Speaker 2: just to consider some of the most popular websites for
Speaker 2: pornography prior to this tubing, if you will. They were
Speaker 2: paid for sites, many of them where you would watch
Speaker 2: videos that were created and uploaded by someone who was
Speaker 2: a porn producer, right, whether that's on the very high
Speaker 2: end or the very low end, in all the various.
Speaker 3: Categories and everything in between.
Speaker 2: Yes, there were also a lot of free sites you
Speaker 2: could go to that you would you would find a
Speaker 2: lot of the same content but just in a free way,
Speaker 2: or an older version of the same content that had
Speaker 2: been around for a long time, but you could access
Speaker 2: it for free now.
Speaker 5: And just to say too, like, prior to this, access
Speaker 5: to pornographic materials was pretty much limited to magazines that
Speaker 5: would be tucked away in a very specific siloed room
Speaker 5: in either magazine shops or bookshops or video shops or whatever,
Speaker 5: and there'd be cameras on it and like a whole
Speaker 5: little secret, skeezy kind of door that you had to
Speaker 5: go through. And stores or online retailers that would sell
Speaker 5: DVDs from companies like I guess, Vivid maybe or different
Speaker 5: ones Wicked. I think as was a really popular one.
Speaker 5: But I don't know if you guys were aware of this,
Speaker 5: but I mean those DVDs were really, really, really expensive,
Speaker 5: like sixty seventy dollars sometimes, So this is sort of
Speaker 5: like a great democratization of pornographic material.
Speaker 6: And you got alo.
Speaker 5: I wonder what those publishers felt about their very pricey
Speaker 5: intellectual property getting uploaded to these tube sites for free.
Speaker 3: They hated it. Yeah.
Speaker 4: New York Magazine has a great piece on this from
Speaker 4: twenty eleven by a journalist named Ben Wallace, and Wallace
Speaker 4: walks through this like, you know, you would also find
Speaker 4: VHS tapes before you would find like the DVDs, right,
Speaker 4: And so that move from physical media to online online accessibility.
Speaker 4: At first, it started, per Wallace, It started with the
Speaker 4: idea that it was relatively simple to build a website,
Speaker 4: and people would put up a web page that linked
Speaker 4: to other adult websites, and if you clicked on it,
Speaker 4: you would get thumbnails at first, right, and that computer
Speaker 4: virus yeah, Thumbnails and a computer virus, yeah, and you
Speaker 4: would be sites still had the Achilles Heel of online content,
Speaker 4: which is that they relied on ad revenue to.
Speaker 3: Make a profit.
Speaker 4: And then it evolved, as we're saying to these very quickly,
Speaker 4: it evolved to video content. In the summer of two
Speaker 4: thousand and six alone, three different sites launched that would
Speaker 4: things that would become kind of a triumvirate for a
Speaker 4: time of streaming pornography, Porno Tube, Red Tube, and u Porn,
Speaker 4: and they were flooded with free content. A lot to
Speaker 4: your point, Noel, a lot of the content on there
Speaker 4: was sometimes legally licensed for a very small amount of
Speaker 4: money because the old school production companies like Vivid Entertainment
Speaker 4: for instance, did not recognize how big the web would become.
Speaker 4: And then a lot more of it was pirated from
Speaker 4: those paid sites, those paywalt sites, and they just started saying, Okay,
Speaker 4: we're going to make our money by keeping users on
Speaker 4: the sites and clicking through banner ads, which is something
Speaker 4: that continues today. I mean, please check out Samantha Cole's
Speaker 4: book if you want to learn more. It is probably
Speaker 4: one of the best works on this evolution of the
Speaker 4: Internet and sex.
Speaker 5: And I'm just going to add, like now, I mean,
Speaker 5: there's so many mechanisms that are kind of codified for
Speaker 5: getting stuff taken down or filters or like bots that
Speaker 5: scan for you know, owned intellectual property, and you know,
Speaker 5: we'll automatically pull things down or temporarily pull things down
Speaker 5: until the poster can prove that they have the rights
Speaker 5: to the material. But back in these days, it was
Speaker 5: the wild West man and especially some of these less
Speaker 5: Internet savvy companies, they probably didn't even know the stuff
Speaker 5: was out there. They didn't even know they were having
Speaker 5: their lunch eaten by these new companies.
Speaker 4: Right Why possibly in New York magazine, just to put
Speaker 4: this part in New York Magazine. The reason that while
Speaker 4: this article is important is because it depicts exactly what
Speaker 4: Noel is describing earlier, which is the previous models of
Speaker 4: distribution of pornography. We're at av in the Adult Video
Speaker 4: that the Adult Industry Awards. They were at AVN and
Speaker 4: there were a lot of protests about what was happening,
Speaker 4: and they were saying, people are stealing our work. So
Speaker 4: they identified this early on, but a few years too late.
Speaker 2: I want to make some point here. I don't know
Speaker 2: if I can do it correctly, but let's just go here.
Speaker 2: Imagine the different specialized I was going to say kinks,
Speaker 2: but the things that people are into right genres.
Speaker 3: Let's say perhaps you know, I don't know, just.
Speaker 2: To make a point about what we were saying at
Speaker 2: the top, ben about how the Internet really changed the
Speaker 2: way this stuff functions. Because if you were back in
Speaker 2: the day interested in a specific thing, you would have
Speaker 2: to find that specific thing and you would go on
Speaker 2: a hunt, and it would not be easy to find
Speaker 2: let's just say, like bondage or something like that, right,
Speaker 2: you would have to go to a very specialized place
Speaker 2: probably to even find that content, like physical place to
Speaker 2: find that content.
Speaker 3: And then the.
Speaker 2: Way the Internet changed that is you they started using
Speaker 2: like meta tags, right, and stuff for search and revolutionized search.
Speaker 2: The stuff that you use now with Google or with
Speaker 2: you know, Duck dugo or whatever you search for, a
Speaker 2: lot of that was revolutionized through some of these sites
Speaker 2: in making these very distinct categories and tagging every piece
Speaker 2: of content and just making it a robust system rather
Speaker 2: than just a simple search for a couple keywords that
Speaker 2: are in you know, a title somewhere, like just putting
Speaker 2: that stuff deep within the content.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And there's an argument that could be made, sometimes
Speaker 4: perhaps by more conservative forces, that in doing that, in
Speaker 4: surfacing the availability or surfacing the prominence of that that
Speaker 4: these systems and we'll get into the data mining later,
Speaker 4: that these systems have radicalized or pushed people toward things
Speaker 4: that they may not have normally engaged in or even
Speaker 4: knew about, especially when we're considering underage users of the Internet.
