A lot has been said about Pornhub and its parent company, MindGeek, since the publication in December 2020 of a shock investigation by the New York Times which revealed that the site hosted videos of sexual assaults sometimes committed against underage girls. The Montreal porn giant has been pilloried, dropped by online payment services. But now Netflix is giving birth to a documentary that sheds new nuanced light on this saga, without defending the indefensible and rehabilitating the most popular phonographic site in the world.
When it comes to pornography, two irreconcilable camps clash. On the one hand, the abolitionists, for whom ethical sex work is a chimera, pornography cannot be reduced to anything other than exploitation. On the other, a nebula of rather libertarian inspiration, which claims just as much feminism, but with the conviction that women can be fully fulfilled and consenting in the porn industry.
Money Shot: The Pornhub Story, which will be available on Netflix from Wednesday, carefully avoids taking sides with one or the other, leaving it to the audience to make up their own minds. Both the porn starswho are sorry for the lawsuit against the entire X industry, that the activists, who are calling for the site to be closed, have the airtime they need to put forward their arguments.
The one-and-a-half-hour documentary does not fall into Manichaeism, and this is undoubtedly its main strength, failing to reveal new details on this affair already widely covered by the media around the world. Those who followed MindGeek’s rout on social networks — no pun intended — won’t learn much behind the scenes.
From rise to decline
It briefly discusses the genesis of Pornhub, a site created by three Concordia students, initially rudimentary, before being swallowed up by the mysterious company MindGeek. From its unassuming offices on Décarie Boulevard, opposite the Orange Julep, the Montreal company will propel Pornhub among the 10 most visited websites in the world. A feat that is no stranger to a cleverly orchestrated marketing strategy, which contrasts with what we had been accustomed to until then in the world of porn, which was better off being discreet.
With provocative advertising campaigns and giant billboards in Times Square, Pornhub will become in a few years a recognizable brand for the general public. But by exposing itself in this way, Pornhub has also exposed itself to criticism. First, the #Traffickinghub campaign, launched in March 2020, raises awareness of the portal’s slowness in removing videos deemed problematic, even when they feature underage girls or people filmed without their knowledge. The article “The Children of Pornhub”, published in the new York Times in December of the same year, will have the effect of a bomb.
It will turn out that the verification process is indeed grossly flawed. Pornhub has a fraction of the number of moderators employed by Facebook, which publishes much less sensitive content. Following the revelations, the Visa and Mastercard of this world will eventually let go of Pornhub. To calm things down, the platform will remove nearly 80% of its videos, even if most of them were not illegal. In the midst of a pandemic, senior leaders will be summoned to come and explain themselves to a committee of parliamentarians in Ottawa, where they deliver more or less convincing testimony.
ideological war
On social networks, a broad movement is taking shape to demand the closure of the site, with abolitionist feminists at work, of course, but also several groups which officially fight against sexual exploitation, and whose origins date back to the American evangelical right. .
An astonishing alliance of circumstance, perhaps. But the defenders of the X industry, who are often incidentally actors, do not fail to point out that Pornhub has been the victim of the puritanism of Christian fundamentalists. The withdrawal of online payment services prevents them from monetizing their content on the platform, which pushes them towards smaller sites, which are probably even less exemplary in terms of sexual exploitation. If they are to be taken at their word, the charge against Pornhub will have had the effect of pushing already vulnerable sex workers even further into marginality.
You finish watching this documentary with the impression that pornography is not going away anyway. Pornhub, which continues to exist, by the way, may be a necessary evil after all. But it’s a safe bet that these star porn actresses, interviewed from their beautiful apartments, are not representative of the still very hidden world of pornography either. Could they be screens for a system that is actually inseparable from sexual exploitation?