The END of PornHub as we know it!

[Vaugemind727]

I emailed support about a refund for my sub and they stated that they were trying to "get the site back to normal".

[book_guy]

As far as the new situation.

Spoiler: show

Sounds like PH is probably under investigation from higher authorities, is what I think. The Youtube-like nature of it, previously, didn't necessarily make it any more or less nasty than any other porn site. It's PORN fer chrissakes. (LOL, one of the comments in that NY Times opinion piece says that PH tries to market itself as the "cheery face" of smut ... obviously another article-for-scare in which the author feels free to make assumptions which just can't be denied, like all the other porn-bashing and escort-bashing and strip-club-bashing articles that come out written by someone who hasn't ever written about the adult industries ever before and therefore is quite comfortable working only within puritanical anti-adult-industry assumptions.)

As far as refunds.

Spoiler: show

Well, if you're willing to inform strangers about your past subscription to Pornhub and your current complaints about not getting what you paid for, then just tell your credit-card provider that the purchase price did not provide you with the product which was described. You get your money. That's what credit cards are for. We pay with credit cards, and not with mere cash, IN ORDER THAT the merchant can be held to some degree of accountability. Generally you have three months from the time the charge appeared on your bill. If it's a recurring monthly charge, you'll be able to get back each individual month's worth of payment, as long as the payment isn't more than three months old at the time when you first ask for it to be returned.

As far as downloading,

Spoiler: show

you can use any of a number of stream-capture add-ons, websites, and so forth, to get a full-force copy of anything that comes into your computer if you just bother to Google up how to do it. It's not difficult. YouTube-DL is one, as mentioned; VideoDownLoadHelper is a Firefox add-on I often use; Chrome has its own suite of video-capture utilities. The idea is utterly laughable, that somehow the owner(s) of the Pornhub servers have any say at all in what does or does not get downloaded. Kind of like the US Post Office demanding that people not use plastic letter-openers for anything they deliver to anyone's mailbox, only metal letter-openers allowed. WTF man, it came into my house, once it's in here I do with it what I want to do, no matter who put it through the damn mail slot.

As far as what's up there, and what's not, now on Pornhub. How did they decide?

Spoiler: show

Lots of my favorite PMVs have disappeared, thousands of them. I can't imagine that they paid a few wankers to go through all gazillion of their videos and pick which ones do, or do not, have child-trafficking possibilities in them. Did they just leave 1/10th of their former collection randomly? Did they have some kind of tag-me-tag-you crowd-source going on? Did they delete anything from anyone who had not paid them money? Or maybe they deleted anything from anyone who was not one of their six or ten favorite porn-provider professional studios? Or what? How did they decide? Not only, (a) what criteria did they use to decide?, but also (b) in what manner and with what logistical tactics did they apply those criteria? For item (b) it seems to me, the logistics would probably have been rather burdensome. They had thousands of videos from thousands of sources; kaboom they've just magically removed exactly the right ones to remove, and kept the right ones to keep? No way it was that accurate a cull ... something must have been mislaid on one side or the other, I think.

As for copyright ...

Spoiler: show

well, different regions and nations have different arrangements. The USA's rules are more arcane and backwards (historically) than those of the European Union, partly because the USA's Congress wrote some legislation that tried to be forward-looking during the late 1980s and early 1990s but then they haven't revisited it and of course the predictions about technological change turned out to be entirely wrong, partly because what rules for Microsoft and for Disney also rules for Pornhub, partly because the USA generally (wrongly) assumes it's the biggest gorilla in the room and therefore demands that the rest of the monkeys follow the USA's lead. But that's about what the rules are; the enforcement is another question, and is often more strict in more wealthy countries (where they have more resources to put to it) even if the rules are less draconian (f.e. ANY porn trafficking in Singapore is seriously punished; but they don't generally try to catch you watching it, there). The intersections of morality, puritanical controllers, social mores, rules and their enforcement, current and outdated laws, and other related concepts, all criss-cross in many problematic ways over the notion of pornography. Nobody here is a lawyer. The USA's First Amendment protects free speech and publication, generally including porn (and, somehow, strip-club dancing has been held to be "self-expression" of the protected sort, as well ... so Barbie and Dusty can continue to shimmy and disrobe, as long as they're doing so with the intent to express a thought or two, like, "I look hot, don't I? Vote Biden. How do you like my tits? Vote Biden." I just don't get it.) Other nations don't necessarily have the same protections with the same regimes of coverage or enforcement. But the internet goes everywhere.