Speaker 4: But the real trippy thing, and we're talking about this
Speaker 4: a bit off air, is when you go to and
Speaker 4: no judgment, folks, when you go to if you go
Speaker 4: to free pornography sites that you would just visit on
Speaker 4: the Internet very easily with a search engine of your choice,
Speaker 4: you will see what appears to be a panopoly of
Speaker 4: distinct brands and entities, but it is exactly like how
Speaker 4: when you walk through a grocery store, you'll see all
Speaker 4: these products advertised, like there are a million different varieties
Speaker 4: as cereal. Right, they appear to be separate, but in reality,
Speaker 4: the monopolization is still occurring. It occurs in every profitable industry,
Speaker 4: just like how one or two companies will own most
Speaker 4: of the cereal, one or two companies own most of
Speaker 4: those seemingly autonomous pornography sites. There's one company in particular
Speaker 4: that we're going to talk about, and that company, folks,
Speaker 4: has been party to some very evil things.
Speaker 2: And all they want to do is keep you on
Speaker 2: their sites forever.
Speaker 4: Evil things. We're going to pause for a word from
Speaker 4: our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. Back to pornhaw
Speaker 4: one of the most popular adult content sites out there.
Speaker 4: As of February of this year that we're recording twenty
Speaker 4: twenty four, is the thirteenth most visited website on the planet.
Speaker 4: And it makes me recall our earlier conversation about the
Speaker 4: dead Internet theory. I think was you Noel who said
Speaker 4: most people don't go to like destination websites. Things like
Speaker 4: porn hub are the exception. But it's only one facet
Speaker 4: of a much much larger enterprise, and it's a it's
Speaker 4: a twisted tale to figure out who owns porn Hub.
Speaker 5: It's interesting too, because at its heart, porn hub is
Speaker 5: an aggregator, but it's gotten to the point where it's
Speaker 5: so powerful that it's kind of aggregating all its own
Speaker 5: stuff right under the guise of different genres and labels
Speaker 5: and brands. But it's like, you know, the idea of
Speaker 5: ge owning all of the TV networks or NBC at
Speaker 5: the very least, you know, and you don't really think
Speaker 5: about that because you're thinking, oh, I'm watching this network
Speaker 5: and that's it's got its own distinct identity. But really,
Speaker 5: the hand inside the puppet has always been ge hmmmmm.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think that's a good comparison.
Speaker 3: We know that.
Speaker 4: We know just to get into this part with the
Speaker 4: ownership three card Monty the Matroshka dol structure of ownership. Here,
Speaker 4: after Matt Keezer and his foosball friends made porn Hub,
Speaker 4: the parent company inter Hub was purchased by a German
Speaker 4: national named Fabian Filman, who when he purchased it became
Speaker 4: part of what's called the Manvin or Manwan conglomerate, which
Speaker 4: was once called mind Geek. This reminds me of Blackwater,
Speaker 4: like how Akadema Blackwater became Xi became Akademi or whatever
Speaker 4: the order is.
Speaker 2: Well, it was called mind Geek till very recently.
Speaker 4: And now it's known as Alo Aylo. And we will
Speaker 4: get to the Alo's still not the top of the chain.
Speaker 4: We'll get to the real owner in this episode. The
Speaker 4: real owner is not Fabian. He was arrested for tax
Speaker 4: evasion at the end of twenty twelve. At that point
Speaker 4: he was making an estimated one hundred million dollars US
Speaker 4: per year from this empire. He paid a pretty hefty
Speaker 4: fine and then he got a suspended sentence, but he
Speaker 4: sold his stake in the company in twenty thirteen. And
Speaker 4: this is also I think he was a programmer as well.
Speaker 4: This is why it's different from some of these studios
Speaker 4: of old because to your earlier point that you may met,
Speaker 4: these sites have always taken a data intensive approach. That's
Speaker 4: how they they weapon you could say they weaponize algorithms
Speaker 4: to point to monitor everything about a user's interaction. Right,
Speaker 4: even if you think that incognito browser can save you.
Speaker 6: Sorry, can we.
Speaker 5: Just really quickly acknowledge that the name change from mind
Speaker 5: geek to our you joking man Win is for a
Speaker 5: porn empire is a little comical. I mean, I don't
Speaker 5: think that's necessarily what the word is intended, but the
Speaker 5: pun is inescapable.
Speaker 4: Man Win, jeez, they own a lot of things they also.
Speaker 4: I was surprised to find that by two thousand and nine,
Speaker 4: the company now going by alo or Ilo, they had
Speaker 4: an estimated one hundred million unique viewers in their three
Speaker 4: largest sites alone. For comparison, that's slightly less than one
Speaker 4: third of the entire population of the United States. Any
Speaker 4: other web company would kill for that, would literally murder
Speaker 4: for that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and let's get into that data just a little
Speaker 2: bit more here, because think about all of the social
Speaker 2: media companies that have algorithms that try and suggest things
Speaker 2: to you based on what you've watched in the past,
Speaker 2: how long you've watched those things, if you interact and comment,
Speaker 2: if you like, if you share that, all of that stuff,
Speaker 2: all of those actions and the tracking of you as
Speaker 2: a person, all goes back to this industry because again,
Speaker 2: all they wanted to do is keep you on their site,
Speaker 2: so they needed to know exactly what you like and
Speaker 2: what you click on and the you know, all of
Speaker 2: the terms associated with the content you're watching, and it
Speaker 2: all goes back to this.
Speaker 4: Agreed And to what degree was alos like YouTube responsible
Speaker 4: for content uploaded to these sites? That's one of the
Speaker 4: big questions. Are they functioning as just a public stomping ground.
Speaker 4: Do they bear any responsibility for what people are saying
Speaker 4: in that digital space? Also, who actually owned or owns it?
Speaker 3: We'll get to it.
