Exploitation Hub- The Problem With The Porn Industry

Pornhub. Redtube. Brazzers. There are tons upon tuns of free porn websites on the internet. Many of them are owned by the parent company, MindGeek. These websites allow individuals and Studios alike to post their content with no distribution fees. The brand’s revenue mostly comes from adrev, as the high traffic to their many, MANY porn sites allows them to make a hefty profit from companies that want to promote themselves to a vast array of potential customers.

But with a website where anyone can upload comes problems, especially for creators. Widespread piracy on Mindgeek’s platforms continues to contribute to losses for porn stars and studios, while making a profit for the websites and their parent company in spades.

They also have a massive exploitation issue in regards to their partners and models, taking a massive amount of revenue from creators and giving them dimes t dollars of the money their labor created. The Copyright Claim system on Mindgeek’s most popular site, Pornhub, is devastatingly complex. According to sex worker and popular creator Siri, Pornhub has a habit of making their creators jump through hoops like mad to maintain ownership of their content.

As a result, Porn DVD sales have dropped by 50% and many sex workers have moved from porn to full service work to maintain a livable income.

Now, I will never shame a full-service sex worker that consents to her work. That is a valid career path and I commend their confidence and contributions to society. Sex is an in demand service, and full service sex workers are a community as old as farming.

The issue here is the financial exploitation of sex workers by media platforms, and the theft of labor value.

“Because there is so much free porn readily available, fewer consumers are willing to purchase any” said adult performer Charlotte Sartre in an interview with TechCrunch.

And don’t get me fucking started on Racism in the porn industry.

But this is not PornHub’s only issue.

Producer and sexual predator Michael Pratt ran GirlsDoPorn, a very popular channel where 22 women were abused and coerced into performing on camera. This makes the content he filmed and shared illegal, as coerced consent is not legitimate autonomous consent, and making the sale of these literal rape films criminal.

Pratt was indicted, but not until hundreds of videos had been uploaded, and Pratt had profited off of his abuse of these innocent women.

In another case, a 15 year old human trafficking victim was falsely verified as an adult by Pornhub and over 50 videos of this kidnapped girl being raped were discovered by her mother.

And though I have MANY qualms with Exodus Cry, what happened to Rose Kalemba was detestable, and her abuse being defended for six months by Pornhub was absolutely unacceptable.

A case that doesn’t get a lot attention is that of Avri Sapir- a young woman trafficked by her father as a toddler and child, whose abuse was uploaded and viewed by thousands. Avri, despite starting as anti-sex work due to her trauma, has grown to be an ally to the decrim movement and very outspoken on the necessity of collaboration between trafficking survivors

As of writing, a sex worker driven petition for MindGeek to dissolve and give its profits to sex workers and trafficking victims exploited by their platform, has over 2500+ signatures.

I hope all of you will sign it as well. I know I have.