[book_guy]

Previous post TLDR ... summary:

Can I get the job of being paid to watch gazillions of their videos in order to help Pornhub decide which videos to keep up and which to take down? I promise to do a real careful job ...

[morewanking]

You should still be able to download videos using a third party service, such as this one:
https://www.tubeoffline.com/download-PornHub-videos.php

Well,it is not working anymore! Even if it is used on example video
http://www.pornhub.com/view_video.php?v ... 59727ee9d9
it will display "Title: Video Disabled - Pornhub.com".
And more than 75% of pornhub videos (was 13 514 155, become 2 912 706) were removed:
https://www.pornhub.com/blog/11422

PornHub have been on a weird crusade against all sorts of content recently, but doing it in a really unfriendly way. I had my account deleted without notice. I didn't even know what had happened. I got in touch with their support who flatly refused to explain what had happened and said they could terminate accounts at any time without explanation - not really very helpful if you don't even know what you did wrong. I might not have minded if it wasn't for the fact that I was a paid up premium member with 3 months left on an annual subscription and purchased videos. At every stage PornHub have been obstructive and unhelpful, so they can go to hell. I'll not be spending any money there again because they can't be trusted.

That's the reason! You paid up premium member with 3 months worth, they decide to just take it without providing the service.
Words "they could terminate accounts at any time without explanation" really mean: we just take your money (if you are stupid enough to give it to them), but we do not promise anything in return.

[3xTripleXXX]

Lots written above, but PornHub's reasoning and method are pretty simple.

Underage porn, real rape porn, and revenge porn were all being uploaded. This was all reported about in a major news site (New York Times, I think it was). There is no automated way of checking for this. How do you tell the difference between real rape and consensual rape play? Or an 18yo model vs. a 16yo model? Most of the current laws for age verification came from when Traci Lords lied about her age and started doing porn at 16.

Because of this, Mastercard and Visa blocked all transactions through PornHub. This basically took out their whole financial basis, since that's how most people pay. Not only does this kill PornHub's bottom line, it means all the people who are uploading their own content through PornHub's modeling program and the legit content providers are also not getting any money.

Without being able to make money, PornHub is fucked. So they've disabled uploading by everyone who's not part of the modeling program or registered content provider in a desperate gambit to get Mastercard and Visa to allow them access to their services again. After that, they removed all videos uploaded by anyone else to ensure there was no more illegal content on the site. I totally understand this, considering the situation they're in. Without people being able to use bank cards, they're not making any money.

They've still got all the videos, but they're blocked from view. When I look at my video manager on PH, it says they're all blocked, pending review. I doubt there'll ever be one, though. No one's going to manually watch basically 10 million videos, and even if they did, too much content would still be questionable.

Their verification process is also blocked at the moment, and they're apparently working on a new one. I doubt they'll ever open for unverified uploads ever again, and I would at least not bother verifying for content that could get hit by a DMCA, even if I'd consider it at all. PH has already banned one of my accounts for DMCA reasons.

tl;dr After bad publicity, Mastercard and Visa blocked use on PH, and now they're desperate to get money flowing again. They nuked from orbit, leaving only what they could be reasonably sure was legal content.

[Strothy]

Previous post TLDR ... summary:

Can I get the job of being paid to watch gazillions of their videos in order to help Pornhub decide which videos to keep up and which to take down? I promise to do a real careful job ...

count me in I mean only 11.000.000 videos to screen how long could that take?