Speaker 4: But naturally, there were industry concerns about piracy, which we
Speaker 4: mentioned earlier. But again, folks, here is the third disclaimor
Speaker 4: for this episode. This is the deep water. This is
Speaker 4: the disturbing stuff. You can turn back now, all right,
Speaker 4: the worst stuff there was. There are worse things on
Speaker 4: there than piracy. They are non consensual videos from hidden cameras,
Speaker 4: you know, dressing rooms and department stores.
Speaker 2: Or shoots that were arranged and agreed upon to look
Speaker 2: like in some form or fashion, but then things go differently.
Speaker 2: There's so many storyboard yeah.
Speaker 5: Well, but there are also but you know, because that
Speaker 5: is sort of a kink, there are also a lot
Speaker 5: of videos that just mimic that make the production look
Speaker 5: as though that's what you're seeing.
Speaker 3: But I'm not making apologizing for any of them.
Speaker 5: There are shoots that mimic that style, but it is
Speaker 5: consensual and it is a production. But then there is
Speaker 5: also the real deal.
Speaker 2: It makes it almost impossible to know the difference between
Speaker 2: one that is the problem to be that way and
Speaker 2: one that is actually that way.
Speaker 4: Yes, and then how does the casual user know the
Speaker 4: difference And to continue down the to continue down the
Speaker 4: litany of unclean things. There's also revenge pornography, which is
Speaker 4: non consensual revenge pornography is when someone, in an attempt
Speaker 4: to besmirch or humiliate or harass another person, they post
Speaker 4: sexually compromising content of that person without their consent. There's
Speaker 4: also documentation of sexual assault up to an including rape,
Speaker 4: depictions of child sexual abuse material. Please don't call it
Speaker 4: child pornography, folks, This quickly becomes an enormous issue. Journalists.
Speaker 4: Multiple journalists found intensely disturbing proof that the company, the
Speaker 4: Ultimate Owner Company, used various outlets, including porn Hub, to
Speaker 4: profit from what very much was non consensual content, content
Speaker 4: including sex trafficking. Samantha Cole, before she wrote the fantastic
Speaker 4: book we mentioned earlier, she wrote several articles for Vice
Speaker 4: and concluded in her investigations that Pornhub in particular profited
Speaker 4: from quote content that has destroyed lives and continues to
Speaker 4: do harm. Unfortunately, this was not just a single tragic example.
Speaker 4: There are numerous examples of this, as well as numerous lawsuits.
Speaker 5: Right and in January of twenty twenty one, there was
Speaker 5: a class action lawsuit that was filed in Montreal calling
Speaker 5: for anyone who had had pornographic photos or videos of
Speaker 5: them shared on Pornhub since two thousand and seven to
Speaker 5: come forward and be a party to this class.
Speaker 4: And then there was another infamous series of cases that
Speaker 4: involved what were called pornhub content partners, meaning there was
Speaker 4: an outside company that may have their own website but
Speaker 4: also widely distributed their content on these aggregators like you
Speaker 4: were saying no, And one of the most infamous is
Speaker 4: outfit called Girls Do Porn. It was a nasty, terrifying
Speaker 4: story of assault, sex trafficking, horrific exploitation. They would fly
Speaker 4: their victims out and essentially take them to the middle
Speaker 4: of nowhere, pressure them into agreeing to have sex acts recorded,
Speaker 4: and then they would lie to them actively about how
Speaker 4: they would say, okay, well, this video is only going
Speaker 4: to be distributed overseas to private collectors in places like
Speaker 4: Australia or New Zealand. And in every single case this
Speaker 4: was a premeditated falsehood. The producers, everyone involved except the
Speaker 4: victim knew they were lying, and they would later take
Speaker 4: this content that they had filmed and they would put
Speaker 4: it up on their own website, the Girls Do Porn website,
Speaker 4: and then they would put it on these other hubs
Speaker 4: like porn Hub, and they would millions of people would
Speaker 4: see this. The victims were getting docksed in the comments,
Speaker 4: identified by their full name, their location, et cetera. They
Speaker 4: were harassed at their jobs and their schools. Multiple women
Speaker 4: said the harassment reached the point where they contemplated suicide.
Speaker 4: Their lives were ruined, and when they were taken to
Speaker 4: those rooms, that does count as trafficking, when they were
Speaker 4: coerced into these acts.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, the pornography industry, if anyone you know,
Speaker 5: followed the history of it or seen films like Boogie
Speaker 5: Knights for example, certainly no stranger took acts of coercion,
Speaker 5: and you know, having underage people, maybe runaways, you know,
Speaker 5: taking advantage of people who are maybe on the skids.
Speaker 5: But the very least it had it did evolve into
Speaker 5: despite all of these problems and the problematic you know,
Speaker 5: origins of the industry, there was more agency in those
Speaker 5: days where at least, you know, you got paid. It
Speaker 5: was a form of sex work that was legal, you know,
Speaker 5: and and and you technically had protections, and you had
Speaker 5: a way to earn an income.
Speaker 3: And you were making this choice.
Speaker 5: With this advent of this kind of stuff, it's like
Speaker 5: you're adding all of the worst parts of the Internet,
Speaker 5: the piracy, the removing that agency, and just absolutely victimizing
Speaker 5: individuals and in a much more egregious one could argue,
Speaker 5: way than what the you know, video porn industry was
Speaker 5: like in the sixties and seventies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and just to get into some of this coercion
Speaker 2: and just how awful this is, I want to give
Speaker 2: a quick example here from the New Yorker's piece the
Speaker 2: Fight to hold porn Hub Accountable. It was written June thirteenth,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two. This is This is a little excerpt
Speaker 2: from the article. It's about a woman named Rachel, who
Speaker 2: as a child when she began to be coerced by
Speaker 2: some unknown person that had a lot of personal information
Speaker 2: about her and convinced her that for her own safety,
Speaker 2: she had to start taking pictures of herself and videos
Speaker 2: of herself doing things. She was fifteen years old when
Speaker 2: this started happening. I'm gonna just read a bit of this, guys.
Speaker 4: And this is by Sheila Kolhatakar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's correct. Says Rachel stopped sleeping and spent her
Speaker 2: days and nights searching for the videos. At this point,
Speaker 2: she videos of her that she was taking and sending
Speaker 2: to whoever this person was. They've showed up on pornhub,
Speaker 2: and then they start going wide everywhere to all the
Speaker 2: porn sites, and she cannot take them down, so she's
Speaker 2: trying to figure it out.
Speaker 3: So here it is.
