Pornhub just removed around 80% of its hosted content in order to get back into the good graces of the established payment channels of the world. For a content delivery platform, deleting 4/5ths of its product from view is a drastic move.
Background
On December 4th, The New York Times published a piece by Nicholas Kristof with very serious claims of PornHub profiting from illegal content including child exploitation. He waded a little further into murky anti-porn moral territory (misogyny is not illegal) but that's another discussion. Clearly there is a problem with the illegal stuff. Based on what he found, Kristof called upon Pornhub's payment processors to cease doing business with them, and less than a week later they did.
Impact
Pornhub clearly needed to work harder at removing illegal content, because even making a penny from serving ads on something like that is unacceptable. It's hard to blame those making decisions for Visa and Mastercard for accepting the call to demonetize them.
Clearly the owners of Pornhub are feeling it. And other porn platforms similar to them are surely taking note (and I would guess doubling their moderating teams). However there are more people impacted by the removal of PH's revenue stream than just its stakeholders. Samantha Cole writing for Vice makes the case that credit processors pulling out of porn puts sex workers in danger.
Crypto alternatives?
Pornhub has dabbled in cryptocurrencies for several years now. Up until recently these have been low-adoption or scam tokens. Perhaps with some insight into what was coming, they got a little more mainstream and added Bitcoin and Litecoin payments in September. Seemingly in response to the present situation, they have just added support for Monero too.
It's good to see another company that has become a household name, porn-related as it may be, take cryptocurrency this seriously. However, is it enough?
No alternative, yet
Pornhub's removal of most of their own content in order to appease their credit gods is akin to a religious sacrifice. The dollar is their Lord, and there is none beside it. Despite opening the door to cryptocurrencies, even some of the most popular ones, they still have to give in to extreme self-destruction to have a chance at being able to deal in the Almighty Dollar again.
Source: cropped from this photo
State of crypto in 2020
Over 10 years since Bitcoin's launch, there is still much ground to gain towards cryptocurrency adoption and commercial use beyond speculation. Pornhub's current situation is almost a dream for pushing adoption and use of alternatives to fiat money, but their religious fealty to the dollar makes it clear: Crypto is still far from where it needs to be for generating real revenue.
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My apologies for reaching out to you here @pfunk, I wasn't sure where else to contact you directly. I noticed you downvoted my recent post substantially and wanted to ask why? I don't think I said anything that could have been poor quality (though that is obviously subjective) nor have I interacted with you or your work in a negative way to result in some sort of retaliation. Anyway, I am just trying to understand the reason. I blog just one article a week over three platforms Hive/Publish0x and ReadCash. This is the first time however, that I've received a downvote from someone. It would be nice to know what you perceive that I did wrong (in you opinion). Thanks.
No worries for reaching out. I should maybe explain in each post I downvoted, because it's impersonal and confusing otherwise. Thanks for reminding me of that.
I see that the posts in the Project Hope community are being set to 50% beneficiary of a Project Hope account and then the main Project Hope account is then upvoting those posts to a high value. I see this as the owners of the Project Hope accounts using the community's posts to vote on themselves for profit (beyond normal curation rewards) and my downvote is to help remove the profitability of the scheme. My downvote means nothing personal about you or your post. You've done nothing wrong.
I suggest to the owners of the Project Hope accounts that they discontinue this scheme because it's going to result in downvotes on their community members' posts like this.
Thank you very much for explaining the downvote, your rationale does make sense and I'll pass the info back on to those in charge of the PH team.
Perhaps I can give a little background on why I give 50% back. It was requested of a bunch of regular (longer term) posters as a way of building the PH-Support fund so that it becomes more sustainable and community voting is less dependent on a few bigger whales in the curation trails. I'll be honest I still don't fully understand the economics of the platform, but the bottom line for me appeared to be little differences between my previous 20/30% beneficiary and then 50%.
Anyway, thank you again for explaining. It is a little more reassuring that the downvote isn't a reflection on the quality of my content. I spend a few hours each weekend writing an article so it is kinda a kidney punch to get blank negative feedback. Thanks also for permitting me to use this content to respond to you. Let me know if you'd like me to remove this info so as not to take the comments on this article on too much of a tangent.
One issue I have with this is it maintains the stereotype that cryptocurrency is for shady stuff regular finance won't touch.
That is true for some cryptocurrencies, especially a few years ago. However, the majority of cryptocurrencies are just an evolutionary step better than existing finance.
In anycase, I'm glad pornhub deleted most of their videos. Asides from the extreme content or nonconsensual stuff (I hope we can all agree needed to go), there was actually a lot of copyright infringement, and not just from porn, lol.
At the end how do you spend the money ? It would still be fiats 90 % of the time, isn't it ? That is where the regulators have advantage - they can always frame rules and trap and do whatever they want to. The real solution is when government adopts crypt - then only it will become main stream.
Pornhub has been exposed for those types of content for years maybe and they didn't care at all... until now. If you ask me pornhub shouldn't even exist or any other pornography site, it's too vicious for mental and sexual health of teenagers and also grownups.
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You can think whatever about porn, but for a chain like Hive to get a big player like Pornhub would make all the difference. Will be interesting to follow how this will play out for them
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Might the @dporn folks ever expand beyond their tiny niche?
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Hi, @preparedwombat this story was on our radar for sure. We are doing a few things around it.
We are currently building a off-chain marketplace for Dporn content creators to sell their content for both Hive/Fiat and the native token Porn on it. It will allow for behind-the-paywall for content.
We were talking to @eonwarp about behind-the-paywall scheme for our Dporn tribe and said its doable ,but would take some development. We reached out to PeakD in this comment here about having PeakD provide the ability to do so too.
One thing we are lacking is a full time dev. at the moment. We don't have the resources like LEOfinance ,but hoping to change that soon. We are here for the long-term.
Thanks for the mention.
Thanks for the reblog!
You bet. Thanks for making everyone aware of what is going on in this industry.
Does Hive have a marketing team or someone who can reach out? because they sure as hell ain't gonna coming knocking at our door.
Not that I know of, you can always join the discord and talk to some of the witnesses I guess. But I think aswell someone from Hive should atleast reach out and talk
Wow first I get a big upvote from the witness that I vote for.. then I come
To see the based AF article written by them! Damn I know how to pickem!
Thank you so much for that huge upvote, it means a lot! I am trying to onboard Walt Anderson and show him the value that his content can realize on this blockchain Vs. YouTube.
You are welcome!
so now i need to find a girlfriend :P
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they also used verge!!
!discovery 30
Yep, that was a pretty nice score for the DogeCoinDark err I mean Verge guys :) Still I think it's low-adoption. Bitcoin and to a much lesser extent Litecoin are much more well known. I'm not about to create an account to find out what exact crypto payments they take right now but it seems like Dogecoin would be a good option for commerce, even for porn.
like it! :)
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STOPHi @pfunk .Thank you for your good article.
Thank you for your comment and I will keep it in mind, I am a very distrustful man and it is one more plus in this regard, I am going to your comment because I do not see the link you are talking about and thank you for helping me, I am already following you
pfunk (72)en LeoFinance • hace 5 horas
Don't put your password into any suspicious links like this one, you can lose your account.
Hey man, just wanted to post and say thank you for being my biggest follower over the years.
Woops, this must have squeaked by the notifications (I missed it) but you're welcome! Hope you're doing well. How are the rest of your old podcast buddies?
How's Sun's micropenis taste? lol