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MONEY SHOT: THE PORNHUB STORY. About the famous porn site [REVIEW]

Everyone knows what Pornhub is, whether they use it or not.

Michalina Peruga

25 March 2023

I guess everyone knows what Pornhub is, whether they use it or not. This is one of the most popular porn sites that provides its users with professional videos produced by porn studios and studios, and also allows the publication and viewing of amateur videos. The website is active in social media, and the greatest attention of the world media is attracted by annual lists of the most popular thematic searches on the website in a given year. Pornhub also supports various initiatives and charitable activities.

Despite this, the website is not spared the controversies arising around its activities, as well as confirmed cases of unethical activities, such as the distribution of illegal films depicting sexual violence against women and children. That’s what Netflix’s latest documentary Money Shot: The Pornhub Story is all about, directed and produced by Suzanne Hillinger.

Pornhub has dramatically changed the way pornography is created and distributed online, giving its users access to vast amounts of both free and paid, amateur and professional content. Thanks to the large amount of content, the service earns a lot of money from advertising. The film tells how Pornhub became the hegemony of pornographic content, Netflix or YouTube of pornography, leaving its competition far behind. The service also became a place where individual creators could earn money by uploading their own films to the platform. Pornhub’s reach gave them a chance to stand out, appear in the porn world and earn enough to support themselves.

Hillinger talks to such creators as Siri Dahl or Gwen Adora, showing how, willy-nilly, they began cooperation with the market-monopolyping Pornhub. However, it was there that they developed a loyal audience and gained a steady source of income. Until allegations of Pornhub distributing child pornography and rape videos came to light.

It happened thanks to the great article Children of Pornhub by Nicholas Kristof published in “The New York Times” in December 2020, which took a look at the way the site is managed and focused on the stories of women and young girls who have been trying unsuccessfully for years to force Pornhub to removal from the website of videos showing their use. The problem turned out to be insufficient control of the materials – you did not need to be a verified user to upload a video to the platform, which meant that anyone could upload whatever they wanted to Pornhub. As a result, the site was full of videos of rapes and sexual violence against children. Service staff did not respond or reacted too slowly, and even after removing a video, it often reappeared on the platform. The reason was the lack of security and more restrictive restrictions, as well as an insufficient number of moderators for such a huge amount of content.

After the widely publicized article, payment operators such as Mastercard and Visa withdrew from cooperation with Pornhub, which meant that creators making money on the platform, such as Dahl and Adora, had no way to earn and withdraw money. They are the focal point of Hillinger’s interest – due to the insufficient activities of the website, they have become, in a way, victims of this situation. It’s a non-obvious point of view and very often overlooked, so it’s interesting to hear their point of view in the documentary.

On the other hand, the director focuses almost exclusively on the side of the performers, and thus the essence of this terrifying and shocking affair is lost somewhere in the background. I missed, for example, interviews with the other side, i.e. with activists who publicized the case and gave it momentum, such as Laila Mickelwait mentioned in the film.

After watching the documentary, it’s a bit hard to determine which side its creators really stand on. Of course, Pornhub’s operation is clearly stigmatized here, but it’s hard not to get the impression that there is an attempt to whitewash the porn industry a bit. And yet it is its existence that indirectly often reinforces rape culture. I missed a clear, strong criticism of Pornhub’s actions. Since they are a platform that distributes such sensitive and abuse-prone content, they should be particularly sensitive to their meticulous and thorough moderation.

I would love to see this documentary in the form of a miniseries, each episode of which would present the case from the point of view of those involved – victims, activists fighting for women’s and children’s rights and those working against human trafficking, Pornhub employees, moderators managing the site or pornographic creators. Each of these threads seems only superficially touched upon, but it is clear that there is great potential in these stories, a lot of emotions and nuances. Money Shot: The Story of Pornhub is an interesting documentary that explores the unknown side of this global porn industry.

Michalina Peruga

Michalina Peruga

Film scholar, art historian and lover of contemporary horror cinema and classic Hollywood cinema, especially film noir and the work of Alfred Hitchcock. In cinema, she loves mixing genres, breaking patterns and looking closely at characters.

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