Speaker 2: She's spending her days and nights searching for these videos,
Speaker 2: filling out dozens of removal requests, saying things like quote, Hi,
Speaker 2: I'm underage and I had many videos and photos posted
Speaker 2: me on here. This is in December twenty eighteen, writing
Speaker 2: to pornhub. Keep getting re uploaded onto this site. I'm
Speaker 2: only fifteen in them, and I don't have the links.
Speaker 2: I don't know what to do because every time I
Speaker 2: get them removed, you keep allowing them to be uploaded,
Speaker 2: and it's ruining my life. Porn humb responded to her,
Speaker 2: asked for a link to each video, the username of
Speaker 2: the accounts that were used to suploaded it, the title
Speaker 2: of the video, and the file, the screenshots of the page.
Speaker 2: Rachel went through and would spend like on a nightly routine,
Speaker 2: send all of this information every time she could find one,
Speaker 2: trying to get them taken down. But then videos would
Speaker 2: sometimes get taken down, but not often, but they would
Speaker 2: be uploaded in just a modified clip, so it's not
Speaker 2: the same content that can be tracked and deleted again, right, so.
Speaker 4: The scraper can't find it, Yeah, exact, which is the
Speaker 4: same strategy used in YouTube piracy.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But somebody out there at this time is just doing it,
Speaker 2: is just continually trying to get this content online and
Speaker 2: profiting from its.
Speaker 5: Or it's become popular content at this point, Yeah, is
Speaker 5: being uploaded by others who have you know what I mean? Right,
Speaker 5: that then it's impact with the things that are being
Speaker 5: asked of this young woman. Impossible, These are impossible to do,
Speaker 5: and you're basically putting the burden on the victim.
Speaker 4: Yes, Yeah, which is very a very American strategy with business.
Speaker 4: But this is as we'll find, this is not an
Speaker 4: American based company. But there's also I'm glad you pointed
Speaker 4: out that article in the New Yorker, which we'll go
Speaker 4: back to as well, because it is a must read piece.
Speaker 4: We see here a very dark version of what is
Speaker 4: sometimes colloquially referred to as the streisand effect. Right, and
Speaker 4: this this continues to go back to the Girls Do
Speaker 4: Poorn owners. In twenty nineteen, they were found guilty of intimidating,
Speaker 4: encoursing twenty two women into having sex on camera, and
Speaker 4: lying to them. In December of twenty twenty, forty victims
Speaker 4: filed a lawsuit against mind geek for a cavalcade of accusations,
Speaker 4: including they said, you knew that your content partners were
Speaker 4: up to these evil things, and you failed to moderate
Speaker 4: the content circulating rampantly. Unfortunately, that child's story is not unique.
Speaker 4: The lawsuit expanded to include fifty plaintiffs. It demanded more
Speaker 4: than forty million in damages as well, in addition to
Speaker 4: the money that a Loo or mind geek at the
Speaker 4: time earned from hosting and promoting those videos. And October
Speaker 4: of twenty twenty one, those victims reached a settlement with
Speaker 4: the parent company, and the company reacted. They said they
Speaker 4: no longer post content without first passing it through human
Speaker 4: and automated moderation.
Speaker 3: They also said, if.
Speaker 4: You flag a v video, it is automatically disabled until
Speaker 4: there's a review. And they said, since twenty twenty, we've
Speaker 4: begun requiring users who upload content to provide a government
Speaker 4: issued ID in order to be an uploader. However, there
Speaker 4: are more and more examples that seem First off, that
Speaker 4: is nice in theory, but is it actually deployed in practice.
Speaker 4: And then secondly the removal is not as clear cut
Speaker 4: as it should be. I mean, this takes us to
Speaker 4: another underage case legist. Also consider the case of Rose Klemba,
Speaker 4: who was assaulted by a group of men habitual sexual
Speaker 4: predators when she was only fourteen years old. These men
Speaker 4: who very much were premeditated, you know, they threatened to
Speaker 4: murder her and she told anybody about this harrowing assault.
Speaker 4: And then they also this is per her own description,
Speaker 4: they took out a laptop and showed her videos that
Speaker 4: they had taken of attacks on other victims. Fast forward,
Speaker 4: she survives and by the way, the first law enforcement
Speaker 4: officer she speaks with when she's been stabbed and beaten
Speaker 4: and repeatedly assaulted, the first law enforcement officer asked her
Speaker 4: if it started as a consensual interaction.
Speaker 3: Yeah, break I know.
Speaker 4: And a few months later she survives, thankfully. She is
Speaker 4: browsing MySpace. She finds people from her school classmates sharing
Speaker 4: a link and tagging her in it, and when she
Speaker 4: clicks on it, she's directed to pornhub. You can read
Speaker 4: read a full interview with her speaking with the British
Speaker 4: broadcasting service where she recalls the title and it's important
Speaker 4: to hear it her quote in her words, the titles
Speaker 4: of the videos were things like teen crying and getting
Speaker 4: slapped around, Team getting destroyed or passed out Team one
Speaker 4: of the mat over four hundred thousand.
Speaker 5: Viewers, and I have to say, like, as a parent,
Speaker 5: it's become it's been a little bit of a co
Speaker 5: almost a culture shock to realize how much my kid
Speaker 5: is aware of at fifteen, and how much you know,
Speaker 5: kids in their cohort are aware of.
Speaker 3: And I mean it makes sense.
Speaker 5: It's maybe me having fooled myself into thinking that my
Speaker 5: kid was still like innocent my kids, it's a good kid,
Speaker 5: not a bully, but is bullied and there is this
Speaker 5: kind of bullying and fourteen thirteen, fourteen, fifteen year olds
Speaker 5: can be really really cruel and horrible and mean and
Speaker 5: share this kind of stuff without thinking about who is
Speaker 5: being victimized here and just treating it as a way
Speaker 5: of like punking somebody on the internet, you know, as
Speaker 5: opposed to realizing that this person is who is of
Speaker 5: my same age, needs help, and instead we're using this
Speaker 5: as an opportunity to humiliate them that is real, and
Speaker 5: it's it's terrifying and I'm, you know, again not saying
Speaker 5: I'm so special my kid does not someone would ever
Speaker 5: do that, but there are definitely people in that age
Speaker 5: group that to this day would still do something like that.
Speaker 3: It's horrible, guys.
