Unbelievable that in her thread of Tweets on the subject she promoted her book. That and using the language ‘rape tape’ doesn’t exactly endear her to me.
This seems to be another instance of a business model being unsustainable once reasonable expectations of moderation are applied.
This is usually the case with any large platform where user submitted content is the bedrock of growth and profitability. These companies wouldn’t exist (or they certainly wouldn’t have become the behemoths they are) if they had been forced to apply scalable moderation methods expected of every small forum and blog in the world.
So far it seems Tumblr is the only one to have fallen foul of the ramifications of the “too big to moderate” ethos, although that was driven by Apple, not a government agency or legislative effort. It’s not unreasonable to expect every Tube site to suffer the same fate when legal power is brought to bear, and this will likely extend to social media eventually. Facebook is going to be fending off a tsunami of regulators in the next ten years and it’s probably not going to win most of those battles.
I think it’s likely to come down to the question of whether authorities deem it reasonable to allow some risk in exchange for the perceived benefits to users. Social media sites like FB and Twitter have a much better chance to prove their worth than adult content sites, due to existing biases against adult entertainment.
I’m glad they’re taking this seriously at PH.
Well there’s further developments, one I did dear hoping for so soon. However, let’s see how it actually plays out and if they really are deleting all the user uploaded stuff:
Potentially… a very good thing for the rest of us.
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Well I did a little test… If you go to the link below, you will find only content with blue tick… so uploaded by the verified model, or a studio and 2257 checked ect… There’s still a few pages i am seeing with unverified, I am assuming its just a cache issue or they are suspending the unverified in batches.
Since they live on the illegal and unverified content and then just try to monetize themselves off the unverified I suppose there might be a bit more cake for the rest of us… Also trying to imagine what removing millions of pages from SERPs will do to their rankings also 
Yes that’s what I’m thinking, at least in theory… I don’t trust them though. Removed content now says pending verification, so it might not be gone forever. And there’s still plenty of very suspiciously long videos on there.
Trying to stay optimistic on this one… I cant say I trust them, I see a lot of long videos from model accounts, but that makes sense as my understanding is they get a viewshare even on the free side of $X cents per short video and $XX cents for longer ones.
By example, when I looked at Sort by longest just a few days ago to check piracy there were about 50 pages of 200+ minute videos, now there is only 12 over 100 minutes.
In the shorter video bracket I see some full scenes, but all seem to be part of studios channels, so… so far I am counting it as a win, both as an affiliate and from speaking to fellow studios over the past few hours, future will only tell what happens next
The entire network of their sites, Xtube, Gaytube, for example, now offers videos only from verified partners. I guess their ranks will collapse dramatically, along with all the tube sites that used their content. Without being an exceptional optimist, I think this is excellent news for those of us who play the game honestly - owners, producers, partners.
I really hope so too, lets see how it develops.
I checked my XTube account this morning. It had some videos I uploaded YEARS ago. All but one were gone (with no explanation). I’m assuming the other will be gone in a day or so. Curiously I showed as a “verified user”, but when I went to the upload page it said I wasn’t the type of user that was allowed to upload.
So, yes, it’s their entire network. And yes, the videos are completely gone, not just pending verification.
Well that’s interesting. That’s a lot of videos on a lot of sites they removed then. It shows then just how much they rely on their transactions and how little sponsors get from them.
CNN featured them now too:
This is a tricky one for me. One one hand I am aghast that Visa and MC are stepping to fill the role on internet police and censors. We ran afoul of them already years ago with Peters Twins content (ironic that it remained up on PornHub the whole time but we are not allowed to screen it). On the other hand, this business has been built on the theft and misuse of others hard work in the knowledge that there was basically no policing.
Absolutely, their success is entirely based on others demise, always hiding behind user generated content rather than taking responsibility. The rest of us use whatever promo content we get from sponsors and know exactly where it comes from.
I personally thought it was quite ironic to be honest that one of the most noticeably pirated sites on pornhub in recent years was czech hunter, had all its videos pirated within hours of being released… Ended up getting acquired by Mindgeek… Now all that piracy has been cleared off the main tubes and the site is surely a lot more profitable, just under the new owner that facilitated the piracy by having it on one of its platforms in the first place.
Also as a sidenote… anyone noticed that gaytube has seemingly disappeared, tried it today it redirects to xtube
oh wow ok… yes same for me, it redirects. Why the hell would they just close it? it was very spammy obviously but still. Perhaps there was simply too much unverfied uploads to save?
BTW, this is affecting more than MindGeek’s tube sites. Right now the only way to buy a membership on their paysites is with MasterCard. Visa, JCB and Discover are all disabled. If you enter a credit card number for a Visa card it will tell you they can only take Mastercard.
Needless to say that’s going to affect ratios with AdultForce sites.
Now only verified members can upload videos to PH, which will prevent a lot of pirates from uploading full videos to PH. At least this is a good sign for sponsors and affiliates.
That’s bad news… thanks for pointing it out. It very much will hurt ratios. There used to be some sites on ccbill that only accepted MasterCard and they did much worse.
I also tested myself here in Europe and get the same, only MasterCard accepted now.
Sales seem unaffected at the moment though. However I don’t sell as much for Adult Force as I used too, their changes a while back made sales decline.
Latest update, Just got this to my email (not that I send any traffic to them via hub traffic) but considering they just cutting off any webmaster traffic rather than knocking the CPM rates to extremely low, that has to be some indication how much this is currently hurting them.
Also their ad network is currently only accepting Paxum
I didn’t realize Traffic Junky was one of theirs. So all their sites are affected. Suddenly a huge loss of income yet large running costs. They must be hurting badly. Question is how long they can survive without processing.
When asking rep about processing memberships on adult force only got the reply “we’re still processing”… yet obviously they are not.