Pornhub’s latest defibrillator zap to the site’s public image comes in the form of Terms of Service: a new podcast that released its first episodes on November 7, 2023.
It’s hosted by Asa Akira, one of the most successful porn stars on the site, and Alexzandra Kekisi, who was made Pornhub’s head of community and brand in August 2023. Kekisi’s appointment came as Pornhub attempted to battle legal issues such as age verification rules, and the critical fallout (or “misconceptions”, as Kekisi frequently describes them) about the site allegedly offering a haven for illegal and dangerous content.
The idea, Akira tells us, is to discuss censorship, deplatforming, free speech and sex, in the context of online porn and sex work. The reality is a huge amount of moaning, plus the framing of porn creators, and by extension Pornhub, as the victims of egregiously unfair social and business practices.
In the first episode Akira and Kekisi talk about how Pornhub is, Kekisi claims, “best in class” for moderation and safety, plus various “misconceptions”, including the suggestion that Pornhub had to remove hundreds of thousands of videos that had potentially illegal content from the site (over 650,000 videos were removed in 2020). In reality many videos were, according to Kekisi, removed simply because they were not from verified Pornhub accounts, glossing over the fact that enormous amounts of porn videos from unverified sources being on the site didn’t sound particularly safe either.
Akira complains about the likes of Cardi B being allowed to post sexualized content (albeit not full nudity) on platforms such as Instagram, whereas porn stars like Akira get routinely kicked off the platforms. Pornhub’s Instagram account was banned in 2022, when the brand had amassed 13 million followers on it.
Grievances such as these are often valid, but are undermined by the full extent of the moral and legal reckoning Pornhub has been forced into in recent years not being openly discussed.
In 2020, it was reported that the site featured illegal content including child sexual abuse material, and for years before that Pornhub was accused of building its enormous business on flagrant copyright infringement, by not properly moderating videos posted on the site. No-one’s expecting self-flagellation on what is essentially a Pornhub marketing podcast. But the site’s owner, MindGeek, rebranded in 2023 in an attempt to draw a line between now and this controversial past, so to tip-toe around this while claiming to go deep on sex worker issues feels like, well, double standards.
Conversations are, though, more long than deep. Over 90 minutes Akira and Kekisi talk to the hosts of The Ion Pack, a podcast that takes comedic shots at the New York film world, the main tenuous link being that the presenters used to present it anonymously, and some porn stars also use fake names. Celebrity gossip blogger Perez Hilton’s appearance is a jump-off for more moaning about social media (like Pornhub, he’s been kicked off TikTok). Chat often broadens into general internet and ‘cancel culture’ figures such as Kanye West, Donald Trump and Alex Jones: three people we don’t really need to hear about on a sex workers issues podcast.
The most relevant conversations are with porn star Cherie Deville, another Pornhub spokesperson / porn star, and Mike Stabile from the Free Speech Coalition, who raise the kinds of deep industry points lacking in the broader internet chat. They say, for example, that criticism of online porn from pro-condom campaigners doesn’t take into account condoms chafing and ripping after extended on-set use, arguing that regular testing is therefore more appropriate. Whether this opinion is medically supported isn’t really what we’re here to judge, but it’s the kind of insider view that wouldn’t get aired elsewhere.
Other nuggets (among the waffle) include insights into the boundaries of what Pornhub officially now allows on the site. If your pet dog walks into a sex scene you’re filming, that’s not going to pass muster as the footage would technically involve an animal: a red line. No blood is allowed to be shown and any bodily fluids we see, aside from semen, need to be clear. What about urine? “Maybe if it’s not too yellow.”
“The world is against us, we’re ostracized people,” Akira says in one episode. With financial, internet and social restrictions so often placed on porn creators, it’s understandable that many feel this way. A focused podcast looking deeply into each of the issues they face could serve great purpose, but it doesn’t sound like that’s what we’re going to get from Pornhub’s Terms of Service.
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