Speaker 2: Should we talk about some of the I don't know.
Speaker 2: There's another dark side to it here, where it's an
Speaker 2: individual who makes the decision to try and make some
Speaker 2: money with their body because they can, and they're pretty
Speaker 2: desperate and they they need income, so they try to
Speaker 2: become let's say, a lingerie model or something like that
Speaker 2: for an extra two hundred, three hundred pounds or whatever.
Speaker 2: If you're I'm thinking of a specific case in London
Speaker 2: where you know, I need to make rent and I
Speaker 2: need to help I need to make sure my kid
Speaker 2: has food and all this stuff. So I'm gonna do this.
Speaker 2: And the thing that can occur to read from, well,
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna read from, but I'm going to reference
Speaker 2: an article that's on this website called Exodus cry e
Speaker 2: xo d us cry dot com.
Speaker 3: It is.
Speaker 2: It is an American Christian based nonprofit organization that's got
Speaker 2: some pretty like interesting ideas about like ending porn pretty
Speaker 2: much and in all sex trafficking, and it's actually it's
Speaker 2: kind of cool, but it's also I don't know, it
Speaker 2: just depends, right, depending on how you feel about some
Speaker 2: of the stuff. It's a little out there, but they
Speaker 2: allow for individuals to give their story. This is how
Speaker 2: I ended up in a porn video. And there's one
Speaker 2: you can find right now. It's called I was trafficked
Speaker 2: into the porn industry as a desperate single mom. And
Speaker 2: it just goes through the process that can occur where
Speaker 2: you begin down this road and you're able to make
Speaker 2: some extra income, right, and it's good, but the quote
Speaker 2: producers of this stuff exploit an individual because, as as
Speaker 2: this person says, there's always another person who's willing to
Speaker 2: do it. If you aren't willing to do it, so
Speaker 2: you won't get paid and you won't make rent this
Speaker 2: month or whatever if you don't do this increasingly more
Speaker 2: intense or maybe horrific thing on camera for us, like.
Speaker 4: The Order of Nine angles the kind of coercion exactly.
Speaker 2: And she describes a moment where she goes to set,
Speaker 2: she doesn't know what the scene is going to be,
Speaker 2: and then she is told what the scene is going
Speaker 2: to be. She has given drugs and alcohol so that
Speaker 2: she can quote get through it, and it ends up
Speaker 2: being twenty five individual males that she has to have
Speaker 2: sex with on camera and she passes out.
Speaker 3: It's horrible.
Speaker 2: It's a horrific experience, and she attempts to get out
Speaker 2: of it, but it's it's very difficult once you're inside
Speaker 2: this thing because these people, these individuals, these again producers
Speaker 2: and the people who work with know who you are
Speaker 2: and know where you live. And it can be extremely
Speaker 2: scary and horrific even if you're doing it, even if
Speaker 2: you are choosing to do it.
Speaker 4: Right, because you don't have informed consent, if you don't
Speaker 4: know what you're agreeing to. And that's where these that's
Speaker 4: one of the realms of which these predatory forces operate.
Speaker 5: They're always moving the goalposts too right. You might agree
Speaker 5: to one thing, but then there's this adherent escalation that
Speaker 5: isn't under your control, and then you're manipulated by these
Speaker 5: individuals and yeah, dare we say threatens.
Speaker 4: The monsters always seek to erode agency. The rampant depictions
Speaker 4: of abuse continue. The Internet Watch Foundation, a great nonprofit,
Speaker 4: found one hundred and eighteen instances of child sexual abuse
Speaker 4: on just Born Up just one site of many owned
Speaker 4: by a single company, and that was only between twenty
Speaker 4: seventeen and twenty nineteen. Again, this started ten years before
Speaker 4: twenty seventeen. It continues today. And then there were reactions
Speaker 4: as this increasingly entered the public sphere. MasterCard and visa
Speaker 4: to big financial credit card companies, they suspended use of
Speaker 4: their cards on the site porn Hub in December twenty twenty.
Speaker 4: In I'd like to go back to that June twenty
Speaker 4: twenty two New Yorker article which really brought this to
Speaker 4: brought this to the mind of the public. More so,
Speaker 4: they had an investigation into the ongoing of use. They
Speaker 4: interviewed several women, one of whom we mentioned, who discovered
Speaker 4: videos and pictures of themselves on porn Hub. They did
Speaker 4: not ever consent to sharing this material in several situations,
Speaker 4: they did not consent to being filmed. They did not
Speaker 4: even consent to the acts that occurred. These were crimes,
Speaker 4: These were criminal acts, and they would now in the
Speaker 4: midst of surviving these horrific things, they would have to
Speaker 4: ask this website that was making money off the crimes
Speaker 4: to remove the material. In just a few days after
Speaker 4: that publication in The New Yorker, the CEO and COO
Speaker 4: of Mind Geek resigned from their positions. I don't think
Speaker 4: we mentioned these guys earlier, Ferris Antoon, the CEO, and
Speaker 4: David Tassilo, the COOO, that's chief executive and chief operations officer.
Speaker 4: They also claimed the resignations were not due to this
Speaker 4: report in The New Yorker, and as far as we
Speaker 4: can tell, they remain shareholders today, so they are getting
Speaker 4: passive income off of these acts.
Speaker 3: Of course they are.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And as we record this episode right now, and
Speaker 5: most likely as you are listening along at home across
Speaker 5: the globe, this type of abuse is ongoing. It continues,
Speaker 5: and depictions of it are going to find their way
Speaker 5: into various other parts of the Internet. We know how
Speaker 5: difficult it is for legislation to stay in step with
Speaker 5: exponentially changing digital landscapes and technology. So you know, while
Speaker 5: there may be the best intentions of lawmakers to keep
Speaker 5: this stuff under wraps, just as soon as the law
Speaker 5: has passed, a loophole is found.
Speaker 4: It's like a sick game of whack a mole, Whack
Speaker 4: moist against a hydra of old myth. You stop one monster,
Speaker 4: and then it seems two more spring up in its place.
Speaker 4: Because stronger the Internet wants stuff on it, right, it
Speaker 4: wants people to stay on it. It wants to create things.
Speaker 4: It's very easy to create a website. It's very easy
Speaker 4: to create or upload or distribute content. It is much
Speaker 4: much more difficult to remove that, to scrub that. And
Speaker 4: this is something that is being leveraged by predators around
Speaker 4: the world. I mean, we're talking a little bit US centric.