Spoiler: show

:thinks about all those 4-5H long compilations: maybe 15€€/$ per watched hour? I promise I won't just let in run on my laptop and don't actually watch xD

I've also geeked out a bit and started monitoring the number of videos on Xvideos and how much inflow they now will see, but so far I think Spankbank and XV are gonna be the replacement for some of the unverified amateurs (I hope).

[throwawayacct]

PH is the big fish. Undoubtedly the other sites like xvids, xvideos, xhamster, xnxx, and spankbang will follow suit, either on their own or due to pressures from card companies.

We saw this with the crusade against sex workers on Craigslist. It was just a matter of time before the next biggest fish, Backpage, was targeted. Then TER, Preferred411, RS2K and other more "networking" and verification sites within the following year.

I get why CC companies take a hard line against their cards being used to finance illegal and harmful things like CP, drug trade, and so on. The line between "illegal" and "immoral" is fat and blurry, and while it's true that morals do get enshrined into law by a society, there are a whole host of things the Puritanical aspects of western civilization deem immoral and fight to make the rest of us adhere to their concept of morality.

Thing is, the world of sex workers is chock full of the same figures and "leaders" crusading against them, using their services. These things - porn, sex work, recreational drug use - have long, LOOOOOOOOOOOOONG been part of society, and it's clear there isn't some shadowy illicit minority keeping it afloat - the preacher condemning unwed women to hell for sinning is the same getting spanked with a copy of Thus Spoke Zarathrustra by a trans leather Domme on Monday. Utah is the largest consumer of gay porn in the country. We've all seen the stats and info.

It's high time we have a real discussion in society about how the "dirty, dirty" porn industry and sex workers in general are managed and treated. Normalizing and accepting these things as part of society and culture will do far more to protect vulnerable persons than these continued broad-sweep smackdowns. If CC companies and LE (worldwide, like Interpol) would work *with* PH to nab CP and rape images/video uploaders and creators, I believe there would be more effective means of eliminating these harmful elements. But the "all porn is bad" crusade pits the website against any attempts to do so.

I think your average Boomer/older X'er who didn't grow up or into the internet (I'm a "xennieal" and BBS came and went while I was in HS/college) would be utterly appalled at how much porn is out there. I mean shocked to their core. And that's ultimately the problem - so many of these decisions and processes are put into place by people who don't realize the magnitude of what they are attempting. There is no way PH could afford the size of a moderation team to curate the site as it stands now, much less moderate content coming in - it's fundamentally impossible for humans to manage the scale, it has to be done by algorithm. And algorithms can be exploited or circumvented - even (rather especially) Youtube has a CP problem. Clearly the suppression and speaking about it in hushed tones isn't fucking working.

[doremi]

I can't imagine that they paid a few wankers to go through all gazillion of their videos and pick which ones do, or do not, have child-trafficking possibilities in them. Did they just leave 1/10th of their former collection randomly? Did they have some kind of tag-me-tag-you crowd-source going on? Did they delete anything from anyone who had not paid them money? Or maybe they deleted anything from anyone who was not one of their six or ten favorite porn-provider professional studios? Or what? How did they decide? Not only, (a) what criteria did they use to decide?, but also (b) in what manner and with what logistical tactics did they apply those criteria? For item (b) it seems to me, the logistics would probably have been rather burdensome. They had thousands of videos from thousands of sources; kaboom they've just magically removed exactly the right ones to remove, and kept the right ones to keep? No way it was that accurate a cull ... something must have been mislaid on one side or the other, I think.

Actually, their process was brutally simple. And any company having the word GEEK in their company name can do this. They just ran this algorithm:

Code: Select all

FOR ALL video IN database
{
     IF video.user.type = UNVERIFIED
     {
          DISABLE video
     {
{

[GodDragon]

I can't imagine that they paid a few wankers to go through all gazillion of their videos and pick which ones do, or do not, have child-trafficking possibilities in them. Did they just leave 1/10th of their former collection randomly? Did they have some kind of tag-me-tag-you crowd-source going on? Did they delete anything from anyone who had not paid them money? Or maybe they deleted anything from anyone who was not one of their six or ten favorite porn-provider professional studios? Or what? How did they decide? Not only, (a) what criteria did they use to decide?, but also (b) in what manner and with what logistical tactics did they apply those criteria? For item (b) it seems to me, the logistics would probably have been rather burdensome. They had thousands of videos from thousands of sources; kaboom they've just magically removed exactly the right ones to remove, and kept the right ones to keep? No way it was that accurate a cull ... something must have been mislaid on one side or the other, I think.

