It's like nobody knows how this technology works. When you upload a video, you get to type in the tags... PornHub isn't reviewing the videos and deciding to tag them with "pre-teen", or whatever.... that's THE UPLOADER that did that. So the solution is simple: Cancel and block any account (and delete all the content) from any uploader that is ever found to have used "youth-baiting" tags or illegal content. Sure, the uploader can create a new account... but then all you need to do is make upload accounts have greater responsibility. A photo ID. A bank account linked. Whatever. These articles are always so pre occupied with the PRESENTATION MEDIUM that they completely miss the individuals using that medium to post their garbage. Fuckin hate tech journos.
No offense, but this reads like you might not have finished the article. Here are the solutions he, cautiously, floats in the article: Nothing about limiting searches. Nicholas Kristof is also not a technology journalist, he is an op-ed columnist (a rather famous one) who mostly writes about human rights and gender equality. Not saying I'm a huge fan of his, in fact I typically think the NYT op-ed is awful, but this article seems above average for them.I don’t see any neat solution. But aside from limiting immunity so that companies are incentivized to behave better, here are three steps that would help: 1.) Allow only verified users to post videos. 2.) Prohibit downloads. 3.) Increase moderation.
Like it or not, it made waves https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/opinion/pornhub-news-child-abuse.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage...Pornhub on Tuesday announced three steps that mirrored suggestions I made in a long investigative column over the weekend that quoted the young people who so bravely told their stories. 1.) It will allow videos to be uploaded only by people who have verified their identities. 2.) It will improve moderation. 3.) It will no longer allow video downloads, which allow illegal material to proliferate.
Isn't the point of the article that by not implementing these simple solutions, they are complicit?
No...? The writer points out all the terrible terms that people can search for ... and then talks about how PornHub returns X number of videos for those terrible terms. The reader is left to guess that PornHub is responsible for the terms that produce the results, when the actual fact is that the uploader hand-typed in the terms. What PornHub needs to do is penalize account owners - with massive, instant, unreversible bans - the incentivize posters not to post such content or tags. The author never makes it clear who defined the repugnant terms being used, and therefore the reader is left with only one culprit to point a finger at. It's not like PornHub has a folder named "Choking 13-year old" and someone uploaded a video to that folder.... the uploader chose to upload that vide and that tag, and therefore should be punished by being de-platformed.
Maybe the article was underemphasizing the fact that the tags are user generated, but it wasn't saying the opposite either. I would've thought (perhaps wrongly) that this should be obvious to anyone reading this in 2020. To me it's very clear that PornHub aren't even close to be doing all they could to stop this - their effort seems half hearted at best. Don't forget they are becoming unimaginably rich off of the website; they could do A LOT more if they weren't such greedy pricks. In my book, that makes them complicit.
Obviously these are incredibly difficult problems to solve, and I was initially a bit sympathetic with PornHub for that reason. However, the following struck me: 80 moderators is so low they almost might as well not have moderators at all. And clearly they are making boatloads of money, so it's not like they can't afford them. It's an insult to victims of abuse. So is their so called "measure" of doubling the number of moderators. 2 * ~0 = ~0 Having all uploaders confirm their identities, while not a perfect measure since it could expose people who legitimately want to remain anonymous, seems like a reasonable solution. This isn't YouTube, it's a place that's exclusively populated with extremely sensitive content. Other than that they should clearly do a lot more to algorithmically detect reposts of known abuse videos. YouTube does it with copyrighted work, there should be little to stop PornHub from doing the same. I know it's easier said than done, but they are making billions. They could invest a few hundred million into this.While Pornhub would not tell me how many moderators it employs, I interviewed one who said that there are about 80 worldwide who work on Mindgeek sites (by comparison, Facebook told me it has 15,000 moderators). With 1.36 million new hours of video uploaded a year to Pornhub, that means that each moderator would have to review hundreds of hours of content each week.