Speaker 3: But to.
Speaker 4: Answer the question we asked a couple times at the
Speaker 4: beginning here, we have to travel outside of the US
Speaker 4: to learn the true owners of Pornhub, which became mind geek,
Speaker 4: which became a low which is owned by someone else. Today,
Speaker 4: I suggest we pause for a word from our sponsors. Okay,
Speaker 4: this is an evil version of that old Saturday Night
Speaker 4: Live cartoon about how few media companies actually control the media.
Speaker 4: You see Pornhub and its parent company, which owns so
Speaker 4: so many things. We can even give you a full list.
Speaker 4: Idiots do that quick.
Speaker 2: Just a gives appeal. Their premium pay sites include Brassers,
Speaker 2: Reality Kings, Digital Playground, twistismofosmen dot com reality dudes in
Speaker 2: seancody dot com. Their video sharing platforms include Pornhub, U,
Speaker 2: porn Red Tube, and Tube eight. They have marketplaces called
Speaker 2: my Dirty Hobby and uv O uv Io. They also
Speaker 2: have gaming and application companies guys called Nataku and Uta
Speaker 2: k U. They also own two advertising networks that then
Speaker 2: work through all of those sites to sell those ads. Right,
Speaker 2: there's Traffic Junkie and Adult Force, and that's just getting started.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and Pornhub, which is again just one of the
Speaker 4: things owned by a low all of a low. The entire,
Speaker 4: the entire umbrella of these corporate possessions is now owned
Speaker 4: by another company that most people haven't heard of. I
Speaker 4: think it's fair to say we had not heard of
Speaker 4: this until we began researching, researching these crimes. That company's
Speaker 4: name is Ethical Capital Partners. They acquired a LOO for
Speaker 4: an undisclosed sum in March of twenty twenty three. And
Speaker 4: what do we say about innocuous names?
Speaker 3: Oh boy again.
Speaker 4: And initially ECP, which we'll call them for the sake
Speaker 4: of convenience, they refused to disclose their owners, their stakeholders.
Speaker 4: You can find the board, but they initially refused to
Speaker 4: say anything about this due to the stigma of their purchase,
Speaker 4: which happened after many of the lawsuits that we just described.
Speaker 4: Now you can go to their website. You can easily
Speaker 4: find a list of the management team online. But the
Speaker 4: management team is not necessarily the same thing as the profiteers. Right,
Speaker 4: they are getting paid to be there, but they're not
Speaker 4: what we will call the majority stakeholders to find to
Speaker 4: find the big fish in that when we have to
Speaker 4: travel to Austria. Oh, it's confusing because Ethical Capital Partners
Speaker 4: is and it's various subsidiaries. They're based in Luxembourg, but
Speaker 4: the owner doesn't live in Luxembourg. Let's learn a little
Speaker 4: bit more about this guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's just I just want to give a couple
Speaker 2: piece of info here, ECP that Ethical Capital Partners announced
Speaker 2: that they, as you said, Ben, they announced that they
Speaker 2: acquired mind Geek back in March of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: So it is like, right after all of the heat
Speaker 2: had just happened, right, So then this company called Ethical
Speaker 2: Capital Partners runs through to be like, hey, we got
Speaker 2: this guys, We're going to make sure everything's good from
Speaker 2: now on, you know, And it sounds that way, right,
Speaker 2: it's the story that's being told here.
Speaker 5: Certainly in the statement they release, Yeah, a question disclosed
Speaker 5: amount that it was acquired for, right, Like, I would
Speaker 5: imagine that means it was a massive amount.
Speaker 6: But isn't there shouldn't there be a way to find
Speaker 6: things like that.
Speaker 5: The filings, Like can you can you do an acquisition
Speaker 5: like this and have.
Speaker 6: It be a complete and utter mystery to the public.
Speaker 3: How much money?
Speaker 2: It's a private company?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it's a private company. It also at this
Speaker 4: point going across conventional geopolitical borders, so you can use
Speaker 4: whichever set of laws is most convenient to you. A
Speaker 4: microcosm of that is is why so many companies in
Speaker 4: the US are based in Delaware unreasonably or maybe in
Speaker 4: the Caribbean or other I guess you can also see
Speaker 4: tax advantages being another thing weaponized. But the the issue too,
Speaker 4: is not just the international borders, right because the Internet
Speaker 4: has rendered some of those borders relevant in legal terms
Speaker 4: or actionable legal terms. The issue is also the many, many,
Speaker 4: many shell companies and proxies between the actual owner and
Speaker 4: the purported owners, or the management or the infantry on
Speaker 4: the ground, or the boardroom. The way it works, which
Speaker 4: I don't know if we have time to fully get
Speaker 4: into it, but the way these things work in general
Speaker 4: is you, as a business tycoon, you don't directly purchase
Speaker 4: the thing you want to purchase. What you have instead
Speaker 4: are ideally is at least one, but ideally many more
Speaker 4: than one different companies, and you have a controlling stake
Speaker 4: in those companies. You're a majority stakeholder in that, whether
Speaker 4: that's fifty one percent or just like you are the
Speaker 4: single largest percentage shareholder. Then you have those companies get together,
Speaker 4: maybe even form another company or another group of shells,
Speaker 4: and you have them purchased the thing you want. And
Speaker 4: so in a way, you are paying a little bit
Speaker 4: of a vigoroush to all those other stakeholders for that activity, right,
Speaker 4: and they're getting kickbacks, And then you are able to
Speaker 4: hide your hand. Now you are unseen, but the Czechs
Speaker 4: still arrive, the profit still still arrives. And if you
Speaker 4: are not dare I say, an ethical capital partner, then
Speaker 4: you have nothing to worry about until the law comes knocking.
Speaker 4: Does that seem like a reasonable explanation.
Speaker 2: Well what if you think yes? But what if you
Speaker 2: founded ethical Capital Partners and your name is Roco Milliambro.
Speaker 2: This is not somebody we were going to talk about,
Speaker 2: but this is one of the primary people at ECP,
Speaker 2: the company that acquired Ilo Slash mind Geek. And this
Speaker 2: dude is one of Canada's biggest cannabis rea tailors. He
Speaker 2: has an empire that was just acquired by another or
Speaker 2: I guess merged with another of the largest cannabis retailers.
