Netflix tip of the day: Money Shot: the Pornhub Story

TW: Rape and sexual abuse

It's time again for a fine docu on Netflix. Although ‘fine’ may not be quite the right word, but for true crime lovers at least, this will be right up their alley. And tsja, I think we all know the name Pornhub; this porn site was founded in 2007 and bought by Canada's MindGeek in 2010. For years, this platform was known as a place where pornographic videos were uploaded by adult content creators. What happened in the videos was all done with consent and the earnings and conditions were better than porn videos shot in studios.

A safe place, then, until a piece by journalist Nicholas Kristof appeared in 2020 in the New York Times. The videos voluntarily put up there were indeed in the majority, but unfortunately Pornhub had a very dark side: rape videos and child sexual abuse footage. These videos were also just online, visible to the website's visitors.

Logically, after this piece, Pornhub came under huge criticism, after which they severely curtailed all activities. They wanted to act tough right away and get rid of these activities - logical of course. Especially considering the Fosta-Sesta laws were introduced in the United States in 2018, making all employees guilty when online sex trafficking is involved, as was the case with Pornhub.

Content creators were therefore no longer able to upload as many videos as before and, as a result, made less money. Pornhub simply did not have enough manpower to properly screen all videos: the ‘moderators’ had to watch around a thousand videos a day to approve or reject them, and so many creators decided to switch to another platform: OnlyFans, which we are all familiar with by now.

This platform was much better regulated and allowed creators to post as much as they wanted. By now, OnlyFans is hugely popular and several celebrities are also active on the platform. Not all accounts on OnlyFans belong to sex workers, by the way, but this docu focuses on that.

All in all, not a true crime docu like you are used to, but it does give a very interesting look behind the scenes of these content creators. I myself had no idea about the situation uncovered in 2020, which is why I really recommend this. Even though the documentary does not really go into depth, it is still very entertaining.