Actually, their process was brutally simple. And any company having the word GEEK in their company name can do this. They just ran this algorithm:

Code: Select all

FOR ALL video IN database
{
     IF video.user.type = UNVERIFIED
     {
          DISABLE video
     {
{

Code: Select all

UPDATE videos video INNER JOIN accounts acc ON video.uploader = acc.id SET video.available = acc.verified 

But probably easier to just update the videos one by one when they are requested. Removes the need to run a query accross like 13m entries.

[Sissy Elise]

Just a quick note to say you can find all my sissy video's that was on pornhub pre-uploaded to motherless.com :
viewtopic.php?f=25&t=19565&p=229739#p229739

[3xTripleXXX]

In case you guys haven't seen it, here's PH's statement on what they're doing and what they're going to do: https://help.pornhub.com/hc/en-us/categ ... and-Safety

Sounds pretty comprehensive.

[masperturbator]

depending on what their new verification process is

Straightforward. It's a photo held as collateral, paired with honesty about your gender.

That's their old verification. If you try to upload now, it says it's blocked until the new verification system is in place. So they're making changes to the process. :)

I see. Apologies for taking it at face value. I'm not interested in verifying, so didn't click through.

... obviously another article-for-scare in which the author feels free to make assumptions which just can't be denied, like all the other porn-bashing and escort-bashing and strip-club-bashing articles that come out written by someone who hasn't ever written about the adult industries ever before and therefore is quite comfortable working only within puritanical anti-adult-industry assumptions.

Perhaps. I bet you're right about that author. Isn't it funny that 80s and 90s conservative values are showing up in progressive liberal outbursts of activism now?

I can't imagine that they paid a few wankers to go through all gazillion of their videos and pick which ones do, or do not, have child-trafficking possibilities in them.

They hid every video posted by a non-verified (in the old method) account. No review yet.

Actually, their process was brutally simple. And any company having the word GEEK in their company name can do this. They just ran this algorithm:

Code: Select all

FOR ALL video IN database
{
     IF video.user.type = UNVERIFIED
     {
          DISABLE video
     {
{

[Sissyhero]

What I'm wondering is how does Mastercard and Visa not working with Pornhub actually help anything? Doesn't it just encourage people to buy and enter the world of cryptocurrency, which you would still use real money to buy? For all the good things it provides, we all know you can buy illegal things with it. The conspiratorial side in me feels like this is a social experiment.

[3xTripleXXX]

What I'm wondering is how does Mastercard and Visa not working with Pornhub actually help anything? Doesn't it just encourage people to buy and enter the world of cryptocurrency, which you would still use real money to buy? For all the good things it provides, we all know you can buy illegal things with it. The conspiratorial side in me feels like this is a social experiment.

Most people won't bother. But what it does is allow Mastercard and Visa to claim that they don't support sites with illegal content. They do it to separate themselves from bad PR, basically. But most people will switch to other sites that do accept their existing means of payment, rather than try to figure out cryptocurrencies, which is a pretty big topic to research.

[doremi]

But what it does allow Mastercard and Visa to claim that they don't support sites with illegal content. They do it to separate themselves from bad PR, basically.

The more I think about this, the more I think that this is a setup by credit card companies to claim higher percentage fees via "High Risk business" payment processors like CCBill. And maybe they even have stakes in those processors to make more money. I'm currently searching for such a processor for a project of mine, and let me tell you, they make tons of money per transaction, and people still pay using Mastercard and Visa. It doesn't make any sense, other than greed.