[imagesource:netflix]
Netflix is taking a deep dive into the website so popular it’s basically synonymous with online porn in general.
Money Shot: The Pornhub Story is Netflix’s new documentary on the biggest porn website in the world, knowing very well that the answer to the question it asks off the bat – “do you remember the first porn you ever saw?” – likely has something to do with Pornhub.
As the gateway to adult content for many young people, everyone knows the raunchy website.
But little do we all know about the morality fight on the other side of the NSFW content.
Over to The Guardian, noting that the majority of the 90-minute film focuses on the scrutiny and backlash the site has faced in recent years:
[It is] a place that encapsulates both the potential and the peril of the internet – private exploration amid furtive data collection, boundless opportunity and information warped toward extremity, the freedom to view and post tied to the ability to steal, harass and abuse.
“This issue of nonconsensual material on the internet – it’s not a Pornhub problem. It’s an internet problem,” Money Shot’s director, Suzanne Hillinger, told the Guardian.
Produced by Alex Gibney’s Jigsaw Productions, this doccie is coming off the back of that New York Times op-ed by Nicholas Kristof titled The Children of Pornhub, which reported on real instances of rape and sexual abuse of teenagers posted to the website with little to no recourse:
The article, coupled with a “#Traffickinghub” social media campaign orchestrated by US-based Exodus Cry, an Evangelical group with ties to the Christian right and Donald Trump, led MindGeek to ban all uploads from unverified users – a move many porn performers had been advocating for years to prevent piracy. It also prompted Mastercard and Visa to end payment processing with Pornhub which, as several performers attest, directly and abruptly imperiled their livelihoods while doing little to actually curb trafficking.
The director has made a point of not wanting this to be a “WeWork version of the Pornhub story”:
“The story is really complicated,” she added. “It’s really hard when there are people doing good work to try to curb trafficking and nonconsensual material from ending up on the internet. But there are also a lot of people doing it for other reasons, and that all kind of gets conflated, and there’s not a lot of conversation that has nuance to understand what those motives are.”
Watch the trailer for more:
Money Shot: The Pornhub Story is now available on Netflix
[source:guardian]