Speaker 2: And it's very interesting if you look at this guy's investments,
Speaker 2: which include mining, like gold mining somebody like that, that
Speaker 2: just has all of these companies that go out and
Speaker 2: do these massive things. The way you were describing it, Ben.
Speaker 5: That's just called diversification though, right, And I mean from
Speaker 5: the perspective of a business business person. And isn't it
Speaker 5: interesting how those like even things like cannabis which are
Speaker 5: now legal and then these types of you know, I guess,
Speaker 5: sex selling, sex whatever in whatever form we're talking about
Speaker 5: on paper being legal that once was sort of the
Speaker 5: realm of someone like a pimp or a drug lord
Speaker 5: or you know, someone in the Old West who maybe
Speaker 5: had a tavern that also ran gambling and games and prostitution.
Speaker 5: You know, this is now something that is the realm
Speaker 5: of the legitimate businessman.
Speaker 4: And these folks again are to my horm I like
Speaker 4: the description of infantry on the ground in the boardroom.
Speaker 4: That's not necessarily the general, that's not necessarily the officer level,
Speaker 4: even though they're corporate officers. Let's travel over to Austria
Speaker 4: and meet the guy who was working so ardently for
Speaker 4: his identity to be obscured.
Speaker 2: Oh, this is a weird one. There's a whole video
Speaker 2: you can find that Vice News produced in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: one titled who is the Secret Owner of porn Hub.
Speaker 2: It's a weird video because the people who made it
Speaker 2: kind of track this person down. This this person named well,
Speaker 2: I guess should we give the name yeah Burned b
Speaker 2: e r n d Berg mayor b e r G
Speaker 2: m ai R. This is one of the majority owners.
Speaker 2: This is a person who ran in mind geek for
Speaker 2: a long time. This is a very fascinating character who's
Speaker 2: extremely elusive, and this Vice News video finds him in London,
Speaker 2: of all places, by tracking down his girlfriend and her
Speaker 2: Instagram page and then her like I think she had
Speaker 2: a blog or something, and that's how they found him.
Speaker 2: But this guy just kind of stays out of the limelight.
Speaker 2: The creators of that video from Vice News don't get
Speaker 2: any new information or anything. They just kind of track
Speaker 2: him down, which is honestly a bit weird.
Speaker 3: Guys.
Speaker 5: I can't help I mentioned the thing earlier about how like,
Speaker 5: you know, what once was in the realm of like vice,
Speaker 5: you know, lords or whatever, you know, gambling and drugs
Speaker 5: and sex work and all of that has now kind
Speaker 5: of become in the realm of like legitimate business. I
Speaker 5: can't help but see parallels with what you're describing, Matt,
Speaker 5: and this corporate structure of shell companies and all leading
Speaker 5: down to this one man to the whole arrangement and
Speaker 5: the TV show Breaking Bad Madrigal, and like the giant
Speaker 5: web of German run corporations that are diverse at everything
Speaker 5: from fast food to you know, whatever else it might be.
Speaker 5: And also hiding in there in between the lines is
Speaker 5: a meth you know, empire. And I'm not saying what
Speaker 5: porn ib is doing is that, but they are breaking
Speaker 5: the law. And it all is kind of whether at
Speaker 5: the behest, but at the very least under a structure
Speaker 5: governed by quote unquote legitimate business people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, people you know, you're right, people who have in
Speaker 2: intense investment across the board.
Speaker 4: I don't.
Speaker 3: Don't.
Speaker 2: It's very weird. And again, if you look at Ethical
Speaker 2: Capital Partners website, they specifically say we focus on investment
Speaker 2: with companies and in sectors that require extreme ethical guidance
Speaker 2: right and making making well, I mean making decisions like
Speaker 2: if you think about the stuff that that guy I
Speaker 2: was talking about earlier invests in cannabis, you need some
Speaker 2: ethics there when it comes to how it's produced, how
Speaker 2: it's distributed, who it gets distributed to, in the laws
Speaker 2: that you have to navigate with that stuff. Mining, the
Speaker 2: mining industry and gold mining, especially depending on the country
Speaker 2: that you're operating, right, those mining operations, there's all kinds
Speaker 2: of issues, especially if you look at mining that's occurring
Speaker 2: on the African continent and what was the other one.
Speaker 2: There's another one in there, Oh yeah, porn, porn. Yeah.
Speaker 5: But I'm just saying, I mean, isn't that sort of laughable,
Speaker 5: Like they're saying, we are the arbiters of making sure
Speaker 5: that these businesses are run at the utmost ethical levels
Speaker 5: because there's potential for abuse.
Speaker 6: Is that sort of what I'm seeing here?
Speaker 4: Ministry of Truth, Department of Defense, be careful with innocuous names,
Speaker 4: and perhaps transparency and accountability will keep past, present, and
Speaker 4: future victims safe from this dirty, dirty industry. But as
Speaker 4: anybody on the Internet can tell you, it is incredibly
Speaker 4: easy to find adult content online. They're very let's be honest,
Speaker 4: they're virtually no users online under the age of eighteen
Speaker 4: who se a click yes or click now I'm ating
Speaker 4: contact no one. That's that's not a turnback here moment
Speaker 4: for a lot of people.
Speaker 5: Porn hubb is it a legal defense though, Ben, I
Speaker 5: always wonder that it's a cat like you said, oh,
Speaker 5: they clicked that they were eighteen. Therefore we are absolved,
Speaker 5: you know, of any underage you quota users on our pages.
Speaker 3: It just seems laughable to me, is it just is like, yeah,
Speaker 3: it is laughable.
Speaker 4: I mean, and you know, as a result of all
Speaker 4: these factors we're describing, porn Hub in particular, remains one
Speaker 4: of the world's most popular websites again, number thirteen across
Speaker 4: the globe, over eight billion people almost put it in
Speaker 4: the top ten.
Speaker 2: One hundred million, one hundred and fifty million active users daily.
Speaker 4: And those are unique users as well. If you've been
Speaker 4: the target of non consensual pornography or content like this,
Speaker 4: you are far from alone. As many as one in
Speaker 4: twenty five people in the United States, just the US,
Speaker 4: have had a private image or video of themselves shared
Speaker 4: without their consent. It is statistically certain that some of
Speaker 4: us listening along tonight have an unfortunate firsthand experience with this,
Speaker 4: and we do want to hear from you. There is
Speaker 4: a bit of good news, at least in the case
Speaker 4: of porn Hub.
Speaker 1: They have.
Speaker 4: They have a templatized content removal form through which you
Speaker 4: can get specific videos removed from the site. But again
Speaker 4: those are specific videos, and that is a legislative reaction,
Speaker 4: not a proactive move. So those videos again, like these
Speaker 4: unfortunate innocent children, those videos keep cropping up, and you know,
Speaker 4: I think about.
Speaker 2: Rachel's problem that have that we just talked about.
Speaker 4: Think about Roses problem. You know, those are very similar cases.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, but a fifteen year old, a fifteen year
Speaker 2: old who's now fourteen year old, Yeah, who has content
Speaker 2: on there that uploads and pornub gets it removed or that, right,
Speaker 2: But they are not stopping the human being that has
Speaker 2: that content, that uploaded it. In the first place that
Speaker 2: person can then turn around and upload it to any
Speaker 2: other site, any other site, because porn ub started a
Speaker 2: trend of all of these other outlets.
Speaker 5: We haven't really talked about this at all, and maybe
Speaker 5: this is you know, beside the point, but I will
Speaker 5: say I think there is something positive about user owned
Speaker 5: and operated distribution methods, like something more resembling an only
Speaker 5: fan situation, where individuals are putting up content at their
Speaker 5: own behests. They're the ones getting paid directly. They have
Speaker 5: users subscribing directly to them. It's also a lot harder
Speaker 5: for that stuff to get ripped and uploaded without these
Speaker 5: individuals consent. A lot of them have you know, watermarks
Speaker 5: or whatever it might be in their easier methods for
Speaker 5: getting that stuff pulled down.
Speaker 3: And oh, well, that's exactly right.
Speaker 5: I'm not saying any of the stuff is perfect, but
Speaker 5: I'm just saying, there are you know, alternatives to this
Speaker 5: hive of scum and villainy model. And I think, you know, Ben,
Speaker 5: you can put it right here in the outline, and
Speaker 5: it's absolutely true. We are all very sex positive individuals.
Speaker 5: It wouldn't begrudge anybody, uh you know, agency of their
Speaker 5: own body and choosing to do this kind of stuff
Speaker 5: if it is in fact at their own behests and
Speaker 5: and uh and and using it as a means of
Speaker 5: having comfort and and income.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're not. We're not.
Speaker 4: We're not the arbiters uh of your personal preferences, so
Speaker 4: long as everyone involved is legally consenting, so long as
Speaker 4: no one is being harmed. But we have to understand,
Speaker 4: as long as there is this enormous, this gargantua and
Speaker 4: gigantic profit motive at play, these things will happen. Unclean
Speaker 4: things will occur. We also have to understand that humanity
Speaker 4: as a whole does not yet fully comprehend nor control
Speaker 4: what can happen online.
Speaker 3: And you know, if.
Speaker 4: You're a casual observer, these may be nothing more than ephemeral,
Speaker 4: momentary pixels that you view on a screen.
Speaker 3: But those pixels, those.
Speaker 4: The acts have real world consequences and time and time again,
Speaker 4: that seems to be something these companies and their owners
Speaker 4: do not want you to know. We talked a little
Speaker 4: bit off air. This may be this may be the
Speaker 4: first part of a series. Because I'm sure the three
Speaker 4: of us can agree there's a lot we did not
Speaker 4: get to.
Speaker 2: We didn't talk about how it's changed the way we think,
Speaker 2: the way porn makes us think about sexual encounters and
Speaker 2: intimacy and like what that looks like. I mean, really,
Speaker 2: just as humans, as humanity, this stuff has altered us fundamentally.
Speaker 2: And I'm I'm not coming out against porn or something
Speaker 2: because whatever, it's just that's a whole other topic.
Speaker 5: But it's also been evolving since the advent of the internet,
Speaker 5: like to the early points at the beginning of the episode,
Speaker 5: like technology, as long as there's been technology, someone's figured
Speaker 5: out how to do something horny with it, like you know,
Speaker 5: from the earliest cave paintings and drawing people were drawing
Speaker 5: people in sexual you know, situations, and speaking about the
Speaker 5: algorithm and the way it has created this kind of
Speaker 5: I don't know, mind rot, I guess as the kids
Speaker 5: call it, around content creation and around pornography and intimacy
Speaker 5: and just the way we see the world. I just
Speaker 5: this is a great OPPORTAI just want to really quickly
Speaker 5: read a quote from Brian Eno, who's a thinker, technologist,
Speaker 5: music guy. He says, algorithms are not transparent. They're not
Speaker 5: like screwdrivers or something like that. They have a personality.
Speaker 5: They have a direction, and coded into them is a worldview.
Speaker 5: And if the worldview encoded of them as a sort
Speaker 5: of libertarian, capitalist, individualistic worldview, that's where we will end up.
Speaker 5: And not being dramatic and the saying that we've seen
Speaker 5: it happen with social media. Social media could have run
Speaker 5: with different algorithms. It could have been a different world
Speaker 5: and I think that applies to pornography as well.
Speaker 4: Let us know your experiences, folks, Thank you so much
Speaker 4: for tuning in. Be safe and talk to us directly.
Speaker 4: We try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 5: We exist at the handle conspiracy stuff on YouTube. We
Speaker 5: have video content rolling out every single week very pg
Speaker 5: and also on Facebook and also on x fka, Twitter,
Speaker 5: on Instagram and TikTok. We are conspiracy stuff show bo.
Speaker 6: Wait there's more.
Speaker 2: Call one eight three three STDWYTK. When you call in,
Speaker 2: give yourself a cool nickname and let us know if
Speaker 2: we can use your name and message on the air.
Speaker 2: If you got more to say they could fit in
Speaker 2: that three minute voicemail, why not instead send us a
Speaker 2: good old fashioned email.
Speaker 4: We are the folks who read every single email. We
Speaker 4: get no character limit, no limit on, no limit on
Speaker 4: the links you want to send us. Speak your mind,
Speaker 4: speak it true. The same rules from the voicemail apply
Speaker 4: as well. We keep your safety and anonymity paramount.
Speaker 3: Folks.
Speaker 4: We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff they don't want you to know. Is a production
Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.